My older daughter is in the Peace Corps in Mali: she had Internet access this week:

There’s still no Internet at the house. I cornered M, our regional coordinator, this morning and said I’d do anything I could to help make Internet a thing we could have again. He assured me he was on it and we might even get it today. I’m just hoping it happens this week.

So the last three weeks weren’t necessarily my most productive, but they were generally more positive feeling than the month of October when nothing seemed to be going my way. Seliba or Tabaski was at the beginning of the month. It takes a couple days for people to prepare, and then the celebration itself is basically three days long, so nothing gets done for awhile on either side of it. I’d heard different things from different volunteers and also from my homologue about what to expect, but it actually seemed a little more low-key than seli fitini or the end of Ramadan.

The big selling point for this holiday is that everyone who can afford to, i.e. the male heads of households, kills a sheep. B, my homologue’s husband, is like the lead old man for three households, his own two wives and kids and then the two younger brothers and their three wives and kids. So B did the actual cutting of the sheep’s throats. I asked if I could watch, and they were thrilled as always that I wanted to take some pictures.

After the morning prayers at the clearing by the side of the road (the mosque is too small for a capacity holiday crowd including women and children) we rushed back to the compound for the slaughter. I was the only woman present. The younger men handled the sheep, dug a hole for the blood, and picked leaves off a nearby tree to stem any arterial spray (which I had actually been wondering about when I chose my angle for picture taking). B muttered some blessings over the animals and slit there throats so the blood filled the hole. I expected to feel something while watching, but really I was just excited at how much meat that meant we were going to have to eat for the next couple of days. I felt bad about not feeling bad, but meat is so rare in village, I couldn’t help but feel happy.

I went home to change and missed the skinning and beheading of the animals, but came back in time for some of the butchering. The rest of the day young boys on bikes crisscrossed the village delivering meat from one family to another. I gave the meat I received directly to my homologue for cooking since I didn’t want to handle it. The best meat preparation involved a mustard and vinegar sauce and what basically amounted to a bbq grill. It was delicious. The meat stewed for a long time in the sauce was also good. I think I may have over done it, because they were surprised at how much meat I ate. Apparently T, the volunteer before me, showed more restraint.

One day we went to Numula, the farthest away quartier where my people, the blacksmiths named Fane, live, to greet B, my homologue’s best girlfriend. She hadn’t warned her that we were coming even though we planned to stay there all day because it is a long walk from our compound, so the lunch wasn’t very good.

I made what is probably my most hysterical joke to date in Bambara as we were walking to Numula. After we’d been walking for about half an hour I asked my homologue if we weren’t actually walking to Dugukolobugu, which is 7 km in the same direction. She thought that was hilarious and told everyone when we arrived what I’d said.

After Tabaski I biked to T’s village, Djambugu, to hang out for a couple days. Her gas tank is leaking so she couldn’t cook on her gas stove, and she likes to cook for herself so we had to cook over charcoal, which really is a slow process and makes you appreciate what the Malian women do every day. T’s host mom was also suffering from Malaria bad enough that she had to get driven by moto 7 km to the nearest CSCOM twice a day for quinine shots. It was weird seeing her looking like death, dragging herself around. (She is better now.) The first day I took some pictures of a dead hawk that a hunter in her village killed, as well as her three pet ducks, and some monkey skull balls in her neighbor’s compound. T’s village is probably half if not a third the size of mine. It is only two quartiers, no CSCOM [hospital], no maternity, no commune offices, but there is a primary school. The people seem very motivated to work, and her homologue is great. But right now it is harvesting season, and everyone was out in the rice fields during daylight hours, so the town was basically empty, except for kids running wild. The second day we went down to the river.

Near T’s village the river is basically the natural barrier for the Ivory Coast. You have to bike for a couple hours, but the border is right over there. That’s where our young men take their cows for the hot and dry seasons, and it is where manufactured goods of any quality come from, since they have ports. There is a guy who lives by the river, he is ethnically Siamon which is like the Sikasso version of Bozos, who ferries people across. He took us across just for the hell of it. We did not even get off the canoe type boat, just watched him unload the other passenger and his moto, then he took us back. It was a fun excursion, but it was hot, so it was basically the only thing we did that day until I biked back home.

A couple days later Lasina, B’s younger brother passed away. He has been sick since I’ve lived in N’tjilla. He started out able to sit outside his house, but for the last couple of months he hasn’t been able to even do that. He has been completely bed ridden, unable to feed himself or go to the bathroom. So it wasn’t totally unexpected. A lot of his kids had come back in the last couple of months to say farewells, but when he actually died it was a huge deal. Everyone from village came over, and all of the relatives from Bamako came running. The old man passed away around 8 in the morning, and some Bamako family managed to be there by the funeral at 3 pm. That really means dropping everything with no warning. We already had some family in town because of Tabaski too. People trailed in through the rest of the evening and the next two days too.

We had already decided Tabitha was going to return my visit that week, and I think the timing ended up being good because there was an intimidatingly large number of people in my homologue’s compound, and me having my “little friend” come visit kept me entertained and out of their hair. We went to the market on Wednesday, but with all the people in my compound mourning, there was no one at the market, which isn’t normally that big to start with.

Between the holiday, the Director of the Secondary School also getting severe malaria, and the old man dying, all of my plans on working on the library and girl’s soccer team got delayed. I had also been talking with my homologue about making ameliorated porridge (the idea being they already make corn, rice and millet porridges, so if we can just get them to add some protein powder too like peanut or bean powder, and best case also some fruit, iodized salt, and moringa powder, they could be making a more complete, nutritious meal). Basically kids here for the most part aren’t starving, but they’re fed pretty much exclusively carbs. The same goes for adults really. They don’t know thing one about nutrition. They know fruits, vegetables, fish, and meat are expensive, so they basically don’t buy those things but sell them when they get their hands on them. So I had a whole nutrition spiel I wanted to give, and then the old man died and I didn’t think I’d get to do it, but we ended up doing it Saturday afternoon. It turned out well. The women only kind of paid attention to the nutrition lesson, but they all paid attention to the recipe, and the ameliorated porridge turned out delicious. Perhaps it was too delicious because a lot of the moms ate it themselves rather than giving it to their kids, but it was hard to begrudge them since they were all also breastfeeding, and therefore arguably needed the protein as well. Some kids got some porridge, and maybe if the mom’s like it enough that means they’ll be more likely to cook it again someday, and then someday the kids might get to eat some. I’m just glad I got something productive under my belt for the three weeks.

Now I’m in Sikasso for Thanksgiving. It is going to be an extended break from site. I’m going to play it by ear. I’m excited to see a bunch of people from my stage who didn’t come to Halloween in Bougani, but I’m sure Thanksgiving itself will be chaos, so I’m excited also to see who sticks around for a couple days afterwards to hang out, or maybe I’ll try to go to Segou or Coachella if people are going there.