Of Coulibaly and Third Wives

Madame Touré was given the wonderful task of picking me up this morning for work. She was in the front seat with the driver, and when I opened the door to the backseat there was an elderly woman already there. After getting through the initial shock of the thickness and roundness of Madame Touré's mother's glasses, we exchanged a few greetings in a mix of French and Bambara. When I introduced myself as Sali, as expected she asked me what was my "nom de famille." I explained, "Je n'ai pas encore un nom de famille Malien"/"I don't yet have a Mali last name,"and as is the Malian way, she offered me hers.

And like everyone else I've spoken to, she also warned me not to take the last name "Coulibaly"/COOL-E-BALL-E.

I explained via blog before that last names are important because they establish who you're able to make jokes with; every last name is connected to certain other last names that are considered your "joking cousins."

Well apparently, Coulibaly is joking cousins with everyone (I guess one particular Coulibaly got around back in the ancestral days). Your friend spills a drink, "ahh...t'es un Coulibaly." A donkey crossing the road gets in the way of your driving, "regardez cet Coulibaly!" So if I took the family name Coulibaly, I'd be setting myself up for some trouble.

As luck would have it, the horrible Malian referee that took back the U.S. goal vs. Slovenia was in fact a Coulibaly. He would've been called a Coulibaly out here even if he wasn't actually a Coulibaly...so it could not have worked out better.

During this typical car ride and throughout the first part of the day, I was already looking forward to lunch. Today was my co-worker Kankou's birthday. This birthday has been getting uber pumped up the past week because birthdays in the office mean: CAKE.

Now while things like Nutella-type products, sweet yogurts, and hard candies are readily available in the everyday market, there really is little to no actual chocolate. When there is chocolate, it is expensive, and this birthday cake was no exception: ringing in at a whopping $30 U.S. dollars, or 15,000 Fcfa.

After the fact, I can say that it was definitely worth it; if not for the actual taste, then for the singing that accompanied it.

Everyone in the office started weakly singing "Joyeaux Anniversaire," the French version of "Happy Birthday," once they had stuffed themselves with fried chicken and french fries that had been brought in for the occasion. But Kankou herself took the lead on the song and started belting it. She didn't stop there, any time I whipped out the camera for a picture she would start singing again, slipping in and out of the French and English versions of the song.

Couressy the program officer, Aicha the financier, Paul the chauffeur,

and Kankou the exec. secretary/birthday girl

In the cake's wake, on a chocolate high, we got onto the subject of marriage for some reason. Mali laws permit each man to have up to four wives. Kankou is the third wife to her husband, as her mother was the third wife to her father. She was one of eight children from her mom, and the other two wives had 4 and 6 children respectively, making Kankou one of eighteen children total! That's a lot of birthday phone calls and texts.

It makes you wonder, why are we doing family planning with women's groups, when we should be doing wife planning with men's groups!? One's enough!

Issa also pictured here, general physician/program officer

When everyone then asked if I were married, I said I was waiting for the laws to change in the U.S. to allow women to take four husbands.

Technological Jargon

David and I took lunch with Claudia at the "Voices for a Malaria-Free" office to discuss exactly what work I would be doing while here in Mali. For the past few days, I'd been working on a "Case for Change" (shoutout to you, Ashley Weber...stole that right from under you!) based on my initial assessment of communications at "Projet Keneya Ciwara II" and the interviews I'd been conducting in the office with the pillar 6 employees. The powerpoint itself was not anything difficult, but it had taken me a whole 2 work-days to make sure I had translated everything correctly to French. Turns out I can't just copy and paste from Google Translate.

The presentation basically ran through how the office works now: Monday meetings every now and then, informing the group of field visits when individuals are already on the way, etc.; to how the office could work more effectively and efficiently: having agendas for Monday meetings that should be held every Monday, discussing field visits in those meetings before they happen, and emailing out the key points of the meeting once it's concluded. Minor adjustments.

At the end, I also added a slide about options on how to increase information sharing with the other JHU CCP offices. I mentioned weekly or monthly newsletters or emails, but also included Facebook and Twitter options that provide platforms from which updates of the on-goings within the office can be published for all to see and visit regularly, even those in the U.S.

Teaching the yahoo.fr email system

From there, David -- a native Cameroonian who had not yet taken a serious interest in my powerpoint (albeit, it was on agendas) -- got out his pocketbook and pen and jotted a few things down...the wheels were turning. He then spoke up, "I am seeing that something you could be doing with our office is give presentations on different aspects of technology." Claudia and I both replied that it would be a great idea, and I started throwing out ideas like how to better maneuver Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, how to manage emails, how to use Google, and so on.

David

"Yes, yes, this is all good. But it is the technological jargon that I do not understand. Take, for example, this SMS (text) I get from Madame Touré a few days ago. She used this other lingo, and it took me hours to discover that 'tjs' meant 'toujours."

Now David is a very well educated man, many simply call him "Doctor," and yet here he was asking me, in Mali as a practicum for my master in public health, to give a presentation on texting abbrevs. (abbreviations for all of you non-technologically savvy individuals).

While the aforementioned activities are not exactly what you'd consider public health work, it is considered systems strengthening within a public health program which will hopefully lead to long-term efficiency and worker productivity, and thus better the management of the Keneya Ciwara community health programs.

United Against Malaria and Ghana

When I got home from work today, a white Subaru was parked out front with some TUBABOU (white people) sitting in it. The driver got out of his seat, and I could tell by the sharp German accent it was Bremen's running partner Franz, although he looked much different without his short runner's shorts on. His wife Francisca was in the car, and he expressed the urgency of my getting ready as the Germany vs. Ghana football game was about to start.

I ran into the house where Bremen was about to walk out with his laptop case. This did not surprise me, as Bremen is a workaholic and has been staying up until the wee hours of the morning to work on the "United Against Malaria" campaign. His stellar work on a football-themed malaria prevention newspaper, which will undoubtedly save lives, can be found here: http://unitedagainstmalaria.org/2010/06/united-against-malaria-world-cup-newspaper-goal/

Just because I was not surprised by his eagerness to multitask during the football game does not me it wasn't grounds for making fun of him throughout the match. I was glad the Germans decided to help.

The Germans also decided to bring their obnoxious German flag to the game and flash it with each goal, burning the hearts of all 2 of the African fans in the "Floyd" bar where we had chosen to watch the game. They were both bartenders. We should've known that this particular bar, named after a UK band, would be both out of Malians' price and style range.

The last African team on African soil ended up losing, but it was a win-win situation as Australia creamed Serbia that game. Franz was able to wave his German flag sans fear of flogging.

Peanut Sauce and the Perils of Being a Vegetarian in Mali

Today would be best described in terms of food and beverage, illustrating my daily struggles with being a native English speaker and une végétarienne ("qui mange aussi des poissons"/"who also eats fish") here in Bamako, Mali.

When I woke up this morning I grabbed a boiled egg for breakfast, my lunch, and 2 Marathon bars, one for me in case of protein emergency and one for Berthé the chauffeur. These came from the impressive arsenal that Mom insisted I stock for the trip; no lie, these things are probably what cost the hundreds of dollars in excess baggage fees.

Once I got to the Keneya Ciwara office (where I've been the past 2 days), Mme. Touré la secrétaire offered me a cup of tea and asked if I wanted sugar or honey...yet after I agreed to sugar I couldn't translate the word "enough" to French fast enough! Five tablespoons later, I had myself a nice mug of insect attractant.

My pack lunch consisted of the beans I had made last night, being that it is too risky to depend on vegetarian dishes at the restaurants at work. However, I was not looking forward to eating the beans because, even though they were well seasoned thanks to the Zatarain's I so crucially brought from home, they were still very hard. Bremen my roommate had only a few meals earlier expressed his concern that we were running low on gas in our knee-height gas tank, and so I didn't have it in me to boil them for the full hour they needed.

Around 10AM, David, my Cameroonian boss, announced that we would be traveling to the rural village Bougouni for a Ciwara d'Or mission -- a.k.a. getting signatures for budgets. Oh what a world it is without fax machines! He told me it'd be about an hour away, so I calculated we'd be back around 1:15, which is ideal under-cooked bean hour. Five of us piled into a truck, the youngest (me) sitting in the spot named after the female dog, and away we went.

About an hour into the trip, which should've meant the trip was over, we had only just gotten out of Bamako proper due to "embouteillage"/"traffic." Another hour later, dozing off while trying to avoid the sticky heat from touching legs with other passengers, I got hungry. I whipped out my Snickers-brand Marathon bar without thinking, but then remembered that chocolate is a rare commodity here in Africa and (I hate to say it, but regretfully) offered it out to the other four in the car.

In Bougouni another half hour later, 2.5 hours in total, it was a circus. We drove back and forth from the community health center to the community president's office, about a 45 second drive each way, trying to get signatures, discuss future plans, women's groups activities, etc. The sun was beating down and all the climbing in and out of the car was really taking its toll on me. We bought oranges on the street, even though they should be called "greens" here because of their coloring, and the orange seller took a knife to peel them. Their peels had to be more than 1 inch think so while there was lots and lots of rind to be eaten, there was really very little actual juice and pulp, which at least provided me with some of the fiber that I could've otherwise gotten from my rock-hard beans.

We finally finish the business aspect of our trip and hunted down a restaurant around 3PM. They claimed to have no food, but upon further probing they brought out the Malian rice and "peanut sauce," which I've decided should really be called "chicken and gravy." I try to down some rice with chicken sauce but found ingesting it even more difficult than using their bathroom in the back, which was basically just a hole in the ground in a pitch-black shack.

Despite the food debacle the whole way through, I did love the excursion. The drive was relaxing with vibrant scenery. There was a sign for each village upon entering, no matter how small, and the same sign with a red slash mark through it once you were leaving. In between these tiny villages we were driving through what seemed like the middle of nowhere, but then you'd see people walking or riding donkeys in that nowhere space with obviously some place in mind.

I had one place in mind for when I got home: the refrigerator.

"We are the World"

Ernest invited Bremen and I to his house for lunch today, offering to pick us up at 12:15PM.

What you need to understand about Mali is that any car ride to your destination means at least one stop along the way.

We got into Ernest's impressive Mercedes with his daughter Do-Do, short for Dominique, and he informed us right away we'd be stopping at his friend's wife's house -- bien sûr! Of course! The friends had just had a new baby one week earlier, and were excited about celebrating Father's Day (another shoutout to you, Dad! Love you!). When we walked up, they had a BBQ going, 3 cooks were skinning buckets of fish, and they had a decent sized group in the T.V. room awaiting the big Côte d'Ivoire football game. Underneath a frilled mosquito net in a bright white crib was the new baby, and I couldn't help but think what contrasts in lifestyle we'd already been exposed to in Bamako.

Walking out, the BBQ pit was still burning and I asked what exactly they were cooking, thinking it was some sort of Malian un-pork sausage (remember, we're 90% Muslim over here). "Eviddement, c'est la queue de vache." "Obviously, it's cow's tail." And obviously, upon further inspection of the black clumps of hairs attached, it was.

While we had to take Bamako's notoriously bumpy, red dirt roads to get to Ernest's house, his home had beautiful marble floors and the large T.V. was already blasting the pre-game announcements, waiting for our arrival. Aicha showed up a few minutes later with her two boys, both wearing orange outfits.

A few minutes later, I noticed my own orange pants and Do-Do's matching top, we were all decked out in Côte d'Ivoire's colors without even realizing it! Perrrfect.

The food was très delicieux, with fish cooked 2 different ways, cous-cous, rice, a chicken dish, plaintains (my favorite), and Aicha said that she had made her Senegalese tapioca/peanut dish vegetarian just for me..."seulement un peu de la viande"/"only a little bit of meat"! I believe it's a little difficult for Africans to grasp the concept of not eating any chicken or beef when it's available.

Feasting plus "la chaleur"/"the heat" was not an ideal social situation for our gathering of friends, because we all started zoning out into the game and I'm pretty sure Bremen passed out for a few minutes on the couch with his eyes open.

But the real show was not the game...it was Do-Do's singing for us at half time. While a little cliché to point out, the song choice, "We are the World" by Michael Jackson could not have been more fitting. Two Americans, a Senegalese, a Côte d'Iviorian, and their Malian children, all sitting around watching the Coupe de Monde, the World Cup.

NES...CAFÉ

Quelle journée! What a day! It began with an early morning walk led by Ernest, a native Côte d'Ivoirian who is friends with our Senegalese co-worker Aicha. We had planned to meet at the national museum at 8AM to beat the heat. However, in the short walk for me and Bremen to meet them, I had already worked up a serious sweat bib.

We walked through my first encounter of a market, where it was a struggle to find an unopened bottle of water vs. an opened bottle that had been refilled for resale. Just past the market, Ernest led us onto a trail straight up one of the mountains in town. I was feeling super lame en route as I was chugging my recently purchased bottle of water in my badass Nike's, as mothers carrying loads atop their heads with children strapped to their backs easily made the trek in flip-flops!

I didn't take pictures on the climb but you can imagine the combination of these two:

Load on head:

+ baby on back:

At the top, families had laid claim to small plots of land that were lined in small black plastic bags. The children working in the fields would point their fingers and chant/sing in their native language, Bamabara: "TUBABOU! TUBABOU!", "White people, white people!"

Post-walk, Ernest took us for a drive through Kati, the neighboring military town. We all made a few purchases at the vegetable market there, with my plethora of onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. costing around 1,000CFA, or less than $2. On the way back, we stopped for lunch and a Castel beer at one of the local restaurants. They only offered one thing, chicken, and when I asked for some rice and Mali's infamous peanut sauce, they told me they did not offer rice. When Ernest explained to them that I was vegetarian, the hostess -- in a tight, knee-length skirt and button-down shirt and vest -- hopped on a motorcycle, against my pleas, and drove to the market on the corner to pick up some rice for me! Talk about service.

Later that night, Bremen and I ventured to "The Pirate's Club," as per Claudia's suggestion, for the Cameroon vs. Denmark game. Middle-Eastern men with Eastern European women hanging off of their arms did not make for good watching company, but we decided to stay for the free peanuts.

The next stop was "La Fête de la Musique," the festival of music, on one of the main drags. There were 2 stages set up, but the real party seemed to be in an enclave neighborhood where 2 guys on microphones connected to small amps were hyping up a crowd of what seemed like hundreds of children. When we walked up to them and started dancing, they surrounded us. We had about 7 Malian children's hands holding on to every part of each of our hands.

They followed us to the main stage where we thought authentic Malian music would be playing, and then more children ran up holding stacks of Nescafé cups. Instead of West African drums and chorus we saw make-shift rappers and scantily clad girls (surprising for such a modest culture) in Nescafé t-shirts pumping up the even bigger crowd of children and adults alike to cheer for the instant coffee brand. I realized that the kids were collecting the cups based on how many free samples they had gotten, and then it hit me why they were all so excited to yell back "CAFÉ" when the emcee yelled "NES"...they were jacked up on the stuff!

"Quand je dis 'NES,' vous dites 'CAFÉ!'" "NES...CAFÉ! NES...CAFÉ!"

"CAFFEINE"..."RUSH" is more like it!

Some good did come of the Nescafé debacle, which was learning the Mini Cassé dance. I encourage all of you to try it at home:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG6eyHYX6dE

Joyeux Anniversaire, Dad!

Happy Birthday, Dad! While I do love you, I can't exactly say that I miss you quite yet!

I'll be working on two different projects here in Bamako through Johns Hopkins' Center for Communication Programs, the first of which is called "Voices for a Malaria-Free Future," http://www.malariafreefuture.org/projects/mali/index.php. Claudia is the head honcho at this office, and I've been there for the past two days getting acclimated and introduced. Kankou, the receptionist, already gave me my Malian "prénom:" "Sali." Apparently it's a big deal to adopt a "nom de famille," or last name, because it determines who you're cousins with and therefore with whom you're permitted to joke. From what I gather here at the office, though, you're pretty much allowed to joke with everyone.

Lunchtime today, for example, I brought tons of chocolate to the office -- one of the three things Claudia and Bremen (when he was still an African female in my mind) had asked me to bring, along with tortillas and bacon bits of all things. When everyone started digging into the Hershey bars, Butterfingers, Reese's, and M&M's, Paul the "chauffeur"/driver was about to dig into his 3rd regular-sized candy bar when Kankou the secretary grabbed it from his hand. She had not yet tried that particular kind, and wanted to trade the big Reese's for the smaller Butterfinger. Couressy, the main jokester of the bunch, started getting on her about her weight (she's a decent sized woman) and said he was going to pull out the scale, which apparently he brought from home a few months back for just these occasions. But then he retracted, saying that if she got on the scale she would probably break it, so she might as well go ahead and eat the candy! She gave him a friendly, yet hearty, slap, handed Paul his candy bar, and went back to her business.

Fridays are shorter days at the office to allow those who are Muslim, which is 90% of the country, to pray at the mosque. So today was short, but chaotic. We had to send out letters to the Presidents of the National Assemblies of all of the West African countries to invite them to a malaria forum in July, without having any of their addresses. After an hour or two trying to hunt down mailing information on some of these never-updated government websites, Paul the chauffeur saved the day and made a quick trip to the Malian Embassy to get a booklet of all the addresses.

At the height of the chaos, I looked over and Claudia was multitasking, or as she calls it, having an episode of adult ADD. She waved me into her office as she was on the phone talking about ordering pizza, while at the same time addressing envelopes. She invited me to her home for a swim/pizza party/soccer-watching party, and not knowing when I'd get another chance to eat pizza, I jumped on the opportunity of course!

There were a number of mixed couples at her house this evening, each with the most gorgeous children that looked like they could all be cousins. We sipped on grenadine mixed with water and I heard all of their stories about working in public health and international development. Claudia had met one of the couples in the Peace Corps the year I was born, which made me feel a little intimidated, so I stuck to listening. Hearing of their (mis/)adventures in the workforce in Africa have made me even more excited about my stint here in Mali, and I look forward to what work has to bring next week with my second project, "Projet Keneya Ciwara," http://www.care.org/careswork/whatwedo/health/downloads/srh_Mali_case_study.

Bienvenue à Bamako!

On the plane Dakar to Bamako, I looked at my passport to fill out a bit of paperwork for customs and realized that the official start-date of my visa was 6/17/10, and yet it was still the 16th! We landed a few short hours later, and I didn't even realize how hot it was because I was already sweating from stress. After my customs walk-through in Senegal I should've known not to worry, and I got my official stamp of entry in Mali with no problems.

Walking out of the airport lugging the extra 151 lbs., I saw someone holding up my name and when I flashed him the thumbs up he flashed me a big smile and said: "Claudia est sur la voiture"/"Claudia is in the car." And she certainly was, my new boss with her Mac computer on her lap in the middle of nowhere, Africa. She immediately started giving me the run-down on some of the issues that day had brought, what she had to do, what I could do, and immediately I knew I liked her. None of those let's-get-to-know-each-other-first/sugar-coating shenanigans, she gave me the quick and dirty of what was going on with the different projects of which I'd be a part.

Bamako, the capital, had been described on the internet as the "urban hub" of Mali, and yet during the short car trip to Claudia's house I didn't see anything urban about it besides a few paved roads. There were mud hut homes, mud walls with tarps hanging off as homes, tons of motorcyclists without helmets, and cars and taxis smoking from their leaded gas consumption.

We pulled up to a driveway across the street from the Niger River and a car repair shop, and the security guards opened the gates to Claudia's house. We walked on the mosaic tile steps into her kitchen where the cook, Melanie, was preparing French fries, and I could hear a very deep laugh in the next room. When we entered, a huge, muscly African man in a wife beater stood up and Claudia introduced me to Cherif, her husband from Côte d'Ivoire/Ivory Coast. He handed me a glass of wine and said "Bienvenue à Bamako!" Then she called her two beautiful boys into the room and they both gave me a quick handshake before delving into their plates of French fries.

A longer car ride later, we arrived at the security gate to my new living complex and pulled up to a gorgeous two-story home. I was shocked to see a skinny white boy open the door. Claudia had told me I was going to be living with Bremen, but from the name I had envisioned an African girl or woman. Nevertheless, after he fixed me a fresh salad and handed me my first mango, I liked the guy.

The place where I'll be living with Bremen the first few weeks is amazing,with a screened in porch,

a balcony, A.C. units in the bedrooms,

Caddy who cleans 5 times a week,

2 cats (pro/con to be determined), plus Bremen's even got a keyboard.

Apparently, living like kings and queens can help boost the economy -- living urban in not-so-urban Bamako is the way of the West here in dusty Bamako.

First Impressions in Senegal

When I walked off the plane in Dakar, Senegal, my feet hit African soil -- actually, the African pavement of the runway -- for the first time. I was dreading the 12 hour lay-over that was ahead of me, but there was a cool breeze, surprisingly! I was so grateful the 109 degree Louisiana weather I left behind had prepared me for anything!

All of the passengers climbed onto the airport bus that took us a whopping 200 feet to the main terminal, and I waited for my 2 oversized bags that weighed in at 90 and 61 lbs., respectively. I was a little bit antsy: hoping my bags had made it through, not knowing what to expect from customs officials at 4AM, wondering how on Earth I was going to get through 12 hours at the airport with 151 lbs. of luggage, but then I saw my first Nike bag on the carousel. When I grabbed it, though, my trusty "Tulane Volleyball" bag tag had been replaced by a "Cal Berkeley Basketball" bag tag, then I realized that this particular suitcase belonged to the 7" tall Senegalese girl standing across the room from me. Mine came around a few minutes later, and I craned my neck to talk to the basketball player for a few minutes before going through the easy customs process, a.k.a. walking through the sliding doors.

At the departure terminal, I set myself up next to a pile of African cloth with my feet propped up on my stack of bags. A few minutes later, the cloth started moving and a perturbed old woman peeked out of the patterns and left the steel bench for me. The mosquitos were out and it was cold on the metal bench, so I put on a long sleeve hoody and wrapped my new insecticide-treated bandana around my neck (thanks, Dad!). Then I got sleepy, so I shimmied my bag cart so it was parallel to the bench, put the hoody over my head, the bandana over my face, and laid down with my legs hugging my luggage. The sloshes of a few young boys mopping woke me up a few hours later, and after I arose from my own pile of cloth they laughed at me and said: "Tu dors bien!"/"You sleep well!"

Good morning Africa!