Fatoumata(s)

There are a lotta “-ata”s here in Mali. Salimata, which is my given Malian name; Alminata, my football/soccer coach’s name; Halimata; Aissata; and in a category of its own is Fatoumata, the #1 most popular name I’ve come across. The secretary at my office has a daughter named Fatoumata. The captain of our soccer team is 28-year old Fatoumata. In my data collection for the women’s groups I can’t tell you how many times I’ve entered the name Fatoumata into an Excel spreadsheet. Then there are the Fatoumatas I meet everyday on the street.

A few days ago, I was walking on one such Malian street looking for bananas. After nearly two months away from home, I was needing some American flavor in my life and had big plans for making my friend Tori’s world famous banana bread. I asked our guard outside the gate if he knew where to find them, and was pointed in one direction. Minutes later and still “sans bananes”/”without bananas,” I asked the guard at the neighboring Senegalese Embassy if he knew where to find a banana stand; he pointed me in another direction. Still no luck. I next asked the guard at the “Palais de la Culture”...

There are a lotta guards in my up-scale neighborhood. Not a lotta bananas, apparently. It was getting close to evening, and it seemed as though the banana vendors were disappearing with the sunlight.

Asking the guards wasn’t giving me results, so I asked one of the female soft drink vendors who was carrying an ice chest on her head. She pulled down the ice chest and suggested I buy one of the local D’jino colas, in flavors like “Pamplemousse”/grapefruit and “Ananas”/pineapple. It was hard to turn this insistent girl down, but I declined, having bananas and not ananas on the brain.

She pointed me in a new direction even deeper into the neighborhood. Great. Thankfully she offered to walk me there. She said it was she and her friend who sold the bananas down the way and was there anything else she could help me buy?

On the way, she introduced herself: Fatoumata.

We found the precious bananas in holy territory: right next to the neighborhood mosque, which booms loud prayer chants every four hours from its outward projecting megaphones (like most mosques found in every neighborhood here). I stuffed my backpack with the fruit, and started heading towards Fatoumata’s home. She had invited me over, wanting to show me the “teinture”/cloth dying she, her mother, and sister did for a living. This 19-year old girl was a serious saleswoman.

We got to her home where there was an army of children crowding around Fatoumata’s mother, who was breastfeeding her youngest, and ninth, child. Fatoumata’s 17-year old sister was carrying her own 40-day old child wrapped to her back, and Fatoumata’s 3-year old son came running up to her. I thought the whole idea of having children at the same time as your mom was only a reality in the movie “Father of the Bride,” but it is very much a reality here in Mali!

Saleswoman Fatoumata convinced me to purchase one of their beautifully dyed “basins,” also called a “boubou.” A “basin” (pronounced “bay-zeinh”) is a large, formless dress that covers the entirety of your body like a giant Snuggie, but in a cool material rather than the hot felt shown in infomercials. I told them what colors I wanted and in what style, and after measuring me, Fatoumata walked me home. She’d bring the basin to the house when it was finished.

The finished product! Pictured with Fatoumata

My old friend Fatoumata came to the house a few days later with two of her sisters, equalling one third of her family’s brood. She showed me the colorful cloth they had dyed for the “tubabou’s” boubou. She unfolded the red and blue pattern, and I felt bad not being able to offer them the banana bread that I had since devoured. Instead, I offered the girls “jus de bissap”/bissap juice. Fatoumata nodded that she’d like a glass, but added: “mais tu sais ma mère est vendeuse de bissap avec gingembre?”/”but did you know my mother sells bissap juice with ginger?”

Fatoumata sells a lotta stuff.

Football as an Amazon

For the past month and a half, I’ve been trying to find some sort of sporting activity. I’ve gotten a little soft now that I have a 9-5 desk job; my African dance class once a week isn’t going to cut it. I tried getting my jog on, but too many laughs and taxi honks have steered me away from that outlet. I've looked for volleyball, but the only facilities are at the American Club, where there would not be enough people to play. I tried getting into the Pilates DVDs that Claudia (my American boss whose house I’m living in) has lying around, but doing series of “10-minute Super Ultra Turbo Waist Slimmer” routines in my air conditioned room seems kind of lame here in Bamako, where women get trim waists from walking around with babies tied to their midsection and baskets of mangoes balancing on their heads.

That’s where football, or rather, soccer, comes into play. A young man, Douad, had stopped into the office saying that his women’s soccer leagues wanted to team up with our women’s groups to promote family planning, sexual health, pre-natal consultations, the importance of sleeping under a mosquito net, and all that good stuff. My boss in the office, Cameroonian David, knew that I had been searching by and large for some team camaraderie, so he suggested I start playing with the women and eventually introduce the topics to them.

Douad took me to my first practice last Thursday, and from “la rue pavée”/”the paved road” (there are no street signs here, and this is my only point of reference) we turned left onto a dirt road and parked next to a big block party with music and a mic hooked up to an amplifier, a normal occurrence.

Block party

We were in a large open space where the dirt road widened, with some kids were running around. No field, per se, or grass to be seen. Then I saw the two goals and realized this extra wide dirt road was actually the soccer “terrain.”

The soccer road/field

a) child performing what looks like gris-gris on the tubab

b) second child in awe of the tubab

I introduced myself to the coach and team as Liza (Lee-Zuh), as that seems to be the easiest way to pronounce my name to most Malians here. I offered the alternative “Sali” in case Liza was even too difficult. They decided just to call me “Tubab,” short for “tubabou,” or “white person.” Pronunciation wasn’t an issue, they chose to call me "Tubab" simply as a matter of preference.

The practice felt like any other I’d been a part of, with warm-ups, sprints, passing drills, and a scrimmage. I overpassed many a ball, not having any grass to slow the roll, and when we did header passes everyone kept asking “tu es d’accord?”/”are you OK?” and insisted I stop a few headers early to get some water. Other than that, I felt like a regular part of the team.

Only one practice into my new soccer life, we had our first game on Saturday. I walked onto the sand/gravel field and was handed a long-sleeve blue soccer jersey. That day, of course I had chosen to wear my bright blue polyester capris, and they insisted I put on the long blue socks so that none of my skin would be exposed to the hurt that awaited when (not if) I'd surely fall on the gravel dirt field. Covered in all blue, being the only white person on the field or in the entire neighborhood for that matter, I was quite a sight.

Before we began playing, the owner of the league had both teams circle up in the middle of the field for a pep talk. I figured it was a part of their normal pre-game routine until he turned to me and said, “I hope you’re getting all this,” as if I were a special reporter. The message was, however, duly noted: that women’s soccer has picked up in other surrounding countries of West Africa but had not taken off here in Mali the way it should.

I could tell. My team had girls as young as 12 and as “old” as 28. It was a mixed crowd. Not very many sporting opportunities exist for women out here, and there are few young women in Bamako that aren’t already with child or children.

Which is why I felt pretty bad when the coach decided to “start” me, after only one practice and still wishing for grass. Normally, as in back in high school, I would play defense, but I had been put in the forward position. Fatumata, my main pal and the oldest on the team at 28, stayed on me about where to go, and after an unproductive few minutes with only minor slips I was happy to be subbed out and thrown a plastic bag of water.

On the sidelines, I took a seat in the dirt next to my teammates. They grabbed my arms and took turns comparing their skin tone to mine. A few stroked my arm hair in wonder, as theirs is almost non-existent.

At this point we had quite a crowd. I suppose there’s not a lot else to do on a Saturday afternoon when the rain is waiting to fall and a men’s team isn’t playing. We’d attracted more than a hundred by-standers; mostly made up of young men and boys but a few other girls’ teams had come to the game in support.

Just when the game was about to be end, Coach yelled at me to get warmed up. I stood up, all decked out in my blue, and start doing high knees on the sidelines where the fans were lined up arm’s length away. They all start chanting “tubabou, tubabou, tubabou!” and yelling to each other, “tubabou se réchauffé!”/”white girl’s getting warmed up!”

I jogged onto the field only to be met by the whistle with the ref holding his hand up to stop me. Apparently our very local league was playing by international standards, and after subbing out you’re not allowed to sub back in. He tried to escort me out, but the crowd wasn’t having it. They wanted to see the tubabou in action, and so they all yelled “boo” while simultaneously chanting, as usual, “tubabou.” The ref turned to me, defeated, and said “C’est pas normale”/”This is not normal.” And while for different reasons, I had to agree.

On the field, I tried to stay low on the radar, but a teammate passed me a ball presumably far enough ahead where I could run and take a shot. I tried to run after it but my legs weren’t going too fast after hurrying through my on-display warm-up. It rolled out of bounds, and everyone, all one hundred something people, started laughing.

They laughed again when I tried to change direction after trapping a ball, and slipped in the dirt.

Pilates was starting to sound like a good idea after all!

Our team, FC Amazon, won the game 3-2 no thanks to the tubabou. My teammates still gave me big high fives and sincere props, “tu as bien joué, tubab”/”you played well, white girl.”

Coach gave us an inspirational talk at the end of the game, where I tried to just blend in with the girls. The neighborhood kids surrounded me, grabbed at my hands, and practiced their French on me, “bonjour!”, “bonsoir!”, “ca va?” throughout the entire talk. I guess I’ll just have to accept that I can't exactly blend in.

Wedding Edition! Dedicated to Becca

My cousin Rebecca is getting married in less than a week. She is the only daughter, and baby, to my Uncle Richard and Aunt Lynn. As you can imagine, they will be throwing her a “Big Fat Lebanese Wedding.” Every aunt and uncle (including a great aunt, clad with 10 rosaries, on a walker) and every cousin (including second and third cousins, available for inter-marriage according to the aforementioned great aunt) will be there.

Except me.

Nevertheless, I’m doing my part to get into the wedding spirit across the world: I attended a Malian wedding. From my African marriage experience, I want to pass along a few pointers to my dear cousin Rebecca:

1. Your new husband (in your case, John Bobby) does not need to be present at the reception. After the small “official” ceremony in the morning, the celebration in Mali does not include the husband. How convenient! Becca would be free to eat all the cake she wanted to, without getting it rubbed into her face!
2. No males need to be present at all, in fact. Except for the musicians and a few key dancers, males are nowhere to be seen in Mali on the wedding day. Win-win situation: ESPN for the dudes, and more cake for the females (I love wedding cake).
3. You can serve food in communal bowls without utensils. That will definitely save mom and dad some serious moola. Forget buffet lines and fine china, all you need is a bowl of rice with a few chunks of meat, and some soap and water to wash that right hand! Also would make cake-eating a lot more fun.
4. Your eyebrows must be painted in a radiant color at least 3 inches long each. There were purples, golds, thick black eyebrows that reached the ears, and even multi-colored brows at this wedding I attended. Being raised by a 100% Lebanese woman, Penny Tanory, I know the importance of a well-shaped brow. Before she became the real-estate guru “Worth Every Penny,” my mother had three priorities in every-day life: a) child-rearing, b) cooking pork chops and mashed potatoes for Jim McGehee, c) eyebrow upkeep. Rebecca can agree that although diluted, our Middle Eastern blood makes tweezers our most prized possession. In Mali, it seems as though the eyebrow paintbrush holds this same importance.
5. No need to have a music playlist, one song will suffice. While it had some variations to it, I’m pretty sure the musicians at the wedding played the same melody the entire time. Hours of the same song meant hours of the same dancing, which was basically all of the women trotting in a small circle. How could this be seen as a positive for a wedding state-side? Simple dance moves = not as tough on your poor feet decked in 4-inch designer heels.

There were some notable similarities between the two wedding styles. Mali has your typical “money dance," although it includes money dancing for the bridal party and family ($core!). A few guys (a rarity) also appeared for a brief dancing cameo, and really gave it all they had on the dance floor. Similarly, I know my Uncle Richard will be stealing the dance floor for a few minutes with his rendition of “the worm," which I would imagine these days is more like “the slug” (sorry, Cheech!)

This Malian “wedding,” without the husband or any males, was quite an interesting experience. But at a family wedding done in this same manner, I’d miss the fellas too much. Who would want to miss Becca being roasted by her two brothers' toasts on the “zabada” or asking everyone to “telle hassa teezee?”

I wouldn’t, even though I will, but that’s no matter -- Becca told me she’d ship a piece of cake to Africa. That should more than make up for missing a wedding that includes men and properly plucked (rather than painted) eyebrows!

FÉLICITATIONS Rebecca and John! I'm so happy for you two!

THE MALIAN WEDDING:

(my camera lost all picture-taking capabilities, I can only take videos...enjoy!)

*Note: just posted the English version of the video I made for Keneya Ciwara: lizinmali.blogspot.com*

COFEMali Kita

Although not completely finished, as I continue to be stumped going from English to French and back again (making even my English incomprehensible), I wanted to attach the videos I've made for Kita, Mali. It's a smaller town about 3 hours away from the capital Bamako, and is home to one of our project's fastest growing women's groups.

Before you press play, however, you could probably use some background information:

- Mali has one of the lowest contraceptive rates in the world,

at 8.2%. (2006, worldbank.org)

- Mali has the 17th highest maternal mortality rate, at

970 women/100,000 live births. (2005, worldbank.org)

- Mali has the 7th highest infant mortality rate, at a whopping

194/1,000 live births. (2008, worldbank.org)

- Mali experiences more than 800,000 cases of malaria each year,

which account for 30% of outpatient visits, 30% of hospital deaths,

and 17% of childhood deaths, contributing to its unbelievably high

infant mortality rate. (malariafreefuture.org)

Now what this should signal to you is that there is little to no contraceptive use, meaning women are having a lot of children starting at a young age, which creates a high maternal mortality rate. Disease, such as malaria, is prevalent, and when coupled with other issues like malnutrition, diarrhea, and having been produced by a mother whose body may not have been ready to produce a child, the infant mortality rate goes up. Children under-5 then only have an 80% survival rate, such that families continue to have even more children in expectation that theirs may not survive.

It's a pretty vicious cycle; something we at Project Keneya Ciwara II decided not to add into the happy-go-lucky videos we're creating on the women's groups.

Within the scope of the project, we are trying to promote family planning, pre-natal consultations, vaccinations, and malaria prevention, primarily focused on family planning and malaria prevention.

But now that you know the stats, you can understand that we're not just trying to implement "population control" for the hell of it.

Instead, we're using family planning as a means to push back age of first pregnancy and promote birth spacing, so that women's bodies can handle pregnancy. Coupled with sleeping under a mosquito net and anti-malarial drugs during pregnancy, mother and child are given a better chance at survival.

Voila!

So here are the videos we're going to be putting up on our different project's websites, and sending to all the big guns with which we work. We will also be putting them on CD, or even VHS (yes, that still exists), to actually send out copies to the women's groups themselves.

In English:

En Francais:

Newsletter: PKCII

Ta da! I’ve uploaded the English version of the newsletter I've created for Project Keneya Ciwara II. Those of you at home can get a sense why I seem to be on my computer all day in Africa, and can see where -- and for what reasons -- I’ve been “au terrain”/“in the field” when I'm not on the comp (I took the pics on the PDF).

I've also been working on short videos, with great W. African music, for each trip we've taken to the field. Hopefully when those are finished I'll be able to upload them.

In the next months, I’ll be training one of the staff here to take over the newsletter once I’m gone. Ideally, the partner offices (Johns Hopkins, Care, Groupe Pivot, USAID) will continue to be kept informed of PKCII’s activities via the newsletter throughout the remaining years of this community health strengthening program. Recently, these donor partners have been frustrated by not knowing where exactly their money is going, and hopefully something as easy as a 2-page document can help keep them updated.

We're also thinking of adding a newsletter in Bambara, the local language, to be sent out via snail-mail to all the 600+ women's groups that we work with throughout Mali. Seeing pictures of themselves and having something like a "Women's Group of the Month" may help keep these women, who volunteer their time as community health workers, motivated to continue promoting family planning, pre-natal consultations, malaria prevention, and community health center visits.

And yes, I absolutely added on the front page that there’s a new colleague, Liz McGehee, in the house!

Newsletter PKCII

Flashing Lights

"The Diplomat" restaurant is known all around Bamako for its atmosphere: local music played at extremely high levels for nonlocals. It's a hub for ex-patriots who want to feel as though they're being culturally immersed, even though there are no Malians in sight.

When I had asked my friend Amanda where would be a good spot for local music on Saturday night, this is where she suggested. With old roommate Bremen, Johns Hopkins colleague Tina, and my Cameroonian boss David, we got a table, ordered fruit juice cocktails, and waited for the live music.

The DJ played a great mix of Afro-techno and traditional music, and we waited for the live band to show up. At any lull in the conversation we could either watch the strange array of American music videos that served as a backdrop to the African music (No Doubt, James Blunt, Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" video even played) or we could watch the massive group of Parisian girls dance to the music.

Our fish dinners had come and gone, and there was still no live music. Finally, an older man with perfect white curls in his hair came and asked us if we had enjoyed our dinner. He introduced himself as the owner.

We all agreed that the fish was delicious, but expressed our concern that the live band had not yet taken the stage.

Due to the rains (always the reason for something going wrong), the roads were too bad and the band could not make it out tonight. He suggested we bite the bullet and get out there and dance to the DJ.

He asked if I spoke Spanish, and when I said that Tina was a native Espaganole his eyes lit up. And out on the dance floor, so did his hips.

This Spanish restaurant owner, fueled by disco and strobe lights, really got his groove on. He would look back every so often to see if Tina was paying attention, and when he saw me taking this video the old man gave me quite a back lean in what I think was another dance invitation.



A few minutes later we caved and started dancing, but talk about sensory overload!

On the taxi drive home, I was still hearing the music blaring in my head and seeing the disco lights all around me. Then I realized that the sound and lights weren't in my head: they were coming from the car next to us. A truck labelled "1er Arrondissement" was honking and someone was shining a flashlight into our taxi. We pulled over.

A policeman in uniform walked up to the front window and asked me and Tina for our passports.

Claudia, my American boss, had previously warned me that after 11PM foreigners are required to have their passports, so I got mine out of my bag. Tina, who had only come to Bamako for a week to help with the malaria forum, didn't have hers.

She explained that it was right down the road at the hotel, and if the police car could follow, she could show it to him within 5 minutes. He refused, saying in perfect English that without her passport she had two options.

The first option was to spend the night in jail, and the second was to pay 18,000 fCFA, roughly $40US. A ludicrous amount.

We called David and handed the phone to the officer, who was yelling that he'd been to three international police academies, flashed us his ID ever so quickly, and asked us to get out of the car.

Tina tried to appeal to his soft side, saying that he's supposed to be protecting us as a member of the police force and that we were only on our way home. I chimed in, saying that we were here in Bamako to help his countrymen in "la lutte contre le paludisme."

He didn't want to hear any of it.

Tina said she'd consider paying the fine, but wanted a receipt. He couldn't provide a receipt here, so she got to yelling. This tiny Spaniard roared that this was corruption and that she wouldn't pay. After about 20 minutes of going back and forth, I finally got smart.

I asked him for his ID so that I could copy down his information. After all his yelling and hard-headedness, he starts laughing.

"Oh, non non non non Madame. Ca ne va pas marcher."/"That will not work." When I asked why, he said: "Je vais manger ton argent, tu vois?"/"I will eat your money, don't you see?" as he makes a hand gesture towards his mouth.

He continues laughing, "Why don't we do this. You pay me half, 9,000 fCFA, you don't copy down my information, and we call it even."

Then he does the unthinkable. He goes in for the high-five.

Thirty minutes of yelling, pleading, arguing, making phone calls, and even guilt-tripping the taxi-driver, and here he was going in for the Malian high-five.

At this point, we were ready to be done with him and nearly hated him. But I couldn't help it, I accepted the high-five and started laughing, then said: "Monsieur, nous ne sommes PAS amis!" "Mister, we are NOT friends! Not after this!"

When we handed him a 10,000 fCFA note, he said he didn't have change. Tina and I yell at him in unison, "Of COURSE you don't have change!"

And then, of course, he laughs and goes in for another high-five.

La Lutte Contre le Paludisme

“Forum International des Parlementaires d’Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre en vue d’Acceler l’Atteinte des Objectifs dans la Lutte Contre le Paludisme”

= “International Parliamentarian’s Forum for West and Central Africa to Accelerate the Attainment of Malaria Control Objectives”

= “The Malaria Forum”

The past few weeks have been fully dedicated to getting prepared for this 3-day monster of a forum.

My first official duty was taking on the task of compiling an Excel worksheet of all the RSVPs from the West and Central African participating parliamentarians. This singular worksheet took me a whopping six hours to complete. Between trying to decode the hand-scribbled version of the RSVP list, emailing the listed National Assembly representatives that from what I’d deciphered had not yet RSVPed, calling these same representatives’ offices, and then continuing to call their offices in 20 minute increments because they were at a World Cup party, it was quite an endeavor.

After such a week of frantic last minute preparation, at last Tuesday rolled around to start “rolling back malaria.”

Professionally, I was totally ready. In addition to finally finishing my cumbersome Excel sheet, I had compiled all of the parliamentarians’ powerpoint presentations, had translated a number of them from English to French and vice versa, and had even laid out my most professional outfit.

Personally, I was exhausted. Not only from my new nemesis Excel, but from “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” I had dumbly stayed up until 2:30AM Tuesday morning finishing the graphic Swedish thriller novel, and had to wake up at 6:30AM to get going for our big anti-malaria show.

When we arrived at 8:30AM, I had to get some caffeine in me. Tea time wasn’t scheduled until after the welcome remarks. Rough start.

My colleague Djiba represented our program, “Voices,” on the stage and began her welcome speech in French, then switched to English to kindly, although confusingly, add: “Some of you may be English speaking, but we are the African continent, and we are all African here.”

She then starts talking about the reason we are all here today: “la lutte contre le paludisme” which means, quite literally, “the fight against malaria.” Packs a little punch to it. Yet when I was translating a few paragraphs for a presentation with my dear friend Google translate, it came up as “malaria control.” Not as much punch, although as I would find out, much easier to type.

There had to only be about five other people on stage, but their personal thanks to the crowd took at least a full hour. All fifty of the parliamentarians plus an additional fifty or so extras made up of our staff, malaria programmers of Mali, and some of the parliamentarian’s personal body guards, then passed around a mic for individual introductions.

Taken just before my camera completely lost its picture-taking capabilities:

It was becoming a challenge to keep my eyes open.

Right at my breaking point, we got our Lipton tea, Nescafe coffee, tamarind + ginger juices, and mingling break. Individuals representing their countries in the most vibrant clothes all sipped and snacked together. The outfits ranged from a pair of men’s bright red silk pants to another man’s bright red fez to the ancient head wrap that even covered the chin and mouth of an African-Arab representative, with individuals decked in traditional Mali patterns among them.

The first presentation for the parliamentarians was given by Dr. Malle, who joked about being limited to 10 minutes, which meant that the old man was going to take his sweet time. The only thing I really understood were the charts he added to his densely worded powerpoint on “la lutte contre le paludisme” (still packing punch). Of interest is the fact that Rwanda had made the most progress in devoting more than 15% of national GDP to health, an amount previously determined by the “Alma Ata” agreement. Of particular interest is the fact that Rwanda's progress consequently ensures that 70% of its population sleeps under insecticide-treated bednets.

By this point, my Lipton tea coupled with my ginger juice had gotten me going. I was running up and down the aisles making sure the presentations were on the main computer connected to the projector, recording the presentations on my camera, and jotting down notes. The next presentation on why women and children should sleep under mosquito nets flew by, and I listened intently while typing fiendishly.

Lunch came around, where I opted for "bissap"/hibiscus juice and for an extra jolt, coffee. I wasn’t going to let “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” win this "fight against fatigue."

The presentations recommenced and Joy Phumaphi stole the show. It’s hard to imagine show-stopping for malaria, but this woman has a way of commanding a room. I thought at one point all 100 of us were holding our breath just to make sure nothing would interrupt her. She delivered a very powerful message: how manufacturing anti-malarial products, like bednets, insecticide, and anti-malaria drugs, can enable countries to decrease import costs, eliminate taxes on the products, and reap not only health but also economic benefits.

Her presentation was the highpoint for me because of her inspirational words, and because it was the last presentation in English. I was stuck wearing painful earphones listening to painful translations the rest of the day.

With help from the melange of caffeinated and highly sugared beverages I had been ingesting, I typed every word down coming out of those headphones. I wanted to have the opportunity to make sense of the content later, when I was no longer in an exhausted, jittery state, and at last free from the Frenglish babble being fed into my brain.

Throughout the day, I had been working closely with Tina, a Spanish firecracker who had been sent from Johns Hopkins in the states to help us with the forum. She had been preoccupied with ensuring the day ran smoothly, and had been delegating tasks to me.

She took notice of how quickly I had been typing, and officially gave me the job of secretary.

This duty would not have been an issue had the presentations been in English, but again this is French we’re talking, with an at-times nonsensical English translation.

After rereading my typed work during one of these bizarrely translated presentations, I decided I should try my hand at typing everything down in French. Yet as you can see from the title of the forum, while French may be considered more romantic than my native language, it sure is a hell of a lot more annoying to type.

Eventually, I had typed “la lutte contre le paludisme” a few too many times. It wasn’t packing punch anymore, and no amount of caffeine could motivate me to go back and add the French accents where they were desperately needed.

I made the decision to return to the head-squeezing headphones, and typed the best form of English translation Mali had to offer.

From prep to end time, in my personal "lutte contre le forum" on "la lutte contre le paludisme," I most surely lost. Any language you translate it.

My "Situation"

This past weekend I’ve been fighting off a foreign, exotic disease that most people have never even heard of -- “the cold.”

All the going back and forth between the dusty, smoldering outdoors and my A/C-ed office has caused me to come down with a sore throat and stuffy nose. Someone call the emergency evacuation troops!

Who needs Walgreens or Rite-Aid!

Notice the small plastic bag in hand, only a few pills are sold at a time as necessary.

While I’m certainly thankful that I haven’t caught any real tropical disease -- come on! A measly cold is slowing me down in Africa? That’s pretty lame.

Today, with my slight malady, I stayed indoors and hung out at Claudia's/my boss's house. I’ve recently moved in to house-sit for her family while they take leave on Thursday for 5 weeks of vacation. They’ve opened their doors, and all their amenities, to me: pool, trampoline, piano keyboard, Wii, unlimited access to their overstocked book shelves filled with African tales and French grammar texts. All for what I thought was going to be rent-free ride.

Sweet pool and backyard hut, which helps protect you when the

mangoes fall from their large mango tree:

A few days ago, I accidentally let it slip that I had taken 14 years of piano lessons in my day. Claudia seemed excited, explaining that she, too, had taken 8 years of lessons and wanted her boys to learn and couldn’t wait to hear me play.

This afternoon, she touches back on our conversation and asks, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could teach Andrew how to play? Why don’t we get started today while you stay in.”

Never having taught a lesson before, and only really being able to remember one song all the way through after my years of Suzuki lessons (albeit a 14 minute long Beethoven Sonata), I had to say yes. This family was taking me into their home, the least I could do was teach the boy a few scales and arpeggios!

Claudia's son Andrew: my first victim -- err, student.

He's immersed in his reading about ninja chimpanzees and tree-climbing goats.

We started with the C-scale and “Mary had a Little Lamb." While being the most repetitive hour I’ve spent in a few years, it was painless.

Later this evening, just after the World Cup trophy had been handed to the most beautiful keeper in the tournament (I love you and your tears of joy, Casillas!), Christine -- one of Claudia’s friends and the Chief of Child Security at UNICEF -- took me to the side and said: “I heard about your ‘situation.’”

Christine jumping for joy after Espagne's goal:

Tina Wolfe, a Johns Hopkins colleague and native Spaniard, just as excited:

Claudia and her other son, Abraham, were not as excited about Espagne's victory. They were pro-"Pays-Bas"/Netherlands.

I looked at her with my thick Lebanese eyebrows raised, and asked what she meant. Maybe she had heard about my uncommon sickness, and wanted to offer the newest and most effective treatment: a few Tylenol and some noodle soup.

“Well, Claudia told me that you’ve been moving around a bit, trying to stretch your dollars. I wanted to let you know that once her family gets back from vacation, you’re welcome to move in here with us.”

I looked around at her mansion of a home where we’d been watching the game on her huge flat-screen TV. It was decked with its own pool, basketball court, a huge surround sound system that was always blasting, and her two kids running around on a sugar high after a few apple sodas.

I could rock this. It was a much better offer than what I thought she would’ve probably given me for my sinus situation: I’d guessed it would’ve been CHICKEN noodle soup.

“There’s a catch...I was hoping you could maybe teach my kids how to play piano.”

On the couch with Kessia, Christine's daughter looking like an angel;

Amanda, who's in Bamako doing research on urban gardens;

Lisa, who works with USAID; and Mike, Peace Corps coordinator here in Mali

What Kessia did to my hair:

Not as angelic as she looks after all! Still a cutie:

Despite having a population of nearly 2 million, word travels fast here in Bamako.

Still, not a bad trade-off for such an impressive roof over my head. Definitely won’t catch any serious tropical diseases here, chez-Christine.

Plastic and Worms

From my volunteer experiences the past two summers, I witnessed that there is little to no plastic used with food and drink products in India. The beverages -- Cokes included -- are in large glass bottles at your neighborhood store, which are returned to be refilled. If you buy food from any vendors, it’s handed to you on dried leaf plates and bowls, which are thrown onto the street once you’ve finished.

In fact, all trash is thrown onto the street. There are no trashcans. Instead, there are sweepers who whisk all of the dirtied leaves and other rubbage into piles on street corners. The packs of wild dogs, sacred cows who roam freely, and neighborhood crows then eat through the piles, resulting in “natural” composting.

Plastic bottles are thus precious items. Any time I’d finished a bottled water, a rare find, I’d have 5-6 people asking me for it. Plastic bags are equally as cherished. Some of the school kids would show up to class with their books in bags that looked as old as they were.

In Mali, things are different. There is a lot of plastic...but in miniature. At the fruit and vegetable market, your fresh papayas and avocados are handed to you in tiny black plastic bags. When you’re a weak-stomached Westerner looking for bottled water, you have to settle for plastic-bagged water that looks just as tempting to drink as to launch as a water balloon.

Not only used as storage, these mini plastic bags can also be used as drinking vehicles.

A few days ago at the women’s association meeting, the vice president brought me a taste of three different juices she’d made for me. They were each tied up into little plastic bags that I figured you were supposed to pour into a glass, but she stood there waiting. She then whipped one that she had packed for herself, palmed it, and took a tiny bite of the plastic on the corner. With the right grip, you can drink straight out of the plastic bag without spilling.

During the Espagne/Allemagne match of the World Cup, a friend had bought us “degue” packets/natural yogurt with millet balls, for dinner. As practiced a few days earlier, I took a quick bite out of the plastic, and started sucking my dinner down. Hand-held dinner is perfect during intense World Cup times.

Degue before -- locked and in position:

Degue after:

This morning after our regular Saturday walk around Bamako, we bought a few frozen popsicle bags. Bite then slurp.

You get the drift.

While the mini plastic bags are easily accessible, the larger plastic bags are nowhere to be found. Through make-shift packing techniques, I unknowingly/luckily brought a few big ones from the states, and have been using my favorite one -- the biggest and most sturdy -- as my lunch bag every day.

Friday, I packed a few items in my trusty bag, including a mango that seemed to be aging a bit. Its bruised spot had busted open a tad in the bag, but I thought nothing of it. In the states, that kind of thing would happen with bananas in bag lunches all the time.

When I sat down to have my lunch, a few small white specks flew out of my wonder-bag. Upon close inspection, I realized these specks were crawling around in a worm-like fashion.

WORMY LARVAE! Either from mistakenly letting my bag get dirty, or worse, straight from the mango.

It was a sad, sad day.

I had to throw away my prized plastic bag, and spent the rest of the day wondering if similar white specks had been hiding in the mango I’d eaten the day before.