Last Friday I arrived in Bamako, the capital of Mali and met the students and teachers of the SIT Health, Gender and Community Empowerment program for the first time. We left from Paris around noon and arrived in Bamako at 6:00PM. The flight was originally supposed to depart at 4:00PM, but it had to be rescheduled because the lights on the runway in Bamako aren't working, so all flights have to land during the day. When we arrived we were met at the airport by Modibo, the program director, Lamine, our Bambara teacher, Aida, the homestay coordinator, and Oumu, the program assistant and French teacher. They took us out for dinner at what is likely one of the most Western restaurants in the city, called Amandine, where I ate spaghetti and marinara sauce for dinner and a crepe for dessert.
The next day we had a lecture about the rules of the program and then our first Bambara class. Bambara is the name the French gave the language spoken by native Malians. However, the correct name of the language is Bamana or Bamanakan. I really like our teacher Lamine. He's a great teacher and a really cool friendly guy. The women are much more reserved around us. According to Lamine, sometimes it takes a while for women here to open up to new people. After lunch we all went downtown to the center of Bamako for our first "drop off," which is exactly what it sounds like. Our professors leave us somewhere with an assignment: it's our job to complete it and return to home or school on our own. They gave us 5,000CFA, about $10, and assigned us to go to various important sites, gather information, buy something cheap, then take a taxi or a sotroma back to the hotel on the other side of the river.
Sotromas are like busses here. They're green vans, often crammed full of people, that have certain regular routes. However, the only way to find out where a sotroma is going is to ask the driver. Next weekend we have another "drop off" that involves taking several sotromas, so I'll write more about riding on them then.
When we returned to the hotel my friend Hayley and I decided to walk around the neighborhood for a few hours. We practiced our Bamana greetings, which are very important in Malian culture. It's considered extremely rude to start speaking to someone without first going through the proscribed set of greetings, which can be a simple "good morning, how's your family," or a complex series of questions that can last up to ten minutes or more. Once you greet them, people are more than happy to talk with you for hours. We stopped and spent almost an hour talking to several men in French and learned some new Bamana phrases from them. It's harder to talk to women because they are shy and many of them don't speak any French because it's typically only upper class women who are able to go to school and learn French.
This weekend I moved into my homestay. I'm really pleased to be living with a large family with lots and lots of children. Everyone here is really nice to me and eager to help me learn Bamana. I have ten sisters: Kadi, who is 24, Penda who is 20, Lago, who is 19, Oumu, who is 17, Fatumata, who is 12, Aishata and Salli, who are both six, Adama and Haoua, who are both two and are twins, and Mami, who is ten months old. Here all of the women who share a house call each other sister or mother, depending on their age, even if they are not exactly sisters. Kadi, Penda, and Oumu are all sisters. Lago is their niece. Salli, and Mami are Kadi's daughters. Fatumata, Aishata, Adama, and Haoua are the half-sisters of Kadi, Penda, and Oumu. The mother of Fatumata, Aishata, Adama, and Haoua lives with us because Kadi, Penda, and Oumu's mother died and their father remarried. Their father's mother also lives with us. Her name is Miriam, which is the Malian name the family has given me, in her honor. A second Kadi lives with us, who is the sister of Penda's father's second wife. I barely see the mother of Fatumata, Aishata, Adama, and Haoua, because she is always at work or in her room. I spend most of my time with Penda and Oumu and playing with the kids. I keep having to remind myself when I'm playing with the babies that, in a culture where it is widely believed that, when a child dies it was probably "eaten" by a sorcerer, it isn't quite as funny to joke with the kids that I'm going to eat them, like I do with American kids
We also have four maids who live with us, Bintu, Bakoro, Fatumata, and Bama. They don't speak any French but Bintu, who is fifteen, likes to help me learn the names of things in Bambara. Now for the men.
Penda has five older brothers named Ben, Alpha, Lassi, Oumar, Sekuba. I don't really interact with them because they live in our compound but in a different house on the other side of the courtyard. I live with the women. Only the baby boys sleep in our house, although I'm not sure where the father sleeps. I have nine brothers in total, though, again, they are not all technically brothers: Ben, Alpha, Lassi, Oumar, Sekuba, who are older and I don't know their ages, a second Oumar, who is three, a third Oumar who is six months old, Papi, who is also six months old, and Modibo, who is five months old. Modibo is Lago's son. Papi is the son of the second Kadi. The youngest Oumar is the son of Penda's father's second wife and the second youngest Oumar is her nephew. I spend a lot of time playing with all the little kids here. Mami is especially cute. She was really afraid of me at first but now she comes over to sit with me when I'm in the salon, which is like the TV room. I share a room with about five of my sisters although sometimes one of them will end up sleeping in a different room. I share my bed with Penda and sometimes Oumu too. During orientation we were warned that in Malian culture part of being a good host is to make sure that a guest is never, ever alone. To want time to oneself is seen as a sign of being strange or wicked. That hasn't been a problem for me here though, I'm not someone who really likes much time alone in the first place.
Another thing we were warned about in orientation was that people here tend to be very blunt and comment on other people's character, appearance, etc. but it's not at all intended to be offensive. I experienced this myself on the night I finally met my host mother/aunt. I didn't see her at all for the first two days that I lived here, which struck me as kind of strange. According to the program directors and everyone else I've talked to, family is supposed to be very important in Mali. It seems though like the father and mother try to spend as little time at home as possible. They take the car every morning, even on weekends, and come back late at night. Even when my aunt/mother is home, she rarely comes out of her room. My host sister Penda brought me into the aunt's room to meet her and, after I gave her the gifts I brought, she asked me how long I was living here for, which seemed kind of odd to me...didn't she know? I get the impression that she's pretty removed from what goes on in the house. Later that night I was sitting with my sisters in the salon, where we watch TV and eat, when the aunt came in to get some water from the fridge. "Miriam," she yelled across the room in French, "your feet are not very pretty." I didn't know how to respond except to ask why, so I did. All she could tell me was that she didn't know why, they just weren't, which we all found pretty funny.
Even if my host parents are not very present I still get the impression that family here is very important, like I've heard. My sisters and I spend a lot of time together with the babies and children in the salon and also outside, where the maids cook all the food. As far as food goes, I'm probably lucky that my host mom is not super interested in me. One of my good friends here tells me that her host mom is always encouraging her to eat more and seems a little offended when she gets full. I can turn down food whenever I want without anyone getting offended. Or at least if they are offended they don't show it.
During our first week in Mali we spent several days in Siby, a rural area about 40km outside of the city. On Thursday night, the director told us that the American embassy had issued a warning for Americans in Mali to avoid Bamako because of the rioting going on there. Since we were supposed to return Friday we had to wake up very early so that we would pass through Bamako before the riots started. To the relief of some of the other students, we didn't see anything out of the ordinary on our drive back. (I was actually kind of disappointed, I was hoping to take some pictures). The articles about the riots I've been able to find on the internet tell a very different story from what I've been hearing here. The program director tells us that women in Bamako are rioting because their husbands, sons, and brothers have been sent away to fight the Tuareg who are rebelling in the North of Mali without enough arms or ammunition. According to the director, they're being massacred by the Tuareg, who are heavily armed with weapons from Libya. However, the only English news story I was able to find reported that a crowd of 15,000 people was demonstrating in Bamako, to encourage the President to take a stronger stance against the Tuareg rebellion. I'm hoping to find out more from my host family. My family is Malinke but her best friend (and my friend Hayley's host sister) is Tuareg. My sisters told me that many people in Bamako are not very happy with the Tuaregs who live here, but all of them have friends who are Tuareg. I asked what they think should happen and my sister Lago told me that she thinks they should stop the war and the violence but shouldn't give in to the Tuareg demand to secede from Mali. We're discussing the political situation in class tomorrow; I'll write more about it then.
