I think 9 days is the perfect amount of time to stay in village. I was super productive, got to know my family, set up my hut (decked it out, really), had a mini-meltdown, recovered from said melt-down and learned a little Pulaar. Now I’m back at the regional house with good people, awaiting the arrival of more good people so that we can have a relaxing, American-inspired weekend.
So my family is HUGE! I would say there are about 12-15 adults and maybe 20 children that live in the compound. From what I gather, my Dad has 2 wives. The first wife is who has been designated as my Mom, but the second wife “Neene Galle” (literally “House Mom”) is more of my caretaker. She makes sure I’m fed and she’s my go-to person when I need to know how, where or when to do things. I think my Mom is a retired “house mom” so as far as I can tell, she doesn’t do all that much these days. The house mom, who I’ll refer to as Neene from here on out, does most of the work… pulling water, cooking meals, cracking peanuts, etc. There’s so much to explain, I don’t even know where to start and I anticipate that it won’t be as descriptive as it needs to be to make you understand. This may as well be an alternate universe.
I won’t tell too much about my hut because I fully intend to post pictures, although today’s internet strength has failed miserably. Hopefully tomorrow will be better for uploading purposes. My family is great. My Dad is the chief of the village and a man of few words. I think he likes me, and I’m pretty sure he respects me as an equal, which is a huge deal here. That’s how I feel anyway. He may not feel the same way, but I believe that people act as you condition them; therefore he respects me as an equal. I really want him to be overprotective of me but I’m having difficulty conveying that to him, as I’m not used to playing the damsel in distress role. Last names are a status symbol and since I share his last name, I hope people associate me as the chief’s daughter. Oh yeah, they changed my name from my training village name, Salimatou. I knew my last name would change but was trying to convince my counterparts to go back and convince my family to let me keep Salimatou, for no other reason than I dig the name. My new name is Aminata Kanté. Everyone calls me Ami, pronounce “ommy.” I’m so used to responding to Salimatou that it took me a few days to start answering to Ami. I don’t mind the name in itself though. There are definitely worse options.
All of this will sound funny because I don’t really know all the facts, not being able to speak enough of the language and all. I’m pretty sure my family is mostly peanut farmers. If I had to guess, I would say most of the village men are. So a lot of the day is spent shelling raw peanuts. In no way am I expected to do this, but if I want to spend time with the other women without just staring at them while they work, then it means shelling peanuts. This doesn’t sound all that bad but once you hit the 1000th peanut your fingertips start to crack and peel. They take the peanuts in between their knuckles and crack them on the ground and open them one handed. I tried this knuckle method and it equates to bloody knuckles. So I just hold them in between my thumb and index and hit them on the ground, but still have to use two hands to open them. I think its odd that they don’t make a separate pile for shells and nuts. They just sift the nuts out later. Such is life, I guess. We open SO MANY peanuts everyday. The upside is that it’s an all-you-can-eat peanut buffet. Lunch is usually white rice with an oily peanut sauce. Dinner is usually what they call couscous, I call sawdust, with a watery peanut or leaf sauce. I don’t eat much at dinner. I try to fill up on peanuts beforehand. I make my own breakfast which is instant coffee that takes like nuclear wastes should taste, and oatmeal or protein bars until I ran of both. Send protein bars!!!
I try to hang with Neene during her work throughout the day, but I can’t. I don’t even come close. I can pull 4 or 5 times from the well before my arms fail. She can pull, well, she could just keep pulling water all day. Its amazing how many buckets she’ll pull. The pulley system fell into the well the other day and she was still pulling water by just pulling the rope up and over the well! I couldn’t believe it.
Since I don’t spend any money while I’m in village, I don’t ever think about money. That’s one of the best things about being in village. However, water is my new currency. I have two buckets for water storage and my water filter and a clay pot that I store filtered water in to keep it cooler. When all 4 of these water storage devices are full, I feel rich! When they are running low, I know I have to work soon. The entire day is spent obtaining and maintaining the 3 basic human needs: food, water and shelter. I can’t explain how nice it is to live so simplistically. I should also explain that even though pictures depict this place to look like a “save the children” commercial, it is in fact NOT a “save the children” commercial. The people I live with are content and laugh more than any group of people I have ever spent time with. Pulaar people are especially charismatic and have a sarcastic, insulting sense of humor. I fit in well!
Oh, the meltdown. We were told that being here will make you feel bi-polar. I think I’ve explained this in previous posts. I didn’t get it, having never been bi-polar and usually having a pretty good grip of my emotions. Being sarcastic and insulting, they always make fun of everything I say in my butchered Pulaar. I always laugh with them and make them explain how to fix what I said. Then one morning we had a misunderstanding on trying to go to the market (which is a one shot deal as there is one bus that goes to the weekly market) and we missed the bus. No one was upset, I just didn’t understand what had happened… still don’t. It was 6am so I went back to bed. When I woke up and came back out to hang with the family, all of a sudden their laughing at me was really annoying. I tried to brush it off but was getting more and more frustrated. Having never tried to learn another language, they don’t understand how frustrating it can be. I took a sip of water and choked on it. They kept saying I was sick so finally I said, “Yep I’m sick. I’m going to rest.” I laid in my backyard the rest of the day, questioning what the hell I had gotten myself into, why the sky is blue and how will my grandchildren pay for college. Those kinds of things. I actually read two books in their entirety. That was the day I decided to come to Tamba for the weekend. I rallied the troops and here we are. The days in village after the meltdown were fine. Its nice to get away though.
I brought a bunch of photos of my family and friends with me. The first time I showed them to my training host family I thought that I was in too many of the photos. I wished I had more of just other people without me in the photo. Now that I’ve made a “picture hanging contraption” and have to look at photos of myself everyday, its reassuring to see that at one time in my life I was clean and looked decent. It gives me hope that one day I can return to that and feel some resemblance of attractive. I don’t necessarily mind being dirty and unattractive here because we all are and it helps us bond. In village I don’t look in the mirror for days on end. I don’t wear makeup or my contacts. When I come back to regional house I put my contacts in, slap on some mascara and get dressed up by wearing earrings. These are the little things that make me happy.
Well, I’ve been procrastinating on finishing this and now its an hour before I have to catch the ride to village. I’m going to try kind of, sort of hard to stay there this time until June 20th. This may be unrealistic, I’m not sure yet. I’m going to attempt to bike the 30k to Hilary’s village at some point so maybe getting out for a day will help me to stay there longer. I’ve been at the regional house for 5 days and I think it’s a little too long to hang out here. But it was SO much fun. A bunch of us came in and cooked up a storm, watched movies and played lots of games. I had some skirts made while I was here too and love them! I didn’t think I would want to wear skirts here because I don’t in the States hardly ever but they are so much cooler than pants. Shorts aren’t an option here. Those knees will get you starred at, for sure. Women will sit around topless, but you bust out a knee and you’re a tramp! Oh, I never succeeded at posting pictures on here. I don’t know why its so much harder than posting them on Facebook. So the pictures of my hut are on Facebook. This might be a reoccurring problem so if you don’t have the Facebook and care that much about seeing the pics, you should get an account. Ok, I’m going to go sweat my life out in a mini bus for 3 hours. You sit back and have a glass of something over ice. xoxo
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