market morning

I thought I would post a couple pictures and talk about going to the market.  There is a good market in our neighborhood, about a 10 minute walk from the house.  This is an open outdoor market, kind of like a "farmer's market" in the states.  I went this morning and bought a lot of stuff.  Although everything adds up, the prices at the open market are good, this is where the average Malian gets all of their food.  I get a few things at a supermarket, but things there are pretty expensive and the average Malian never sets foot in there, it is catering to rich and expat clients. 
Sometime maybe I'll take pictures in the market and post them, but here are just a few pics from after the shopping was done.

 Carrots are a seasonal item here.  Sometimes they are in abundance and pretty cheap, sometimes they are few and expensive, and sometimes they are not to be found.  I bought 3 bunches of carrots this morning, each bunch was 200 francs (.40 cents American).  I get excited to find good carrots and I eat a lot of them when they are available.  I never thought much about carrots in America.  Usually I would just buy the bag of baby carrots because that is less work.  Nothing is less work here.

 I took this picture just outside my gate (I asked the guy to wait a minute while I ran inside to get my camera) and you see my groceries in bags sitting in the cart.  Usually I just carry my bags back home from market, but today I bought a lot of heavy stuff and it was too much for me to handle.  In the past I've brought a backpack so I could be stubborn and carry everything home myself, but I've come to realize that it is really worth the .40 to .50 cents that it costs to pay a guy to push my groceries home.  We chatted about the new year's holiday on the walk home. 
Some of the heavy things I bought which are not pictured are:
5 kilograms of flour, it comes in plastic bags of 1 kilo each (about 6 cups each) and costs 450 francs a bag (.90 cents),
6 kilos of wheat - the way to get whole wheat flour is to buy wheat, then wash and dry it and bring it to the mill to have it ground ($6),
1 kilo of sugar for $1,
a big bag of plantain bananas that will be fried up for JP's birthday party tomorrow ($3),
2 kilos of potatoes ($2),
a jar of peanut butter (or peanut paste really, natural pb with no sugar or salt) $1.50, I bought my own container to the market to have a lady fill it up, otherwise they give it in a plastic bag,
a small papaya ($1),
SO, that's at least 35 pounds already, and that doesn't take in to account the vegetables I bought, not all of which are pictured. 

 

This is pumpkin-like squash.  It is possible to buy whole squashes, but it is also sold in wedges.  It is a much bigger job to process a whole squash, so I get about 3 big wedges (you see 3 that have been cut in half) every week and cook it.  I eat it like that and use it for different recipes and then I freeze some too as it is also a seasonal item that isn't always available.  Each wedge sells for .20 cents. 

 

Here are a bunch of veggies that get used all the time at our house.  On the left are small red hot peppers, these go in sauces (1 at a time) and JP actually eats them, I just enjoy the flavor they add to the sauce.  If I eat them my face turns all red and tears stream from my eyes.  Anyway, this size cost 2 for .05 cents.  Green peppers are .20 each.  Tomatoes are sold in piles of 4 and the pile I bought was .40 cents.  The cabbage was .40 cents, same price for the big eggplant, and garlic is .10 cents each.   I also bought a big cucumber for .40 cents (they are expensive right now) and a bag of lettuce for .60 cents.  All of the vegetables have to be soaked in bleach water so that we don't get typhoid or anything weird like that. 


why JP was late

"I almost threw up... I don't want to think about it." -JP's response when I asked him about what he found in the yard.

Our walled-in and gated courtyard is shared by the 4 apartments in our building.  One of the neighbors in our building has a puppy (she is fully grown now but I still think of her as a puppy) that has become more than annoying.  I feel sorry for the little dog, she just wants to be loved, but her way of getting attention is jumping at people and biting ankles.  Some neighbors across the street from us had a wedding party at their house last week.  December is the month for a lot of weddings here, I guess because of the cooler weather and because it isn't time for planting or harvesting.  Very early on Thursday morning the neighbors butchered a cow and it was served up to the wedding party attenders later on Thursday. 
Well, Friday morning we were sleeping and woke up to the sound of the nearby mosque's call to prayer at around 5am.  Usually I don't hear the call to prayer at all, or if it does wake me up I just turn over and go back to sleep.  But this Friday morning we woke up and smelled something foul drifting in through the open window.  "what is that?!" It was pretty awful but as it was still dark out we couldn't see what was out there.  We closed the window and went back to sleep.  When it was light out and we got up, we discovered that the neighbor's puppy must have gone out in the street (sometimes the gate doesn't get latched) and dug through the trash of the neighbor who had butchered the cow.  The puppy had brought a large trash bag full of rotting cow parts into our courtyard and must have had fun tearing open the bag and spreading the stinking guts and stuff around just outside of our bedroom window and next to our front door.
Jean-Patrick realized that this problem needed to be taken care of right away as the smell wasn't improving any and there were already hordes of flies.  We also couldn't let our dog outside until it was cleaned up.  So he was late for school because he was a hero and cleaned up the mess.  After re-bagging up all of the nastiness, he hosed, soaped, scrubbed, and rinsed the paving blocks that make up our yard.  What a guy!  After all of that he needed to get himself cleaned up before he could go to school. 
This is the sort of problem that I just never encountered in my life before coming to Mali.  Maybe the neighbor's dog could poo in my yard, or their cat could leave a dead bird or mouse, but never rotting cow innards.

Christmas 2013 in pictures

Today I am celebrating my 5th Christmas in Mali!
What is Christmas like here?  You can see my photos that cover some of the activities of the last few days.

We went shopping at a couple shops downtown that sell a lot of expensive imported goods.  Maybe next week I will write a post so you can see what we bought, it's a project that isn't finished yet.  Anyway, you can see me with a huge creepy Santa that I found in one of the stores. yikes.





I got to choose and prepare the songs and powerpoint overheads and play the piano for our English Christmas caroling service.  We were all set up outside and after all the singing and the message there was good food to eat. 

The above picture was taken at the Christmas party for our group.  There were 18 people there to celebrate, sing, dance, eat good food, and spend time together.  Of the 18, we had people from 8 different countries. I love the internationality of our group!

Below is little Grace in her Santa hat.  She, like many girls here, just had her hair braided for the holidays.

 One of my colleagues from English school is scooping popcorn into a paper cone to give to a student at our Christmas Movie Night.  We set up chairs and projected "The Nativity Story" in a big classroom.  Everyone was invited and about 20 students came.  We watched the movie in English with English subtitles.  About 15 minutes into it I paused it to clarify what we had seen, to discuss the setting, answer questions, and make sure everyone was understanding it well enough.

Many people get new clothes made to wear for Christmas.  All of the churches make fabric each year and sell it a few weeks before Christmas.  Many people show up to the Christmas service wearing their new outfits made of the special Christmas fabric.  In America if I went to church wearing the same outfit as someone else it might be kind of embarrassing, but here half the church has on the same fabric and everyone loves it.  This year our church was selling purple and blue fabric and I liked it so I asked JP to buy it for me as a Christmas present.  He did, and then I took it to a tailor to be sewn.  Above is a picture of the tailor putting the finishing touches on my new outfit.  You can see me wearing it in the last picture.

 We went to church on Christmas Eve.  We were there from about 7:45pm until just after 11pm I think.  There was a service that had a lot of music.  We all sang some songs together and JP played the guitar to help lead that.  There were small groups presenting songs and the children did a skit.  JP sang a song in N'Gambaye, a language he knows from Chad, with 2 other Chadian guys in the church.    Last year some ladies from the church cooked up a big meal, but this year everyone was asked to bring a dish to share. 

 The last picture is of me and Masitan, the woman who works for us several mornings a week to help with cleaning, laundry, and food shopping.  She wanted to come to church with us for Christmas to share in the celebrating.

King's Kids and a Sotrama adventure

 This weekend I attended a big event and I got to see the Bamako Kids perform several of their choreographies.  It was a 50th anniversary celebration for the AGEMPEM - this is the organization in which all of the protestant churches and missions in Mali associate together in cooperation.  They held this special evening for the children to celebrate and show their different songs, dances, and skits. 

 The event was held at a soccer stadium, which as you can see is pretty huge.   Actually we were right next to the stadium in a big building that is a basketball arena (bottom photo).  This all was built in 2001 to host the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament in 2002.  I read that the stadium can hold 55,000 people, and like many well-constructed things here, it was built by the Chinese.  I don't know how many people can fit in to the basketball arena, but we were an impressive sized group even if we didn't even half fill it.  Besides me I only saw 1 other white person.

 

To get there I had taken a taxi.  As it is pretty far away the taxi rate was higher than most trips in town, so I decided to save some money and take a Sotrama to get back home.  A Sotrama is a brightly green painted public transportation mini-bus.  Its like a big van that they have taken all the comfortable seats out of and then attached skinny planks of wood around the edges so that as many people as possible can cram inside.  Lots of these green vehicles go by when you are walking or waiting along a main road, and the money collector shouts the name of the neighborhood it is headed to.  I could not at all understand what the guy was shouting because apparently the Sotrama money collectors learn their shouting at the same place as auctioneers, it is incomprehensible.  I had to ask the guy where it was going even though he was shouting the name of the place, and when he told me I still didn't understand, so he asked me where I wanted to go.  I told him and he said "get on."  I got on hoping that everything would be ok.

 When you ride in one of these you are wedged between people, so if it is hot you will soon be getting their sweat on you.  It is cool season so I thought it would be ok.  I was positioned near the door though, so sometimes when ladies were climbing in or out they used my knee as a handle to help them. There was also a little girl on the lap of the woman next to me who thought I was an armrest.  Some of the ladies started arguing with the guy who collects money, they all seemed pretty angry and I didn't really understand what it was all about, but after a few minutes they all started laughing.  It wasn't too sweaty, but the dust is pretty nasty these days.
The price for the Sotrama ride was only 1/10th the price of a taxi, but it took me over an hour to get home compared to the 20 or so minutes it would have taken in a taxi.  It was an adventure and its good to have those now and then.



orphanage

I was recently able to visit an orphanage.  It is the only government orphanage in the whole country and it is located here in the capital city.  There are currently 137 children at the orphanage.  Most are babies.  The few older children have special needs and are less likely to be adopted.  It is not allowed for foreigners to adopt Malian children at the present time.  Before the coup d'état it was possible, but they put a hold on that and it has caused numbers to rise at the orphanage.  There are still babies coming in regularly, but not as many going out.
I know Malian women who have not been able to have biological children (much to their shame and despair), but they would never consider adoption.  Many Malians would never consider an adopted child to be "theirs."  The babies at the orphanage are mostly there because they were abandoned at birth by their unwed mothers.  This is generally the reason for orphans.  Otherwise children are taken in by family members.  I know several children being raised by aunties and uncles after their mothers died (way too many women here die in childbirth).  But again, I often see that the adopted or taken-in child is not treated as "their" child.  While their biological children wear new clothes for holidays the adopted child wears an old hand-me-down dress.  This is not always the case, but I've seen adopted children treated as less than biological children enough times.

 

Before going to the orphanage I was a little worried about what I might find there.  I've seen scary things on tv about horrible places where children are filthy, starving, and 3 to a bed.  While it absolutely touches my heart to see these kids in an institutional place without parents, I've seen plenty of kids a lot worse off in this country.  The babies in the orphanage were all well fed, clean, well clothed, only 1 to each crib, and they even had some toys.  One young man with special needs was scooting himself across a clean tiled floor and playing with a little ball.  I remembered visiting a young woman in a village with similar disabilities.  She was living with her family, but they seemed to want to keep her hidden away, forgotten.  Instead of a clean tiled floor she had a dirt courtyard shared with chickens and a few sheep.  She was not clean or groomed like the young man in the orphanage.  I did feel compassion for the young man, and I stopped to squat down to hold his hand and talk to him for a few seconds.  But I think that he is a lot happier and probably better off than the young woman in the village who lived with her unloving family. 
The babies don't get held and played with as much as they need, its just not possible with the limited staff.  But they get held and played with some, and they all seemed to be doing pretty well actually. 

Seeing all of these beautiful babies got me a bit upset with the mentality here about adoption.  I remember having a friend in the 3rd grade who was adopted.  Her family was pretty rich and she had a lot of expensive toys.  She told me how her parents had told her that they couldn't have a biological child, but they wanted a little girl so badly, and they were so happy that they found her to be their dearly loved special little girl.  I remember feeling jealous and wishing I were adopted too.  When I tell some Malians about friends I have in the states that have adopted children, how those children are really "their" children now, they find it hard to believe.  I wish that the mentality would change.  It is ridiculous that all of those perfect babies are sitting in the orphanage waiting while there are so many women yearning to have a baby but not being able to conceive.

 

I was glad to visit these sweet little ones, and I hope that I'll be able to go there again soon.  I would be open to consider adopting a baby in the future if the situation changes and they allow foreigners to adopt again.  I'm not sure if the Mr. would be as open to that, but its something to pray about. 

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  James 1:27



real ice cream?!

I saw this real ice cream at a supermarket here in Bamako!  Most of our food shopping is done in small neighborhood shops and at the outdoor market.  The outdoor market sells everything fresh - vegetables and fruit and fish, though you can find things like packaged spaghetti, tomato paste, and salt at stands within the market.  I stock up on "dry goods" once a month at a shop that has especially good prices.  I know, I said "dry goods" and sounds like this store is from the 1800's or something, but really it is just an African version of one of those old stores you'd see in a movie or TV show set back then.  There is a long counter with a guy working and shelves of goods behind him.  They scoop flour and sugar out of huge sacks to measure it out to sell.  It has charm.
There are a couple of modern supermarkets here in the capital city, and they have imported things that the average Malian could never afford to buy as well as things that the average Malian would not recognize.  I don't buy much in the supermarkets because we can't really afford to buy most of it, but I find a few things there that are special treats.  They sell expensive imported cheese!  It is so good to have a pizza night once or twice a month with the mozzarella cheese that can be found at the supermarket.  I'm getting pretty good at making it all from scratch - the sauce and the crust.  Other special things I get at the supermarket from time to time include: a jar of pickles, a bag of dried lentils or chickpeas, a can of tuna, hair conditioner.  Once I bought a can of black olives for pizza night, but I have a hard time paying 3-4 times the price of what it would be in America, so we really mostly use local foods.
I noticed the ice cream last time I was there and decided to take a closer look.  The apple sorbet that you see in the top picture, 1 liter size, costs at the current exchange rate a whopping $19.  Yes really, $19!  The Haagen Dazs is half the size but costs $17.  Who is buying this stuff?  Certainly not me!  I guess its people who work for different embassies or do international business or something. 



 

On the bottom you can see the Yoplait that is sold in any local corner store that has refrigeration.  These yogurt pouches cost 30 cents each.  It is not actually "yogurt" but "lait caille".  I don't know if we have a word for that in English but basically it is thin drinkable yogurt stuff.  It comes in plain, vanilla, and strawberry flavors.  We often put these in the freezer and then eat them frozen.  Its not quite ice cream, but it is a good cold treat.