village weekend

Crazy or Brave?  Someone asked me, "So, you are going to a village you've never been to and you'll stay with people you've never met... all by yourself?"  Yep. I spent last weekend in a village to work on my Bambara language skills.  My new language helper, who is one of those people who seems to know everyone, found a family for me to stay with when I asked him if he could help me arrange a language immersion weekend.  From my house it takes about 1 hour to get there by taxi, and the family serves as its church's leaders.  Plus, they were willing to welcome a language-learning foreign lady for the weekend.  Perfect!

This is the mom, Tabita, with Marte who is almost 2.  Marte was afraid of me when I arrived.  I tried to buy her friendship at first by offering a piece of candy.  I heard her ask her big sister if she could go get the piece of candy for her.  The sister said no.  Then Marte asked the sister to ask the white lady to throw the candy to her!  How cute is that.  The sister again refused.  Marte finally came to get the candy herself and seeing that I didn't bite or anything, we became friends.  The next day she was sitting on my lap and giving me hugs.

 It was unseasonably chilly for the beginning of March!  Overnight lows were down to 60 degrees (which I'm sure sounds balmy if you're in MN right now, but for us here that's freezing!) and there was a lot of dusty wind blowing.  In the morning and nighttime everyone was wearing jackets or sweatshirts and still feeling cold.  Its nice to not be sweating hot once in a while in Mali, but taking an outdoor (in an enclosure) "bucket bath" in 60 degrees left me shivering.  Other than that everything was wonderful.  The food was good (corn porridge for breakfast, rice and sauce for lunch and dinner), I had my own little private room to sleep in (no sharing a bed with a stranger), and most importantly I had the opportunity to have conversations with many people.  There was a lot I didn't understand, but a lot I did understand, and overall I was encouraged by my ability and progress in Bambara.  I want to go for another weekend (or longer!) again soon.

This is the dad, Alain Madu.  He is standing on the land that belongs to the church and you can see the partially constructed church building is behind him.  For now the small church, about 30 people, meets in the family's courtyard under a shade roof.  The village is pretty big, I don't know the population, but it is next to an "Industrial Zone" that already has a few factories and will soon have more, and there are tons of new houses being built in the village.  Their church is the only one in the village.  They are praying for the finances to put a roof on the new building so they can move the church meetings over there.  Having a "real" church will give them more credibility in the eyes of other villagers.

On Saturday I went a lot of places with Tabita.  She took me to the market, to visit friends, and to her weekly women's meeting.  In many villages, women make groups and when they meet each week they bring and collect money, it's kind of like their own little credit union system.  There were some kids hanging out at the meeting and they liked having their picture taken.  I thought it was pretty cute how a couple of them climbed into this old shipping crate. 

Here I am with the whole family.  The 3 little girls in the middle are the daughters of Alain Madu (blue shirt, center) and Tabita (back left).  The man in the pink shirt is Tabita's brother.  He has a tiny bachelor's house on the land next door to the family.  The boy in yellow is Sidiki, he is not related but came to live with the family to go to school and help take care of the 5 cows and do other work.  The girl in front of me is also not related.  She came from another village to work for the family.  She said she is 14 and has never been to school.  She does cooking and cleaning and takes care of little Marte if the mom goes out.