Just Married

This is my honey, Baba Fima!

So, remember that movie Lost in Translation? I really hated it when I first saw it, but I’m feeling more and more like I’ll need to watch it again. This past weekend Baba and I went to his village, Boidié, so that I could meet his family, and we left married! I was really looking forward to meeting everyone and seeing where he grew up and was all mischievous as a child. So, after my mom and sister left we headed out there. The other back part of this story is that we had decided back in April/early May that we wanted to get married. So, social ceremonies are huge here in Mali and normally when two Malians want to get married the male’s family brings kola nuts to the female’s family to ask for her hand in marriage. Well, I don’t have a real family here so we improvised a little and just bypassed that step. He and I had thoroughly discussed this whole going to village and going the Kola Ceremony and I felt confident that it meant we were officially engaged – kind of like being proposed to. The closer it grew for us to go to village, it kept sounding more and more like we were getting married. Either way, we already decided we wanted to get married so it’s a non issue really. Plus, living in Africa, things/plans/definitions change about every 30 seconds so I’m constantly ready for change. So, this is how it went down: We arrived on Friday afternoon and spent the day greeting family members and I was introduced to everyone in the village and was aptly named buramuso by everyone. Buramuso is Bambara and is what women who are married to a family member are called. Well, here, everyone is your brother, sister, uncle, aunt and cousin so I’m buramuso to literally the entire village. It’s a name that will stick for life and if I’m called buramuso I can call the person who called me it my buramuso or burace in the case of males. Anyway, needless to say, buramuso is not a word I’ll soon be forgetting! After being asked if I know how to do housework and prepare meals by every woman I met throughout the course of the weekend, I finally got a chance to sit down and talk to Baba’s mom which was awesome. She’s this great lady who is aging but couldn’t stop to rest for a second if you paid her. She goes to markets all around her village to sell fabric and vegetables to other woman. She’s doing well for herself which is really great. So, like most social ceremonies in Mali, the Kola was underwhelming. Baba told me that on Sunday night the men would go to the mosque and pray and give benedictions/blessings and then they would return to the family’s house area and distribute the kola nuts and pay me my dowry and then we’d be married. 100 kola nuts were purchased and distributed and I received 3.750 CFA which is about $8.50. In the past, 3,750 CFA was a lot of money and it gave the woman an opportunity to buy something to start her life with her husband, whether that meant new clothes or a goat or sheep, it didn’t matter, but this money is meant to be used by the woman only and not spent on anyone else. Then benedictions were passed around and “Amen’s” were said and it was over. I’m not joking when I tell you that Baba was at the mosque for maybe 7 minutes, and that the whole thing was done in maybe 20! Underwhelming? Yeah, so I sat at home the whole time staring at the wall wondering how I was going to tell the people in my life that I was married and I hadn’t even found a solution by the time he returned. It was crazy!

So, a little on the wedding process here. Traditionally there are 3 weddings: religious, Mayor’s Office, and traditional fete. It’s not that different than in America, but in America, we do all three of these on the same day at the same time. Here, each group/family is different, but we did the religious ceremony and the Mayor’s Office and traditional will come later. Weddings here aren’t decided by the people getting married. If Baba’s father were alive he would have decided and made all of the arrangements, but instead his oldest brother, Bafi, organized everything. Before there were Mayor’s Offices in Mali, the religious ceremony was the ceremony to be married. So, Baba’s family is still very traditional and so they all consider us to be very married now and we can start our life together. In a couple of weeks, Bafi will call Baba and ask him when we want to have the traditional wedding/fete and together we will decide that. For us, it’ll probably happen next February or March, whenever we’ve saved up enough money, but before we come to America. That just leaves the Mayor’s Office and the only reason that this is so important for us is for visa purposes for Baba to come to America. On this day, which will likely happen here in Sevaré, I will actually have a dress – hand made by my tailor – and we will have a small party after with friends and family here in Sevaré/Mopti, but it’ll be nothing like this big fete in his village next year. Now, I say all of this like I know, but in all reality I have no idea! I also have to prepare myself for these two weddings to be underwhelming or else I’ll get my hopes up and will be let down on the day of. So, let’s just say I will update very frequently about the status of these social ceremonies.

So, the last question is what does this mean for me? Well, I’m 24 and married which is daunting but really exciting. My new name is Sara Berthé (like bear-tey), but that won’t be official for awhile. And I’m ridiculously happy. I know that in America we date and then get engaged and then get married and the whole process can take from 2 to 5 years to longer, all depending, and I also know that a lot of people are going to say, “From meeting to married in a year? What is she thinking?” but when you know you’ve met the person who will care for you and about you for the rest of your life and you’ll do the same, you can’t let that pass you by. In my “ideal sketch” of life, I probably wouldn’t have started looking for a husband until 27ish, but anyone who thinks they can plan their lives to a T is ridiculous and you have to be ready for surprises.

But, I’m definitively going to have an awesome wedding/ceremony in America because it’s not the same getting married in a different country with different customs. I love it here and I understand and respect it, but I want celebrate with my friends and family in America and get married the way I know. So cliché, I know, but whatever, I’m allowed to be cliché sometimes!

Identity Crisis – Or Not?

So people say that moving to a new place is a new chance for a change of identity. You can recreate yourself and change any things you didn’t like about yourself in the past or you can add new elements to your life that would be too far of a leap in your past life. Where am I going with this? I knew that this identity change could happen, but I didn’t necessarily think that living in Mali would change me that much. When you’re joining the Peace Corps you read a lot of literature about how you’re going to go find yourself. Well, what does that even mean? Honestly, two years ago, “finding myself” wasn’t on my list of to do’s in Mali, however, it’s definitely been checked off and done!

It started with something as simple as going to the tailor here and having some Malian clothes made. Or wearing ridiculously big, beaded necklaces, which I’ve recently been called a patron for wearing. The outside appearance was the easy stuff – a change of clothes or wearing new jewelry. Things got complicated when my personality traits started changing and I wasn’t necessarily prepared for it.

So, how do you find yourself? Well, take yourself out of the culture and country that you’re most comfortable in and compromise everything about your life and things start to change. You realize that a lot of your personality traits and idiosyncrasies are a product of your environment. What examples can I give? In America I was pretty uptight about things. There were deadlines, there was money to be made/that needed to be made, there was shit to do. My last year in America I was at school full time, working 30 hours a week (minimum), organizing a conference, having ankle surgery and doing physical therapy and applying for the Peace Corps (which is pretty intense). There wasn’t time to take a step back and look at my life and see what was going right or wrong. I wore black pants and pointy-toed shoes and wore subtle jewelry because everyone else in DC was doing it and why be the fish swimming upsteam in a city where no one else is? I wanted to fit it and I did and it was nice.

So, here I am in Mali, wanting to fit in again. The problem is that fitting in here and in America is totally different. And now that I’ve fit in here, and I’m not uptight about everything and “American” about everything, it’s awesome. I feel great! But, how to I re-assimilate into America? How do I stay Malian in America? I don’t know. It’s going to be really hard. I know who I want to be, even if I wasn’t that person before, but I’m worried about the constraints of American society on who that person is. I also worry that my friends and family will expect me to be a certain person – i.e. the person I used to be – and I want to change. Is that going to be weird for people? Are they not going to know how to react with me or what?

Anyway, I think I’m having an identity crisis – yikes! – and think that this crisis will continue when I arrive in America next year. I just want to ask everyone to be accepting of this change. There will be a lot that has changed and you can accept me and the changes or not. We’ll see how this plays out!

Anything Goes BUT Clothes

The title really says it all, but it was a birthday party for a couple of PCVs. So we had a fete and it went well. Here's the Belushi photo of our last party altogether in San.




Costumes were pretty impressive, I myself sporting some brooms and loofah.



Ah, the Belushi's. What will I do without them?

A Return to Normalcy

Not just a campaign slogan for Warren Harding but also my general state of being for the past 2 months or so. It all started when I went on vacation to Togo and Benin. I mean, things were strange, don’t get me wrong – I was in a ridiculously developed country, comparatively speaking. Things were very strange. But at the same time, things were so normal. Sitting on a bus for 3 days to arrive at a destination, whether we had seats or not, was normal. Sitting on this transport with goats, sheep and chicken both in and outside of the car, is normal. Eating meat, chicken and hot dogs from a street vendor (read, a guy with an empty oil barrel and fire heating a grill on top and sitting on the side of the road) is normal. Walking down the street and getting cat called at and asked to be married is normal. Showering 4 times a day, just to cool off….again, pretty normal. Seeing family’s of 3, 4 or 5 people on a moto, on their way to school is normal. Being so modest that I feel scantily clad if my knees show for a second, is normal. Eating with my hand, and completing boycotting utensils – that’s scarily normal. Drinking water from unknown sources, that’s just survival. But what I want to know is when these things changed from being weird and foreign to being an everyday part of my life. Granted, I’ve been here for two years now, but I still feel like these things should make my head turn and not seem to everyday. I think it’s a survival mechanism. You deal with things as they come at you because if you don’t, you’re going to go crazy. It’s funny how things seem so normal here.

As Usual, Long Time...

Yes, it's been awhile but I just got back from vacation. I may post photos of Benin and Togo later, but no promises.

I want to say that I'm going to start a "series" of blog postings on different subjects here. They'll vary from my feelings about certain things to the differences between Malians and other West Africans to Consumerism, comparatively in Mali/West Africa and America.

That's just a preview.

Things are a little hectic now and will be that way for a couple of weeks. So, these postings will come, but not immediately.

Fashion Show, Douentza, Ansongo and Gao...Yeah, we've been busy here!

Okay, so it’s been forever and a day since I’ve written anything, but I have been active, if not completely busy out of my mind. I had a couple of down days because I’m kind of bored right now. I don’t really have much work to do and I’m just waiting on money for the cow insemination project (shameless plug, really: ) and I was down. Then I took to the road! For about a month it was Festival Central here with festivals in some major towns which brought some great musical acts and artisanal products from all around. It all started in Segou with the Festival sur le Niger which brought Habib Koite and Salif Keita and then continued in Mopti with Amadou and Mariam and then went to Douentza for a cultural festival and even continued all the way to Ansongo for a Songhay festival. The past week I went to my old stomping grounds, Douentza, for the Dogon cultural festival and then continued to Ansongo (though I didn’t make it in time for the festival), which is pretty close to the border of Niger and then back to Gao. The trip was twofold. One, I needed to get away from site and two, I have friends whose site’s I wanted to visit and see them in their elements, living their everyday lives.

So, here’s the recap, in photos, of course:

First of all, there was a fashion show with people from Farafina Tigne. Of course we did it Peace Corps Baba/Farafina Tigne style and went all out! My teammate Beth and I were the two token white people in the procession and we were decked out.

Group shot of many of us.

So, it was kind of like carnival as we promenaded down the streets of Mopti.

PC Baba, of course, wearing bogolan and riding a white stallion? Where he even found the horse is beyond me!

Me and Bozo (That’s his name because that’s his ethnic group, though he is pretty silly!)

Me and Vielle, the single handed best djembe player in all of Mali – that I’ve met anyway.

Then on to Douentza. Douentza’s festival was a cultural festival so not many tourists were there, which was awesome. I haven’t talked about how much I dislike tourists, but I’ll make that an entry soon enough. Anyway, there were Dogons from Bankass, Koro, Bandiagarra, Mopti and Douentza and each town was represented by dancers. Here are some highlights.

Here’s a huge toguna that was constructed especially for the event. A toguna is a meeting place in Dogon culture where only older men are allowed to go. It’s built close to the ground so that a man can’t stand up quickly, if angry, to leave the meeting. It’s also adorned with Malian flags. Verte, Jaune, Rouge, go Mali!

Dogon’s are infamous for wearing this indigo cloth which they themselves dye in Dogon Country. They were all decked out in it, looking fabulous.

Some Dogon men dancing with their swords.

This is the essential “Dogon” wearing costumes for dancing. They are what tourists come to see.

Also, here are some videos of different groups of Dogon's dancing:







After being lied about transport times, I finally made my way to Ansongo (which is like 600 kilometers from Douentza) and I was exhausted. I got on the bus at 3:30 AM only to find the window was broken (remember, it’s the desert-ish area so it’s still chilly at night), plus an old Peulh guy that couldn’t sleep and was screaming so that no one else could either. Thanks to an iPod and a sheet I had the foresight to bring with me, I slept until Gao. I arrived in Gao, waited for 5 hours and then we left for Ansongo. The scenery was pretty, it’s more of the desert there, and I made it in two hours, to see the Ansongo festival finishing up. I was there to visit my friend Joanna and we spent two days seeing the town and I went with her to her baby weighings at the clinic. We also took an afternoon boat ride to these gorgeous rocks that are in the middle of the Niger River.

Here are the rocks at sunset.

We climbed the rocks and I’m standing with the Niger in the background.

Joanna and Dave, Ansongo teammates, with Ansongo town in the background.

So, after two days, I headed back to Gao ville to experience all that is Gao. It’s really pretty there, this kind of sand blown city in the desert. The population isn’t that large, but it’s really spread out. So, I went to visit my togoma, Sarah, and we had a great time. She’s a tourism volunteer so I visited the Gao Tourism Bureau, and of course part took in some tourist activities. I visited the Tomb of the Askias which is the tomb of the famous Askia Mohammed. It was constructed in 1495 and is remudded every two years to preserve it. Inside, there is the body of Askia Mohammed and also other valuables that came from his travels around, like gold originating from Egypt. All of his descendants are buried on the ground of this tomb, which is pretty cool. It’s still used as a mosque everyday for men and on Friday’s for non-menstruating women. I also visited the infamous Dune Rose which is this gorgeous sand dune a couple of kilometers from Gao ville.

The view from Sarah’s roof of the pirogues on the Niger river at sunset.

Sarah and Sara.

Tomb of the Askias.

Me, standing at the Tomb. Okay, so Malians can’t really hold camera’s straight.

Traveling nomad on his trek across the Dune. There is a series that go all the way to Timbuktu. I wonder where he’s going.

Gorgeous black sand on the Dune.

Me at the Dune Rose.

Sarah and Sara and our friend, Chaka.

Milk is so Important

Good Morning from Mali –

How are you all doing? Most of you know I’m not big on the mass emails, except for certain occasions. As you can gather, this is one of those occasions. Things here in Mali have been going really well and I’m doing well. Cold season is unfortunately close to over because I’ve been warm the past two days. This is not a good sign. But, we’ll make it through!

Anyway, I wanted to tell everyone about a project I’m working on. Despite working with PC Baba and Hallmark for the bogolan bag project, my ‘real’ job here is with a dairy co-op. We have a project going right now to do some cow inseminations. Trust me, I never thought the words ‘Sara Rosen’ and ‘cow insemination’ would be in the same sentence either, but they are. I’ve filled out a project proposal we call a Peace Corps Partnership Proposal and what happens is that this project is posted online and then friends, family and interested groups can donate. The good thing about this type of proposal is that the community is required to donate to the project, so it’s not just a hand out. My dairy co-op has donated 25% of the total cost with the hope of the American public funding the other 75%.

This is where you can come in! I would really appreciate if you could give even a little bit. The total that we’re looking for is $5,860, but I don’t expect that to be raised in an instant. I’m willing for it to take some time, but I hope it gets filled before the end of my service here! I would love to see this project through to its end. You can see this information on the website, but here is the summary of the project:

Due to the breed of cows in Mali, their output of milk production is low. With the insemination of these cows with sperm from French or Netherlands cows, and therefore hybrid offspring, milk production will at least double. The increased production will allow greater income generation to befall on Laiterie Suudu Baaba (dairy co-op), but will more importantly ensure the supply of dairy products to the community that demands them. Suudu Baaba has been very forward thinking with its project ideas thus far and knows how to expand their business and satisfy the community. Money for the large scale insemination is the only thing holding them back. The dairy co-op is asking for 76 cows to be inseminated and has the capacity to pay for 20 of those. It asks that you help supply funding for the remaining 56.

With the help of funding from the American public, Suudu Baaba can continue its business and continue to provide dairy products at low prices for all to afford them, not only those financially stable. It is their desire and hope to be a successful co-op in the region and sustain themselves for years to come. Without an increase in raw milk to transform into the products it offers, it will not be able to stay in business to see the next several years.

So, there you have it. Here is the website address that you can visit to donate.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/regioncontrib.cfm?region=africa

If you scroll down to Mali you’ll find my name and the heading Increased Milk Production. If you can give, I’m pretty sure the donations are tax deductible. In addition, please let me know who you are and you’ll definitely be thanked by me and my Malian counterparts.

If you have any other questions regarding the project, I will be more than happy to answer them. Don’t hesitate to ask. Also, if you can forward this on to other people or groups who might be able to help or who might be interested in giving, that would be greatly helpful.

Thanks so much, in advance, and we’ll talk soon!