Phase three--SWEAR IN! Swear in is when trainees become official volunteers. Basically it means that you have passed all of the exams on cross-culture, language, safety/security, health, your sector training, ect. First, however, we had one more 10-day stint with our host families. My birthday was the first weekend we were back with our families and, lucky for me, a field trip was planned! We went to the Malian museum of art in Bamako and had a fabulous lunch including a banana split at a local café. I half expected my “mom” to plan a big dinner for my big day, but, alas, yams again. As it turns out Malian’s don’t celebrate birthdays and, in fact, usually only have an idea of how old they are. If you ask different members of the family how old the children are you’re likely get a few different responses. Oh well. It’s not Vare’s mac & cheese, but the yams were predictably delicious. Next on the agenda, a field trip to Sibiri where we visited a women’s association working with Shea (pronounced “shee”, as my 84 year old grandmother found out on the internet. Go Guam!) butter. The women are using sanitary, quality practices to make soap, salve and palm aid. Mali has more Shea trees then any of the surrounding countries, and yet they export the least amount of Shea butter because, typically, they make-- for lack of better words, crappy butter. Another part of the reason that no one wants to buy Mali butter is because in the past Malians have put “things” in the butter to give it more weight. In addition, if the nuts are smoked in the first stage of production they have a terrible smell and taste. This is the traditional way Shea butter has been made in Mali and, although they know that other countries are more successful doing it the proper way of boiling the nuts, they still insist on traditional practices. Their mentality is both endearing and extremely frustrating. They also don’t take precaution to wear clean clothes or wash their hands before making the butter, all things that contribute to the quality of the butter. The women in Sibiri are inspirational and, rightly so, eager to boast about their success. The arduous process of making the butter had a lot of us wondering who invented the archetype? I have posted pictures from the trip, but I’m not sure they convey how labor intensive the process is. I had the opportunity to mix the crushed Shea nuts mixed with water, by hand, and after about 3 minutes my arms were on fire and I was dripping in sweat! My hat goes off to those ladies. Speaking of ladies, being one in Mali is a thankless job. Allow me to digress a bit here…the women here plodder from dusk-till-dawn and get no respect. Something as simple as having to wear skirts all of the time. I have to ride my bike 5K a day to work, and then 5K home, and then 6K or so to my homologue’s to get my dinner and then back…not to mention if I need something from the market it’s back again. This gets old FAST in a skirt. Not only is it difficult, but it’s just plain dangerous. It’s dangerous because for the obvious reason of getting your skirt caught, but it is also dangerous because people here don’t use things like BLINKERS and they just pick a spot on the road that works for them with negligent regard for which side of the road they are supposed to be on. The stop signs are in English, which why I‘m guessing they don‘t adhere to their cautious message, and it’s not uncommon to come around a corner to find a herd of cows in the middle of the road sending you 4 wheeling into the nyegen water and being laughed at by the local children who are calling out “white person”, or “Tubauboo” at the top of their lungs, over and over and over. AND it’s not as though you can just pick up your skirt because heaven forbid your knees should show. Oh well. Anyway, after the field trip to the Shea butter site we hiked up to an amazing waterfall. It has to be at least 75ft tall. It is absolutely beautiful and provided a nice break in the otherwise oppressive heat. Finally, it was time to say goodbye to our home stay families and head back to TSO for our last few days of training before swear in. It was a tear-filled event, but I think that once we were on the bus everyone was excited to be getting close to get to their site’s and finally have a little freedom (or so we thought…). Swear in was a success and the event was held at the American embassy. We spent a little over an hour on “American soil” which was nice because it had grass. Everyone looked fabu in their Malian outfits! We stayed in an air-conditioned hotel room in Bamako, and danced the night away until 3am. Finally, it was time to head to our site…or at least towards it! We stopped on the way in Segou for three days to do some shopping for our sites. Unfortunately I acquired a little over 25 bed bug bites from the hotel that we stayed at. Boo.
Finally, I have arrived. Here’s how my new journey began: I arrived at my house just as evening was approaching, but I still had to get to my site mate’s house to pick up my mosquito net and portable mattress. Just as I was about to leave, a storm suddenly approached. I had two options: sleep on the cement floor with my sleeping bag and hope for the best against the creepy crawlies, mosquitoes, and mice… or, I could run like hell. I knew that I couldn’t wait until after the storm because it would be dark. I decided to chance it. Well, in typical me fashion, I had forgotten that I had only been to my site mate’s house one other time, and that I had no idea what street number he lived on. I knew that he lived by the hospital so I just kept asking “dogotoro so be min?”, or “where’s the hospital”, all the while eating dust that the oncoming storm was string up. Several people gave me directions and one woman even took me a little way yelling “sanji sanji”, or “rain rain.” The trip was, of course, twice as far as I remembered. Finally I arrived, grabbed the mattress and tent, and ran as fast as I could home. The wind was so strong at this point, however, that I could barely walk down the street. The mattress, it seemed, was set on taking flight. I got about two blocks from my site mate’s house when the storm hit. At first I tried to keep going, but the wind was so strong that my arms were on fire from holding the mattress so tightly. To make matters worse, the sand that I was covered in mixed with the rain and my sweat, turned to mud, and then ran into my eyes making it impossible to see. I decided to take refuge behind a broken down tour bus and was soon joined by a Malian boy caught by the storm on his bike. The wind got so strong that he had to help me hold the mattress down. And then we just stood there; we never spoke to each other. We were completely vulnerable to the storm, staring at each other for what amounted to a little over ½ hour. I was afraid something was going to come loose and hit us; a tree, a piece of shrapnel--or that I was going to be hit by the crazy lightning. Literally, just as I was about to bust into tears the rain let up a little. I decided to make a go of it. Of course I had only been to my house once too, so I couldn’t remember what street I lived on and by now it was almost completely dark. I took the wrong road twice and the second time I followed it to the end, my feet sloshing through green neygen water. I thought I could see the swamp that is at the end of my road so I kept going. Luckily it was the same swamp because now it was pitch black. FINALLY, I made it home and my neighbors looked at me like I was a crazy person. I immediately antibacterial soaped up my feet and put on some dry clothes. My first in night in Niono I slept on a soggy mattress covered in a couple of my skirts, under an equally soggy mosquito net, and I slept well.
