A New Bubble

For this post I’ve provided a few observations regarding the similarities and differences between the “Elon Bubble” and my new “Malian Bubble.” If you haven’t been to Elon you probably won’t understand some of this.

Both bubbles have populations hovering around 5000; if you included all of Elon you would roughly have the size of the town where I live. Both have similar population dispersions, with lots of people present in certain areas at specific times of day.

To get around my site you travel mostly on small dirt paths amongst buildings made of bricks (mud bricks). There are the also the main transportation arteries, roughly the width of a road but are in actuality creek beds that flash flood in heavy storms (really cool to see).

The oaks of Elon have become giant palm trees. Equally picturesque, these trees dot the skyline of my site. There are no cushmans to vigorously clean at night, however there are giant fires of trash that ultimately serve the same purpose. While Elon spends great amounts of time on their pristine lawns, Malians sweep their dirt concessions at least three times a day and make it look exceptionally clean (not joking, you can make a dirt floor look really nice).

Greeting here is much different from Elon. Instead of staring at the sidewalk or your cell phone or straight ahead in the most unnatural way possible, you must greet everyone here. I literally have to make an effort to greet every person I see, every place I go; sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s exhausting. But if I don’t greet everybody I hear about it from everyone else for the next 24 hours. Add to this the fact that Malian greetings are much longer and intricate than Elon nods (“Hi, good morning, did you have peace last night? And your family? And your friends? Peace, Peace, Peace, are you good, what is new, may you have peace, May god give us a good day, you eat cats, peace be”).

I’m a minority here, so frankly that’s different from Elon. And instead of living by the popular bar (1/2), I am by the popular mosque (1/2). It should be noted that the Christian church of course fills the roll of Lighthouse; though it offers some great weekly specials (equal-ish social status, monogamy, the divine right to consume beer) it only seems to occasionally draw a marginal crowd at best.

Instead of BMWs there are NGO Toyata Land Cruisers that pass on the way to Mopti. Former family sedans become mopeds, motorcycles, bicycles, and the occasional horse drawn cart that offer a taste of the local people (Bamanan, Bobo, Peuhl).

My roommate (concessionamate) is Banta, an older woman who is hilarious, awesome, and slightly crazy. The other day she came out and slapped a chicken to the beat I was butchering on my guitar (chickens make a very amusing noise when you hold them upside down and slap them). We jammed for a few minutes, then killed and ate her instrument.
In general music here is always played too loud to a point that you can’t actually make out many of the words (similar to Jiggaman).

There is peanut sauce, but no Dan Thai; To, but no Harden; The market butcher on Saturdays, but no roast beef from Acorn. All of these similarities and differences have been amusing and I’m sure there are many I’m forgetting to list. If you are in the former bubble, have a beer for me; I don’t frequent the church.

More specific stories to come soon-ish.

I Speak Small Small

Hello Friends, I apologize for the long delay in updates to the blog, emails, and other forms of communicative media. Summer Camp (training) ended, and having passed all of my exams I am now living and beginning to work at my site (the closest PCV is 25k away, not too bad). My site is just east of the city of San (look it up on the map); given Peace Corps Security rules I can’t post the name of my town on my blog as of now, but if you shoot me an email or ask my parents you can find out where exactly I live. In a few weeks I’ll include some better, humorous posts about how life is going. However, this is serving just as a brief update now to the Peace Corps adventure.

I more or less spend every day hanging out with my Malian friends, drinking tea and working on my language. A few times a week I work at my local health center where I’m running a malnutrition/baby weighing program, as well as help with the vaccination days and anything else they need. I’ve managed to establish a pretty good daily routine (I have an amazing running route), and while there have been the typical ups and downs per usual for the Peace Corps, everything is going really well and it’s been an amazing experience so far.

Life is much better as an actual PCV than as a trainee. More fun, more freedom, more experiences, etc… I have some very amazing stories lined up that I will begin posting soon, along with lots of pictures. I haven’t had my computer at site with me for these past few weeks, and when I’m in San with the other PCVs of my area we prefer to frequent the bar over the internet café. But the stories are there, and more are coming. You can also shoot me an email to my Gmail account if you care for a less politically correct assessment of my surroundings. So yeah, it looks like mid to late October the blog should be back in full swing and the funny stories will return. Cheers.