'There's No Place Like Home' or 'Change is Good'

It has been so long since I offered an update on things here in Bamako.  Honestly, the time seems to have flown and crept by at the same time!  It is hard to believe that I am 4 ½ months through a 10 month grant!  A lot has happened since I last posted, and I feel as though I find myself now in a period of change.  I hope this post will give a bit of an overall update on the months that have passed since I last blogged. 

Happy New Year from Siby! Love, Ryan, Sonja, Gaelle, Bodil,
Zak, Alys, and George

Many changes have taken place since Decemeber… first and foremost: I have a new home!  As some of you know, after a long and arduous search, I found a lovely little apartment right at the end of 2010.  I have been waiting to write a blog post about the apartment hunt until I had a positive outcome, and now I do!!  The road was long—I saw places that were missing toilets, that involved entrances of rickety stairs leading to the street, that were furnished with plastic chairs and tables yet twice my budget!  Despite precise descriptions of preferred locations and neighborhoods, I saw places in probably a 20 mile radius.  I made a list of agents I used during my search and came up with no less than nine numbers saved in my phone.  And those are just the guys I called!  But after many disappointments (and photos to prove it), I found set of brand new buildings with 16 plausible apartments to choose from. 

A view of the salon in my new home!

My favorite and most receptive agent, Keita, found the place with the help of a friend, and it responded to all my criteria- 1-2 bedrooms, living room, bathroom, kitchen (i.e. a room with a  sink), and it even had extras- a patio, potentially a balcony, and a spacious kitchen (with a satisfactory sink).  I grew excited and realized that the most difficult part of the decision might just be choosing which unit I preferred!  I returned a day later with Bodil for a second opinion, and chose one of the corner apartments with spacious rooms.  The next day I discovered that the price I had been quoted did not match the current asking price.  Following a brief meeting with the building owner, the price had almost doubled overnight!  I was outraged and convinced that he had taken one look at me and decided I could pay more than the 60,000/month (About $130) he was asking.  I decided that the apartment wasn’t even totally finished, this guy must be a jerk, and I would look elsewhere—on principle.  But, after another fruitless week, some seriously whiney frustrated phone calls to my agent, two more visits to the same apartment building with different agents, and a nice conversation with the wife of a fellow Fulbrighter, I decided to take the place.

At my housewarming party with my Malian parents
and sister Bibi

The apartment I had originally “picked” had by this time been reserved by a French man, so I ‘settled’ for my second choice… though in retrospect, I feel I really got the better deal.  I now have a delightful little place with a terrace and balcony, cheery yellow walls, and a slowly developing interior ‘design’ scheme.  After installing most of the furniture, getting cushions made for my couch, and having curtains hung on my doors and windows, I eagerly invited friends and family to show the place off.  The housewarming party was a big hit, and I packed more people on the terrace than a firemarshal would have liked.  Even my Malian parents made an appearance at the soirée!!  Mali has always felt enough like home to me.  I am comfortable here, though sometimes it is a shock to remember that I actually live here- it’s not just that I’m on vacation or visiting friends.  This apartment has helped me remember that over and over again- as I wait for internet installation, or curtain hangers, or look for refrigerators, or try to furnish a seldom used second bedroom (hint hint—I love guests!!)- I really am “home.”

The change in location has been a big one for me, even though I didn’t move too far from my old stomping grounds.  Along with the change in scenery, I have felt like January into February have been major times of change for me in Mali.  The end of the string of holidays has meant I have not been quite as constantly social with other ex-pat friends, and the reality of life is sinking in even more acutely.  Things are “back to normal,” if you will, though for me, trying to describe a “normal” day is difficult.

I think this new year is going to bring with it plenty of new experiences, and I am trying to open myself to all of these- positive and negative.  I have already been getting out of Bamako a bit by ringing in 2011with friends on a mountain in Siby, going to a world class music festival in Segou, and spending more and more time in Banankoro.  I am looking forward to a potential trip to Burkina Faso, some trips around Mali, and maybe a vacation trip or visit from loved ones in the coming months.

Observing at a prenatal care day in Banankoro with
Salif (a community health worker), Doumbia- the head nurse,
and Bintou, a nurse's aide 

One of the biggest recent changes involves my work.  I have spent the last four+ months meeting with my advisor, working on creating a study protocol in English and in French, meeting with different experts in the fields of public health and development, and inquisitively observing in Banankoro once a week or so.  Though this is not particularly taxing (trust me… I have fallen quickly and easily into a routine that would shock most of you.  I am pretty good at doing nothing most of the time…. ), I have not been satisfied with the way my scholarly efforts here have unfolded.  I have done some goal adjustment and tried to remind myself that we constantly have to redefine our objectives, especially when it comes to field studies.  I have also tried to convince myself that I am learning every day whether it happens formally or not, and maybe learning how to pay my electric bill in Africa is an important part of this stage in my life… but I can’t convince myself that the Fulbright committee would see it that way.  To put it simply, I have been a combination of lazy and frustrated about the fact that I am not doing what I came here to do!  And in fact, as I wait and the time drags on, I have come to doubt the very goals that I arrived with so enthusiastically several months ago.

However, some of these things are beginning to change.  Frustrations about not being able to conduct interviews turned last week to frustration with the sheer volume of interviews I tried to conduct in one day!  I have finally turned a corner by really starting my project!  In the past 2 months since the new year, I have been doing more of the waiting game, but this time with some permission to start preliminary interviews.  I found a fabulous research assistant, thanks to the suggestion of a fellow Fulbrighter and friend.  Binta is a young wife and mother trained in Socy/Anth who has more experience conducting field studies and interviews than I do!  She has worked on anti-excision campaigns, and other projects evaluating women’s group projects and health initiatives in Mali!  Last week, we traveled together to Banankoro first for introductions and later to begin work!        

The stage on the river at the music festival in Segou

So to date, I have conducted 6 interviews in 2 days!  Given the way my research crept along the first time I was here in 2009, I was pretty psyched about getting 5 interviews on day one!  I think that there will only be more discussions to come, and already my appetite is whetted by some of the first responses I got from women who have participated in the prenatal education program and are expecting or celebrating the births of children.  A goal for today is revising questionnaires to include even juicier questions about pregnancy and preparation for child birth here in Mali.  These changes certainly will be good ones!

Bumper cars on Valentine's Day

Honestly, many lovely moments have passed since I last wrote an update in December.  I have enjoyed many memorable and delicious meals with friends, heard beautiful music along the riverside in Segou, enjoyed the moonlight on a clear night in Bamako, reveled in a view of the city from the university perched on top of a hill near my house, sweated and smiled in an African dance class, been the first to hold two new babies that I helped deliver, gone on my first Valentine’s Day date, and enjoyed the atmosphere from the balcony of my new home with a book and a beer.  Despite the difficulty that I am having making a big change and getting back into the swing of doing work, I am reminded that all of these lovely moments have come about through moments of change: celebrating the arrival or departure of a friend, taking a trip and changing the scenery, joining a new class and trying a new activity, deepening a relationship- small or large, they all mark moments of transition.

Proudly holding a healthy baby boy that I helped deliver!

To get even more introspective, I could share with you that I am also sensing and anticipating the change that is taking place more generally in my life during these months that I spend in Mali.  I am beginning to ask myself (for better or for worse… ) what comes next.  When I start to really completely freak myself out by wondering where I’ll be in a year or even in 6 months, I try my best to remind myself (and often to convince myself)… Change is good!  My dear friend, Bodil, left Mali at the first of February to return to her home and teaching commitments in Europe.  We spent a lot of time the day of her departure discussing the changes she was going to have to make in her lifestyle in order to return to a routine back at home.  At that moment, it took a little convincing, but we decided that many of the changes would be good ones- regular hot showers, the availability of sushi, the ease of doing things like grocery shopping, the proximity to family, etc.  When I dropped Bodil off at the airport, I gave her a card that said on the front, “There’s no place like home.”  (Yes, I still love the Wizard of Oz… ).  I think that Bodil (and maybe even me at this point) has found a second home here in Mali.  No matter what changes she makes in her location, Mali will always be with her because she is home when she is here.  Maybe just changing the way we think about home is important and really ties these two thoughts together for me.   

I really began to feel the winds of change the night that Bodil left, and I think her departure really impressed upon me the fact that change is good.  And even if not, it’s not irreversible… she’ll  be back in June!  J   


*To see more recent photos, visit https://picasaweb.google.com/alysmmoore

An Introspective Moment

So, I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from the blogging world as a lot has been going on in Bamako.  So much, in fact, that I want to devote entire blog posts to some of the specific events that have taken place in the past month.  I hope to write a post chronicling my long, frustrating, and finally rewarding journey to find an apartment, one about my impressions of the police here in Mali (there was a week earlier this month during which I had three run ins with the police…), and another about some of the varied and neat things my friends are doing with their time in Bamako (because they’re all doing pretty cool stuff!!).  Doubtless, the entries about apartment searching and police encounters will be laced with descriptions of the frustration I have experienced and the ridiculousness of some of the protocol here in Mali.  But tonight all of that seems somewhat insignificant given some of the events of the past week. 

I spent my evening thinking about life and death issues… things that go way beyond being stood up for appointments or led on and let down by the internet company (some of the things that have really gotten me down in the past week or so).  My dinner plans tonight were cancelled because my good friend, Bodil, found out that the seven year old son of her best Malian friend, Koti, had died earlier that day.  Bodil has been coming to Mali for several years to do research and has spent almost 2 years (in bits and pieces) living in San, a village north and east of Bamako studying Bogolon mud cloth production.  Koti is a Bogolon artist and the two became good friends in a place where it is often hard to for white women to break into female circles because of language barriers and cultural differences (I often find I relate more to men here because they are more generally the independent, freer thinking sex in Mali).  Koti has been in Bamako for the past six months trying to make money because things in San’s Bogolon world are a bit tight.  So, not unusually, her son has been living with an aunt back in San while his mother is gone for a while. 

Tomorrow, the two friends will get on an early morning bus and make the long journey to San.  But tonight thoughts weren’t on that trip, but rather the gravity of the situation and the greater issues it represents in a country like Mali.  It is never easy when a child dies.  But here, it is not the rare occurrence that it is in Europe or the states.  Here, three hundred children die every day- half of them never reach their first birthday and the rest don’t make it to age five.  Koti’s son made it past both of these milestones, but he died after an apparently sudden illness.  (7 of 10 children who die do so at home without having the opportunity to get care at a health facility) The details of his sickness and death are unclear at this time, but it appears that he became ill suddenly and his health deteriorated so quickly that his mother did not even receive a phone call about his sickness until it was too late.  I imagine that, like many children here, the boy was probably sick for some time with a “standard” respiratory infection, and some other infection took advantage of his suppressed immune system. 

Bodil and I spent several hours discussing the injustice that occurs when a child dies.  She described to me how she initially found the young child a bit bothersome and annoying as small children often are, but that in recent visits she realized he was really growing into a beautiful, kind boy.  We shed tears together as we discussed the multitude of reasons that children here have such a hard road to hoe.  In a sad coincidence, a good mutual friend had also lost a young Malian friend earlier in the week, also in San.  She wrote a moving account on her blog that I think will express some of the thoughts and emotions that I can't here.  I found myself remembering a specific passage in her book, “Dancing Skeletons,” in which anthropologist Katherine Dettwyler reflects on death in Mali.  She spends several pages recounting interviews in which women describe to her their childbearing histories- number of pregnancies, miscarriages, births, and often subsequent deaths.  Her research assistant explains that, “death is a fact of life here in Mali…. Every person has experienced the death of numerous relatives, friends, and neighbors… No on escapes.  You never really get used to it, exactly, but you come to accept it, and even expect it.  A woman expects that some of her children will die.  Why should he be any differend than her grandmother, her mother, her aunts, her sisters, her friends?  You can’t let the death of a child destroy your life.  You have to laugh.  Otherwise you’d have to cry” (Dettwyler 157).

Though I have been told that crying is not appropriate in cases of death here, women do cry.  Dettwyler describes women crying over lost children after twenty or thirty years.  Bodil returned from San reporting that she and her friend Koti had spent a great deal of time crying and grieving together.  I know that just reading these passages out loud to Bodil and talking with her the night she found out about Koti’s son were enough to make me come unhinged.  

I have become interested in the phenomenon of childbirth in great part because it is a universal phenomenon that is approached in a multitude of ways throughout the world.  Similarly, the interpretation of death shares similarities and exhibits differences throughout different cultures.  But I feel comfortable enough making the following generalization based on recent experiences and observations- in almost all cultures and in most situations, birth brings feelings of excitement, happiness, and wonder at a new life entering the world, while universally, death entails at least some sliver of sadness and sobering finality.  Even when Christians rejoice that a soul goes to heaven or Buddhists prepare for reincarnation, I believe that there is a sense of loss involved when a death occurs.

I find myself with little resolution to this post, just as my conversations with friends and reflection time left me with little sense of an “answer.”  Why is it this way?  Why do children here have to fight such a hard battle?  It’s not that there is no answer, it’s just that it is a long, hard, complicated one.  I think all that I can do is use this experience as renewed energy for growth.  It is unfortunate that it takes something so serious to remind me how lucky I am here and in general and how much I have to be positive about.  Maybe that will be this little guy’s legacy… he can remind us to be thankful and positive day in and day out, and to look forward to a day when childhood death is not something to be ‘expected.’ 

*Note- I started writing this post on Jan. 26^th, and finished it today- Feb. 17^th