la fin

the end~  I can't believe that it is finally time to end this chapter, that of voyaging, trying new activities and new food, intense soul-searching, and of course writing about all of it.  Although I shall continue most or all of those things on my own, this is the end of "findings of a future francophone." To those who have read some or all of the entries, THANK YOU.  I honestly didn't really expect to write this to be read; it was more of a way to guarantee to myself that I would record my personal journey.  But a million MERCIs and I NI CHEs to those of you who decided to come on this journey with me.

Looking back to my first entry, I am intrigued by how fulfilled my goals and expectations for this year abroad are.  I said that I wanted to find continuity and consistency in myself, that I was seeking vocation by throwing myself into a world where all of the variables change to find what is constant within that self.  Little did I realize, even while abroad, how much that would actually happen.  In France, I was so happy all the time that there was only so deep I would let my thoughts go...only so far into the negative recesses of myself I would wander.  In Mali, I was so beaten down by the experience that I couldn't even see how much  of my true self-good and bad- was being exposed.  But after 5 weeks at home, I am beginning to see emerge a balance that has never before existed in my life.  Of course, I will probably spend the rest of my existence passively discovering where all of the pieces of this experience fit, but there are a few things that I have concluded, and it is all I need to know for now:


  I am a girl who knows a lot less than she thought she did about the world before going abroad, but I am going to change that.  This experience already has begun the process.  I also love the French language more deeply than I ever thought possible, and I hope to use my new DALF C1 diploma in work or study later in life.  Running is my addiction and I could never live for an extended period in a place where pollution or cultural stigmas limit me from doing that.  I have been living my Christian faith superficially; I wear a band that says integrity on my wrist for a reason, and I am ready to dig deeper.  Never have I needed to trust in God as much as I needed to in Mali, and never have I had the kind of Christian community I had in France.  Both of those were essential steps in readying me for my next journey, a much deeper and less obvious one.  Sleep, silence, and prayer, ARE important, and I am finally ready to start valuing them truly rather than touting their importance and then being too "busy" for them all the time.  Focus is essential; sometimes you have to say no, and sometimes you have to make a decision rather than making a compromise.  I want to live my life being more environmentally conscious than ever; I never fully understood the negative power of trash until I saw it burning on the side of the street being eating by animals and dug through by women hoping to re-use plastic bottles.  I am quickly turning into a flexible vegetarian.  I understand anew the value of relationships-- especially family ones.  Finally, speaking of vocation, I still believe that medical school is right for me, but maybe just medical school.  There is always the possibility of doing an exchange in France during the second or third year if I do that!  But my first choice, for reasons I don't fully understand is Vanderbilt's medical school and divinity school (an amazing dual degree program).  


I urge you to go on with your own personal travels as I am, finding an environment and your own inner strength to hold onto hope; without it, all is darkness.  After all, "hope is the wedding of two freedoms, human and divine, in the acceptance of a love that is at once a promise and the beginning of fulfillment." ~Thomas Merton.


But that is another journey altogether.  Again, thank you for traveling with me on this one.

FIN

Rennes

(note: I wrote this entry a month and a half ago while actually in France... sorry for the late post)

"Rennes est une ville où il fait bon vivre.  [C'est] aussi une ville qui si nourrit de la diversité de sa région, la Bretagne.  Union de la terre et de la mer, l'Armor, la Bretagne de la mer, étire du Mont-Saint-Michel à Brest et de Brest à Nantes, une côte magnifique aux noms évocateurs...c'est aussi la Bretagne des peintres, là où la lumière est la plus belle...la Bretagne intérieure, l'Argoat, est...plus mistique, où l'on rencontre des forêts de légende...mégalithes, châteaux, manoirs, et villages anciens."

"Rennes is a city where the living is good.  It is also a city that thrives on the diversity of its region, Brittany.  Union of earth and sea, Armor, Brittany of the Sea, reaches from Mont-Saint-Michel to Brest and from Brest to Nantes with a magnificent, evocatively named coast...It is also Brittany of painters, here where the light is the most beautiful... Inland Brittany is... more mystical, where one encounters legendary forests, megaliths, castles, manors, and ancient villages."

best hot chocolate in the world!!!

The explosion of life and love, relationship, joy, well-being, kindness, and comfort that hit me when I reached Rennes after a LONG semester in Mali was enough to keep me gasping for breath and floating on the clouds for my entire two-week stay there.  Whether it be the beautiful welcome and soft pink comforter waiting for me at my church friends' house where I stayed or the smiling woman at the post office who spent ten minutes searching to give me pretty stamps instead of normal ones, I found myself surprised to the point of tears by this kindness that I understand.  It also makes me believe that if I ever encounter a Malian stateside, I will greet him or her for about 15 minutes just so that he or she may experience a sign of kindness recognizable through the lens of Malian culture.  I was content to stare at the pastries, appreciating them for their precious ingredients, their beauty, and the cleanliness of the shelves on which they sat.  My French program directors offered a warm welcome, sympathy, encouragement, and even a good old American hug.  I visited the most beautiful park in the city, appreciating the flowers and the lawns on which people are not allowed to walk.  My little host sisters seemed all grown up when I went back for dinner with the family.  It was Monday night so according to tradition, we had to have galettes!!!  And of course, I spent quality time with the people of my church-- friends my age, the couple that took care of me.  I was able to witness baptisms and meet some of the youth as well as to sing the beautiful French hymns I grew to love last semester- scripture paired with harmony.  

an old friend down the street from the best spot in Paris...wonderful

Two weeks in Rennes and a weekend with a wonderful old friend in Paris later, I was finally ready to go home.  But my time in my favorite town of my favorite region of France left me certain of one thing: in this messy world, there is always a place waiting for you...maybe it is a place you have not yet visited.  Maybe it is a place you have never seen for what it really is to you; maybe it is a place to which you must return.  Aiken, South Carolina, here I come!!!

kan ben/au revoir

goodbye~  
"So the journey is over and I am back again where I started, richer by much experience and poorer by many exploded convictions, many perished certainties.  For convictions and certainties are too often the concomitants of ignorance.  Those who like to feel they are always right and who attach a high importance to their own opinions should stay at home.  When one is traveling, convictions are mislaid as easily as spectacles; but unlike spectacles, they are not as easily replaced."
                                                  ~Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate

      I have never been as ready to leave a place as I am to leave Mali, partially because I have struggled a lot with broken beliefs and constructs of who I am throughout the semester, partially because France is waiting on me, yet goodbyes are always bittersweet.  Last week was time to say goodbye to the kind fruit ladies near the catholic mission, Sunday, to say goodbye to my missionary friends, and a few days ago, I saw the vendor at my favorite mini food boutiki to buy yogurt and the woman who works my favorite internet café for the last time.  When the boutiki owner asked if I will be back, all I could give him was a half-hearted "maybe," but it is highly unlikely, really.  Mali has been one of the important places I have ever visited but not one of the most enjoyable, literally changing my life plans a bit every day, tearing away ignorance and pieces of idealism to the point that I would compare the experience more to a painful waxing than to a relaxing spa treatment (please pardon the ridiculous metaphor).  My time here has been anything but superfluous for personal growth, but the problem is that I in no way am equipped to be important for Mali except for as another mean toubabou who fails at speaking the native language and who does not greet people more often than she does.  The mark I am leaving behind is barely noticeable beyond my research and a few discarded clothes to lighten my luggage.
      However,  it is undoubtedly impossible to be in a place for as long as I have been here and to not find at least a bit of love in the minutiae of the experience.  Today it was time to say goodbye to those who work at the catholic mission, my home for three weeks of the experience and a place where I found shelter from everything that had been difficult or overwhelming for the other three months.  Apparently my ridiculous efforts at writing a research paper in the face of heat and illness inspired Soeur Albertine, the nun who takes care of guests, to begin reading again.  And if it were not for Marie, the kind girl about my age who cleans rooms there and lives with one of the nuns, I would never have experienced the amazing Saturday when we climbed up a seemingly random hill to an abandoned half-built house and overlooked Bamako, eating mangoes and talking about marriage and the future along the way.  I was surprised to find that there are some people who I will miss as much here in Mali as in Rennes, leaving them today to go back to my air-conditioned room in the unbelievably, culture-shockingly upscale hotel down the street where I am staying with the rest of the girls in the program for the last few days.  Yes, I will miss Soeur Albertine and Marie as well as the missionary community, most notably Shari, who literally rekindled the failing Love within me with prayer, brownie baking, and Easter dinner.
     Yet again, Rennes is my next stop, and I cannot believe that three days from now, I will be there, feeling at least momentarily prepared to fill the big place waiting for me, but afraid that I will not quite fit where I did before, given how much I have changed.  After all, if I cannot replace my lost convictions as easily as spectacles, I am at a very raw place right now...but as Rennes is in many ways just as chez moi as Aiken, South Carolina, there could be no better place to go to find my new, and deeper sight instead of merely putting back on my falsely rose-colored glasses...

Kan ben...et au revoir

à la mission

at the mission~ exactly a week ago today, I woke up to my first morning in the Catholic Mission that also serves as a hostel in downtown Bamako.  The day before felt like it hadn't happened-- saying goodbye to the host family for three weeks, packing up almost all of my posessions here, and trekking down the uneven sidewalk...taking a sotrama (for 30 cents instead of a taxi for 4 dollars) downtown, getting hopelessly lost for the next hour, receiving a warm welcome from the nun who most often takes care of guests, buying a yogurt from the Boutiki across the street (soon to become the place where I would always go to break my large bills, as no one ever has change), and going to bed at the ripe hour of 7:30 p.m.
     I knew that I would find it a relief to have some control over daily life, but I had yet to realize how different it feels to be myself again...and how much I would want to hide in the beautifully quiet and tranquil confines of the mission...and of the person I thought myself to be before coming... instead of venturing out into the colorful, dirty, friendly, falling apart, pieced together world of Bamako, followed constantly by cries of "toubabou" and by men wanting to "talk" but really naming all of our future children in their heads and reveling in how I will submit to them once we marry a few months from now (at least that is how I imagine it...surely some of them have less nefarious intentions).  Yes, I have learned how to be much harder on them as well as how to use the carefully honed art of ignoring, after one of them followed me around for two hours and then attempted to teach me names of body parts in Bambara.  Nevertheless, when I do leave the mission, I finally have the opportunity to see what "real" life in Bamako is like, being downtown rather than in the relatively remote neighborhood near the airport where my host family lives.  I begin to feel like I belong as I make friends with the fruit ladies down the street (they always throw in an extra mango or banana, but without my host mom's habitual "Il faut manger"), become a regular at the closest internet café, learn the sotrama lines from here to other neighborhoods, and wave to the server at the restaurant across the street each time I make my way back to the mission, content that he has shown neither an interest in marriage nor teaching me body part names as of yet.
        Research is picking up again as well, with a whopping 20 interviews with women today and tomorrow and a hopeful 9 interviews with midwives all over the city next week (I wonder how far my sotrama knowledge will stretch...).  When I finish transcriptions for the day or momentarily need a break, rest time at the mission is just that--beautiful, glorious rest, whether it be alone time with a book, much-needed sleep, or time in the company of fellow travelers (my first weekend was hugely enriched by the company of Breeta, a German girl my age who just finished working in Togo for 8 months, and of Juan, a 35-year old Spanish guy with a rather pessimistic view on relationships but a traveling heart who loves talking politics and just spent a week pushing a boat to Timbuctou... literally.)  A week of detoxing from salty and oily food with meuslix, fruit, and peanut butter kept on the shelf I have labeled my own in the mission refrigerator, and not only can I breath again spiritually and intellectually but also physically. 
       But yes, seeing the self who I new before coming, I know I will not be able to forget the self that I have seen emerge while being in Mali.  Some things I would have called intolerance before, I now call integrity to one's own principles.  Ideas that I may have called racist before, I now would call intercultural understanding.  And it is important not to forget this other self, because maybe that is even more of who I am than the girl who grew up in a world much more like the catholic mission's sanctuary than the street outside its door.  New seasons indeed.

La Pluie

Rain~ It is nearly impossible to imagine a dry season before experiencing it.  I always knew I loved rain, but I never thought that after three months without it, I would long for it more than I had ever longed for the sun.  This was one of my many fleeting thoughts as we drove back to the village of Sanankoroba for our first week of field research.  There were six of us total, with four girls staying in the "Case d'Amitié"  ("friendship hut") and two who went back to their host family from our village stay a month ago.  Our topics range from domestic violence ot plant knowledge to perceptions of prenancy and the role of the midwife in maternal healthcare (the latter being mine); however, we all went to the same village for the sake of convenience, as every moment of our 5-week research period is invaluable.  Even with our program's established connections, we ran into some major logistical dilemmas bordering on ethical ones, so I hate to imagine what would have happened if we had attempted the unknown.
      However, the week began well for me, with a long afternoon visit to the maternité and a few days of interviews with women that went very smoothly due to my stellar translator.  Wednesday afternon found us sitting with some of her friends waiting for my recorder's batteries to recharge from a car battery kept for that very reason in one of Sanankoroba's "boutikis" (since the power had been out at the Case for the past two days).  I watched the mounting clouds with cautious anticipation.  And then it came, a glorious, two-hour long mango rain (the technical term for such a rain near the end of the dry season)!!!  The Malians all ran for cover, but I joyously took my chair outside and sat in the downpour, letting it wash away dirt, frustration, sweat, and impatience.  "Everyone is looking at you, you know," one of the men in the group said.  But honestly, being a toubabou in Mali, what else is new?  I eventually made my way back to our friendship hut, jumping puddles along the way, and there I found the other three girls dancing and playing hopscotch, sharing in the giddy joy that I had felt, alone, among the Malians with whom I had been during the bulk of the rain.  The icing on the cake was that our electricity was back on.  It didn't even feel like we were in the same country anymore...
      I sat that evening reflecting: this rain welcomed in several new seasons--literally, mango season, practically paradise for the girl who had never had a fresh mango before coming to Mali.  But it also marked the middle of our research time in the village, which had thus far provided more independence than we had had in ages.  There, we made our own dinners with limited salt and oil and no maggi (a disgusting yellow powder used to flavor nearly everything made by our host families).  There, I could go for an hour-long run into the African bush, away from pollution and people, every morning if I wanted to.  There, I could wash dishes to my heart's content, including an entire cabinet of cups and plates covered in...months?...years?...of dust.  We could play with children outside when we were not busy or tired, but if we were, we could go inside and shut the door.  It was possible to be silent or to laugh at our own brand of jokes, to be in company or to be comfortably alone.  Yet again, we could see the stars.  Easter is coming, as are friends' birthdays and our research deadline.  Now I am back in Bamako, holding onto the knowledge and hope of new seasons.  Happy Spring.

les hauteurs

the rock outcropping we climbed...

Heights~ SIT study abroad is nothing if not dynamic in its own way.  One day we are taking exams, the next we are climbing cliffs, and the next we are embarking on a month of research.  Or at least that is how it feels sometimes.  My long absence from this blog and from internet in general is due to our 10 day "grand excursion," a vacation period of sorts during which we traveled to Selengué, Sikasso, and Teryabugu-- not necessarily the most popular tourist destinations in Mali but some of the only ones without travel warnings keeping us away.  It was very strange experiencing a bit of tourist life in this country where we have been doing our best to let ourselves be immersed.  Air conditioned rooms and poolside lounging is practically a culture shock compared to my now habitual nights of drowning in my own sweat and days of which the highlight is my favorite peanut sauce that my host mom makes or a simple interaction with the children who live down the street.  However, it was nice, certainly more relaxing than any other period here has been.  Along with this "height" of relaxation, I certainly found my own personal height of physical fitness during my stay here, running three mornings out of 10 for MORE than half an hour each time. 

     In Sikasso, though, we found our highest of highs; we began by checking out some of the caves at the bottom of a rock outcropping, including one that is considered to be a natural mosque and another that serves as a holy place for animists.  Then, with no warning of what exactly was coming (in normal Malian fashion), our guide told us that it was time to climb up the outcropping.  Steeling myself against my normal fear heights to be expected at the top of a mildly rigorous hike, I followed the rest of the group up the first ladder, only to find another ladder awaiting us and then a 75 degree rock wall that we were expected to climb free hand, followed by a vertical one with a chain hanging from it that was supposed to help us reach the top.  I did not even notice it hitting me, the wave of fear and anxiety that I should have expected but hoped to hold off.  The tears flowed nonetheless, pouring from a place I did not even know existed.  There I stood, at the top of a pile of rocks in Africa sobbing from an uncontrollable and only slightly rational fear.  I did not even notice the sheer drop in front of me, only the sheer climb awaiting behind.  However, Lamine, as always, was right there, assuring me that as my "joking cousin," he would help me climb down, that I was brave (even though I am anything but), and otherwise making me laugh through my helpless tears.
     But we made it back down...and to a few more historical sights that day, a waterfall the next, and finally, the pristine village of Teriyabugu, built by a French ex-priest gone rogue and fostering several environmentally friendly projects.  Thus, I would never refute the fact that my fear of heights is as raging as ever, but only that of literal ones.  Heights of laughter, rest, friendship, fitness, food quality (yes, Teriyabugu had PUMPKIN SOUP), and comfort are periodically important for refereshing the soul, and that is what we found.  Even those tears, in a way, were refreshing.  They probably constituted the first "rain" that rock outcropping had seen in a long time during this dry, dry season.  And finally, I found the time again to read, so I leave you today with a quote from my reading, hoping that in leaving from and coming back to Bamako, France, the U.S., etc., I am beginning to let the wild woman flourish within me:

"Where is [the wild woman] present?  Where can you feel her, where can you find her?  She walks the deserts, woods, oceans, cities, in the bar-rios, and in castles.  She lives among queens, among campesinas, in the boardroom, in the factory, in the prison, in the mountain of solitude.  She lives in the ghetto, at the university, and in the street.  She leaves footprints for us to try for size.  She leaves footprints wherever there is one woman who is fertile soil... She is the maker of cycles.  She is the one we leave home to look for.  She is the one we come home to."  ~Women who Run with the Wolves (Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD)

La Nuit

Night~ The crickets are particularly loud tonight, a peaceful night despite the noise of a passing motorcycle or two and the periodic truck on the main road not too far away.  The stars are bright here in a way they never are in Bamako, blotted out only a bit by the mounting clouds.  We (Hannah/Bintou, my American homestay buddy, and I) may have another small mango rain while sleeping outside, just like last night.  Alternating Malian music and rap songs indicate a party going on in a neighboring quartier, and we sit, journaling, attempting to put on paper the turbulent thoughts and feelings coursing through us after a full day with a village family. 

Before today, we were really only halfway here- eating breakfast and choking down fishy dinners with our host families but spending the days with the other American students- dying fabric, painting with mud, learning a bit more Bambara, discussing research proposals, and (in my case) spending some time at the maternity to see if I could sit in on a birth or two.  But today we were completely and totally here- holding babies, hauling up well water (which is a rather terrifying experience if you are even remotely afraid of heights and/or water), stirring ridiculously large pots of food, washing dishes, going through the motions of pounding millet, and even washing lettuce and frying potatoes for dinner.  All of this happened while we were not being mobbed by children asking us to take their pictures. 

So now we have had a very small taste of "village life" in the rather atypical village of Sanankoroba- atypical because of its proximity to Bamako and because of several prominent NGOs's presence here.  But we were absolutely linguistically challenged enough- trying to use our broken Bambara with families who speak limited broken French.  My most successful moments were those in which I discerned marriage proposals and forcefully said no.  Now more than ever, I believe that in order to truly discover a place and its people, one must speak their language.  A translator is not enough, because there are too many socio-linguistic nuances in even the simplest of exchanges that are lost in translation.  However, I also maintain that some things transcend culture- a smile, a willing spirit, laughter.  And the manner in which praise of their God pervades daily life for my family here and in Bamako is also wordlessly inspiring.  As I look at the stars, I cannot help but remember the man I saw today kneeling on his prayer mat as a cow pooped beside him and chickens ran squawking around them both.  That is love.  But now it is time to put up our mosquito net and sleep under the stars...
Kan Si

Mais je ne suis pas encore médecin!!!

But I am not a doctor yet!~Youchaou Traoré has done it again: he has succeeded in being one of the only Malians I have met to actually follow through on any kind of specific time frame.  He told me he would inquire about an internship, and now I have one (the Malian version of one anyways).  He e-mailed me midweek before we left for our village stay, giving me the phone number of the head doctor at Kaliban Kuro's (a neighborhood relatively close to mine-Kalaban Kura) CSCOM (Community Health Center).  A phonecall later, I had a meetng with that doctor the next day.  While going to the meeting, I encountered all of the normal difficulties of being in Mali (the taxi driver not knowing where the CSCOM was, then finding it, leaving me to realize that there are multiple CSCOMs in Kaliban Kuro, so an intern there drove me to the correct place...about 20 minutes away by car), but once there, the planning process was incredibly simple.  My "internship" basically would consist of me shadowing the weekend doctor whenever I want, and I could begin the next morning. Thus 8 a.m. on Saturday morning found me back at the correct health center.  The taxi driver only got us slightly lost on the way.
    It was a fascinating morning.  I was able to watch several consultations (in which all of the diagnoses were Malaria), a few treatments being administered (for Malaria), and a vaccination campaign in action.  The latter was particularly interesting and the part of the experience most different from anything I have seen in the U.S.  Hordes of children came to the CSCOM at the same time, and the laidback nurses sitting in front of the building would nonchalantly inject any arm that happened to present itself in front of them.  They had me give a few of the injections, and I had to fight every fiber in my body that screamed "YOU ARE NOT TRAINED TO DO THIS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!"  Medical training in Mali, as are most things here, is much more hands-on than theoretical.  No matter how many times I say, "but I am not a doctor yet," the child in front of me was not going to receive this essential vaccine if I did not give it.
     Finally, around noon, I realized it was time to go home, or I would miss lunch with my host family.  The doctor pointed to a hill in the distance.  "You live in Kalaban Kura?" he asked.  "It is just on the other side of that hill.  Go down the road, turn left at the cell phone tower, and climb over the hill.  You will reach your neighborhood if you keep going straight."  An hour later, I had no idea where I was but had had quite an enjoyable little hike.  Giving in and flagging down a taxi, I was happy to find that I had somehow been walking in the right direction.  The ride was 3 U.S. dollars instead of the 4 it had been to go to the CSCOM.  That afternoon, I felt quite accoplished all in all, and I now have hope that at the end of this experience, I may be way closer to knowing something about medicine than at the start, even if je ne suis pas encore médécin.

Somogow

La famille~ Avant de venir au Mali, je n'avais pas vraiment pensé à chercher une église ici; le Mali est un pays Musulman, et je ne savais même pas s'il serait trop difficile d'en trouver une.  Or, étant ici pendant quelques semaines, j'ai découvert ce que cela veut dire d'être isolée.  Après plusieurs petites maladies et un peu de choque culturelle, je ne voulais que me retrouver parmi une communauté chrétienne, chez moi à mon église aux États-Unis ou en France, la dimanche suivante.  Je suis allée, alors, comme toujours, aux directeurs de mon programme pour demander s'il y a une église protestante à Bamako, et comme toujours, ils avaient une réponse.  Mon directeur a un ami qui est pasteur à une église au centre ville, alors j'y suis allée... Toute de suite, je me sentais plus chez moi.
     Les croyants étaient beaucoup plus nombreux que ce que je m'avais attendue; après la culte en bambara, le 200 à la culte en français semblait d'être petit.  Je me sentais toujours seule, une toubabou submergée par cet océan des africains...jusqu'au début des chants.  Quelle beauté!!!  Ravie, j'ai chanté les louanges malgré ma rhume et toutes les pensées négatives que j'avais eu pendant les trois semaines précédentes.  Ensuite, le pasteur a prêché un message par rapport aux soins pour les pauvres, un appel clair à s'en sortir et à mettre les autres devant soi.  Finalement, après la culte, j'ai trouvé deux femmes du Canada et une de Suède.  Les Canadiennes travaillent pour un mission ici, et elles m'ont immédiatement invité à leur étude biblique le jeudi en anglais avec des autres anglophones.  Même si je veux toujours pratiquer mon français, je comprends mieux que jamais ce qu'une amie m'a dit le semestre dernier: parfois, on a besoin d'entendre les paroles de Dieu en la langue de son cœur, ce qui reste presque toujours sa langue maternelle.  Donc je suis aussi allée à l'étude biblique, et enfin je me sentais proche aux autres, pas divisés par les grosses différences culturelles, ni par les différences des croyances.  C'est vrai que la diversité est essentiel pour le monde; j'en suis sûr.  En revanche, Dieu vient de m'enseigner une leçon importante par rapport à son soutien.  Je comprends mieux maintenant le valeur des autres pour me rapeller de ma faiblesse, ma tendance humaine de dépendre trop du monde materiel et aussi ma tendance d'oublier que c'est Lui que m'apporte partout pendant la journée.  J'attend avec impatience et à la fois paix une belle amitié avec ces femmes et la communauté chretienne ici et en plus toutes les choses que j'apprendrai en focalisant sur les gens autour de moi dans la vie quotidienne au lieu de moi-même et mes problèmes minimes.
Amiina

Il faut manger!!!

You have to eat~ I sat, doubled up in laughter in my host family's living room, reading and rereading a simple conversation in Camara Laye's l'Enfant Noir (The Dark Child): 
"'Tu ne manges pas?'  disait alors ma grand-mère.  'Si, si, je mange,' disais-je."
This simple conversation, which consists of a grandmother asking her grandson if he "is not eating," and him assuring her that he is, conveys word-for-word any and all mealtime conversation I have with my host mother.
      For some reason, I thought that by coming to one of the poorest countries in the world, I would not be forced to over-eat every night.  Knowing that I would be under the watchful eye of an American study abroad program, I was certain I would not starve, but I figured that there would be enough food; that is all.  Oh how little I knew about Malian hospitality!
     Feeding time begins about an hour after I come home from school with some papaya and/or sweet cream frozen onto a stick- delicious, I know, and especially lovely if that were half of my dinner instead of just a snack.  If I have been throwing up, suffering from a cold, or experiencing any other type of illness, I will likely be offered both.  Next, around 9:30, I hear my Malian name: "Sira! SIRA!!! SIIIRAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!" It does not matter how loudly I yell "OUIIIII!" Various family members and the maids will continue to shout until I go outside (usually walking by my host dad, sitting at the table inside, waiting to be served and to eat his meal with a fork) and sit dutifilly on my stool.  There, waiting for me (much to my chagrin....I tried constantly for my first two weeks to help cook, but am never allowed -probably because I would actually be a complete clutz working with an open fire and no cutting board) is either a bowl of fried or boiled potatoes, spaghetti, or green beans (swimming in oil and animal fat) and always a large salad (consisting mostly of lettuce, also swimming in oil, vinegar, salt, and periodically...mayonnaise).  The first several nights, I thought that this would be my entire meal, but I know now that I am absolutely expected to eat as much of the communal dish as the rest of the family, if not more.
     As we all dig in (literally), after I have eaten my normal one-third of the salad and one-third of whatever else was made specifically for me, my host mom begins her chorus in my general direction: "Il faut manger, il faut manger, il faut manger."  I find myself being melodramatic- looking at the stars and thinking of how these are the same stars you can see at home, drinking some water and forcing myself to take another bite, washing my hands, thanking my host mom, and fleeing.  If I stick around for a while after dinner, I will find myself eating another papaya or some fried fish eggs (that was only one time) about an hour later.  The same principle applies to breakfast and lunch on the weekends.  After my normal half baguette on Saturday mornings, my host mom always wants me to take another half...or two.
     Apparently, this is my family being hospitable.  They want me to gain weight to show they have taken good care of their guest, especially since their guest is a toubabou (white person).  To augment the situation, I am female, and in traditional Malian culture, size means beauty for females.  In the past, women were fed until they threw up just to assure that they would gain weight.  I honestly think that my host mom would have me eat that much as well if I threw caution to the wind and actually ate as much as she offers.  But the problem is not even that I am overly concered about my weight; there just is not enough room in my stomach for all of this food!
     The other side of the matter, however, is that I am never hungry enough to eat everything but always hungry for other types of food.  Never have I had more cravings for skippy peanut butter, fresh cherries, whole grain bread, and chocolate baked goods...not to mention spinach, broccoli, apples, and good French cheese.  Hannah, a friend from the program in a neighboring host family, has it worse, though: she continuously has dreams about such delicacies as mozarella cheese and brownies, and on a recent trip to an "alimentation" (a small food shop), she practically jumped out of her skin when I pensively said hmm..cookies....looking at a questionable package labeled as such.

Food is an interesting conundrum for us study abroad students, but it is a much larger problem, of course, for the Malians.  Here I am, in a host family with the means to buy whatever they want to eat that is available, and they still eat almost the exact same thing every night, lacking in vegetables with substance, severely lacking in fiber, way overdoing the simple carbs, and salting and oiling what vegetables or meat they do have beyond recognition.  It is certainly interesting to see firsthand some of the simplest causes possible for the massive amount of health problems here.  However, I do agree with my host mom on one thing.  At least they have enough food to eat, excess even, because here I am in a country with a larger starvation rate than any other country I have ever visited, and as human beings, il faut manger.

au marché

at the market~ Nothing-not stories of past travels or all of the documentaries and books in the world- can prepare you to go to the market in Bamako.  People say that it will be a sensory overload, that you should be well-rested before you go, but after the mind-blowing experience of actually being there...several times now...I cannot help but return to one of my favorite travel quotes: 
"the use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality and instead of thinking of how things may be, to see them as they are." ~Samuel Johnson
At the market, you will see a lot of food (I recommend against going to the meat section-lots of live, unhappy chickens and fly-covered chunks of beef), juice and water sold in bags, handmade fabric and jewelry, and many plastic "teapots," which are used for hand washing as well as other kinds of washing (i.e., they help out the left hand with its duties).  However, you will also find MANY signs of "neo-colonialism" and/or globalization: cheap European-looking clothes, flip-flops, sunglasses, sugary sodas, and some Obama posters here and there.  The packaging of many of these products lines the unpaved pathway that serves as such for not only shoppers and vendors but also motorcycles and cars.  If you are in a group of one or more white people, especially white women, you will immediately find yourself surrounded by "helpers" who want to show you around the market and thus earn a sum of the money you pay whatever vendor you eventually choose.  Cries of "toubabou" (white person) come from every direction and every age of person, and don't be surprised when people literally grab your arm and try to pull you in every direction.  I do not normally have too big of a personal space "bubble," but the Malians may finally have found it.
     However, the market it also the center of some people's lives; it is the only source of revenue for a woman who is not well supported by her husband.  She somehow finds a way to feed a family by selling small bags of popcorn or plastic sunglasses to her counterparts or the random westerner who decides to brave the market.  No wonder they are excited to see us-our light skin tone means money, and it is not as if we don't have it.
     After our time at the market, I left with my three white friends and a ridiculous sense of accomplishment in one of the green sotramas (buses-with set lines and stops that everyone apparently just knows without any maps or signs marking stops), new fabric in hand.  It was the International Women's Day-March 8, 2011-print.  I thought that 10 U.S. dollars for 2 meters was a pretty good deal, until I later realized I could have found the same amount at the wholesale store for 2 U.S. dollars.  We definitely have yet to master the art of bargaining...and that of knowing where to go.
     The sotrama filled up to what we would call its capacity of about 15...which  quickly became 30, but we still succesfully made it back to our families, feeling like we had run about 10 miles and wondering how the adventure of dinner would go.  Every day certainly does hold something new and exciting!
 Kan ben

Tooro TE

Pas de problème~Hier, je pensais que je détestais le weekend; je deviendrais folle si je devais passer une heure de plus devant la télé sans personne que parle une langue que j'arrive à comprendre....entre les Maliens, c'est presque toujours le bambara, même s'ils peuvent parler le français.  Je suis là pour apprendre et pour aider les gens, pas pour m'asseoir, seule, pendant toute la journée.  Or, les choses me semblait d'être impossibles à organiser ici.  Je voulais faire un bénévolat à soit une clinique soit une centre de santé communautaire (CSCOM), mais évidemment, ils n'ont pas beaucoup de clients le weekend, le seul temps pendant lequel je pourrais y travailler.  Par contre, je ne comprends pas du tout pourquoi il n'y a pas beaucoup de clients, surtout au CSCOM, le weekend, car la santé de gens en général au Mali n'est certainement pas la meilleure du monde, et ce fait pose beaucoup de problèmes à la vie quotidienne.  C'est une question à traiter- On verra.         
     Avec tout cet énergie nerveux de mes pensées, je ne savais pas quoi faire.  Je ne voulais que courir...faire la cuisine...courir...faire la cuisine, les deux activités que généralement m'aident à réfléchir à mes problèmes.  Mais "faire la cuisine" n'a pas la même signification ici qu'aux Etats-Unis, et je suis nulle.  En plus, ma famille d'accueil ne me donnera jamais des tâches domestiques à faire.  De l'autre côté, les filles/femmes ne font pas souvent "du jogging" au Mali.  Le basket est considéré comme sport féminin, mais comme règle général, ce sont les hommes qui s'entrainent aux sports.  Est-ce que j'étais assez courageuse de casser cette barrière?  Je pensais pas, mais après un dîner au restaurant avec des amies américaines de mon programme, je m'ai décidée-je courirais le lendemain.  Je m'en moquais.
     Alors, ce matin, je me suis levée assez tôt, et habillé en t-shirt et des "culottes" (un short qui couvre les genoux) prêtés de ma sœur d'accueil, j'ai quitté la maison.  Quelle surprise!  Les gens n'ont pas trop crié à moi, sauf l'homme qui dirait parfois, "courage!"  Petit à petit, je me suis détendue, et comme toujours quand on court, j'ai commencé à voir mon quartier d'un point de vue différent.  Voici une école, voilà des petits enfants, des femmes de ménage jetant de l'eau par terre; voici la maison d'une amie, voilà un cyber-café; c'est un vrai monde, pas une idée qui vit à mon imagination, un monde tellement différent que le mien que j'y avais pensé comme à un rêve, même en étant là.  J'y ai réfléchis jusqu'à la fin de la rue...les champs pleins de déchets devant l'aéroport.  Puis, le retour-j'adore toujours le retour, car cela me donne l'occasion de remuer mes pensées de l'aller.  En plus, augmentant la vitesse, c'est l'occasion pour l'on d'utiliser tout l'énergie qui lui reste.  Après m'avoir douchée, j'ai salué ma maman d'accueil.  "I ka kEnE?" (comment va la santé?), elle ma demandé. "Tooro TE," (pas de problème) j'ai répondu avec plus de vérité que jamais.  Hier, rien n'était possible, mais aujourd'hui, tout l'est!!!

Frapper

To hit~ Sardined into our white van with the windows open and the dust blowing in, we were making our way to Koulikoro, a village about 60 km outside of Bamako on the Niger River.  I had carefully placed myself next to Lamine, the amazing "student activities coordinator" who pretty much does anything and everything to help us make the most of our experience.  He also happens to be my "joking cousin," (as he is a blacksmith and I, because I live with the family, Bah, am a cowherder) part of an ethnic group that historically shares a unique bond with my own, allowing us to joke with each other, saying things like "you are my grandson/granddaughter" or "you eat beans."  From him, we learn how to joke, speak, and generally interact in the Malian way.  Therefore, I am ALWAYS asking him questions.  That day, I began with, "is it normal here for older family members to hit younger ones as punishment?" because that in particular had been making me uncomfortable in my host family lately.  Apparently, "beating is part of informal education here," but not to the point that the other person is seriously hurt.  However, if it really bothers me, I may be able to say, "yes, he was wrong to do that, but you should stop hitting him," always agreeing with the older person, and he or she will usually listen. 
     Feeling empowered, I went on to ask an all-the-more nagging question: "what about violence between young children of the same age?"  I had not been able to stop mentally replaying the moment from the day before when my host brother (8 years old) started yelling at all of the girls his age who were painting their nails in my room...and then hitting them.  One of the girls was almost in tears, and another looked at me, laughing, and said "he is going to be just like his father."  My gut reaction was too much, and feeling like I had real power, being 12 years older than everyone else in the room, I fixed him with an angry stare and grabbed his hand...my strength against his...keeping him from moving away from the room or toward the girls.  "Why are you hitting them?!!!" I yelled, in French.  He pointed to a bottle of nail polish that the girl he just was hitting had knocked over on the ground, and I said "no, she knocked that over because you were hitting her, not before." He looked at me in disbelief.  Who was I to stop him?...me, the random white person who cannot even speak his first language and who never keeps the rest of the family from hitting him? But he stopped...and left the room.
     After hearing my story, Lamine looked at me with approval: "you did the right thing; I am proud of you," he said.  Apparently because I am older than my host brother, I as the adult am always supposed to break up fights between him and his friends.  But I was strangely unappeased by this explanation.  It still feels unfair to me that I can stop one person from hitting others but no one from hitting him.  However, Lamine brought me back to Earth...and that particular piece of it called Mali... by asking about what parents usually do to discipline their children in the U.S.  Apparently time-out would be considered abuse here, but beating is not...

le monde est petit

It's a small world~ (this information is slightly old again...I actually wrote it four days ago but couldn't post it until now) Yes, people were right when they said that it would be very different being in Africa, that it would be hard to adjust, that I would get sick.  I am currently finishing up my malaria medications (the doctor found it early enough that I didn't experience anything strongly resembling malaria, but I was a bit sick nonetheless) and feel like I am starting over again, trying not to feel nauseous every time I eat dinner filled with shared saliva, trying not to overreact when I actually want private time, but a few members of my host family run into the room yelling at each other or when they call the maid to turn off the light instead of doing it themselves.  At least, that is how I felt this morning.  But then everything changed... those of you who were keeping up with my blog last semester may remember a certain incident from my stay in France:
   "And [the concert at the sainte chapelle] was all the better not only because of the fantastic student discount but also because I enjoyed it with new friends—a couple from Australia and their cousin, who is French!  The two Australians have been to Mali, and as I am going to study the healthcare system there (among other things) next semester, I was extremely intrigued when they began an in-depth discussion of just that.  Apparently Mr. Awesome Australian man came down with a mild autoimmune (but easily treatable) disease that develops from the flu while he was there, and the doctors were entirely clueless.  When he went to London, the first doctor he saw, along with a colleague, made the correct diagnosis on the first try.  However, Mali apparently offers some of the best treatments for Malaria."
    What I failed to mention in this account was the fact that the Australian couple also had a contact in Mali, the man who helped them get to London when things started to go wrong.  The night of the concert, we exchanged email addresses, and they sent me his contact information within the week.  So today, feeling better and ready again for adventure, I decided to visit this Mr. Youchau Traoré.  An interesting and roundabout taxi ride later during which neither I nor the driver knew the directions to our destination, I arrived at the "ecole youchau traoré."  He welcomed me warmly despite my being 30 minutes late and handed me lunch...complete with a fork and bottled water.  Then, we started talking, and I sat in awe as he discussed his life.  He grew up in a village and eventually moved to the city to study.  He then worked for various international organizations as a translator and language teacher including the Peace Corps and...believe it or not...SIT study abroad (my program).  He then decided that given his success in life, it was time to give back to the community, so he built his school in one of the poorer areas of Bamako, trained his teachers himself, and paid for the majority of his students' tuition for the first several years.  His relationships with westerners continued to multiply, given his continued work as a translator, and with the help of an American student, he set up a sponsorship program between her city in the US and his students, through which people can pay for one year of a child's education at a time.  He also personally financed a Community Healthcare Center in his community, allowing it to be one of the only ones in Mali that is not financially dependent on the government (which would not be good because the government doesn't really allocate funds for healthcare, especially at the community level).  He told me he could sign me up for a one month internship there and that I can use the computer lab at his school whenever I want.  He proceeded to answer all of the hard questions that no one seemed to want to answer before today...like why will my host family never give me less food even though I can never eat all of it?  How do the Sotramas (the "bus" system of sorts) actually work?  And the most pressing question of all: why does it seem that the Malian people never actually answer my questions?  He said that it is language based:  the language of Bambara is very general, so people do not know how to be direct in answering a question.  He said that to receive an answer I should keep asking...and asking... and asking...until the answer becomes something resembling the directness I am looking for.
     Time with Youchau was well spent, and I hope to visit him again soon.  I can't believe that I found a contact so rich in knowledge and a friend so rich in hospitality through a chance encounter in Paris.  Indeed, it's a small world.

le moustiquaire

the mosquito net~ I never thought that the mosquito net would be a source of worry for me here.  And it is only indirectly that it has been, but my strange ocd tendancies are definitely showing their true colors....

The first couple of nights I was here, I knew that I would eventually share a bed, but the sister I usually would sleep with was gone, so it didn't hit me how interesting this experience could be.  I proceeded to throw up profusely the second night of my stay and became totally paranoid that I would get stuck inside the mosquito net when I needed to run to the bathroom...the first internal sign that this might not work.  The first external sign that something wasn't right was a single dress cast off onto my bed.  I thought that was strange but figured that someone accidently left it there while changing, since the communal chest of drawers is in my room.  But then my sister came back, and I realized that it is common practice in my family to throw dirty clothes...undergarments included... onto this bed, to lay on it during the day (sweating a lot in the process), and even to eat on it sometimes.  I told myself that it would be o.k...I have american ideas about cleanliness, etc., but then, I slept with my sister who moves around a lot in her sleep, often closer to me rather than farther away, which is not good, especially when I am already pouring sweat because of being inside the mosquito net.  Two almost sleepless nights later, I decided to ask my family to let me put up the mosquito net tent that I brought from the US outside the house because it would be cooler.  They proceeded to start taking the dirty mattress off the bed to put it outside...for me to sleep on it with my sister.  I quickly assured them that I did not mean to make my sister sleep outside as well...so they proceeded to take the mattress off of another sister's bed and put it outside for me with her mosquito net.  She then slept in the dirty bed with my other sister.  The next day, I finally convinced them to let me put up my tent, so now i am much cooler at night and not stealing anyone's bed...but that was definitely a cultural experience...  Somehow being low maintenance in American culture becomes high maintenance here in no time.  It is all very interesting... Hopefully I will write soon with something a bit more profound, but I find that especially at the start of one's stay here, the practical parts of life feel so immediate and important that there is not much time for anything else!

So/I ka so

chez moi/ à ma maison~ Tout d'abord, à mes amis francophones, excusez-moi pour mes fautes!...              Je ne me suis jamais sentie tellement bienvenue et quand même tellement seule chez des étrangers que je me sens chez ma famille d'accueil.  Ils parlent parfaitement le français, mais comme ce n'est pas leur langue maternelle, le "lingua franca" appelé "frambara" (français + bambara) constitue la plupart de la conversation, et je trouve que c'est une réussite si je comprends même un mot ou deux.  Pourtant, ils décident souvent de me dire des petites choses en français comme, "le petit garçon qui habite à côté a dit que tu es gentille-car tu l'as salué.  Une des anciennes étudiantes n'aurait jamais salué les gens, et quand les enfants l'ont touché, elle regarderait ses mains pour voir s'il y avait quelque chose de dégoutant là."  Au moins je peux mieux réagir qu'elle!  Les enfants sont super mignons et même plus accueillants que leurs parents (de qui le chaleur est plus fort même que le temps ici!)  Je les adore.

     Par ailleurs, chez ma famille d'accueil, on mange avec les mains (une pratique auquel j'avais une réaction beaucoup plus négative que je m'avais attendu...  je suis toujours en train de m'y habitué).  On mange le dîner dehors sur le sol...les femmes, au moins.  En plus, la télé est toujours allumée, et mon papa d'accueil a mis sur le mur des photos de son voyage à la Mec qui ont l'air touristique.  C'est vraiment un monde différent que celui de le semestre dernier.  D'ailleurs, si on tombe malade, les gens essaient de l'aider d'abord avec de la nourriture, une très mauvaise idée pour moi, qui déteste manger pendant toute la journée après avoir vomi.  En somme, j'adore déjà ce pays, mais je vois partout les signes de la pauvreté.  En bambara, "ma maison" est "n ka so," mais "chez moi" est "so."  C'est de n ka so que je vous écrit en ce moment, mais j'espère que je serai à so avant la fin du semestre... Parlant de chez moi, tout le monde en France, vous me manquez tellement que je ne peux pas attendre à vous revoir!

Le Temps

Time~  It is unbelievably true that time is different here.  I almost decided not to publish my last blog entry because I felt the information was too old, and then I realised that I had written it YESTERDAY (i.e., the day before I wrote this post on paper...not actually yesterday now), not 3 days, a week, or even 2 weeks ago like it felt.  So here I am, in the village of Siby for two nights, stuttering Bambara (even though in this particular village, the people speak malinké, which is closely enough related that we should be able to understand each other...theoretically) and staying in a hotel made of huts right next to a women's cooperative that produces shea butter.  The women there are some of the strongest I have ever met.  The labor is VERY manual. They spend hours on each step- picking the shea nuts, sorting out the ones that are good from those that are underdeveloped or rotten, pounding them into paste; and then (here is where we began observing) adding water and beating the resulting liquid until the shea oil comes out.  We tried to help with this step, but seven american girls couldn't close to keep up with the two women working today.  They finish by boiling the oil, sifting out any impurities, and then packaging it as pure shea butter or nicely perfumed soap, shampoo, etc.  "La Maison de Karité" is their name- definitely a worthwhile stop if you will be in Siby anytime soon.

     Another Bambara lesson (more greetings and introductions) later, we ventured into the actual village to meet some sample "host families."  What an insane experience- to know an ensemble of about 20 words of a language being spoken all around you in a world so very different from your own.  Our method of communication became a mixture of French (with the woman who served as our guide) and handshakes/high fives/hugs with the many...many...children.  Will we ever feel like part of this world?  The language will make a difference, of course, but I wonder, how many barriers will continue to separate us from th villagers no matter what?  What can one really research/study/understand in 3 months?  How do the women who we "helped" make shea butter face one of their major roles in society-to be mothers-with the knowledge that they very well may die during childbirth, leaving their friends, their work, their other children, with one less "empowered" woman among them?  One of the answers is humour, which pervades much of the conversation here.  Another, it seems, is a certain strength that runs much deeper than that put into practice beating shea oil out of paste.  After all, the men here respond to the question: "I ka kEnE?" (How is your health?) with "nba" (my mother), while women respond, "nse" (my strength).  My teacher explained that the woman is the most important part of Malian society-the backbone, if you will.  But who are we, the white women with hair like straw?  We are "tubabu," the whites, a word originally from Arabic for doctor/first responder.  Maybe, then, I will eventually feel like part of this world, not as one of its women but instead as a much truer Tubabu among them than I am right now.

Je suis là!

I am here! (note..I wrote this my first day here; some information is old...e.g., lost luggage)~  I was going to begin this with a quote from an anthropologist who worked in Africa in the 60s.  But her book is in a backback somewhere between Chicago, Paris, and Bamako...and the adventure begins!  Thanks to the sage advice of my African friends, I had more than one outfit, my water purification kit, and other such essentials in a carry-on, but it will be interesting to see how long it takes my bag to come.  Maybe this will give me the chance to see that one can survive-quite comfortably-with less material support than one may think.  Anyways, I am in Bamako with 6 other American girls who are beyond interesting and purposeful in their lives in a way that many people our age are not.  Then there is Modibo, our program director, and his several assistants.  Their combined friendliness is overwhelming as is that of the Malian people in general. 
     So what have we done so far?  Day one was a whirlwind of our first bambara lesson (greetings), a short tour of our school and the neighborhood around it, one of the best lunches I have ever had (made at the school by our cook) and the "drop-off," an activity designed to immerse us immediately in the logistics of life here.  A conversatin with a phone company, two marriage proposals (plus a "call me when you NEED me") and the purchase of a beautiful straw hat later, I emerged overwhelmed from the "grand marchée" with my partner, Erin, ready to take a taxi back to our hotel.  We fumbled out the correct amount of CFA (west african francs) and went inside.
     So I am in Bamako and cannot believe it...still.  Bamako, the capital city that is neither as visible from an airplane nor as tall as any other capital I have ever seen.  Women pick through pieces of trash for items to wash and use later while men take other trash out of the city in donkey-drawn carts to dump in the fields by the airport.  I hate and love being American here.  I hate being served, asked to sit while others stand, given more food than I can eat when there are literally starving children down the street.  But I love the fact that children want to touch me, be held by me, and take pictures together...as well as the Obama fabric that many people wear as dresses and pant suits.  Once we make it out of the hotel and into the world, we shall see.

la famille en France

family in France~ I was strangely anxious about my family's arrival in France-- I couldn't imagine speaking as much English as I would need to in my French language sanctuary.  What blasphemy was this?  But of course, with one of his more famous quotes, Emerson says it all:
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we would find it not."

tching!

     It's true that much of my blogging this semester has been an almost ridiculous love fest for a place and its beauty.  But my love for France, my taste for adventure, my ability to find beauty around me, comes from within, not from all the croissants and conjugations in the world.  And the source of this travel lust in my sister and me from the moments we were born: my parents.  If nothing else, I owed it to them to share the large part of me that belongs to France.  Thus yes, I felt a bit like I was abusing my beloved country by being "just another tourist," but in the end, my hope is that I wasn't really that at all.  I was instead a girl in love having a very, very long first "meet the family" dinner.

my parents on the beach in Nice

    It is always good to see the one you love through the eyes of another.  My family didn't particularly love the pervasive smoking, the dog poop all over the streets, the limited availability of water at restaurants, the late dinners, or the frequent closings seeing as how we were there during one of France's beloved vacations.  However, they remained open minded and prepared to appreciate more than to criticize.  The merging of my two worlds was therefore not something to be afraid of but instead something to cherish.
     After much talk about reverse culture shock and the difficulties of returning home, I wanted nothing more than to pack up and go directly to Mali at the end of my program in France.  But thanks to my family, I can now speak relatively fluent English again and am ready for a month in the U.S.A. before my next adventure.  Ultimately a brief break should be helpful, as I will need more preparation than a few immunizations before a semester in Mali.  That means that we all will have a pause in our francophone findings for a bit, but it is definitely to be continued soon...

K'an bEn