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.
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