the life cycle of a past francophone

I pulled out my box of stationary for the first time in a while today and was thrilled to find many pieces of my past: letters from old friends,
postcards from museums I visited long ago,
and eclectic cards and letter paper gifted to me throughout childhood and college.

I also found a note that I wrote to a good friend at the end of my Mali adventure.  I never gave it to him, as it ended up returned to my home instead of delivered to him. I am so glad now, because it gave me the opportunity to glimpse concretely the perspective I've gained since then.

This is what it said:

"Je m'excuse, mais je vais écrire le reste de cette lettre en anglais pour éviter les malentendus..
(I'm sorry, but I'm going to write the rest of this letter in English to avoid misunderstandings...)

So much has happened that I do not even know where to begin.  I have been thinking a lot lately about the way you looked at me last summer and said, "I wonder how this experience will change you." At the moment, I am not sure what the answer is to that, but what I am certain of is HOW MUCH it has changed me.  First of all, I have realized that I am not at all equipped to spend my life in Africa.  Spiritually and physically, I feel like I am coming out battered after a period of struggle with doubt, exposure to parts of my heart that I never knew were so ugly, and lots of physical illness.  The missionary community continuously kept my head above water, but otherwise, I felt like I was drowning- in dirt, an unfamiliar language, the violent temper of my host dad, the seeming hopelessness of the poverty here, my own powerlessness, and the need for solitude.  I leave in one week and have never been so ready to leave a place.  The experience has been one of the most important of my life, but that's just it.. it HAS BEEN.  I am living in the past tense right now.. and the future.  I hope I will get to see you soon, so we can catch up.  But then again, you're the one globe trotting now, aren't you?  Keep in touch!
Sincerely,
Shannon Adele Looney"

How things have changed since then!  For one, Mali has become a nation of blatant unrest, subject to a coup, displacement of people in the North, and questions of who ought to be in charge.  Before I went there, I read on wikipedia that it was one of the most stable democracies in Africa.
How ironic.
But my heart still hurts for the people who I had trouble loving while I was there.  Hearing news reports from Bamako, I think of little Mina, my first friend, and her brothers.  I think of the nuns at the Catholic mission, my host family, and even the many men who asked me to marry them.
I can't help but wonder if they're ok.
I wonder how a country that hosts the fairly liberal Muslims I met can also be the home of people who would like to impose strict Sharia law on Timbuktu.
I cringe when people here use phrases like "only in Timbuktu," because it reminds me of that beautiful city I never visited.  It reminds me that that city is less beautiful now than in was and that the bleak situation I witnessed in Mali as a whole is now even worse.

Life has also shown me its own sense of irony since then.  I have learned firsthand the cycle I'm living by seeing myself grow back into the confidence of a new graduate as soon as I started medical school.  This was the confidence that I had felt strongly my freshman year at USC.  However, by the time I left Mali, it was gone.  I thought that I would forever stay grounded in intense humility, but I am now able to see that humble confidence defines me with much more integrity than humility stemming from a lack thereof.  I was a waif, a shadow of myself when I returned.  I was a tangled web of emotions from which I couldn't escape.  So last year, I started from scratch and built myself again on the foundation of mindfulness, compassion, and a certain realism that I had never known before.  What surprises me now is how much the result of this careful construction resembles the person I used to be.  I am now my freshman self with essential but not necessarily copious new perspective.

So here's to healthy cycles, to healing for the suffering, to memories, and to using hindsight to shape the future while living in the present.
No matter how scary change may be, it is probably not going to hurt or help you as much as you think.  Not that I don't believe radical change is possible.  Certain things, like becoming a healthier person or committing your life to a person you love with every fiber of your being, become the backdrop for life's cycles.  But as we learned in medical school, some plasticity in personality is a good thing.  And plasticity means not only the ability to change but also the resilience to bounce back.
I could not be happier to exist than I am today.  I feel the warmth of home, family, and relationships.  I go to school and learn how to care for my patients.  I run and bake, smile and debate, philosophize and grow.  This is how life should be, and I will look to this glorious existence next time my life cycles into struggle and hardship.

All of this from one short note to a friend.  Life is, indeed, a beautiful thing.  We are all perennial plants, and if you are in your winter, I hope your spring comes soon, so that you can bloom again.

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)