Closest I've been to Whitefish since my arrival

Last week, I went on my first real trip since I’ve been in Mali. I went with some friends on a hunt of large bodies of water. The bumpy bushy bus ride to get to our final destination got a little out of hand -- my fellow travelers were getting so stir crazy that they started eating giant green grasshoppers right off of the bus window. Not kidding. Weird. But when we finally rolled into the valley we immediately knew that the tortuous bus ride was well worth it. Right away, we caught a glimpse of the only lake in Mali and I knew that this was going to be a good trip.

The first couple days were filled with bonfiring, chilling with pet monkeys, exploring and cruising down the river on tubes (well I guess not really cruising but we were moving). The boys finally followed through with their promise of a barbeque on the river only thing that was missing was cheese on my burger. The last full day of our trip to the valley we walked the long walk to the lake with our tubes only to find out we needed some kind of security clearance to be able to swim. After a few frustrating hours of negotiating in French and Bambara we were finally given the go and dove in (me in my sexy one-piece speedo from the dead toubab) as the sun started easing off.

After satiating our large-body-of-water-needs we headed back out of the valley to meet up with the rest of the crew around our area. Making up for the lack of cheese on my burger on the river, we made HOMEMADE mozzarella and threw it on some toasted bread with sauce. Although I’ll have to admit that I’ve had better cheese in my life, the pizza-sandwich on the rooftop was delicious thanks to the best cook in our stage.

Happenings in Farakala

I lost my portable alarm clock in the shuffling around I did before moving in so when my phone runs out of battery at site I tell the time by the type of bird I find in my concession. If it’s before noon, it’s the chickens that are hanging around, picking at the drying peanuts on the ground. If it’s somewhere between 2 and 6, it’s the guinea fowl are all in a line perched up on the crumbling mud wall that marks my territory. They shuffle their fat speckled bodies along the wall while they plan their attack on my dirty dishes or food scraps. I learned from my Malian neighbors that the best way to keep these annoyingly awkward-looking creatures out of your concession is to throw little pebbles at them. My only problem is that my aim is terrible and getting worse and the guinea fowl have learned this by now so they don’t even flinch when I wind up for a shot at them.

Below are some pictures of thing going on in Farakala. The first picture is of my host cousin (?) cooking to which is what the villagers eat for almost every meal. This to is made from corn and it has a wonderful texture (kind of like jello-y cornbread, if there is such a thing) but it only tastes good to me with certain kinds of sauces. The villagers of farakala usually eat it with this gumbo sauce that smells like dead fish and looks like slimy guts so I usually pass on that.

Below you can see just how big my host family (the Sanogos) is. Whoever is cooking to that day usually has to feed over 30 people per meal! The Sanogos concession stretches back the entire length of the market (about 1km) which is the largest concession in the village. I meet someone almost everyday that I later discover is a part of my host family.

This is a pic of me in my house with Noum and Sheata, two of my neighbors that hang around my house. They started getting a little too comfortable helping themselves to whatever they please in my house so I told them that they could only continue coming back everyday if they either A) fetched my water for me once a week or B) got rid of the chickens in my concession. It's kind of funny now whenever Noum enters my concession I know that he's there even before he comes to the door because the chicken are clucking away as he chases them out of my yard.

This is a picture of me working in the rice fields one day with my host dad. We fed the machine stalks of rice until we had 12 whole bags of rice (took about 6 hours). I felt really awesome when my host dad made me wear not only a face mask but also a motto helmet while the other malians worked with almost no protection.