A Little Fishy

After a three-week vacation, a new year, a new preschool room and three new students, mid-January, a new unit of study was in order. I thought my class might find an investigation of the animals of Lesotho a very engaging topic (think ponies, sheep, goats), plus there would be no problem finding field trip sites and opportunities for observation. But the Wednesday after the Christmas break, when I remembered, “crap! I didn’t plan anything for science today!” I hurriedly searched through what I had on hand, and found a book about starfish.

The children loved the book, particularly the photos of the starfish clinging to a rock and opening a clamshell. I made a hasty decision to skip the ponies for now, and stick with the fish. Being a land locked country, Lesotho wouldn’t offer many field trip opportunities or hands-on experiences related to the topic, but I figured these children love water almost as much as they love wearing their swimsuits, and any project in which I could incorporate those things would be a success. Unfortunately, it was later apparent that unseasonably chilly and very unpredictable weather made planning a swimming activity (of the real, not imagined, variety) impossible, but in spite of that drawback, our study of the ocean ended up working.

To start, I got out the chart paper and got a pretty good idea of our collective fish knowledge. We had the following conversation:

Me: What do you know about fish?
Justin: I like a purple sea star.
Lydia: Fish sleep in the water.
Justin: They swim in the water.
Thabo: A fish tastes like food.
Sushmita: A shark is going to eat fish . . . My grandmother gives me fish and rice.
Anna: Mom gives me my fish [to eat].
Esther: I eat a shark.

Me: Is there a sea creature in this shell?
Ibrahim: No in there.

Me: What color is a fish?
Sienna: Orange.
Janelle: Red.

Me: What does a fish eat?
Letsie: A fish eats water.
Justin: A fish eats a shell.
Sushmita: Small fish.

Despite the fact that my students’ apparent desire to eat fish is larger than their knowledge about fish, I decide we should just go with it. I got out some seashells which the children managed to crush like sand castles within seconds of touching them. I kept this in mind the following day when I brought in starfish borrowed from a colleague who had them imported from elderly Floridian parents, and introduced the “touch with one finger only” rule.

The next day, I began the nearly daily ritual of reading the Leo Lionni classic, Swimmy, one of my- and students’- favorite books of all time. Swimmy is a little black fish who explores the ocean after the rest of the fish in his school are eaten by a tuna. He is amazed by all of the creatures he meets, who are all described beautifully (“an eel whose tail was almost too far away to remember . . .”), until he finds a school of fish just like himself, hiding because they are afraid of being eaten. Swimmy, who wants the other little fish to see all of the wonders he has, teaches them to swim in a formation to appear as a larger fish to frighten their predators away. And fish actually do that! Who knew? (Not me.) This concept also appears in a 1960s bumper sticker: On the left, a picture of a school of little fish swimming away from a big fish, and on the right, the school of little fish chasing the big fish away. In the middle is emblazoned, “ORGANIZE!” Well, it just so happens, someone made me a skirt with that design embroidered on it, and I wore it the day I read Swimmy. I felt a bit like Miss Frizzle, the teacher in the Magic School Bus series, who always wears dresses patterned with a motif related to the science topic of the day. But if I ever start looking into the purchase of themed sweaters, the sort with a Christmas tree that really lights up, please do stop me.

Continuing to engage my students’ inclinations toward the imaginary, I populated our water play with plastic sea animals. So what if the shark has a dopey, sedated smile! So what if ducks swim with walruses! So what if the crab is twice as large as the humpback whale! We rigged up a boat out of a cardboard box and made the sail out of an old sheet. I herded the children in the boat and commanded them to row like a coxswain Nazi before realizing that you don’t row a sailboat. It was time to ground this study back into reality.

Well, I was again forced to face the fact that a school in a land-locked country does not lend itself to a study of the ocean very easily, and the fact that the local markets are devoid of fresh (or dried) fish led me to believe that the rivers and lakes are not all that populated with water life. The nearest aquarium was a five hours drive away at least, and scouting out dentist’s offices and Chinese restaurants for what I thought were obligatory fish tanks did not yield any more promising results. And finally I realized that although the aquariums might be too far away but pet shops could be reached in two hours. I sent my neighbor who makes weekly pilgrimages to Bloemfontein to buy us some scaly little friends.

Two days later, the goldfish arrive in all their glory, in a water and air filled plastic bag, held in the passenger side seat safely with a seat belt. The children were immediately enamored and christened the newest additions to our classroom, So and Razyfish. While voting for names, other suggestions included Swimmy, Shark and other names that actually made sense, but when it came time to vote, democracy spoke and until the day comes when they are flushed down the toilet, I am forced to say to parents, “So and Razyfish. . . . No, SO and RAZYFISH. . . . So as in “So What” Razyfish as in, well, ya know, Razyfish . . . No, not Crazy Fish, RAZYFISH . . . I don’t KNOW why.” And so So and Razyfish began their preschool existence, swimming, eating and pooping in their bowl (which used to be my mixing bowl) on the science table, to be observed and drawn by children whose primary concern was probably what they tasted like.

After many more books about the ocean and many hours of staring into the fishbowl, my friends Zoey and Shingi were passing through Maseru, and as certified SCUBA divers, got manipulated into taking my preschoolers on an imaginary diving expedition. They explained all the gear we would need and while the children suited up in their invisible outfits, I dressed Thabo in an absurd makeshift diving suit (Power Ranger costume, pink plastic goggles, rubber gloves on his feet as flippers and my water bottle strapped to his back with a silk scarf as an oxygen tank). We swam around the school (after sailing and rowing our cardboard boat to the middle of the ocean) spotting (pretend) ocean life and manhandling (real) seashells. When we surfaced we turned into fishermen and Hassan caught a box of frozen hake fillets. Finally! We get to eat our topic of study. The fishcakes didn’t . . . “cake” as planned, but it was evidently delicious as a mush, or more accurately papa and fish (papa being the local maize staple, ranging from a porridge like to hard lump of dough consistency).

After the highly stimulating SCUBA dive and fish cooking, we reconvened in an ocean-knowledge-sharing session. And as I returned the shockingly intact starfish to their owner, and the crushed shells to the science cabinet and relocated So and Razyfish from the science table to my desk, the children authored the following book:

Preschool loves the ocean.
The ocean is made of water and salt and fish.

Little fish hide from big fish who eat them. Little fish swim together like a big tuna to scare the big fish so big fish can’t eat them.

We can have fish and our classroom too. So and Razyfish. They swim and eat.

Eel stays in the ocean and looks like a snake.

Jellyfish! They have a mouth!

Sea Star live in the ocean. A sea star can have five arms to open food. A sea star eats with a mouth. A sea star is slow. A sea star is bumpy.

Lobster! He pinch! Lobster is like a crab. Crab has 10 legs. Shells on the beach go in the sand so a big bird can’t eat them.

Our favorite whale is beluga. It’s white and swimming. See the water squirting out of his head.

Scuba Divers! A people! They have science in the ocean. Flippers are for swimming in the water. Goggles are to keep water out of the eyes. Children can have goggles at home. Maybe we can be a SCUBA diver too.

Preschool loves the ocean. (The End).

And they do!

Officially Delinquent

Last week I opened an e-mail from Federal Student Loan Services with a seemingly benign subject heading only to find in all caps, bold face, and red font of at least size 26, that I am officially DELINQUENT in my student loan repayments. I have only been required to start repaying my loans as of last month. And I did. Or at least I thought I did. Twice. Before you start freaking out (dad, mom, credit bureau fearing friends), I have 28 more days before I am reported to the credit bureau and charged late fees. That means 28 more days of clicking the hell out of the Submit Payment button on the website, and sending ever more desperate e-mailed pleas to the faceless correspondent in charge of dealing with delinquents, confused persons and general idiots. That is also 28 more days of re-typing my bank details and squinting at the routing and account numbers in my checkbook wondering where in the name of Stafford I have gone wrong. That means 28 more days of cursing Commerce Bank and the migraines they have given me, asking what did I ever do to you besides deposit loyally in my account and pour my coins in the counting machine with the encouragement of Penny, the squeaky-voiced blond pig-tailed cartoon character bouncing around the screen complimenting me on all the change I’ve collected. I hope she chokes.

Being labeled delinquent has come at a bad (or maybe fitting) time, when I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my Sesotho language skills will never advance beyond the level of a rude two-year old. That goes for my grammar and vocabulary, anyway. As for my accent, I am on par with a stroke victim. Beyond the compulsory greetings, please and thank you, my language skills subsist of giving commands to toddlers and shouting out names of nouns at random. It’s a cruel joke that my tongue trips over itself whenever I try to pronounce the key word in the phrase “I don’t understand,” so I can’t even indicate my ignorance sufficiently- not that the Basotho have any trouble figuring that out.

In the Sesotho book I ordered from Barnes and Noble, I learned such useful phrases as “Where might I send a cablegram?,” “I’ll have the lobster,” and “What time does the [non-existent] train to Buthe Buthe leave?” Finding it fairly useless, I bought a twenty-year old Peace Corps Language Manual off of my Zambian co-teacher, and I can engage in the following conversation:

Volunteer: Peace be with you mother?
Nurse: Yes, greetings brother.
Volunteer: How are you?
Nurse: We are fine. How are you?
Volunteer: We are fine, there is no mistake.
Nurse: That is alright father.
Volunteer: Is the hospital full?
Nurse: Very much.
Volunteer: Are all these people sick.
Nurse: They are patients as you see them.
Volunteer: What is wrong with this man?
Nurse: He was struck by lightening in the mountains.
Volunteer: He is weak.
Nurse: Too much.
Volunteer: What is wrong with that woman?
Nurse: She has a severe stomach ache.
Volunteer: What did she eat?
Nurse: She drank poison.
Volunteer: But why?
Nurse: Because her husband ill treats her.
Volunteer: This is bad!
Nurse: It is truly bad.
Volunteer: What is wrong with that child?
Nurse: He has hiccups.
Volunteer: Such a small child.
Nurse: Yes, father.
Volunteer: What is wrong with these young men?
Nurse: That one was bitten by a snake, this one was beaten by a stick, that one was stabbed by a knife on the buttocks.
Volunteer: On the buttocks?
Nurse: Just there father.
Volunteer: What was wrong?
Nurse: He was fighting with his girlfriend and had pinned her down. His girlfriend’s sister came and stabbed on the buttocks with a knife.

So really, if you come to Lesotho and wish to send a cablegram, eat a lobster, or ride a pretend train, I can arrange things for you. If you are struck by lightening, plagued with a spastic diaphragm or receive an unfortunate wound to the buttocks, I can describe your ailments to a medical professional. Additionally, if you are attacked by a pack of small, hyper children I can tell them to “Hey you! Listen!: Stop! Quiet! Sit down! Sit nicely! Go away! Don’t touch! I don’t have any combs!” If I knew the word for sweets or money, that last phrase might be more useful, but alas, I know how to say combs, (chairs, diapers, doors . . . lobster) and other items the average child wouldn’t demand.

When looking around for a tutor, I couldn’t find a Sesotho-speaking teacher at the school with the time or patience to deal with me, and I didn’t really feel like searching the big wide world for a stranger either. So I ended up arranging for the Head Custodian at the school to tutor me. I asked a teacher what she is paid to tutor students, and she said 50 rand, about 5 dollars. I asked M’é Lineo, my tutor-to-be, if that would be acceptable and she said, “No, anything less that 20 rand” (about $2). That felt like a ridiculous price to pay someone for an hour’s worth of one-on-one teaching, but while trying to convey that to M’é Lineo, she insisted that she would teach me from her heart and not for money, and I insisted equally forcefully that her time is very valuable to me. In the end, she accepted the 20 rand, and didn’t say anything when I changed it to 30.

And from then on out, our lessons have been convoluted threads composed of a few major activities. One is having M’é Lineo translate random words and phrases to use at the orphanage. Thus, I can ask if the baby bawling into my hair is hungry, tired or ill, but I can’t understand a response beyond “yes” or “no.” (Those responses, by the way, are, respectively, “E”- like the Canadian eh, and “Ae,” like the American Uh-Uh.) I can ask for Rose’s bottle, when I have her in the crook of one arm, because, “E, she is hungry” while Lesole is in the other arm, puking on my neck, but I can’t say that her bottle is the one with the green top. I can only request, “Please bring the bottle of Rose,” and say, “green!” “up!” and nod vigorously. And while I can only understand the slowest, simplest Sesotho, I cannot understand baby Sesotho. When I see a child in distress, I invariably ask “ke mang?” “Who is it?” I mean, implicitly, “Who hit you/took your toy?” I could ask “keng?” “What is it?/What’s the matter?” but the more comprehensive (and gurgled) response would be far to over my head to offer any insight. When you ask “Ke mang?” at least the children can point.

Our Sesotho lessons are also largely composed of me explaining to M’é Lineo how I want her to teach me. She is perfectly happy to answer questions and to translate whatever I desire, but she won’t correct my pitiful pronunciation, most especially my cheap replacement of the clicked “q” with a regular “k” sound. She doesn’t understand the purpose of engaging in pretend conversations in which she is a shop owner and I am a customer. And if she doesn’t have answers for all of my nagging whys about grammar, she starts to sweat. I’ve told her a dozen times, if there is no reason why the “L” in “Lipoqo” actually sounds like an “L,” rather than a “D” like the “L” in her own name, she should just tell me there is no reason. It’s like she is a linguistic fatalist; in her mind, every phoneme and grapheme happens for a reason and we, as mere vehicles for language, have no business questioning or even trying to understand it.

Regardless, this tirade is meant to be directed at myself and not at my amazing tutor who is beyond patient and who I am lucky to be able to spend any time with her at all when the normal school dictates that we do not cross paths. But the fact remains, the number of months I’ve spent in Lesotho is not reflected in my language skills, and if anything, my conversations are more charades- reliant than ever.

Writer David Sedaris relates the following about his efforts to learn French:
“I’d hoped the language might come on its own, the way it comes to babies, but people don’t talk to foreigners the way they talk to babies. They don’t hypnotize you with bright objects and repeat the same words over and over, handing out little treats when you finally say ‘potty’ or ‘wawa.’ It got to the point where I’d see a baby in the bakery or grocery store and instinctively ball up my fists, jealous over how easy he had it. I wanted to lie in a French crib and start from scratch, learning the language from ground floor up. I wanted to be a baby, but instead, I was an adult who talked like one, a spooky man-child demanding more than his fair share of attention . . . On my fifth trip to France . . . things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. ‘Is thems the thoughts of cows?’ I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window. ‘I want me some lamb chop with handles on ‘em’”

If I ever make it to the hillbilly phase of my Sesotho language acquisition, I’ll throw myself a party and let you all know.

Where I Work. . .

Where I Live. . .

Christmas in the Sahara with Malian Monroe

When I left Johannesburg, South Africa for Bamako, Mali I oddly found myself on a plane bound for New York City. Unbeknownst to me until check-in, flights from Tambo International Airport to JFK stop in Senegal to refuel. Darker is the final destination for only a handful of passengers, and a layover for apparently just me. Flying up the continent I contemplated how possible it would be to not disembark in Dakar, to call my parents from JKF, and wait for them to pick me up while eating an everything bagel. It was impossible for me not to think this while sitting between passengers bound for the city that makes me drool over soy buttermilk biscuits from Sacred Chow and the public library system in equal measure. But really, I was thrilled to be heading to Mali. Once I took a job that pays in maloti, I assumed air travel would be out of the question until I’m shipped back to America at the end of my contract. I got ridiculously lucky. For once, my work, my traveling whims, and the opportunity to see a far-flung friend were not at odds. Although I got kicked out of the NYC bound plane in Dakar, I was sent hurtling toward Dogon country, Timbuktu and my favorite peace corps volunteer on the planet, a fabulous slice of Jersey right here in Africa.

I’d love to skip straight to the part where Kate and I gallop off into the sunset on twin camels in a kola nut induced euphoria, and I will skip most of the unpleasant and boring details between unplugging my refrigerator in Lesotho and reuniting on a staircase in Bamako. But I just want to say that if the airport in Dakar were a Jelly Belly it would be licorice, namely a waste and a disappointment of a transit hub. Once they let you check in, it’s bearable; there are a few souvenir shops and duty free stores where one can purchase m&ms in varying quantities, and a couple of bar/cafes. However, I was held captive in the transit area for 12 hours. The room was freezing and the chairs seemed purposely slippery so that if you tried to lean back and relax the slightest bit you would slide to the floor. Toilet paper, toilet seats, and soap were not considered necessary bathroom features, and the water worked only intermittently. But the worst part for me was that there was no place to buy food until they let you check in. I had to break into the bag of marshmallows I was bringing to toast with Kate on a propane stove so I could take my malaria prophylaxis. After about six hours of transit room, a vendor rolled in selling $8 pink-meated sandwiches. My hunger equaled my disgust at whatever lay between the bread, so what would have been a really expensive baloney sandwich became a ridiculously expensive soggy roll once I flicked off the spongy animal matter.

Fast forward, and food seems a good place to start. Many people have an image of Africans eating a diet solely of airlifted USAID food and grubs. Despite what I’ve seen and moreover, consumed, to the contrary, I had not imagined Malian food could be so pleasing. I mean, it’s one of the poorest countries in the world and largely desert for goodness sake. Of course, the diet I could afford has considerably more variety and nutrition than the average Malian’s, but I was still surprised, usually in a good way. Street food was it’s own wonderful microcosm, my favorites being spicy, fried sweet potatoes and bissap, a frozen hibiscus juice. My first foray into street food was for scrambled eggs on baguette. It seemed simple enough, although the cook asked if I wanted my scrambled eggs topped with hardboiled eggs. Um. . .? Luckily Kate was there to translate, as I tend to nod when I have no idea what someone is saying. This is how three weeks later, when I was on my own, I ended up with a hard boiled egg, plantain, onion, tomato, cucumber and fish juice sandwich. It was a delicious accident, let me tell you. I was treated to a different kind of food entirely in the village where Kate does her work. A neighborhood family has adopted Kate and feeds her and by extension, me, twice a day. The women and children share one bowl, eating with their hands, and on the other side of the yard, the men do the same. When I asked Kate about Malian table (mat on the dirt) etiquette, she said, “Just eat a lot.” No matter how much I ate of the always fresh, and usually delicious meals, it was never enough for the food pushing mamas. This was especially true the day we had tô with okra sauce, an incarnation of a food I was served in Ghana and hoped to never come across again. Tô, a mashed ball of millet is quite pleasant, especially once I confirmed it was not "toe," and the taste of okra is also good, but when okra is cooked in a stew it becomes a gelatinous mound of slime, and appears, not unlike an upper respiratory infection symptom. It quivers as you swallow it and strings from your fingers and lips no matter how carefully you try to eat. I thought I beat the tô and okra sauce system by scooping an untouched chunk of millet from the middle of the ball. But it slid from my slimy fingers and bounced on a pool of okra sauce before sinking to the bottom of the bowl. As if as punishment, the cow, slurping from her own bowl of okra sauce spit some up in my flip flop before closing her green lips around my ponytail.

Fortunately Mali is the African country where I for once don’t feel completely guilty about leaving food on my plate. In Mali it is a common practice for families to give up one boy to Koranic school where he will stay, usually far from home, for about seven years. The mother gets a free ticket to heaven, and the child gets an education and his basic needs met. The system’s idea of providing the boys, known as garibouts (gairiboos), with food consists of the teachers sending their students to beg for food and change on the street, and restaurants and families often leave leftover food to them. They walk around with plastic buckets and are a quiet, constant presence. Before I understood who they were, I found their presence very hard to swallow. After an explanation of how the schools work, I came to view them as legitimate beggars- whatever that means- and eventually I stopped noticing them. When I was a camp counselor, I had an Animal Planet loving camper with Aspergers. He would frequently head butt me in the spine and when I tried to encourage him to keep his head to himself, he would shrug and say, “I’m just bein’ a caribou.” When the children thrust their buckets at me and mumbled in French or a local language I imagined they were saying, “I’m just bein’ a garibout.”

I found myself guessing what people were saying often, as my French is terrible, my understanding of African accents speaking French even worse, and my knowledge of local Malian languages nonexistent. Because Kate can carry a conversation in French and Koro Boro, I frequently found myself in the presence of conversations I could not understand a word of. When I worried Kate was getting irritated by the incessant translating, I annoyed her even more by “translating” the conversations myself:
Is your friend mute or just unfriendly?
No she is just American.
Ah, yes, I can tell by the girth. Is she married?
No she is highly available and yours for six goats, six sheep and a camel.
Deal.

The only words of Koro Boro that I learned were “thank you” and “peace only,” which I used regardless of situation.

Your feet are very dirty.
Thank you.

What is your name?
Peace only.

I also learned, but had less occasion to use the Koro Boro phrase “anasar kang buu,” which means “dead white people’s clothes.” When Americans and Europeans donate clothes to charity, they often end up being sold for pennies in markets in the developing world. Malians are quite aware of where these clothes come from, but they conclude that the owners of the clothing must be dead if they are being given away.

While in Mali, I celebrated several holidays having little or nothing to do with this predominantly Muslim country. A Christmas Eve party was held in the regional capital and Gao and the peace corps volunteers of that area and their visitors trudged in for the festivities. One magical volunteer is like the Martha Stewart of the desert. She typed up caroling songbooks, sewed African-print stockings (filled with jewelry she crafted herself), and a built a gingerbread house with sculpted sugar snowmen that no one was allowed to touch, not even the slab of cookie implausibly placed over the top of the chimney (how was smoke supposed to get out and Santa in?) At dusk she slipped into a one-shoulder dress she rigged up herself by strategically wrapping and tying a pearly green turban around herself, and reigned serenely over the merriment. Noelle quickly evolved into a bachelorette party for a volunteer bride-to-be who was dressed in Christmas decorations. We hit the town for a scavenger hunt, and whenever anyone inquired as to what all the Toubabs (white people), especially the glittery one, were up to, Kate told them that on American Christmas, the newest bride is dressed like a fool and paraded around town. One man, upon hearing this said, “May you have twenty children. Then you send me five boys form America to sell turbans in my shop.” Shortly thereafter, Kate and I threw a Chanukah celebration. I made latkes (potato pancakes) and Kate fashioned a dreidel. I tried explaining the rules to the goyim (“this means you take half” “this means you get nothing”) but there was an oversight in terms of gelt, the chocolate coins you play for. Strip dreidel was the inevitable conclusion. Spin a shin, put an item of clothing into the pot, spin a gimmel, and you may end up with your friend’s sweaty bandana. Before nudity could enter the scene, the tournament relocated to the local bar where gelt was replaced with beer. And finally, there was New Year’s to celebrate, which Kate and I did by crashing a high school dance party. I didn’t know then, nor do I know now what possessed us. It was literally inside a high school, desks pushed to the edges of linoleum, glaring florescent lights, and chalked equations unerased on the blackboard. The high schoolers didn’t take any particular notice of the overage Toubabs crashing their party, and I believe I was more surprised than they were to find myself there.

I also had the opportunity to experience some more traditional Malian events, namely the Dogon Dancing Mask Festival, a celebration of various arts forms in and around Dogon Country. We paid our 4,000 CFA ($8) entrance fee and found ourselves, unsurprisingly with an entrance fee like that, surrounded by other foreigners. We listened to music led by a Willie Nelson-esque Malian and watched a dozen women dressed in indigo cloth kick up clouds of dust in their exquisite out of sync dancing. Then the gates opened up and hundreds of Malians flooded the audience. The children especially went wild over the traditional warfare segment. Adolescent boys donned three pairs of shorts each and locked in a sort of head to shoulder embrace. Between Kate’s translations of the commentary and my own observations, the object seemed to be to wedge your thumbs into the waistbands of your opponent’s shorts, lift him up in this manner and drop him to the ground. Finally, we were treated the mask dancing in which men swing their heads around topped with masks several meters tall that they held in their teeth.

Kate and I followed this with a visit to a Dogon village. My favorite part was seeing a local courthouse. The ceilings are purposely low (maybe four feet high) to keep people’s anger in check; the threat of concussion makes someone think twice before jumping up and shouting. The US ambassador to Mali was touring the village at the same time. Kate requested an introduction by our guide and he returned to us with someone who was clearly not the ambassador but perhaps her child or intern. Following this disappointment, we climbed some rocks for an aerial view of the mosques, complaining of the inappropriate attire (pants, tank tops) of our fellow countrywomen. We gazed at the village spread out below us while a gust of wind blew our skirts to our faces.

We were spending the 15 kilometres away, and inquired to our guide about the likelihood of hitching a ride at least part way. We assume he meant to be reassuring when he said, “a car will see you walking small small and will take you by force.” This turned out to be true, but not before we crossed paths with a very long and very dead (but freshly killed) black mamba.

Things were more deserty (lanky blond camels grazing on the side of the road) and less snakey in Kate’s neck of the country. I found myself continually amazed at Gao (regional capital) traffic. It was dizzying trying to keep track of the 4x4s, donkey carts, pedestrians, livestock and motorbikes which often contained entire families, kids straddled between their parents and babies tied to their mother’s backs, all sharing the road and kicking up the sand. I didn’t even notice when in Southern Africa, I became adjusted to keeping on the left side of the road, but back in Mali, where traffic sticks to the right, I almost gotten taken out a couple of times by a motorbike. Kate and I biked all of our errands, which I found particularly challenging on the sand. It was even more challenging when I rode for several minutes with the front wheel turned backwards without noticing, keeping half of my concentration on clamping my skirt over my knees and the other half wondering why I couldn’t get my fingers around the brakes.

Gao is also located on the Niger River so I also got to experience water transportation, namely, being canoed through the rice fields with a bamboo pole. I was headed toward the Rose Dune, a big ole hump of sand where all the sorcerers meet in the night. Fact: If you meet someone who claims to be a sorcerer and he has never heard of the Rose Dune, he is not a real sorcerer. I don’t think Mali is cool with sorceresses, so I didn’t get to hang around after dusk. However, I did see a bunch of scarab beetles. When I first saw their footprints in the sand, I thought they were bicycle tracks. They are pretty incredible creatures.

Although Kate’s village is located on a major road, things were considerably calmer than in then center Gao. We did laundry in buckets that turned the water black, read and giggled. If people couldn’t remember or didn’t know my Malian name, they referred to me as Kate’s “hangasine.” I don’t know of an English word that means the equivalent but Kate explained that it refers to someone in your age group who you are with all the time. Kate was also like a village cruise hostess. She cooked me porridge and bean powder, read David Sedaris to me when she decided I wasn’t laughing aloud enough while reading it to myself, and kept the house stocked with water, which watching Kate carry on her head is just the prettiest sight. We made s’mores over Kate’s stove and ate them with the South African wine I brought. Alcohol is a major taboo in much of the country, so Kate did not want to be left with the wine, nor did I want to take it with me. She suggested I give it to the cow that routinely disturbs the peace with its incessant groaning to shut it up, but I can’t imagine a drunk bovine is any quieter than a sober one. Nor is wine an acceptable contribution to a garibout’s bucket, so we splashed the leftover in the dirt and I carted the bottle back to the city to leave no trace in Kate’s village.

One of Kate’s colleagues commented that I look like I sleep easy in the village. She meant that I looked at ease, but it was also literally true. I slept like a champ in all of Mali. If there was a mat on somebody’s floor, I was dreaming by the time my head hit the ground. After New Year’s Eve dinner, I dragged myself to a bar with Kate, and slept in a chair until I was roused at midnight. I even slept through the early morning calls to prayer and the swarms of mosquitoes sucking on my face and ankles on a roof in Timbuktu.

I didn’t sleep quite as well on the bus, and the bus was where I spent a good chunk of my time, familiarizing myself with such cultural institutions as local toilets (in lieu of toilet paper, stripy plastic teapots filled with water), getting my passport checked- and even stamped- crossing from one region to the next, and bus station food (one day Kate and I managed to cover a single food group- fried). Then there was the practice of rushing the door to the bus to get the best seats despite the fact that the drivers admit one passenger at a time, and call the names from a list in the order the tickets were purchased. Baffling. When I first met up with Kate she said, “Hi, good to see you, we’re getting on a bus in 8 hours for 24 hours and you’re to go by the name of ‘Zeinaba Maiga.’” I spent many hours on the bus staring out the window, my eyes shocked by how flat the landscape is. I’ve gotten so used to being in the mountains that the flatness made the land appear somehow damaged to me. When we traveled in areas with more varied terrain, that seemed even weirder somehow; in Dogon country there are peaks and cliffs that seem sort of stuck in the sand every so often like the whole region is a massive, spread-out sculpture garden. Of course, this was not the first all day bus ride. In fact, we started 2009 by rolling along, sucking on a ring pop and singing a “full day bus ride” to the tune of “Good Day Sunshine,” which eventually and senselessly devolved into replacing the chorus of Labamba with “black, black mamba, barack obamba.”

The buses are pretty organized, but the bachet system seemed much more haphazard. Bachets are more for local transport and look sort of like a cross between a pick up truck, covered wagon and hayride. Everywhere I’ve been in Africa has some version of the bachet, the vehicle filled to bursting, that never arrives or leaves when you wish it would, and is falling apart. There are benches rather than seats, and bless whoever gets in last, and has to sort of sit on two people until gravity pushes the person down to the bench. Once the conductor said to a rather robust Malian who fruitlessly tried to walk to the back, “Excuse my language, but you must enter with the ass first.” It would be a joke to ask when a bachet is going to leave, but the unspoken rule is that you leave in T minus sheep in a bag. Yeah, they bag the livestock, and I do mean live, but at least they try to be humane about it and don’t bag them until the last possible moment. Once Kate and I were confused when our animal passenger was nowhere to be seen, yet we were pulling out of the station. Then the stream of pee coming from the ceiling told us that the sheep was very much with us, and not only inside a bag, but inside a bag strapped to the roof.

Kate is banned from going there by Peace Corps, but she threatened to put me on a bus to Timbuktu if I irritate her. Well, I decided to go there anyway, so I was on my own for my last week in Mali. I met a Scottish guy who was going the same direction as I was and thank goodness I only had to spend about eight hours with him. If Kate had met him, she would have sent him to Timbuktu. He was the sort of person who names all of the countries he’s been to without being asked, and who “doesn’t believe in tour guides.” He was appalled that I hadn’t been to the famous mosque next door to where we were staying. “But it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site!” I mean, I biked past it a dozen times with Kate on the way to a restaurant for steamed dough in date and moss sauce, or on the way back from ordering a dress from the tailor. Kate pointed it out once, and said something like, “That mosque is old and famous . . . Hey! Do you want to see this other mosque that looks like a penis?” So I missed out on a couple UNESCO sites, Timbuktu has plenty of those guys.

The ride from the major transportation crossroads to Timbuktu is pretty painful. The dust is so thick that I longed for a turban to cover my face like everyone else. I tried to use my scarf, but it didn’t keep the dust out and only made my face sweat. I coughed nonstop for the four hours we were on unpaved roads, and blew mud out of my nose for hours after. The road ended and we had to take a ferry across the river with about a hundred cows. No, make that bulls. With really long horns. They got pretty rowdy and annoyed when the herders tried to get them on the boat. They were bucking and running with their heads down low, and the herders would grab them by the tails and yank them back in line. When they were all on board, they started sliding and falling down with their knees buckled all over the wet floor which was made worse by their nervous urination. I was pretty sure I would end up gutted.

Timbuktu itself is sort of a strange place. Its history is massive and long, but you would really never know that just by looking. It just looks like a beige city, roads, sky, houses, mosques and all. I think to really enjoy Timbuktu, you have to remain in the frame of mind of, “woah, I’m in Timbuktu.” I had a local guide take me around the city and explain to me what beige things I was looking at. There are a bunch of old buildings named after European explorers, and I could never figure out why. The guide would say things like, “And this guy tricked us into thinking he was an Arab by learning the local languages, but then we figured out he was lying because he couldn’t eat couscous with his hands . . . and this guy tricked us into thinking he was a Muslim by reading from the Koran, but then we figured out he was lying when we saw the bible hidden underneath.” I just didn’t get it. I slept on the roof of a hotel wrapped in Kate’s UN refugee blanket. Either from the dust, or the clouds, I could barely see the stars, but Timbuktu is situated against sand dunes and that is quite beautiful. I didn’t stay in Timbuktu long because most of the sites you can see in a day. Plus the city was overrun with over-tie dyed, over-excitable Europeans on their way to the Festival in the Desert (I met one couple who drove from Switzerland to Timbuktu in two weeks just to make it to the festival) and they were just a little hard to take.

I headed back to Bamako to get a good look at the capital and to get on the plane. I came across several Peace Corps volunteers in the city for training, and there were rumors that Gao, Kate’s region had been evacuated just after I left. Kate had suspected that might happen, since the homes of political leaders were attacked as we were riding there on a bus New Year’s day. Excuse me, there was no attack, just a “hand grenade incident” according to Kate’s supervisor. When I heard there may have been an evacuation, I was not worried about Kate’s safety, but at how annoyed she would be to have to stop working on her various health and sanitation projects. I found out later that I need not have worried. Apparently, Kate’s village is too far to evacuate her, and they would have had to bring her through the area experiencing unrest to get her out of the region.

I got back to Lesotho early Monday morning, and spent the first hour of my 24th birthday waiting on line at the border to get my passport stamped. Home sweet inefficient home.