September Musings

After the trainees officially became Peace Corps volunteers at the beginning of September, I helped the new Kayes region volunteers buy stuff for their houses. I helped them navigate the labyrinth of the Kayes market and bargained for mattresses, kitchen supplies and other big items. It really put things into perspective realizing that I was in the new volunteers’ shoes this time last year, with everything being so new and foreign. Now that I’m so used to bargaining for just about everything I buy, it’ll be hard to transition back to shopping in stores when I get back to the states!

The new Kenieba volunteer and I headed down with Peace Corps transport for installation. It was a relatively quick trip down the long dirt road in the Peace Corps car, but the road was basically all mud since it was the middle of rainy season. The new PCV has been off to a great start, bonding with her host family and meeting her neighbors and potential work partners. She’s also working really hard to learn the language spoken in Kenieba, a mix of Bambara and Malinké. Both she and I learned Bambara during pre-service training, but it’s hard to keep using Bambara since it’s not the language spoken here. The structure is the same as Malinké but most words are pronounced differently. People can understand us when we speak Bambara, but they will respond to us in Malinké or the hybrid Kenieba language. It’s definitely not the easiest way to learn a new language! I’ve picked up key phrases in the time I’ve lived in Kenieba and can have basic conversations, but usually I resort to communicating with the men and some literate women using French.

There have been some issues with the new volunteer’s house, mainly the bats who moved in and don’t want to leave. Nobody lived in the house since June, so the bats made themselves at home. And they really are a nuisance, flying around inside and making noise in the middle of the night. A carpenter spent all day on the roof, closing up all the holes and making lots of noise which we thought would get the bats out. After the carpenter’s attempts were unsuccessful, a boy came in and killed some of the remaining bats. But there were still a few stubborn bats that just wouldn’t leave. Though it’s taken a while to persuade him, the landlord agreed to install wooden paneling to create a lowered ceiling. Right now, there is no ceiling, just the metal roof. Once the paneling is installed the bats may still get in, but they won’t be nearly as annoying if there’s a wooden barrier between them and the PCV!

The end of Ramadan was in the middle of September, and there was a big feast and sense of relief after having fasted during every day for 28 days in a row. I noticed this year that people who had fasted, the healthy adults, were noticeably thinner and weaker by the end of Ramadan. I can’t imagine that it can be healthy to fast every day for a month, but it is an important part of the Muslim religion.

Not much happened workwise in September outside of the usual chatting with artisans and other entrepreneurs in town. When I was in Bamako I bought plastic containers for the women to sell their shea butter in. We worked together on pricing and selling strategies for the 45 containers of butter. We decided that I had been keeping track of how much the women were spending each time they made shea butter, things like soap to wash the basins, the fee to use the grinder that turns the nuts into a paste, and firewood to heat the shea butter. We came to a consensus on how much to charge, which gave them a good profit on each container sold. It is more than traditional shea butter is sold for in Kenieba, but we all agreed that since this butter is high-quality, the higher price would be justified.