Some pictures from Kissa

So I'm in Sikasso now.  The internet is decent here and there is a public computer, so I got to upload some pictures!

Recently in village was the month of Ramadan, when Muslim adults don't eat food or drink water from dawn till dusk, and then have a big feast every night.  I joined them in fasting for a few days, but there's no way I could make it a whole month.  Plus, they work long days in the fields, doing hard labor while they are fasting.  At the end of Ramadan is Seli (or Aid El-Fitr in Arabic), it is kind of like the Malian Christmas.  Malian put on their nice clothes, eat nice food and dance, and they all want me to take their picture.

Also, my village has been visited by elephants!  Which is exciting and unexpected since theyre extremely rare in Mali.  Nevertheless, its a huge problem for my village's farmers, as elephants can destroy tons of crops.  Just another threat to Kissa's already precarious food security.

 

This is Adama and Usthman, striking Karate poses.  Theyre both really helpful, they water my garden for me when I'm out of town.  Theyre kind of my best friends.

 

This is Musa, my host-fathers son.

 

This is a group of women, they were all dressed up for Seli, the holiday at the end of Ramadan, and wanted me to take their picture.  They're my neighbors.

 

Some men, sitting around and playing checkers.  Again, they are dressed up for Seli.  Those one in green on the right is my homologue, who is assigned to work with me in the village.

  

So elephants (or maybe actually just one) came up from the south.  Apparently they come up during the rainy season.  They are a bit of a nuisance, breaking into gardens (above) and trampling and eating crops (below).  As far as I know, I am the only volunteer in Mali to have elephants at their site, which I guess is fair compensation for having a site way out in the bush.  I haven't seen the elephants yet, just their damage.  It is illegal to kill are harass the elephants, since they are endangered.  The government is supposed to re-compensate farmers for damaged crops, although this does not always happen

Teaching Fadjine to Read

 

This is my neighbor, Fadjine.  He's 26 years old, and he works hard everyday in the fields.  The last time my village had a festival, at the start of the rainy season, he put on his nicest clothes and asked to take his photograph next to his proudest possession, his motorcycle.

 Like more than half of Malians, Fadjine is illiterate, and lately he's been asking me to teach him to read.  In Mali, learning to read is made difficult by the fact that most of the population speaks Bambara, but there are almost no written materials in Bambara.  Books, legal documents, and newspapers are all in French.  In schools, Malians learn reading and French - at the same time.  Malians speak French to varying degrees: in Bamako it is almost as common as Bambara, but in a small village like Kissa, someone who never went to school wouldn't know more than a handful of phrases. 

Fadjine doesn't speak French, but he was very persistent in asking me to teach him to read.  So one day I grabbed a paper and pencil, wrote down the letter A, and said "this is 'A,' it goes 'Aaaaa.'"  He doesn't even know the full alphabet yet, but he learns a few more letters every night. 

It's surprising how complicated reading and writing really is.  Fadjine will stare at four letters for a painfully long time, slowly repeating the letters under his breath "Behh - Aaaa - Seh - Iiii, Behh - Aaaa - Seh - Iiii."  Sometimes it will take a minute before it finally crystallizes and he says triumphantly "BASI!."  Then he attempts to write the word under where I have written it, carefully reproducing those tiny weird squiggles. 

 I write down Bambara words for him to read, reasoning that, maybe, once he knows all the sounds, he can start learning a little French.  But he has a long way to go.