Well, I’ve been in Africa for 3 weeks now and it honestly doesn’t quite feel like it. I kind of feel like I’m back in Portland because there are white people everywhere. I’ve been in homestay for 3 weeks as of today, living with an awesome family and learning Bambara. It’s a crazy language. Everything sounds the same. I’ve had some pretty hilarious conversations with my family. And by conversations I mean fragmented sentences, excessive gesturing and awkward laughter. On many occasions, I’ve felt as if I’m in a movie or like someone is playing a big joke on me. After several minutes of attempted communication, I’m just like okay you guys are joking right, someone tell me what’s going on, where are the subtitles? Unfortunately I’m not in a movie and no one is playing a joke on me, we really just don’t speak the same language. The second day of homestay was Seliba (in Bambara) or Tabaski (French) or Eid Al-Adah (Engish?), a big Muslim holiday to celebrate/ commemorate when Abraham sacrificed a sheep instead of his son. So everyone walks around the village and greets each other all day. They give each other an absurd amount of blessings (that’s all the time really not just on a holiday. Everyone said that the first day of homestay was going to be the most awkward day of my life, but they lied. Seliba was. I had zero language skills, and was a vegetarian on the biggest sheep (or goat if you’re poor) slaughtering day of all. Here are a few other things (short hand) that have happened in my first few weeks with my family:
-There’s a dog in my family’s concession. His name is Polisi and he’s a racist. My family has got a racist dog.
-Several babies played in the hole dug in the dirt to collect the slaughtered sheep’s blood.
-My water filter fell over in the middle of the night and dumped about 12 liters of water all over my sunken floor. I swept it out with a “broom” which is literally a pile of twigs tied together. It took about 2 hours.
-Everyone is so cold here right now. When it’s under 85°, they bust out the parka’s and the wool hats.
-We made a dinner for our language trainers to practice cooking over a fire. The rice was the hottest freaking thing I have ever touched in my life and it stayed hot forever (like all food here). Our teachers didn’t like it because we mixed the rice and the beans together.
A bana (It’s finished). The journey continues…
