Tubabu Tubabu

Sorry for the late post, writing this has taken time so I have written up the whole week. Sorry for the length. The internet has been broken so apologies for the multiple posts. Here goes,

As Westerners here we get a lot of attention. Most of it however is friendly, and the most overwhelming is the constant tubabu (white person) chants from the little children who are surprised yet excited to see us, as we are quite the rarity in Bamako. This is a concept I can’t quite get used to, however, there is definitely much less hassle than I thought, just surprise.  Leaving our work office we are greeted by lots of children who run to shake your hand and say hello. We were taught in our cultural class that greeting is one of the most important aspects of Malian culture and these children illustrate this. This feeling has now transferred to me and this evening at the local French institute I was the one surprised by seeing so many Europeans.   

The moment I stepped off the plane I had the culture shock I was expecting despite it being 3 am. In fact, this came as we flew over Bamako to land. During the day we had changed planes in Lisbon and I had noticed when we landed there in the dark the amount of light radiating from the city. Bamako was so different, so dark. I was later told by the intern at the office that there is very little street lighting in Bamako, this was the first culture shock I was greeted with, that and the heat. On stepping into arrivals, the airport was busy, bustling and full of people trying to take our money for phone cards and carrying our luggage. The immigration process seemed simple and less complicated than we had expected. It also seemed possible to bypass this system entirely through bribery. Outside the airport the heat hit me, at 3 am it was 28 degrees. All our bags were piled high onto the roof of a van and we took a number of slightly questionable taxis into town, my worried face was greeted with the comment “c’est Mali taxi” and a smile. Despite the darkness and time, the city was beautiful, dusty, hot but not sleeping. There were so many people just sitting outside their houses socialising. We later arrived at our accommodation which is much better than I expected.

We are staying at the International Service office, where I have my own room although I do share it with a few animals. I have 2 pet birds and their two eggs (along with about a million mosquitos one of which managed to get into my sleeping bag liner and bite me ALL over my legs.) It’s so much bigger than my room at home so I really like it. I like waking up to the noises of children playing in the street and people building in the construction site next door.  I don’t however like sleeping under my mosquito net; it’s like permanently being in a tent. Also, despite it being so hot I think by the end of the three months I will definitely crave some hot water- especially in the shower. I’m staying with the other four members of the AJA team. Our apartment has a really nice lounge balcony and a massive roof terrace- although thus far it’s been a bit hot to be up there. Those at home suffering in the current heat wave, add another 10 degrees on to that! I don’t think I will be getting much of a tan due to the permanent factor fifty. We also have a kitchen but we haven’t attempted much cooking as eating out is cheap and we have had few food related disasters to date. Weirdly however, food takes a very long time to come. I don’t think this is always because of Mali time, I think it is because restaurant owners like having westerners in their restaurants as publicity. Locals always seem to get served first.

                The first few days here have been made up of orientation classes. We had a really interesting Malian culture lesson and we learnt about the importance of family names here and how they allow you to joke with certain people from certain areas. It’s a slightly weird concept. We also started to learn the local language Bamanankan. I think I am going to struggle with it, however, in our lesson the teacher taught us a very long winded greeting sequence and sent us out into the street to practice. I’m very glad I speak French or I think I would be struggling a lot. Despite this, my role has become translator extraordinaire which whilst fun is quite hard work. I think my French will get better though.  

We haven’t been exploring very much apart from in the area we are staying which is very dusty, with no proper roads. I like walking around though as everything is so eye catching, food cooking on tiny stoves, bananas being carried on people’s heads and music playing in the street. At the moment we are not really allowed out anywhere significant without a member of the IS Mali staff which to me is difficult to grasp as I am so used to independence. I will get used to it however and I think as soon as we understand the very complex network of sutramas (tiny green public buses with about 30 people in instead of 8) we will have a bit more freedom. We were taken by Mohammed the intern to the 26 mars stadium to watch the Afrobasket, women’s African basketball championship. The atmosphere was In my eyes better than the play (but that was good too). Taking up an entire stand was a group of supporters/musicians drumming, dancing and playing vuvuzelas. The music kept going and the patriotism amongst home supporters was clearly visible, many of them in dresses/suits/hats of the Mali flag. In the end Mali won.

                Thursday saw the first introduction to our project which was somewhat disappointing. Everything works on Mali time here and takes ages as trying to organise a meeting doesn’t seem to work so when we visited the AJA Bamako office no one was there to see us. AJA is a NGO promoting vocational training for young people, and at the Bamako office there is a craft gallery showing all the Products. They were so beautiful and I am looking forward to working more with these young people to create a better market for the products. This part of the project is encouraging, the second part less so.  We were taken out to Baguineda, the location of AJA’s agricultural training centre. Its 30km from Bamako yet the journey took two hours. Rural Mali is beautiful, not quite as I expected it as it is so green. On the way we saw herds of goats being sold at the market and donkeys pulling carts along the road. I have decided I would like a pet donkey; we are considering purchasing an AJA team donkey and naming him Nigel. The final part of the journey can only be described as a 4x4 adventure trip. The dirt track was so bumpy we all hit our heads on the roof bouncing around in the back. The agricultural training centre is currently at a grass roots level and is just a few huts however the scope to develop is huge. They plan on implementing an 18month program of training for young and unemployed. Our role is to carry out market research on the market gardening industry and help to orientate the young people to develop their own sustainable businesses at the end of the training program. Micro enterprises, agriculture and marketing are not my forte but I am nonetheless excited for the project as we have decided to create a training manual which we can leave at the end of the placement.  As long as I can get over the Mali time and lack of constructive meetings I hope that we can get good results from the project.

                Friday, saw my first insight into the real Bamako and I loved it. The grand marché was the epitome of everything I thought it would be fresh fruit, African drums, women carrying things on their heads, smells and sounds. It was so busy that we had to push through everyone, and I managed to firstly slightly squash a baby because I didn’t notice her concealed  on a women’s back and secondly walk into a girl carrying a bowl of water on her head, subsequently being given a mid-afternoon shower and an angry look. We were taken to the tourist market which featured an abundance of crafts and drums. I finally fulfilled my wish to try out African drumming and had a little jamming session with the owner of the shop. We were later taken to meet his band. In the evening, we went to watch some live Malian music. They were joined by several dancers one of whom performed contemporary routines to accompany the song lyrics and tell stories. There was also a disabled man dancing sitting in the floor, he was mesmerising and performed contortion like moves, it was impressive to see his confidence despite adversity and his happiness when performing. The second part of the evening was slightly less what I imagined and exposed me to a slightly darker side of African culture. Whilst I have been frequently exposed to poverty, the night club we went to exposed me to the “mega rich”. Women in skimpy dresses, not dissimilar to a night out in Birmingham flirted with champagne holding men. It was difficult to tell who was trying to pick up who, but I felt a lot of eyes on me aswell and didn’t like it. It was unnerving and such a contrast to anything I had seen so far. I guess we always choose to ignore the darker sides of culture.  The music contrasted that from earlier with very familiar songs pumping through the speakers and slightly ruined a very insightful day. It was nonetheless fun to go out dancing after a busy week.

 If you manage to get to the end of this thanks for reading and I will try to post more often as soon as the internet is fixed.

Over and Out.

Alice x