Old habits die hard

Coming to Mali from America requires a number of cultural adjustments. Who would have guessed, however, that coming to Mali from Mauritania would require some significant adjustments as well? Some examples:

I was called out by a man in my village for only extending my hand to women when I greet people. In Mauritania, it was highly inappropriate for a women to try to shake a man’s hand (and vice versa), and I could probably produce a complete list of the men who shook my hand during the year I spent there. As a result, and without even realizing it, I never try to shake men’s hands. Here, though, all men will shake my hand. So I am trying to change my behavior, although I am still a little nervous every time I shake a man’s hand that he will just look at me in disgust.

Reflecting the desert culture, Mauritanians (and Moors in particular) don’t bathe all too often. I bathed about every four days there, just because it was appropriate and there wasn’t very much water. In Mali, people expect me to bathe every day, and will remind me if I “forget.” The most common conversation that I have with my host-mother here goes like this:
“Have you bathed this evening?”
“What? Oh yeah, I’m going to.”
“Now?”
“Yes…”
“Good, good, good.”

In Mauritania, the ungodly heat causes people to take cover for most of the afternoon. Walking the streets at 3 pm, you would have thought that you had entered a ghost town. I realized after a few weeks here that the four hour nap is no longer appropriate, and that work can indeed be done between noon and 5 pm.

One afternoon...

A snake wandered into our compound. It was promptly killed.

My brothers skinned it. Unfortunately there is no picture of the mouse they pulled out of its stomach.

This is the part we ate for dinner.

This is the part my brother plans to make into a belt. The joke is on you, snake!

Off to site

I am leaving this afternoon to go to my new site. It is a small village called Goumbanko, located outside of Kita in the southwest part of the country. I have never seen it before, but I do know that I have my own compound with two huts and an outhouse with a giant painting of Obama on it (the work of the previous volunteer). I am looking forward to going; I am banking on the assumption that this will be easier the second time around...

Some Mali pictures

My whirlwind training in Mali is almost over-the swear-in is tomorrow and then we all leave for site on Saturday. It has been an interesting past few weeks but I will be happy to be done with this stage. It has been weird being so new to Mali but having a year of Peace Corps experience already finished-it is like I am neither here nor there. Unfortunately there is very little internet in the region I am going to, but I hope to be able to continue updating this at least once a month, so stay tuned! I did about 10 days of homestay-this is a picture of me, the other trainees, and our language teachers.

This is a hike we went on during a field trip to learn about shea butter.