Almost an entire month has passed and I still can't believe this is all happening.  Most of all that tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  Yet by the time you read this you will be celebrating the New Years.  So even though  I am currently an entire month away from 2012--Happy New Years Ev!  Heck, even by now you might even be enjoying Mexico with the fam sans me.  Just know to not feel bad for me, my ideal vacation spot is more along the lines of Mongolian winters and the North Pole.  Don't get me wrong, your company is yearned for, but the circumstances in which I would have to see you is not coveted.

There are so many things I want to tell you about what is happening now and how I feel now, but I hate that the words most likely won't hold true when my letter finally arrives.  It's hard to fill a letter with generics when you are one of the few people I want to give details to.  Yet, when I sit down to write you, I am left tapping my pen against the dirt with little to say.

This past Sunday, Peace Corps took us on a field trip outside our homestay.  We all were taken to the Mali National Museum which consisted of 2 rooms.  That's it.  After a quick tour, they took us to this place called the American Club.  Entry access only if you hold a US Passport.  We had pizza (which should not have even been called that for the lack of cheese) and cold draft beer.  So for about 4 hours on Sunday, we all forgot we were in buttf*@! Mali and sat and drank cold beers poolside.  That is, until our conscious got the best of us and we decided four hours of luxury was enough for the day. Then again, I think every once in a while a little luxury is needed to keep the sanity or at least get a little buzzed to keep the brain happy.  Tomorrow should be another escape as we will head back to the training base for some Thanksgiving dinner.

I've been trying to think of things that I miss from the states and I have to admit, it's quite hard to have a substantial list.  Pooping in a hole, while at first took some major physical and mental adjustments, doesn't bother me in the least.  It actually makes me much more efficient in the bathroom as I want to get in and out.  No reading material necessary.

As far as the food, I like it.  Rice, peanut sauce and vegetables has yet to get old.  I'm sure it will, but today, I was able to explain to my host family that they do NOT need to add oil to everything.  That should fix the fun time my GI system has been having.  Eating with my right hand (never left, that's gross) while primitive, has a very relaxed feel.  Food falls everywhere, your hand is filthy and if you get a bite with a bone (or god knows what else) it entirely acceptable to simply spit the food out on the ground.

Life here, while at first appeared simply, it more complicated than any world I have ever been a part of.  Multiple wives, dozens of children, 5 different meanings for the same Bambara word, there is nothing simple about this life.  Even as I sit here around 20-25 people, I only know 5 names and 3 relations to my host mother.  Three weeks in, I still do not know whether I have 6 or 7 siblings. Fortunately, I am okay with that.  I have accepted the unknown and while frustrating at times, certainty in not understood here.  There is never a clear answer and I have come to expect murkiness in my everyday life.

I try to write in my journal each day, but my writing is starving.  I am left tired by the day's end and end up regurgitating the days events instead of documenting any real reflection.

Here is a funny story (or at least my exhausted brain was humored): Two nights ago while sitting watching a poorly made French dubbed movie that skipped over every 4 scenes, eating a plate of beans with my hands under the stars where at 8p it was still 90 degrees, my host father, Dramane, says, "This is exactly like your American life. Great good, good TV, with your family.  You are happy in America, you are happy in Mali. Same, same."  I'm sure I don't need to say this, but my host father has never left Mali, let alone been to the good ol' USA.

I am indeed happy here, but a very different type of happy.  I am happy here when I can take part in a Bambara conversation, when I can use the hole without running into any cockroaches crawling out mid-movement, or when I am taking my bucket bath as the sub rises or under the unbelievably illimunated stars of the night.  I am happy here, no doubt about it.  But the origins of my happiness stem from an entirely different roots.  And comparing the two, the happiness here while intense and never stable, feels more genuine than the happiness of a badger win, a lions playoff run or seeing a good movie.  I miss the company of my American life.  But the true American lifestyle?  I simply do not crave it yet.  The characters of my American life are yearned for, but no props, no scenes, no America.  I'm sure that will change, but until then, I'll enjoy this version of happy and hope it continues to grow.

Again, always thinking of you.

Lee

Since it is extremely difficult to write a letter home and stamps are hard to come by, I've been hoarding letters that should have been sent weeks ago to Evan.  So since I skyped with Ev last night and read him my letters, I thought it also be nice to share the letter with my other family and friends.  

November ....18th ?

Dear Ev,

I never quite know how to start off a letter.  Given the conditions I am in living in, the appropriate questions seem, well, stupid for a lack of a better word.  My days are long and tiring, yet I feel more alive than I ever have.  I think that if I were you, I'd want to know exactly what in hell I was doing everyday in the middle of Mali.  So that is what I will start off with.  

Every morning at 4:30a, the call to prayer starts.  It lasts exactly 7 minutes in which I curse the entire Muslim world.  I live about 1,000 feet from the village Mosque and the call, even with ear plugs jar me from my slumber each morning.  I tend to fall back into a light doze that is disturbed often by the donkeys, dogs, roosters and people outside my hut.  Oh and do not be fooled, roosters/chickens do make noise at all times of the day, not just sunrise.

Around 6:00a I wake up and walk across the compound to take my sunrise poop.  It makes the whole idea of pooping into a smelly fly infested hole almost bearable when the sun is rising over the hills.  After that, I grab my bucket and make the walk to the water pump in the village.  It's luckily rather close (5 minute walk) where I wait in line with Malians to get water.  They are constantly amazed that I pump my own and carry it back.  Have no doubt, that bucket is heavy as f@#$, but it's a good right arm a workout.  Tomorrow my sister is going to show me how to carry the bucket on my head which is supposed to be easier.  If not, I'll have some crazy Popeye right arm muscle by 2014.  

Breakfast consists of tea (even when it is 90 degrees outside)  and French bread (thank you colonialism!)  I then grab my books and walk through town to get to school.  Everyone calls my name (Kajatu Diarra) and I know now that I never EVER ever want to be famous.  EVER.  The attention is slowly dying down the longer I am in the village, but it takes a lot of getting used to.  Especially because in Mali it is extremely rude to not greet everyone.  So what would be a 5 minute walk to school turns into a 45 minute stop and go of handshaking, telling people my family is good and praising Allah for my good health.  

Once at school, it is a bit more relaxed.  We sit around a makeshift blackboard and study Bambara from 8-12p.  I’m actually getting quite good at it considering I just started learning it last week.  It helps that my homestay family only speaks Bambara and talks to me all the time,  We break from 12-2:30p to eat and not much more since the heat is so bad.  You sit and do nothing and sweat drips down your face.  And get this, it’s the cold season!

From 2:30-5, we go back to class and continue to study.  It’s boring and intense but exciting to be learning a language so quickly on the fly.  I come home by dark (6p) and help to make dinner which usually consists of rice and a peanut sauce and one (literally one) vegetable.  I’m lucky to be given pretty good food at homestay and have enjoyed almost everything I have had so far—especially since I cut meat out of my diet. 

The night usually flies by between cooking, eating, writing in my journal and homework that by 9p I am ready to go to bed and fall asleep reading.  But not before my 2nd bath of the day!  I go get water once again, walk to the hole (yes, it’s the same hole I go to the bathroom in), stand under the Malian stars with no artificial lighting and take it alllllll in. (well, not the smell of poo, but the view at least). 

So the days go by fast, but that isn’t to say it feels a lot longer than 3 weeks that I’ve been in country.  Thanksgiving is next week and while I am not the least bit homesick now, I fear the emotions I will have come time to eat rice and beans as my Thanksgiving dinner will prove difficult.  So that’s my everyday.  My brain is exhausted, I ooze starch from my pores, but I can sit here and genuinely say I’m so happy.  And by the time you get this and read it I could be in tears, know that today and for the past three weeks, I have been more than content with my life here.

So for the time being, I am truly living in each moment.  I look at the stars each night.  I laugh with my family every joke they make that I understand.  And I tap my foot to the music of Kobalakoro, Mali.  For I know that the day will come, when the burning garbage smoke will cloud the sky, my family will grow tired of the American and the music will turn to noise.  And while that may seem cynical, it is the unfortunate truth.  That while this life offers much beauty, there are alleys of darkness that I will undoubtedly walk through.  So it is with this letter I will read and remember the beauty of Mali in a time when the sun may be too hot and the day may feel too long.

The frogs have arrived and the cockroaches are creeping which means even without a watch, it is time to retire to bed.  Tomorrow is another day of language learning, visiting a health center, and learning to carry water on my head.  I do hope you can make it here one day.  I think you would find it most beautiful.  The people are kind in ways I can only hope I am half of.  And while you may not love the food (HA, may?!) I promise that other aspects of life in Mali make up for the culinary lacking.  I miss you and I love you.  Always thinking of everyone.

Lee