Hi all!
I’m back in San this weekend in preparation to head out on Monday morning to another site where there is a cotton picking party being held. One of the other volunteers the year ahead of me has invited a bunch of us out to her site to help her village harvest their cotton crop in exchange for dinner and good company. I am not quite sure what to expect, but I’ll let you all know how it goes when I’m back in town.
Its been very warm here lately, and it has not rained in over two weeks. I think we are transitioning now to a mini-hot season which is said to last anywhere from a couple weeks to a month or more, and then will change into “cold” season. I can’t wait!
I’ve taken to sleeping outside since it is always so hot in my house. I set out some mats, hang a mosquito net and fall asleep under my trees, looking up at the millions of stars. Its amazing, when there is so little light pollution, you can see all of them, and they really do twinkle! And of course, to wake up with the sun, to the sounds of Mali in the morning is really very nice. You can hear the roosters and the other live stalk making their noises, but you can also hear the sound of women pounding millet or corn or any other number of things in their giant pestles. It is called so so -ing and every time I pass women in the village doing it, they want me to try. I get about three strokes into it, powder and debris flying, and they decide that I am done. No amount of trying to convince them that I am not good at it keeps me from repeating this process with new women, almost daily.
Anyway, I’m enjoying sleeping outside, waking up outside. The only drawback is that the mats I am using are prayer mats, with a heavy blanket atop them. It doesn’t leave much padding. And the ground is really hard. I do a lot of tossing and turning and waking up with dead arm. The other night I decided that I should just sleep inside for one night, get some sleep on my big comfy, very thick mattress. Yes, my house would be hot, 91` compared to the 82` that is was outside, but I was willing to deal with it in favor of a real night’s sleep. Of course, it was also more tempting to sleep inside since I had just finished my first set of curtains that afternoon. I was looking forward to waking up to a settled and homey room.
I was getting settled in the house when I noticed that some dirt had fallen onto my bed when I was hammering the nail for my curtain into the wall. I went to brush it off and noticed there was actually quite a lot of it. I lifted my pillow to shake out my sheet and did a big double take. There, under my pillow, right next to my can of mace, was a scorpion! I knew I needed to kill it, but I wasn’t wearing shoes and in my mad dash for a sneaker, the bugger moved. I came back, shoe in had, to see him slipping down the crack between my bed and the wall. Change of plans; I was sleeping outside.
After three shooting stars and what seemed like forever spent tossing and turning, I finally fell asleep. For 45 minutes. I decided that I would brave sleeping inside. The scorpion was no in my bed anymore and was probably scared enough not to come back. I’d check everywhere to make sure he wasn’t there and then make sure to keep a shoe near by. I did a bit of reading to settle myself down and distract me from the possibility that I was sharing my bed with a poisonous creepy-crawly, and fell back asleep.
For an hour, at which time I was awoken by the sound of something large on my roof. I was frozen in fear, a million worst case scenarios going through my head. I could hear “it” move across my roof and go down the set of stairs I have attached to the end of my house. Then I could hear “it” in the yard. I thought about the things I had left outside in my sleepy trek inside. My mosquito net, my mats, my water bottle…. My running shoes! My most prized possession in Mali were outside, and there was an “it” out there! Slowly I grabbed my whistle that I keep next to my bed. With out even the smallest thought about what I was doing, I slid my hand under my pillow to get my can of mace. Finally, I grabbed my flashlight. I rolled slowly out of my bed, simultaneously cursing myself for having decided to sleep in a noisy, creaking bed and also so extremely relieved that I was not still out there with “it.”
With my mace in one hand, my flashlight in the other, and the whistle in my mouth, I moved from my bedroom towards the door. Which I realized at that moment that I had left unlocked. A frantic check in each room revealed that I was still alone, “it” was still outside. I could still hear “It,” eating something behind my house. “It” was noisy, although that didn’t really designate what it was as Malian mothers do not seem to teach their children to eat with their mouths closed. After locking my door I decided I had to do something about this thing in my yard. I went to the back window and shined my light out it, trying to see what was there. I couldn’t see anything, but rationally (finally) I decided “it” must be an animal since the light didn’t scare them away. Certainly a person would have known they were caught and would have run off. It was at this time that I also remembered two things. A) goats in Mali climb EVERYTHING. I had seen them on walls of other concessions, of rocks a hundred feet up. Surely a roof was no big deal to them. And B) I had dumped my leftovers from earlier in the day out back in the area where my compost pile has started. Of course, it was an animal out back who had smelled food and gone in search of the source. I calmed down and after a bit was back asleep.
The next day I was talking to some people about the goat on my roof. They were looking at me like I was nuts. I know my Bambara is not great, but I checked again and I was saying what I meant to. “A goat? A goat? No, no. It couldn’t have been a goat.”
“Oh, silly Awa, goats are not out at night. It was a dog! A dog on your roof.”
Of course. A dog on my roof. How could I have NOT known it was a dog! Happens all the time where I’m from, of course it was a dog….
And in talking to my host dad about the scorpion, I discovered that I should have killed it. Really? Because I was thinking I’d keep him as a pet. The next morning when we were doing our language lesson, he began to list off all of the things I should kill if I see. On the top of the list was scorpions, followed by snakes, wasps, big spiders, etc. All in all, it was a rough couple of days, but funny to look back on.
No comments:
Post a Comment