A run into my market town

It’s a Monday and I am ready to head to my market town to meet up with my friend and to take care of some business in town. The morning started off great. I woke up early, around 6:15am to the sound of millet being pounded in big mortars with equally as big of pestles at the hands of women who pound millet with ease time and time again. They wake up before the sun rises to get the day going for everyone, men and children, thus making sure that the house is well organized in the morning and breakfast is cooked. So they start the day way before anyone else does. The sound of millet being pounded gets me before the rooster does. After getting myself prepared for the day, I eat my usual breakfast, oatmeal with millet powder, peanut butter, powdered milk, and honey, coffee, and a multi-vitamin, breakfast of champions, I set out to ride 12km to my market around 7am. I leave this early because I want to arrive at the bank before 8am to get a good spot in line because any later will guarantee at least 2 hours of my life sitting in the bank waiting to be called upon. The bank has two window tellers, though only one bank teller at all times which makes things go incredibly slow. To put it in perspective, when was the last time you waited in line at the bank just to withdraw 20 dollars? Or to deposit a check? Never. But this is the banking system in Mali. The bank company I use does have ATM’s at some branches, however there is no ATM at the branch in my market town. Just my luck. When that day comes, I’ll be dancing in the streets. Until then, it’s a race against time and everyone else that has to do business at the bank. I check my bike to make sure its up to code for the ride and I take off down the dirt road toward town.

The ride is pretty and the temperature is cool. During the hot season you can beat the heat in the early morning for a pleasant ride. I am making good time, greeting people along the way on the road who are going to town in order to sell goods they have. Most have a thing called “sebe”, which the fruit of a palm tree. Malians anticipate its arrival and love it when it comes in. Personally, I don’t care for it. It has a bitter taste and there is no real attraction to it that I can find. But they have donkey cart’s full of “sebe fruit” to sell. I wish them luck by saying a few blessings as I pass them on the road. During my ride, about half way I start to feel sick from something I am not sure about. It came pretty sudden with body aches and a head ache. Mentally I didn’t feel sick so I kept riding to town and told myself that later I would rest to pass it by. I am getting close to town when I look at my watch and notice that it’s close to 8am and I am still 15 minutes away from the bank, at least. My goal of being there before 8am is gone and I pedal faster to get there as soon as I can. Whizzing through town, people greeting me on all sides, passing donkey carts full of various items, motos approaching me from behind and in front of me, I set my sites on the bank through 20/20 tunnel vision. I arrive at the bank and no surprise, the bank is full with at least 40 people in front of me. Some are not in the bank though, they left there cards as place markers and went into town to do some other business and will return before they are called upon. Good thing is that if they are not present when the tellers calls their name, they are skipped, making the line go faster. But all I can do is put my card down, take a seat, bring out my reading material, and be patient knowing I will be in the bank for at least a hour. I am prepared, I’ve brought a book that I am about to finish so in the time I have at the bank , I can realistically finish it. The book is called The Wild Trees by Richard Preston. Its an account of the first exploration into the canopies of the redwoods in Northern California, home to the last groves of redwoods in the world. These trees are considered among the tallest trees in the world and some of the oldest living organisms in the world. It follows the story of a few botanist and arborists who are in search of the worlds tallest trees and their quest to find the ultimate tree, the king of the forest while discovering a vast and diverse micro climate 30 stories in the tops of these redwoods. If anyone has ever seen the redwood groves, you know how spectacular these trees are and how small we are compared to their size. If you haven’t seen them, take a trip up the 101 highway and you’ll be amazed at the size of these trees and how they are the last remaining remnants of what used to be the dominant tree species in the North American continent before climatic change and intensive logging reduced their size to only 1% of what their numbers used to be. They only grow in the North West, in sparse areas from Northern California to just inside Oregon. A wonderful book that I recommend special thanks to the person who sent it to me way back in December. You know who you are.

On my last page, I am called up to the teller. Perfect timing! Finished my book and now its my turn to do bank stuff. I am out in 2 minutes, feeling satisfied that I knocked out a book and that the major time consuming chore of the day is over. I head over to my friends house where we chat a little while before I take off to run a few more errands. I head over to Mali’s Department of Forestry, wanting to meet the director and to ask a few questions while leaving my name with him for future consideration on any work involving re-forestation of the surrounding areas. Basically to get acquainted with the Department and to offer my services. However, I just missed him so I will have to come back another day. Though I did meet his wife, wonderful woman. A gentle face with a warm smile, stout in stature with loads of hospitality, she answered all of my questions and was extremely helpful. I still wasn’t feeling well so she brought me some cold water to drink which soothed my aches and cooled my temperature from the heat. I bid farewell to Tabitha and headed back to my friends house where I slept for 4 hours to shake my ailments.

After my nap, I gathered my things because it was getting close to when I had to leave. My ride is at least 35 minutes so I want to be sure to beat the sun before it goes down. I said my good bye to my friend and headed to get some food before the ride. While picking up some water, I was approached by a man who spoke English as he greeted me. This is somewhat of a rarity so initially I was excited to greet him. Not much farther into our conversation, he said he wanted to show me something. Out of his satchel he pulled out a newsletter that looked very familiar. To my surprise, they were Jehovah’s Witness newsletters, “Awake” and “The Watchtower”. I am familiar with these from my time at college where the very same messengers would find you and talk to you about God’s message, handing you these newsletters to read while trying to entice you to come to their meetings. Come to find that this guy was from Nigeria and that he spoke English pretty well, well enough to convey the same message that I heard from others who where the same messengers in the states. We talked for some time but out of the corner of my eye I could see an ugly looking mass of cloud building behind me, not a good sign when I have a 12km bike ride ahead of me. I bid the man farewell and set off to ride back to my village, hoping to beat the coming storm.

I was pedaling hard and fast, still feeling under the weather, but wanting to get a good head start on the rain that was in count down mode on when it was going to arrive. Each time I rode a few hundred meters, I would look back to see where the cloud was and how much longer I had before I would be engulfed in it. This cloud had some serious teeth on it. Draped in rain, it was shadowed by a cloud of dust in front of it that was moving low and fast ready to blanket everything in its path with a layer of sub-Saharan dust. I was making good time by normal riding standards, but I could see that there was no way I was going to out ride this one. There was a window where I could beat it but my legs, not even Lance Armstrongs legs, could have beat what was coming. I got to the 8km marker when in from of me I could see things going south quickly. Trees, the sky in front of me, all turned into a wall of dust with the ground moving debris at 30/mph. I could see where the point of my entry into this zone of chaos would start and braced for impact. I had enough time to pull my shirt over my mouth and nose and say “here we go” before I felt the full brunt of a sudden sand storm. Then like that, I was bombarded with sand that pelted any exposed skin I left out. I had no goggles to protect my eyes and the best thing I could do was glance to one side to avoid a full frontal of sand on my face. The wind would slow my ride suddenly with every gust of wind no matter how hard I peddled. It wasn’t headwind that I was fighting but wind coming from all directions, swirling in all directions pulling me and pushing me at will. My vision was obscured as the cloud of dust got thicker every meter I rode deeper into it. It was a dust hell and all I wanted to do was get home and in doors before the rain came. That last 4km was grueling, one I wouldn’t like to repeat, but I finally made it home where closed all my windows and doors and passed out until it was time to eat dinner. Good news, hot season is over, rainy season has arrived. Halleluiah!!!!

Market Days

As my group and I approach our 1 year Anniversary in Mali, its a time of reflection on what we have experienced, emotions that first gripped us as we exited the plane in Bamako, the feeling of everything being way over our heads when we first set foot in home stay, the reality of my service the first day in site where i will spend 2 years in, the joys of new and exciting experiences, struggle with language, you know, everything I'm trying to sum up in a nut shell that in the end does no justice to 11 months in this beautiful country. I try and reminisce on everything but it's harder to do, at least specifically to each and every detail. Memories come in waves, there at the present that feel as if you are reliving it again only to pass while leaving its essence on the tip of your mind. To think of my service so far is almost a blur as time seemed to lap week after week. Someone once told me that "days are long but weeks are short". Never new how true that was until i started to be more involved in my village where time is only measured by the people you meet and grow with, enjoying times of work and good company as you chat about the day. Plus traveling around to meet up with other volunteers or trainings make time pass by as you finish one training only to come across another. But times where you appreciate how far you've come along in Mali are when you reflect on a simple experience and think about how you viewed it back when you first saw it. As we passed a market, a normal sized not-out-of-the-ordinary market, at first glace it is mayhem which we have grown accustomed to, just a market. But thinking about when we first arrived and reflect on the whole market experience, you pick out the ingredients that give the market its wild and unique character which always keeps you on your toes while enticing your intrigue at the same time.
You know when the market is coming to town. Buses upon buses arrive at the market place filled to the brim with people from all neighboring villages willing to transport their numerous goods for one full day of business and trade. Along with the merchants the buses are equally packed with the very goods they sell: Sandals and shoes of every kind, color, size, and material, some plastic and some leather, fruits and vegetables which vary depending on what is in season, clothes that are from such places as Good Will, Salvation Army, and companies equally as involved in second hand clothes that come from European countries. Plastic containers of all shapes and designs, electronics that are literally a dime a dozen, and fish that occupy a few rows in the market. How you can find this section you only need to follow your nose. When you enter, the throngs of people are gradual going in and going out. Some have beat the late rush and finished early getting only what they need before the rush comes in. You pass food vendors that sell plates of rice and sauce or snacks of different kinds that you nibble on through the market. The smell of oil being fried is overwhelming though and nauseating at first. You have fried sweet potatoes (great snack), fried flower dough balls called "pate", a french word, rice with peanut sauce or tomato sauce (not the Italian kind you think of when you get pasta), and "furufuru" which is rice cakes fried. As you can tell, oil is a stable substance in Mali that is incorporated with all kinds of food. Fruit is available, mangoes, papayas and bananas at the moment for your choosing. You browse through the food area and start to reach the edge of the market nucleus where the real market happens. Market jargon picks up in content and volume, people bargaining, men yelling at cart boys to help shuttle things through market, women being stern with their kids who help them sell things in market by walking around to sell stuff. Its a mesh of words that only a market can speak. Before entering, you must prepare for it because it is overwhelming. A lot of people and a language you are still grasping can distract you too easily and then you are at the mercy of the market, a good way to kill a day without really accomplishing what you want. So a list to stick to is a wise idea but of course, room for whatever comes your way allows freedom to experience the unplanned. So a hit list in your pocket, you travel through the isles, dodging people, walking and scanning each vendor at the same time. You, like driving a car, always keep one eye on the road because something could be heading your way. In this case, a motorcycle zig zagging through the isle. These isles are not wide by any means, about the width of a side walk. They honk and go about the pace of a person walking but still feel the need to weave through a packed isle comprised of old men, women, and kids. A hectic scene that still puzzles me on why you would drive a moto in the market. Carts that shuttle heavy items like sacks of millet and grain that reach over 100kg's bulldoze through isles. Its a wide cart that shows no mercy for feet and shins as it wedges through the crowd. While walking down isles you greet venders you've seen every week, the causal "hi, hows your family?, did you sleep well? and your market?", all normal conversations in market. It takes literally 30 seconds to greet the vendors your familiar with but a hundred greetings in a day and well, your exhausted. But greeting and meeting the vendors is wonderful because you get to know them, a little about where they come from and how they are. It brings me back to swap meets back home and how the best part of going to the swap meet was meeting the people there that showed up every weekend to sell what they had. They came from all demographics and all social backgrounds and just talking to them they would always have something to share with you. You didn't necessarily have to buy anything, it was all about greeting the person, Larry from Irvine with a wife and 2 kids, or Martha, who resided in the same place for 30 years. You meet these people and connect with them just by going to their place and saying "hi". Same goes in the Malian market as you have your "people" that you connect with in which you have built a loyalty to. Like Isetu Coulibaly who is a wonderful woman that makes street food to sell at the market. I like visiting her every day and just saying "hi", joking with her and seeing her warm smile is a great way to start the market. Walking around i try and get everything that is on the list. I try and chat with as many people i can but energy wears out and i then i bee line to what i need. The market is energy draining and there is only so much energy to keep me going. Before long, I have everything i need and make my exit, seeing Isetu before i hop on my bike and go back to site only to return next week to go back again.
As i walk through market, i think of the first time i went to market, actually to the first time i saw the market from the window of the bus. I thought about how crazy it looked, a maze of confusion which would take full advantage of me. Hesitation of the unknown would grip me at just the sight of the market. It was just a lot of things i didnt understand in a country that was much different from mine. Though with time i found that similarities are found if you look and let things come. The cross cultural experience isn't gained if you dont see for yourself. Everyday is a constant reminder of finding something new without the pre determined idea of what it could be. There are still many things i would like to see or experience but have been hesitant to come around to doing them. But there is still time and all i need to do is go with my instincts and let the experience come to me.