K'an ben... kofe?

About a month ago now I went back to visit the village that I lived in from Sept. 2008- Oct. 2009. I tried to contact people ahead of time, but the cell phone reception is so unreliable there that I wasn't able to. Basically, I just popped back into their lives out of nowhere after quite a long time.

The house that they had built for me was still standing, and also in good condition because the school teacher is living there. Oumou Fofana and her one year old son, Papa, took me in for four days in the house I used to live in. The health clinic (CSCOM) is across the street, and I had been looking forward to spending time with the pharmacist (Serenthe Sidibe) and her family. Unfortunately, I had chosen a week when she and her daughters had left to visit her family back in Senegal. I was glad that I at least got to see her husband and my little five-year-old best friend, Bani.

The new doctor of the CSCOM was immediately annoyed with me that I did not come to spend the entire rainy season working in the village. His vocal sense of entitlement to my time and attention in turn raises the hairs on my neck.

I visited the chief of the village, Sekikolo Coulibaly. He received me as warmly as ever, joking with me and teasing me. I had come bearing gifts, and I have learned that I am to give them to him to parcel out to his enormous family. Over four days, we spent many hours sitting in his room on his wooden bed talking. I would never have felt comfortable in a similar situation with pretty much any other man here, but Sekikolo has demonstrated that he respects and cares about me like family. I was feeling brave one day, and I broached the subject of HIV/AIDS. I was surprised by how much factually correct information he knew. We talked about condoms and abstinence, but his best solution/recommendation in the end was monogamy- "one woman, one man." This was interesting to me, because he himself has five wives, which is one more than technically allowed by Islamic statues. I know that he had to marry his last wife because his older brother died, leaving her a widow. I wonder if he had had a real choice culturally how many wives he would have taken. I'm just glad that information has filtered out to this little village, and that people are starting to open up about talking about HIV/AIDS.

Very much related to this, I visited my friend Bakoro Coulibaly. She is an older woman who is very on involved in community life. I feel extremely comfortable at her house with her family, and she needs little excuse to sing and/or dance.

She was a pivotal player in the projects I did with the Health Committee in the village, and since I have been gone she had been chosen by an NGO to receive further training in the health subjects of family planning and HIV/AIDS. Her face lit up as she told me what she had learned about how reproduction works and how (biologically) babies are made.  I asked her, "You never knew how babies were made before this training?" and she, a woman in her fifties, shook her head. She enjoys learning, and she is respected enough in the community to broach sensitive subjects. She took me in her house to show me a wooden trunk full of birth-control pill packs and condoms that were given to her to sell in the village. I praised her up and down and encouraged her as well as my Bambara would allow. I am being replaced in this village by a new volunteer in September, and I have designated Bakoro as his/her work counterpart. I am delighted that women are being given information that can help them make decisions in their own interest about their bodies and their lives.

I did two Neem Cream demonstrations while I was there: one with the women of the Health Committee, and the other with the staff of the CSCOM.

I wanted to have a "State of the Union" meeting with the entire Health Committee, but there were marriages the whole time and many people would have been unable to attend. I talked to many of the committee members to prepare them for the idea of having a new volunteer- stressing that the new volunteer will need friends to help them adjust and learn. I was the first volunteer, and I sincerely believe that the next volunteer will have a much better experience. My time there was not perfect by any means, but I did identify a group of people to work with (Health Committee) and a much better homologue than the one I was assigned (Bakoro!).

As my time comes to an end, I am feeling very philosophical about my two years here. It will take me a while to process my experience and identify the ways in which I have changed. I am looking forward to having the people who know me well back in the US walk with me through that. Please be patient as I stumble my way through trying to articulate my thoughts and feelings. After having met a group of RPCVs (returned Peace Corps volunteers) who have traveled back to Mali, I wonder whether I will end up here again someday.

Also, the group of Peace Corps volunteers that I've bonded with and relied on for the last two years is slowly trickling its way out of the country over the next few months. It's strange to know that our experiences are so closely tied together, but I may never see many of them again. I will miss you guys, and I look forward to seeing where life takes you.