Family Visit: Impressions from a Mom

*For two and a half weeks, I travelled through Ghana and Mali with my Mom, Dad and little sister Rena. I asked Mom to write a special edition of my blog with an outsider's perspective of the West Africa Peace Corps experience. Here it is.*

Jacob met his mother, father and sister in Ghana for a 10-day tour with driver and guide. Therein lay the first adjustment for Jacob, who was used to interacting with people on the African street, not as an observer driving in a vehicle to selected sites. We were definitely tourists. The second major adjustment was staying in upscale hotels with great buffets. This proved fortuitous for me, as it was an easy transition to the local diet (more on this later).

Jacob's friend Dave called Ghana "Africa for Beginners" - an easy first introduction. Here are some impressions:
- Cities teeming with crowded markets, women carrying bundles of every shape and size on their heads, and babies tied to their backs with a length of fabric
- Colorful African fabrics, including prints of Obama's portrait on clothing
- Every imaginable product displayed and sold on the street, from produce and dresses to sofas, auto parts and appliances
- Vendors coming up to the car window to sell their wares (you never have to leave your car to buy groceries!)
- Businesses with names like "Holy Be Thy Name Electronics" or "In God We Trust Beauty Supplies" in this religiously Christian country
- Stopping for fresh coconuts, cut open by boys with machetes on the side of the road
- Rural villages lining the roads, with cement huts and corrugated metal roofs
- Crowded fishing villages where the fishermen repair nets and row out in dugout canoes, and the wives grill or smoke fish along the side of the road
- Life lived out of doors; naked little boys playing soccer on the beach
- Open sewers with brackish water that cannot handle the mountains of trash
- The most memorable sites, the slave trade castles, impressed us with the magnitude of this horror (incredibly only 2% sent to the US, the numbers are staggering)
- And a personal favorite, watching the take-off at dusk from trees lining Accra, MILLIONS of bats flying out from their daytime lairs to feed during the night.

Rena and I returned to Mali with Jacob, leaving the lush coastal greenery for the drier Sub-Saharah, browner, more rural once out of the capital. A couple of important contrasts with Ghana:
- Population is Moslem, more conservative and somewhat secular; few women in jeans
- French is the official language, and I delighted in pulling out my high school vocabulary to order a bottle of water
- Villages of round mud huts, using mud bricks or straw, and thatched roofs so much more attractive (but less durable and cheaper) than the corrugated metals
- Dust is pervasive, often choking us on these dry dirt roads; we wash our feet frequently and can quickly detect the dusty odor on our clothes.

The day after our arrival in Mali, we headed to Jacob's village, Niantanso, home to 1,000 - 2,000 villagers, a school, hospital, mayor's office and fields. No electricity, running water, or cell phone / internet connection. Life at its simplest. Here is a sample of our day:

- Arrival is a big hit, we are instant celebrities as crowds gather with endless greetings and smiles from this attractive people
- Children are mesmerized, especially by Rena who quickly teaches hand games and hopscotch; they are adorable; dress varies from clean, pretty outfits to rags
- Enough space is cleared in the mud hut for our strangely incongruous suitcases, a large foam mattress was borrowed, and we laid out our sleeping bags
- A drum circle of 4 drummers parades into Jacob's compound, and we are given seats of honor during the drumming while women danced, drawing us to dance with them - the crowd grew so large, they brought down the roof of the kitchen porch - literally
- For our meals with the host family, we were lucky to have a family bowl for washing and for eating (with hands or wooden spoons), eating millet with peanut sauce
- We learned to squat and to wash from a water kettle
- We went to bed exhausted and listened to the nighttime sounds of crickets, sheep mewing, donkeys braying loudly outside the door, monkey's occasional whimpers, rooster crowing from 4:00 am, women pounding the day's millet by 6:00 am
- Next day, we accompanied the women to the field for the peanut harvest, learning to shake the chaff from the nuts (a good physics lesson); later watched the men threshing millet at distant fields while we joined them for a midday meal
- Visits in the village to distribute the gifts we brought to Jacob's friends and host family; we also gave pens to the children, who are not permitted to attend school without one
- A visit with the mayor in his yard; he said even if Jacob left tomorrow, he would have still accomplished a greater understanding of Americans by Malians, and of Mali by American visitors like ourselves
- A special honor was an evening concert in our yard by the local Griot (musician / storyteller) and 4 women who sang about Jacob's African namesakes (Ablaye Dembele).

A final word about getting sick in the village: Within 36 hours of our arrival in the village, I was incapacitated by the common travelers scourge and was unable to eat or drink or hold down the medicines I had brought. We were advised not to use the village hospital. How could I tolerate the tortuous 7-hour bus ride back to Bamako? Here is what we did.
- Jacob rode his bike an hour to get cell phone reception and call the Peace Corps doctor to describe the symptoms and ask advice
- Additional medicines were recommended, not available in the villages
- A villager with a motorcycle was prevailed upon to make the 3-hour round-trip to the closest town to purchase medicine
- By the 3rd day, my symptoms were controlled

Next morning, we packed to await transport, which was filled, but took us on when Jacob and Rena offered to climb on the roof and travel with the luggage. It worked!

Visiting the village quickly became like a parallel universe of a simple idealized lifestyle without all the STUFF (junk mail, email messages, schedules, etc, etc), but also too easily romanticized. The poverty is rampant and many families stuggle to make it from one harvest to the next. Water resources are failing, and waste management does not exist. Although we adapted surprisingly well to the rudiments of village life, we welcomed our return to a soft hotel bed, clean toilet, and restaurant fare. Peace Corps volunteers often report few changes resulting from their many projects. On the other hand, the mayor's comment reflected the fulfillment of Peace Corps goals #2 & #3 - no small thing.