Return of the Nonnative: Jake Back in Mali

With apologies to those of you who have somehow been left out of the comings and goings of my life as of late, I assume most of you know that I've found my way back to Mali, my old country of residence from 2008 to 2010.  And for those of you who didn't know this, and are right now going through tremendous surprise and shock, well…whoops…I probably should have told you to sit down for this.  Not the kind of blast-in-the-brain you wanted to get while reading your iPad on a crowded subway on the way to work, is it?

But now that you've had a chance to recover, and for the rest of you who already knew about this, I should probably take this time to explain myself a bit.  As you may have gathered from knowing me personally, or reading my previous tactlessly-honest blog posts, I've been in a bit of a directionless state for a while.  I finished the Peace Corps in Mali in 2010, was home by October of that year, looking for jobs a few months later, with not the kind of success I had hoped for.  It was then that I was invited by an old and dear friend to come along on a WWOOFing adventure with another of his old and dear friends, who would soon become a new and dear friend of mine. (When I was much younger, people would talk about "dear friends" and I would somehow decide they meant Bambi, the only friendly deer I knew of – and now you know even more about me!)

Over the course of my hard-working, exciting, and emotionally profitable adventure, I began to realize that I needed to sit my brain down and have a talk with it.  You know, really figure out what it wanted from me, where it wanted me to go, in a way that would be productive for the safety, well-being, and longevity of the rest of me.  My Id, Ego, and Superego thought they needed a heart-to-heart with my gut feelings.  WWOOFing-buddy Matt noted at a later point that he had noticed that I was often talking about trying to figure out what's next in my life, with no satisfied answer, but that I often spoke with mirth and fondness of my time in Mali, and he had sort of assumed that at some point in the near future, I would make my way back there.  And I had planned to…at some point, though not necessarily knowing when.  But the more I began to look at the prospect of coming home from my trip and having to start from scratch with the job searches and whatnot, I realized that more than any other specific thing, I just wanted to get back into the world of international development and intrigue, and what better place than the place where it all started for me, the land I grew to love, Mali.

Of course, due credit goes to Karmen, my old site-mate, "travel-wife" (so shady characters would leave her alone on our frequent cross-country bus trips), and good friend.  She gave me the extra push of confidence I needed, not to mention advice, for how to go about applying to Peace Corps Response, a program for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers to go back into service to fill immediate and specific needs by host organizations.  I sent emails to our PC/Mali Country Director, applied online (PC headquarters never actually got my application, though, but with the strength of the CD's recommendation, they figured it didn't really matter anyway), and was accepted to work for what I lovingly call the Malian House of Pancakes (MHOP - they're actually called Mali Health Organizing Project).  Washington HQ was actually somewhat vague as to the nature of the work I would be doing there – mainly, I suspect, because of a previous negative experience with a PCV which didn't work out – and with rising Tuareg Rebel tensions in the Northern desert areas of the country, and a last-minute tonsillectomy, I actually began to worry that this plan might not materialize after all.  But my departure date came, and after 10 hours of waiting in airports, 15 hours sitting in airplanes, two sunsets, five in-flight movies (I recommend "50/50" and "The Ides of March," but was disappointed by "Horrible Bosses"), I arrived back into the fresh, balmy, night air of Bamako International Airport, just like I did three and a half years ago, and I felt mighty nice!

I guess the next question is "So Jake, what are you doing in Mali this time?"  The answer is: I don't really know enough to have anything worth telling you quite yet.  I only just met with the organization on Thursday, and I don't begin work until Monday.  If you want to know what MHOP does, you should go to malihealth.org and they will tell you all about what they do, and what I will be a part of.

As for where I'm doing it, well it's a far cry from the rural village I found myself in last time – though not quite as far as I pictured it might be.  I'm in Bamako, the capital city, but not quite in the city proper.  It's more like on the outskirts, or peri-urban neighborhood, as it's been described.  It's got the business, noise, and congestion of the city but without the amenities like nice houses, or electricity or running water in every home.  I'm actually fairly happy with where I'm set up, despite being way on the other side of town from the PC bureau, transit house, and most direct and easily accessible PC contact.  In fact, the taxi ride across town to PC territory costs about half as much as a bus from Kita, one of the nearby transit houses back when I was a normal volunteer, several hours outside the city.

But this time, my walls and roofs are cement, not mud and thatched bamboo, there's electricity, I have an indoor toilet/bathroom so I can use the commode in comfort, in any weather – but no indoor running water, so I'll still have to wait for the water delivery boy to come by every day (just like the Milk Man in the olden days!).  And let's not forget the lovely sunrise view outside my window.

I'm right near a large local market, and not too far from the Westerner-friendly supermarkets and restaurants, if I feel like splurging my meager PC stipend (or I could save up for a fridge…).  And while this neighborhood, Sikoroni (or Sikoron as the locals call it, the "ni" suffix being considered diminutive), is not the quaint, slow-paced, and relaxing village Niantanso was for me for two years, I've been told that the old village mentality this area had before it was developed into a Bamako suburb is still somewhat intact.  They still have unpaved roads, the neighbors are characteristically delightful and adorable, there's a few good climbing hills nearby for great vistas of the city, and best of all, they speak Bambara!  Not Niantanso's bee-stung-tounge dialect of Bambara, locally called Maningakhan, where every name sounds like something somebody belched (M'badjala, Djadjei) and even Malians from other parts of the country can't understand a word the old ladies say, but real, straightforward, simple Bambara, a language as easy to say and learn as its own names (Fanta, Mamadou).  And while most of the people I knew when I was still in Mali are gone, with a few fantastic exceptions, that just means there are that many more new people to meet.

So the lesson for the day is that while things are not quite as I thought they would be, that's part of the fun of living and working in Mali, and knowing that every day will be rife with strange and novel experiences, waiting to be enjoyed.  And for now, I feel like I'm on something resembling the right track.  Of course, work doesn't start until Monday...