Copine versus Copain...

Hey all!

So, the last week has been somewhat uneventful as far as school and family life goes but I have been able to enjoy some other cool activities with my friends.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I joined my friends’ tea circle with their friends from the neighborhood. Their friends are a group of young, male African best friends who have been partaking in the tea circle since they were old enough to be permitted to do so. Two of my friends have brothers in the circle and a girl in my group is dating one of the group members so obviously the three of my friends were welcomed into the group with open arms. One of my friends invited me to join the circle to enjoy some of Mali’s infamous shots of tea and although I had no direct connection to any African in the group, God blessed me with uniquely voluptuous hair that Africans love… lucky for me! Even though I have been to tea circles before and enjoyed the ritual that takes place when drinking their three strong shots of tea, my family does not participate in tea making. Thus, I do not enjoy it on a regular basis at my house and saw the opportunity to hang out in their circle as a great opportunity. Because Momma Tante (my host mom) believes in locking our house door early on school nights, I was only able to stay and hang out in the circle until a little after 10pm. Yes, I found this very annoying but no, I did not want to call and wake her up to reopen the door for me so I only made it through one round of tea before I had to hurry home. I found it sad that I was unable to make it to the last, and by the far best tasting, shot of tea but having the opportunity to observe this group of best friends, or band of brothers, was an experience in and of itself. It reminded me of home… and was refreshing and touching to see that cross-culturally, boys will be boys and the bond that develops between them over time spans seas, cultures, and standards of living. To explain a little further the Malian process of tea making, let me start with the supplies they use… they have two small tea pots (always royal blue in color for some reason), a cone shaped bowl for the coals, and a platter of small shots glasses. (Please see facebook for photos) They heat an even ratio of water and sugar in the little tea pots and add the right amount of very strong (usually Chinese or Arabic) tea. After the tea has come to a boil, they aerate the tea by pouring it into the shot glasses from a very high distance in the air and then pouring the shots back into the tea pot. They repeat this process over and over again, then reheat the tea and repeat the entire process several more times. Although there is obviously some art form to the creation of a perfect shot of tea, it is completely lost on me. Eventually, the tea has aerated and heated for a long enough time that they begin pouring out small shots that you drink by slurping VERY loudly. In fact, the louder, the better. This entire process is repeated two more times but each time the tea gets effectively less strong and thus much better tasting. When I first got to Mali, taking the shots of tea was a chore. I did it grudgingly because it is an honor to be offered tea and irrationally rude to refuse it but now I find that I actually enjoy the tea very much and look forward to any tea circle in which I am able to participate.

I have been up to some other cool stuff including (but not limited to, of course!): going to a traditional African wedding, going out to see live music, doing a project on ‘restaurants’ in Bamako (leading me to eat at a sketchy Senegalese hole-in-the-wall and from street vendors), tie and dying fabric (two little sisters might be getting a pretty cool gift…), and going to my main professors house for an awesome lunch with my class. I also had the pleasure this week of eating day old sheep brains for breakfast served in a sauce that tasted like vomit… although this did not seem like a high point when one of the servants brought it to me, I was able to turn ‘terrible’ into ‘fantastic’. I ate alone, allowing me to only eat the bread with which they served the brains. Then, I tactfully carried my own dishes out back to the kitchen area handing the bowl off to one of the servants. I then explained to them that I was full and if they wanted them, the brains were ALL theirs. Sheep brains are a delicacy here so imagine my two servants’ shock when I presented them with this ‘treat’. Not only did I avoid eating sheep brains and give my two servants a nutritious treat, I fell into their good graces… they washed all of my clothes FIRST and then folded them and laid them into neat organized piles onto my bed. Now that is what I call a win, win, win situation!

Okay, funny story time. Disclaimer, neither of these stories are about me but two of my classmates instead… I prefer not to publically humiliate myself TOO often but they don’t have a choice because it is my blog, so enjoy!

1. (**For purpose of telling this story I will refer to my friend as ‘guy friend’ and the other guy as ‘the kid’. Also, the entire language portion of this story obviously originally happened in French) After lunch at my professor Modibo’s house on Saturday afternoon, most of my class had left the party but one of my friends had stayed behind. He was sitting and talking to some kid who then asked him to go upstairs to the roof. Because my class had ventured up to the roof earlier that afternoon (the view was incredible), guy friend didn’t think anything strange of it and followed the kid upstairs to continue the conversation. When it was just the two of them alone on the roof, the kid proceeded to compliment guy friend’s full belly and large patch of ‘manly’ chest hair. The kid then asked guy friend if he had a girlfriend to which my friend answered “no, but I used to.” Then, the kid used a word that guy friend didn’t know but through context clues and some explanation, guy friend realized the kid was asking to make-out with him. Now, guy friend is kind of freaking out at this point but because homosexuality is SO rare, hidden, and forbidden in Mali, guy friend thought the kid HAD to be joking. After adamantly saying “NO!” and gesturing through any language barrier, the kid reached his hand around the back of guy friend’s neck and pulled him in for a make-out session. My very straight guy friend quickly realized the situation was no joke. He rattled off as many French phrases he could think of as fast as he could and high tailed himself out of the situation… super confused and very narrowly missing a kiss from a Malian male. Life lesson learned… learn the slight difference between the words BOYfriend and GIRLfriend in French, one small letter can change SO much.
2. (**For purpose of telling this story I will refer to my friend as ‘girl friend’) This weekend girl friend wasn’t feeling very well so she decided to go for a run to de-tox her body. While on the run, her stomach kept progressively hurting more and more but because a random African man had joined her on her run, she didn’t want to stop. Eventually, the pains got so bad she knew she had to stop and go home so she could use the restroom. Unfortunately, she was still at least 15 minutes from home and walking with the “stage-5” African “clinger” when the pains kicked into high gear and moved from stomach pains to massive diarrhea. If it hadn’t been for the new friend she was making, she could have secretly squatted in a secluded spot to do her nasty business but he literally wouldn’t leave her side… leaving her no choice, because she couldn’t hold it in… she literally shit herself while walking home. After a while the man left, (she assumes because of the smell) but because she had already pooped so much in her shorts she figured she better go ahead and hurry home. The best part? She had to walk holding the bottom of her shorts tight to her legs for fear that the massive amount of runny poop would start running down her legs. Two life lessons were learned here… first, don’t go running when your stomach hurts and two, if you do go… run at night so no one can see the diarrhea run down your legs.


Lastly, I had been told that there were many strange spelling mistakes in my previous posts. For example, I continually spell the word ‘terrible’ incorrectly. Finding this strange because I do in fact know how to spell the word ‘terrible’, I looked up the settings on my Microsoft Word only to find that I changed most of my grammatical settings to ‘French’ instead of ‘English’. Because I go between the two languages when typing papers, etc., I must have changed some of the settings to help me when I was typing in ‘French’ and obviously forgot to change them back when I started typing in ‘English’. For those of you fearing the legitimacy of my college education let me reassure you that I do in fact know how to spell (although, truthfully not very well) and it is the ‘auto-correct’ function in Microsoft Word that changes the spelling of some of my words. Don’t let this little fun fact restore too much of your faith in me… I am not smart enough to figure out how to change it back so it might stay this way for a while. Sorry!

That is all the updates I have from last week. I can’t write everything on the blog or else I will have nothing left to share with everyone when I get back to the US! I can’t wait to get home and have lists full of questions waiting for me… I have an entire journal FULL of stories that didn’t make the blog that I will be dying to share. Life is still great and at this point I am about halfway through with this first semester abroad. Love and miss you all! Hopefully I will be able to post again before I leave for a 10 day excursion with my class next Wednesday. If not, look forward to an incredibly long post upon my return.

Love, Sarah