My return to Nafadji was not as epically terrifying as expected. I hitched a ride from the very nice people at the hospital in Saraya. The road was not quite as under water from the rainy season as I feared and my arrival was not as overwhelming either. Most people were at the fields when I got there and I was greeted with many hugs from my favorite kids. After about fifteen minutes working to get my door open that had expanded from the copious amounts of rain this rainy season, my entire family immediately came in and swept the dust and mouse poop that covered my hut. Again, my hut was pleasantly not the moldy science experiment I had expected. Note to self though- get a cat, mouse poop will hopefully stop showing up.
That evening I went around to greet everyone, letting everyone know of my arrival. My Peace Corps friends and counterpart did an excellent job of spreading the news of what happened to me, and most people knew what was up. Gossip travels quickly in a village of 800 people. Faster than high school maybe! Also it was not such a crazy thing that I was gone, because people randomly leave all the time and nobody ever knows when they are coming back. Mostly for work and such, often people disappear and when I ask about them they are just like ehhh they’ll come back eventually. That’s probably how they spoke about me.
So, I made a list of things that changed in America since I had last been there. This is a list of things that have changed since the rainy season tumbled upon the village of Nafadji:
- Starving season is over. There is a lot of food! Not delicious food, but more of it. Many families have gardens so there has been bits of vegetables finding themselves into my meals, which makes me giddy. There is also just a lot more of it. Including snacktimes of roasted corn at anytime I need! Note to self- introduce the idea of garlic and butter to family.
- My family has come into money. Not quite sure how. I do have a brother that went to work in Spain, but I am not sure that that brought in enough money for the following: Solar panels, a TV, a satellite and DVD player for the TV, and apparently my old, toothless chief of the village host dad who is always chewing on kola nuts and carrying around a machete for the fields is going to Mecca for the pilgrimage. The thought of him at the airport makes me giggle. So we have all of these things, and starving season is over, still not sure why the food is not so…good….
- Everyone is at the fields or the rice farrow all day long. The village becomes almost a ghost town during the day. The people who are left behind include moms with babies, lots of babies and old people. But school begins soon so students for the middle school are slowly trickling back in. Which sometimes makes me feel like I am a middle school student because I somehow end up sitting with 15 year olds for hours gossiping away. Hmm.
- My sister, Mansa, who I get along with best, got married. And now lives down the street. At first this stressed me out. A lot. At first. But then I realized that her compound is in a nice quiet place without kids pooping and screaming everywhere i.e.- new cool hang out and cooking spot! Mansa is fab. She has her nose pierced and wears cool beads in her hair. No wonder we get along so well even though we don’t speak the same language.
- Everyone has malaria. Somehow, even though everyone has mosquito nets, more people got malaria this rainy season than last. This makes me realize that you can give people tools to prevent disease, but the hardest part is getting them to change their ways and actually use these tools to prevent illness.
- We have a new middle school! Well, we just finished building it. And by building it I mean put up some bamboo fences and a “ceiling.” Photos to come. But it was exciting to see the community working together to build the middle school, and gives me hope for future projects of mine that I hope will involve people building slash cleaning things. I.e. the maternity ward. We also have a new principal of this middle school that seems enthusiastic about making the school the best it can be. I look forward to working with him.
It’s good to be back among the chilled-out Malinkes and begin to do what I came here to do while reading the Twilight books in between (like a drug. So bad, but cant stop reading…)
Nate Said:
on November 30, 2010 at 9:33 am
Glad you had a great Sallah (as we call it here in Nigeria).