Is That A "Tubab" in Your Pocket...

Delayed in Sikasso until further notice...

...or at least until Tuesday, after the Fete du Ramadan this Sunday. Turns out that our planned ride to Blendio today was going to be way too expensive, so we forfeited our ride for the cheaper "grande voiture" leaving for Blendio on Tuesday. That means another 3 days in the land of "plenty of food"! Seriously, Michele and I eat so well whenever we come into Sikasso: the first night was steak, Mexican food the second night, third night was hamburgers (with fries and an egg inside the bun), and tonight is looking like it is going to be fried rice, egg rolls, and (drum roll, please) I bought a nice giant juicy pineapple today for only a keme (500 CFA = roughly one dollar).


So yeah, the reason I am on the internet today is this: Michele and I set up a post office box in Niena and we forgot to give everyone the address. The address we formerly posted is still good, but our stuff will be sent to the Peace Corps Bureau in Bamako (6 hours away). Our new address (which should be good for the 2 years here) is this:

Tim Maher or Michele Scarbrough, PCV
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 35
Niena, Mali
West Africa

Today is the infamous market day in Sikasso, so streets that once comfortably fit 2 car widths and a little extra room for pedestrians have been reduced to single file lines and lots of zigging and zagging between donkeys, children, and women balancing unlogical amounts of fragile item stacked high on their heads. (Seriously, I promise I am going to get a few photos of the women doing this, it really is a sight to see - just today I saw a young woman walking down the road with a watermelon atop her head - flat bottom baskets on a head are one thing, but a round watermelon! The women here regularly defy gravity!)

I think I am really starting to get used to life in Mali as weird as it seems to say that. I don't feel quite as "Tubab" as I did when I first got here. "Tubab" is the word that the children in the streets here yell out in chorus as you pass by them - it means "French" in Bambaran since people here assume you are French if you are a white person in West Africa; they also use the word to mean anyone who is not black - it is an odd querk of the language here, "farafina" literally means "black skinned" but is the word they use for "Africa". "Farajen" literally means "white skinned" but is the word they use for everywhere except Africa. According to the Bambaran language, there is Africa and then there is everywhere else - so Michele and I are called "Tubabs" by the children here.
Anyways, I was saying I don't feel quite as much like a Tubab here because I am comfortable navigating my way through the markets haggling for prices. I seem to impress a significant percentage of the people here by speaking with them in Bambaran instead of French; so many adults here get so excited when a foreigner will actually speak to them in their native tongue. I'll ask how much a kilo of beef is and when they say "un mille cinq cent" (1,500 CFA in French) I will reply "Ayi! A barika. keme fila ni bi-duuru" (1,250 CFA in Bambara) they are usually so impressed and caught off guard that they will give me a good price for it.