For lunch today, I had rice with fish sauce. Ugh. I saw the stupid chickens running around the concession. So, I told my dad that in America, people eat a lot of chicken. They laughed, as they always do whenever I say anything, but I was determined to get some chicken! The dugutigi (dad) then proceeded to point at a chicken and motioned that he was going to kill it for me tommorrow! Mission accomplished.
Tonight, I watched the planes go by and I wondered where they were going and if they knew that they were flying over Mali? Over this past month, I have seen a lot, but not everything and somethings I hope I never see, like snakes! As we make our trips to Bamako, I look at the world outside my window and I see so much lacking in infrastructure, in efficiency and tonight I felt hopelessness for Mali's economical state. I've learned that so much is imported in and geographically, Mali is landlocked and this makes it difficult and expensive to transport things in and out of country. And I see the abundance of donkey carts and lack of semitrucks and wonder, if things will ever change, especially in a nation with the highest illiteracy rate. Everything moves so slowly here, food production, the most popularly held occupation in Mali, is so inefficient. I think part of it is that the people don't know any other way to do things (back to the lack of literate people). I never realized how many things we do by machine. Machines are awesome! But I appreciate the way Malians do things and if they want to continue to remain the same, then I am most definitely willing to help them in whatever capacity I can, once I learn more Bambara.
Does that get annoying/old having them laugh whenever you say something or do you just view it as a cultural habit that you have to adjust to?
ReplyDeleteIt's fine. I laugh along with them, but I don't think I would laugh at them if it was the other way around.
ReplyDelete