Nh Blog

Saturday

Sun, 5 Sep 2010 17:26:02 +0000

Saturday began normal enough, dragging myself out of bed. I took my vitamins, had a yogurt, put on some music to pump myself up. It is far too easy to get wrapped up in chores and little house projects that I have to really get myself psyched up to leave the house and venture out into the crazy Bamako traffic. I sit in the car, waiting for the guard to open the gate, and tell myself, “I can do this.” I told myself today was the day I would find the grocery store. But without a map, and nothing but my hopeful memory to guide me, I set out.

Roads were closed, I took at least a couple wrong turns. But I made it. My heart didn’t stop racing until I made it home again. I thought, what would happen if I made it to the grocery store and couldn’t get back? There was no answer.

In the late afternoon I met up with the Country Rep. I let him drive. I had nearly been stuck in mud minutes earlier trying to meet him and my nerves were shot. We drove all over town looking for a pharmacy. He didn’t want to return to the states without something for malaria in case he got it. Eventually we stopped for tea and waited for another colleague to meet us. We sat outdoors, drinking tea in the heat and looking at all the traffic. I didn’t want to discuss work. I asked him how Mali compared to the other West African countries he’s been to (he’s been to almost all of them and spent at least 10 years in WA). He said, “Bamako is not beautiful. No, it is not easy to fall in love with this place. It is dirty, and there is awful traffic. But I expect with time it grows on you.” I nodded, and listened to him talk of his favorite places. I sipped my tea with lemon and imagined the day when I really love this place. I told him about Cameroon and the mountains in Ndop. He said he’d like to see that.

That evening we went to my supervisor’s house for dinner. Children were everywhere. These are mine, he said, putting his hand on their heads to identify his own children. They each took turns telling us their names. His wife, the only one in the house observing Ramadan, had probably spent a good bit of the day preparing our meal, a meal better suited to feed 20 than 3. We listened to Malian music and flipped through wedding photos. When his wife (second wife to be exact, following the divorce of his first) brought out the food, we took our places on a blanket on the floor. We had salad and a cereal smaller than couscous “infused with peanut vapor” and onion with fish sauce. It was pretty good, but I’m a fan of most of the peanut sauces here. He told me, “For Ramadan, you will come to my house.” I said “Ok, are you going to kill something?” “Yes,” he said, “a sheep.” “Hmm..as long as I don’t have to kill it,” I said.

The work-life balance

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:45:34 +0000

It was before my home leave that I was dropping off a friend who works with me at her hotel, as she was getting out of the car I yelled, “Next time when you come, hopefully I’ll have a life and show you around!” She laughed, “Yeah, and when I get a life, I will show you Sevare!” She had come to Mali nearly three months before me, but at that time had still not moved out of a hotel.

I find myself thinking about this joke from time to time. How does one build a life from scratch in a new place? And the question I’ve had nearly my entire life: what makes a place a home? Sure, I do this every time I move and it’s been quite a few times now. It doesn’t get any easier, especially when work demands so much of my time. This week I was working to meet a deadline. Thursday I worked until 2am and was at work again by 7.30am. At the same time I was juggling meeting the Regional Director for West Africa for the first time and the new Country Representative for Mali, who will come on-board in January.

I did meet my deadline, and the good news is we were approved after the internal competition to develop the full $20 million proposal. The work will continue just till Oct.15. Round 1 is over and now the tougher work begins.

In any case, it was after working late and feeling thoroughly exhausted and pleading with a dog that wouldn’t come out from under the car so I could leave for work that I thought how hard it is to create a life when I spend all my time working.

By Friday, I suddenly found myself signed up for a trip to Mopti that I hadn’t planned to make. Friday afternoon the CR had the HoP (my supervisor/Malien) drive us around Bamako to see different areas and help me get a sense of some main landmarks. It was nice to have someone actually show me around, although I can’t say I will be able to find any of the places we went on my own anytime soon. Saturday at 4.30am the driver arrived at my house to take me to the airport. The flight to Mopti is one hour versus 9+ hours driving. After dropping our bags at the hotel we went directly to the office to meet everyone and have a small staff meeting. In the afternoon, the CR wanted to see the town and we ended up going on a boat on the Niger river (photos to follow when I return to Bamako). We spent two hours being tourists and riding in a handmade boat. It was nice having someone force me to step back and think of this place not in terms of work.

How do I make time for the life I want?

Sevare is a few kilometers outside of Mopti and seems more like a village than a town. Life is slow-paced, the roads are wide and traffic non-existent. In many places the dirt roads are flooded and bulls (or whatever they are) cross just in front of the car. The motions of life remind me of Ndop in Cameroon. Without knowing it, I needed this trip. I needed the boat ride, the small talk about things other than work. I needed to get away from the Bamako traffic and the stubborn dog.

This afternoon we will visit some artisanal centers and meet up with a colleague for dinner. I will spend the next few days here meeting people and visiting our projects before heading back to full-time proposal development in Bamako. I’m already wondering when my next trip will be.

A bit lost

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:50:18 +0000

Monday started well when in the morning I had an impromptu meeting with the two available technical staff and it ended up lasting most of the day. I facilitated the discussion and asked questions to get them to align their hopes with the requirements for the proposal. And somewhere in there I realized I really love my job, and I’m not bad at it either.

The productiveness of Monday wore off quickly. Friday, just before leaving for the day, we discussed going for another award from USAID, to support lower secondary education. The work is even greater for USAID proposals, and the deadline would be earlier than the USDA one we are currently working on. $20 million USD.

By the weekend I’d become distracted by other things outside of work. A good friend from home was hurting and I felt helpless to do anything. The situation was too familiar for me. I was far removed, but it still felt like someone was picking the scab of a wound I thought had healed.

I feel like I am straddling two realities, the one that continues without me at home and the one I live in on a daily basis. Add to that a past that can’t help intruding on the present, and a future that with each day gets a little murkier. Not that I that I am not optimistic about the future, but it is hard knowing in two years I will likely be moving again and that I have two years to figure out where I should be moving on to.

Thursday night I had dinner with a coworker who works in the suboffice. She was just filling in for someone and had to be in Bamako. As we were talking I realized that Mali is burning staff out. Not just in general, not just to move on to another country, Mali is burning staff out of development and living overseas altogether. Two staff have already returned to the US to find new careers and it seems another may be on the way shortly. It put a heavy feeling in my stomach. In two years, will I feel that way?

I’m having a hard time staying present to where I am and what is happening. I feel like I’m losing my sense of what is real. Things that seemed real can disappear with an email. I think about this time when I met a guy at a café in the U.S. to discuss Mali. I was talking about something and he suddenly interrupted me and said, “you are really out of it, aren’t you?” I sat there with my jaw hanging open. I was a bit insulted, but maybe he was right after all. Maybe I am really out of it.

More photos...

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 16:58:55 +0000

More photos of the house added under the album “House and dog.”
And some more of driving around Bamako...

Sunglasses anyone? As you come up the ramp for the highway, there are people selling sunglasses. Starting to run from the rain...

Bad visibility.

Where did the Niger river go? Crossing it on the bridge.

Traffic

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:29:37 +0000

I have a ridiculous life. I know this. Sometimes things feel more ridiculous than normal. This week it feels like I have had a lot of traffic moments where another person, or a more disgruntled version of myself, might have been angry at the ridiculous situations I witnessed or took part in, where instead I just found myself laughing out loud.

For example...there has been a road that was closed that is one way for me to get from my house to work. It opened this week and I watched it for a few days before trying it out. One morning I went that way and realized the roads were much better than navigating a muddy potholed half-dirt half-concrete road. The very next day I decided to go the same way. Only this time, the road was closed. I saw a taxi turn down a small path and a couple other cars follow. I wondered if they knew a shortcut. I followed. We ended up in this large area that looked like you could make it back to the main road. The only problem was that in fact both sides were blocked off, and there was a median. This was all compounded by tens of motos and cars following us into this area with no way out and no way of easily turning around. I tried to turn around in what must have been a 10 point turn and watched the cars continue to flow into this dead end. I waited for a moto to pass and laughed. The police had blocked the main road but not the road to the other blocked off area, causing everyone to get trapped. Eventually, I made it out.

More traffic-related incidents include waiting to cross an intersection where there are two lanes. I sit there waiting for the light to turn. As the minutes pass, I notice a third lane forming. There is no third lane. Add about 20+ motos weaving in between the cars. The longer you wait, the more motos come. I imagine my dad driving in Mexico, panicking about a couple well organized lanes of traffic. The light turns green. 3 lanes will become 2 and somehow no motos will fall or die. I laugh to myself as I slowly start forward. It will be okay.

Today I was driving across the new bridge that crosses the Niger river. The rain started and was exactly the kind of torrential, tropical, rainy-season-rain you might dream up. The pounding of the rain was loud against the car and so dense it restricted visibility. As I crossed the bridge I couldn’t even see the Niger river. What I did see, however, was a woman wearing heels (but no raincoat) driving her moto across that bridge in the pouring rain. I didn’t know if I should be impressed or scared. I wished I had my camera.