N'toho ye Awa Kouloubali de ye

N’toho ye Awa Kouloubali de ye

My name is now Awa Kouloubali and I live in a village called Karamoho So which means house of the teacher in Bambara.  The village is mainly Bambara although there are also Wolof and Pulaar speakers as well.  One of the more difficult things that I have experienced during this past week is not knowing the difference between Bambara and Wolof when it is spoken in my family compound.  We just finished our first CBT stay (Community Based Training) and we are back at the training center as one large group for a few days and then we go back to our host families for ten days or so, this will happen for ten weeks or so, just until we swear in as official volunteers.  Right now we are not technically volunteers; we are trainees.  It is an odd stage to be in, as we are completely immersed in the culture and language at this point, but we are not doing much technical stuff and given our limited language skills after a week of class, there isn’t much communication that we can do. 

My room is on the left, the other room is where my mom sleeps with the three kids.  The building in the far left of the photo is the bathroom/shower.  Right next to my room, outside, is the kitchen.

Baba

I have a host mom named Koomba and a host father named Boubacar.  Nfaa (my father) is never home though because he has a small grocery store in Thiès (about 7km away) and an apartment and only comes home Friday until Sunday or so.  Nbaa (my mom) sells cashews in Thiès but she said that she is not working as much while I’m here (or at least I think that’s what she meant). There are three kids that live at my compound, which consists of two rooms, an outside toilet, and some “lawn.”  Ame is the oldest and is about 11, Baba is around 8 and Khadijah is 2 or 3.  It wasn’t until last night that I was finally told the whole story about my family.  I knew from the first day or so that my host mom was 25 so I thought it was a bit odd that she would have a 11 year old daughter but I figured that having children at a young age isn’t that unusual here.  Last night, Nbaa told me that she is in fact that second wife of Boubacar and that his first wife died during complications in childbirth with her third child Yaya (who is also deceased).  Ame and Baba are therefore the “stepchildren” of my host mom and she only has one biological child, Khadijah, This makes a lot of sense.  But Koomba and Ame (Boubacar’s first wife) are sisters.  In the compound next to mine is the rest of my family.  There I have a grandfather and a grandmother, who are the parents of Koomba, Ame, and all of my aunts and uncles.  There are generally 4 aunts and 2 husbands or so on a daily basis that all live in the same compound.  Then there are about 14 children from the ages of 4 months to 12 or so.  The first day I was completely overwhelmed by all of their names and after these past seven days I’m just beginning to know just about everyone.  At one point, for Bambara class, I made a family tree and figured out who the parents of all the kids were.  In my family compound, which is composed of 6 or so home buildings, a kitchen, and a room with two refrigerators that I’m not sure actually work there are 4 or 5 family units, all related.  I spend most of my days after class in the bigger compound with all of the kids, either doing my homework, just hanging out and trying to listen to their conversation, or watching them.  Sometimes I nap.  Around 4pm I usually go with my CBT partner (there are only two of us learning Bambara) to the garden (where we are doing our technical activities) and do some work; water our compost, double dig a bed or just berm.  It’s nice to be doing something hands on during the day. 

One of the hardest things for me is feeling bored and unproductive.  I’m completely immersed in the culture and the language, which isn’t boring or unproductive in itself, but it is a completely different way of living my life.  I’ve never had to live like this before.  I sit with my family, all of my aunt and cousins, and I’m surrounded by constant noise. The chatter of Bambara with the possibility of some Wolof mixed in is overwhelming but since my language and vocabulary is limited, I am not yet able to say enough to make myself feel productive in those situations.  And for me, an industrious and inquisitive American, I find that not speaking much or understanding much and just sitting isn’t doing anything.  I know that in reality, what I consider to be “doing nothing” is immersion.  What I have been doing for the past week is cultural and linguistic integration to an extreme but sometimes when I’m sitting under a neem tree it is hard for me to grasp that that is in fact what I’m doing.  I’m beginning to understand more that I will need to be patient with myself.  My language will come, and I will be able to converse.   But I also can learn to enjoy doing very little and having that become a part of who I am while in Senegal.