Top photo is of Nyaduku, the Canadian fan favourite from my family, and the bottom is Fanta, a participant from my group. I just thought these two came out well.
Top photo is a cotton plant, and the bottom photo is Boffy, my host father. Me and my CP did our Educational Activity Day on subsistence living, so we toured them around the gardens. Although not quite subsistence, since much of it is sold to the government, the cotton was a very popular part of our presentation, at least among Malian participants. They all wanted to stop and have pictures of themselves taken with the cotton, and they had a lot of questions. It might be because cotton is Mali's largest export, and we were making this presentation for agricultural students. I don't know.
This is some kid I met on the street in Bamako.
So, these kids came by my house on Halloween night with this mask. I didn't realize what the date was until after they'd left. Then my CP busted out a bag of candy. I forget why, but it wasn't because of Halloween. I was kicking myself so hard. The children had come by our house, in costume, on Halloween night, and we'd had candy with us, and we didn't give it out, because I didn't remember the date, and I didn't know we had candy. The kids never said "Halloween" but somebody from a previous group must have taught them. Too much to be a coincidence.
Top photo is the infamous toh, and the bottom photo is beans. I didn't take these photos. Today I leafed through some more of my friends albums and found pics of key things that I missed out on. I never took pics of the food, because I would eat lunch indoors. I tried taking photos indoors, but they either came out too dark or ruined by the flash, and I wasn't willing to step out under the sweltering African sun during the three hottest hour of the day, just so I could take a picture. At night, it was the same issue with darkness. I have a photo of breakfast in the image of the wooden chairs that I posted yesterday.
Anyway, yeah, I know. They're using spoons in both images. Normally, you use your hands to eat this stuff, especially the toh, but CWY gave spoons to the program's participants. Those beans are made with onions and shea butter, but usually they wouldn't get fancied-up that much. These were special beans that came from that huge harvest that my host father brought.
"Traore eats beans and then he farts. Traore love their beans!" It was a common cousinage joke. This was a proud harvest that brought honour to my family, and it was important to them that I appreciate it. So when people asked "So how do you like those beans, Traore?" I never knew what to say. Honour my family's harvest by complimenting them, or protect my family's name by insulting them? I'd say something like "It's the day of the beans, man" and they'd say something like, "And you love it, don't you Traore?! HAHA!"
These are the best images of the Sirakorola market I could find. One of them's a soap merchant, and the other's a more general shot of the market. I didn't take these.
Sort of funny. I had some Malian soap when I came back, just to use through Bamako and in Canada during the reintegration camp if I needed it, and also just because I had it handy at the time. Found it in my luggage when I was unpacking, and I was like "Oh, some Mali soap. Don't need that" and my mom was like "Is it handmade?" And I was like "Yeah, I was kind of cheap and didn't spring for that Bamako stuff" and she was like "Cool!" It was like me not realizing the Canada photos would be interesting to the Malians. Didn't occur to me the Malian soap would be interesting to Canadians.
Top photo is my daba. That's what we used to till the fields. It's also what I used to kill a scorpion. There's an image of the group working with them on my Gallery blog.
Second photo is a round cement container that held our work equipment. There were a few of these in each field.
When we were in Bamako for the mid-phase, we had the opportunity to tour around the countryside bit. This was at a restaurant in a more touristic, although still kind of rural, region. The restaurant owners kept a pet porcupine, I guess to show to tourists. They also had a pet crocodile, but I can't find my picture of it. Whenever people ask me if I saw any cool animals in Africa, I say not really, except for some scorpions and snakes. Maybe I'll mention the Guinea hens. I always forget the porcupine and crocodile. I guess it's because they were more domestic.
Best photo of Bamako that I could find.
Here's a random sign that was somewhere between Karadie and Sirakorola. I thought it was kind of cool for some reason. Look, it has both Bambara and French.
So, I guess that's it for the Malian photos. I think between this blog and my Gallery blog, there's almost as many as what I have on Facebook, and you got quite a bit more context to go along with it.
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