They've got a completely new card design, and now you can get just the barcode in keychain format, so you don't have to lug around a whole card.
Here's some photos of children in my Mali family. All of the photos, with the exception of Nene, were taken while I was riding on a donkey cart with them on the way to Sirakorola for Thursday's market.
This is Nene. He bonked his head once and cried. Usually when a child cries, he just cries until he stops. I was playing catch with some other kids at the time, and when I saw him crying, I put my hand on his shoulder. He stopped crying and I gave him the ball. He laughed and passed it over to me. All the children cheered, and whenever I passed the ball to one of them, they would give it to Nene. Afterward, if a child got hurt, the other children would try and comfort them. My host father asked me if I would adopt Nene and bring him back to Canada.
This is Sakura. I guess it's not appropriate to call her a child. For the longest time, I didn't know what her relationship was with the family. She was a good bit older than the rest of the kids, and since she was of childbearing age and worked with my host mothers, several times she was mistaken for one of my host father's wives, but she wasn't. I thought she might have been the younger sister of one of my host mothers, because it's a tradition for a younger sister to move with her older sister if the older sister moves away from their home village, and one of my host mothers was a foreigner, but then I learned that Sakura was a Traore, which wasn't the family name of either of my host mothers (in Mali, women don't change their family name after marriage).
What I think it was, was, in Mali, if you call somebody a relative, it's considered the hard truth, and nobody questions it. If you have a falling out with someobody you've called your brother, or your father, you can't just bail on your words. You have all the responsibilities and obligations of a blood relative. It's not cool to ask about genetics. If a father has two wives, and one wife gives birth to a child, the child must honour both mothers equally.
I remember, my host father had another daughter, who was obviously too old to be his daughter. She was like, ten years younger than him, maybe. I think Sakura may have had that kind of relationship with my host family, as an adopted daughter.
This is Nasu. It might not be fair to say, but she was probably one of my favourite children. I don't know how to interact with children in the 10-13 year old age bracket, though. She was really shy, and really responsible.
This is Madu. He lived in the same hut as Sedio, before we came along. Another boy, named Salief, lived in it, too. It was the hut for the three eldest sons, but Sedio was the chief of it. Madu was the second eldest son. Isn't this a good photo of him? He's going to be psyched when he sees it. Note: he's not smiling.
This is Sedio, the future chief of the family. He's the oldest son, and the house I was living in belonged to him before me and my CP arrived. A lot of family responsibility, especially responsibility regarding me, was left to him. I felt kind of bad for putting him out so much, but he never showed any signs of resentment at all. It's kind of hard for me to imagine him as a chief, since he was only 13.
I can only post five images to Blogger at a time, so I'll post more tomorrow.
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