Colibaly? I be sho dun.

These few days at Tubaniso have been full of those ever-so-exciting discusions. So rather than actually paying attention, leaving homestay has been great for getting some edible food and reviewing my Bambara language flashcards. The most draining thing about this whole process, and that keeps being a sidenote to everything I post, is the problems with language here, so I'll briefly talk about what I'm learning.

Bambara is spoken by 80% of the people in Mali. Yet the 'official' language is French, so anyone who has been through the school system speaks French. I asked my niece about school, and she pulled out one of her french books, and had me read a passage about malaria, her watching as I read, since my French is still a bit difficult for her to understand. At first, I was frustrated and annoyed, since I knew I was pronouncing these words correctly. Then I talked to some fellow volunteers who had actually lived in France and Quebec, and they were having similar difficulties: them knowing French doesn't mean they know French from France or French from Canada. The French they speak is slightly different in a way I can't explain, but I'm finally starting to be able to follow and speak in a way so they understand me.

Yet most people--and where my permanent site will be-speak their local language. Even if people know French, they don't want to speak it, since it's a European (read: white) language. Therefore, if anyone is dealing with an NGO or office, you need to know French. If you're dealing with anyone on a personal level, or illiterate people, you need the local language. Educated people will mix the two languages.

Bambara has several things going for it--you don't really conjugate verbs, so there aren't any verb tables to memorize. Also, words aren't gendered like in French, Spanish, and German, and they don't really have articles. Past tense is a bit tricky, since there is really no pattern to what verbs change endings, forcing you to simply memorize or guess. After learning French, I can appreciate some aspects of the language which are making my life a bit easier.

But the very lack of formality--a strength which makes it less complicated-is also it's very weakness. Bambara wasn't written down and systematically understood as a language until the 1960s. Peace Corps did most of this work. Since the language was so informal, words are said "or sound different depending on the region you're in. 'Tree' is "yiriden" in one part of Mali and "jiriden" in another. I'll often ask my instructor about a word she writes, which differs slightly from what our book says, and the answer is almost always "well, you hear both ways, it just depends where you are." On volunteer at site even said the older people in villages won't be able to understand you at all, nor you them: they didn't learn words or a structured language, but only sounds.

The very lack of formality is why, written, it's also pretty strange. There are two different kinds of 'e's--one which i can't type, but that looks like a backwards '3'. This type sounds like 'eh', rather than 'e', and ends most words like 'dumunike'--so you actually say the 'e' unlike in french. The letter 'i' sounds like a french 'i', which is of course, literally said 'e'. What's difficult for English speakers are the closed 'o's and the open 'o's, and then there's a high tone and a low tone which we also have trouble hearing. Luckily, sentence positioning is different, "N ba" is "my mother" while "N ka ba" is "my goat." Additionally, there's an 'ng' and an spanish-like 'naw', neither of which I can type either. Other than the two 'o' sounds and three 'n' sounds, I'm having some difficulty with the sharpness of letters. I try speaking some with my family, and found out last week that they couldn't understand me when I said the letter 'j'--like in 'ji' (water) 'jege' (fish) or 'jamana' (country): I was saying it like a soft 'j', while most of the letters are sharp or heavily stressed at the beginning, and then taper off.

After two weeks, I feel like I can almost greet someone--which is no easy task. Westerners might say 'hi, how are you?' and then move on: our entire greeting takes about 5 seconds. In Mali, I've come to just sit and watch people come into our compound and greet my mother: Malians always say hello, then go into a series of questions--How are you? How's your family? How's your mother? How's your father? Did you sleep well? (until about 3pm). Then after you answer this series of questions, you ask the same of them. The responses are always the same, half the time the responding person answering the question while their friend is asking it. So your mother could have just died, and you will still answer 'my mother is fine' in your greeting, and only later say something like 'oh, last week, my mother died.' An entire greeting takes up to a minute before you can proceed to any real conversation.

What's more, you do this with everyone: when you go into a store, you ask the seller these questions, and then if he doesn't know you, he asks you your name. The name is crucial, last name that is, because certain last names, are called 'joking cousins', or always joke with each other. It's a little bit of a method to diffuse the stereotypes between different groups in Mali--like Bobo's always joke with Dogons, and Traores always joke with Djarras. So for example, Colibaly is a last name that jokes with...almost everyone. If I run into a Colibaly (I'm a Toure) I can tell them 'I be sho dun' (you eat beans) or 'I be negan ji min' (you drink toilet water). You do this back and forth a few times, jokingly, before you can proceed to any actual conversation. In class when we get bored, we'll think of more phrases to use with our joking cousins (last time we went over how to say 'you're a donkey.')

Tomorrow we head back to Moribabougou--and I'm excited to see my two nieces Fata and Adam again. Tonight I underwent yet another Peace Corps rite: I had another volunteer cut my hair. She used actual hair cutting scissors and she'd cut three people's hair before mine, so she'd had a bit of practice. It's still long (she only took off a little over an inch), so I'm working up to the day when I ask her to just take off those 7 inches to make my bucket bath every morning just a little bit quicker.