December 2009
4 posts
I am nowhere near fluent in French, but I can successfully do the following things: get and give directions, go on dates, conduct interviews for research, take classes, talk about people with my sisters, forge close friendships, and discuss politics.
I also met a lot of really amazing people, and became incorporated into a beautiful and loving family.
The worst illness I contracted was a cold,...
(This is from December 13, 2009)
The last twenty-four hours may have been the best ones so far for me in Mali.
Yesterday was Fatim’s birthday. In the morning, I took the Sotrama to Artisanat, which is the artist’s market downtown. I had a friend meet me there, because he is pretty well connected and I didn’t feel like being harassed or bartering in Bambara. We walked into the market together,...
My friend Laura is really good at uploading photos and I clearly am not, so visit her picasa site to get an idea of the things I have been seeing and experiencing while in Mali:
http://picasaweb.google.com/laura.anne.paul/
Today is the last of three days at a hotel in downtown Bamako. While I will miss the central location, I can’t wait to get back to my family. I was home for a short...
Edit: for Tabaski, they kill sheep not goats. Sheep.
I am done. (A bana in Bambara). My ISP is finished, bound and laminated. My presentation went pretty well, and now the semester is basically over. Today and tomorrow, most of the people in the group are leaving to go back to the U.S., and my friend Amanda and I will be pretty much the only ones left in Bamako.
Things I want to do before I...
November 2009
3 posts
How is it already Thanksgiving?
There is one week left to finish my research. As much as this freaks me out, I am trying to make peace with the idea of making do with what I have and just trying to crank out a solid paper. I fear that I may have forgotten how to write well. We’ll see.
It’s beautiful out! I mean, it’s still hot but there is a cool breeze and sometimes I even wear a long-sleeved...
Winter is coming. It’s like 80 degrees today— brrr!
Research is going well, and as a result I’ve been exploring a different part of the city. There are a few neighborhoods clustered together where most of the cool places to see music are located, plus I’ve made a bunch of good friends who live around there. So between my interviews and hangin’ out, I’ve been...
Finals are over and I am in the middle of a tour of Mali. So far, the group has traveled to Segou (once a powerful Bambara kingdom), Djenne (contains the famous mud mosque), Dogon Country (with its cliff villages and magical traditions) and now we are in Mopti, a cosmopolitan city on the Niger River. The vacation has been really wonderful and relaxing, but I am ready to return to Baltimore and be...
October 2009
4 posts
Listening to: Leaving Home by The Mountain Goats
Listening to: A Different City by Modest Mouse
Listening to: Africa by Amadou and Mariam
Listening to: Massaké by Habib Koite
Listening to: [Everything] by Salif Keita
Listening to: Yere Uolo by Rokia Traore
Listening to: Bolon Jazz (myspace.com/bolonjazz)
Listening to: Live reggae music every Friday night at Djembe.
There is this symbol from the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch that has always held a lot of meaning for me. It looks like two halves of a circle, with two strange eyes. Whatever the specific reasons for my gravity toward this symbol and the concepts associated with it in the movie, the basic significance for me is the notion of being, or becoming, whole. I have been thinking about this a lot lately...
I came here to do research. Each student in my program has one month to complete an Independent Study Project (ISP) on a topic of her choosing. Initially, I had this grandiose idea to study elements of women’s oral traditions in contemporary Malian music. Soon after I arrived, however, I wrote that off as some esoteric nonsense that would contribute nominally to a body of knowledge with the...
September 2009
5 posts
A Few Photos →
Today is Independence Day! It’s the grand finale of a five day string of partying; the fête never stops here in Mali. I’m super bummed that I am one year short of being in Mali for the 50th anniversary of independence; I guess I’ll have to come back next year.
One of my favorite things to do here is take the Cotrama, the big green vans that transport folks to the downtown area...
On god, etc.
First of all, I am a little miffed because I think that The Retriever Weekly published the first draft of an article that I sent in, which I revised and thought was not going to get into the paper. Oh well. The second one was better. Sorry everyone.
So… le moi de Karem, or the month of Ramadan, is about to come to an end. This means that Muslim families in Mali (about 85%) are going nuts...
Oh man, I am terrible about updating this thing. It’s not my fault! There is hardly any time to come to the cyber (which, by the way, I recently found out has ethernet cables to plug directly into my netbook!) We get to school by 7:45, and then after school we go on little “excursions.” Yesterday and today, we visited two different women’s rights organizations in Mali. Rad...
In Bamako, but it sort of feels like New York.
1. The taxis are yellow.
2. Taxi drivers drive like maniacs.
3. It rains every day, and it is super humid but not unbearably hot.
4. The people are warm and welcoming.
5. I am surrounded by people who are so much like me in various ways.
6. It feels like home.
N togo Rokia Camara. My name is Rokia Camara. My older sister was in Brooklyn this summer visiting a former SIT student. Go...
August 2009
8 posts
This morning, I woke up thinking of a certain Adrienne Rich poem:
…which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements
each one making possible the next.
If you want to send me love letters, send them to:
Sarah Solomon
C/O Modibo Coulibaly
Baco Dijikotoni -ACI - Sud
Rue 732 Porte 54
Bamako, Mali
or you can e-mail me at bsarahsolomon@gmail.com. I’ll be checking periodically, and it would be nice to hear from someone other than Greenpeace and Moveon.org.
I finally got a complete list of students participating in my program, and proceeded to judge them all according to their Facebook pages. I’m going to write down my first impressions so that I can laugh at how wrong they were when I get back from Mali.
Itinerary
August 28 Students arrive
August 29-30 Orientation in Bamako
August 31-Sept. 2 Orientation in Siby
Sept 3-Sept 17 Intensive French and Bambara Study, Field Study Seminars, Field Study Seminars and Gender and Development Seminars and Concurrent Homestay in Bamako
Sept 18-20 Excursion to Sikasso
Sept 21-Oct 4 Intensive French and Bambara...
“You’re going to meet new people, learn a lot, put faces and names to...”
– Adam <3
