More on the boiled goat stomach...

One day we went to Little Yosemite to visit Beatrice, our mayor's aunt. We had to be at language at 1pm, so we started trying to leave a little after 11am, knowing that they would probably try to feed us. Well, they did. They called us into a little room where Sarah, Beatrice, and I sat down on the floor. Another woman brought in two covered bowls and a covered plate. Even though all of them were covered Sarah and I knew that there being 3 different dishes (instead of only 2) would be bad news.

Well the first cover came off the bowl of rice. No surprise there, we have rice for lunch every day. The second cover came off the bowl of peanut sauce. Another non-surprise. We braced ourselves for what we knew was coming...the third removed cover revealed a huge plate of meat. It was worse than usual. Usually the "meat" still has at least a little bit of what you would think of as being "meat." This time it was all organs and intestines. I could identify the heart, liver, stomach, small intestines, maybe a kidney or two, and then there were various other unidentifiable parts...it was kind of like dissection day in high school biology. We poured the peanut sauce over the rice and Beatrice asked if we wanted some meat. We said, "Sure! A little," which is our standard answer for anything because a "little" to them still ends up being a lot. So she put a little bit of meat on the rice and we ate it. We thought we were in the clear! We finished off the rice and sauce and then Beatrice moved the bowl we'd eaten from out of the way. We really thought we were in the clear! But then she grabbed the (still huge) plate of meat and put it in the middle. She took one little part of the heart then said she was full and backed away from the plate. We ate several bites then said we were full. No luck. She told us to keep eating. At this point I really was full so I tried again. She told me to keep eating. I asked her, "One more bite?" This usually worked on H-Mama. She said okay. I took my one more bite, I even made sure it was a big one, and said, "Okay, I'm full." She said to keep eating. I said, "You said one more bite!" She said, "I know. So take one more bite...until it's gone." So we finished off the plate...completely riceless...we should have had her put all of it on the rice and sauce to take away from the texture and taste a little bit. Then when we walked out of the room I saw the goat's head, legs/hooves, and empty skin in a bloody pile on the ground...at least it was fresh. It's okay, they think our food is weird too. Somebody told me that they had asked a group of African translators what the weirdest food they'd ever eaten when being out on a trip with a group of Americans was. I believe almost unanimously they answered, "Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches."

We think these situations are pretty funny...and sometimes nauseating...but it really shows how insanely hospitable these people are. They rarely let us visit without making sure they feed us in some way and they want you to stay for as long as you possibly can. They love it when we help them do things...mostly because we're not as good at it and they get a pretty good laugh. And they love just sitting with us even when we've exhausted our language and can't think of much else to say. And you don't even have to know people before you visit them. They immediately welcome you in like you're their long lost niece or something.

The other day I was talking to a Bambara man and he asked me my name. When I told him he said, "Oh, you're a Sunny woman!" I said that I was and that the Sunny people are good. He agreed with me and said that the Sunny people are very good because they are always helping each other. I know it seems kind of silly, but I really am proud to be one them.

We found her!

A few months ago, before we came to the city, our mayor's aunt from Yosemite had come to the city because she'd been really sick. We had taken her to the hospital in G-Vegas before, but even that wasn't helping so they finally just sent her here. Well a few weeks ago we found her! She is staying at our mayor's brother's compound so when we went it was like a Little Yosemite. Everybody who lives there is either from our village and is just staying here for a while or grew up in our village. It was so nice to be reunited with friends and family. PLUS, Little Yosemite is right down the street from a fake McDonald's...it's called MacParadise. We haven't tried it yet, but it's got to be good...or at least better than boiled goat stomach :)

Language, Language, and More Language

One of the best things about coming to the big city is that we have been able to meet with an actual language teacher...I'll call her Alicia. She is a Sunny woman who speaks...that we know of...5 languages, including even a little bit of English (and Bambara, French, Russian, and of course Sunny...I told you Africans are geniuses). Her actual job is teaching Russian at the public high school, so she really knows how to teach language. We started going to her to learn enough Bambara to get around in this city and then our supervisor said we could continue with her for Sunny for a while.


So we've been going to Alicia for 2 hours a day 5 days a week and it has pretty much revolutionized my language learning. Out in the village we had gotten most of our vocabulary. By pointing, acting out, and any other means we could use we had figured out most nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs...at least the stuff that gets used on a regular basis. The more difficult aspect had been putting sentences together correctly. It is difficult to communicate to a non-English-speaking person who has never once taught anybody a language that you want her to teach you how to put sentences together and speak above the preschool level...in a language that is nothing like English. We would try to get syntax from listening to them speaking to each other (because they would usually speak to us at the level they knew we could understand), but usually they would get to talking so fast that it was still hard to pick out how they had said something.


In the first few weeks, Alicia taught us the things that we'd been trying to figure out for months. Things that we would think we had figured out and then we'd hear it used in a completely contradicting way later. It could be pretty frustrating, but by the time Alicia had explained it we could look back on the things we'd heard in the village and more pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. It's still been fairly crazy because English is her weakest language and she will readily tell you that she doesn't understand English grammar at all...which means that she does most of her explaining in French and some even in Bambara. And we're still learning everything orally...so no writing anything down or seeing anything written down...just us and our voice recorders, but I am so, so, SO thankful for the time we've had with Alicia and the opportunity to get some of this stuff figured out.