michelle in mali: Do you know "Toto?"

I've spoken of him in my email updates, but not on my blog...so let me quickly introduce you to one of our best friends, "Brian." He's also our back-translator for Stories. We call him Brian because one day we were driving around in the truck and he saw one of our cassette tapes with Brian Adams on it. And all of a sudden he breaks out with, "Look into my eyes....and you will seeee...whaat you mean toooo meeeee...." Before we knew it, we were belting out Brian Adams' chart-topping Robin Hood soundtrack hit, "Everything I Do." So that's Brian.

Brian's family has a farm on the outskirts of town, so we told him we'd like to go visit. He told us to be at his house at 8 am one Sunday morning. We arrived and he sat us down to eat breakfast while he got things ready for the day's outing. He was running around with a backpack, putting things in it. He went into a room and yelled at me, "Niame', do you all eat chocolate?!" I said that Magou and I do, but Sokona can't. He looked a little distraught and said, "Oh no, I don't have American peanut butter." Turns out he was preparing chocolate sandwiches for a snack. So we stopped by our house on the way out and picked up some American peanut butter for Sokona. And the chocolate was homemade. And delicious.

When we got to the farm, we noticed that there were some tiny little baby goats. Super tiny. The chickens were bigger than them. So we went over and picked them up and carried them around. Noticing that we were enjoying the animals, Brian says, "Do you know 'Toto?'" I say, "Like the little dog??" He says, "YES! Like the little dog. We have a lot of those. Do you want to see them?" Well of course we do, Brian. So we venture out to a little field where we see a small penned-off area. I'm expecting to see a bunch of yelpy little dogs in there, but instead we see a bunch of huge turtles. I think to myself, "Oh, looky there...they have turtles too. Well, where are all the dogs?" It took me a few minutes to realize that "toto" is Malian English for "turtle." The turtles were great fun, though. One was so big that even with Brian standing on it, it could still walk around!

We spent the rest of the day walking around the farm, stopping to inspect different plants and what-not. We stopped by the well to pull up water for the sheep. Brian was pretty impressed with our well skills. Every so often Brian would lead us in a song. He showed us the different types of mango trees. He had us taste different fruits that we'd never seen before...it was a great field trip. Then he took us down to a creek. We tried to catch tadpoles and minnows. He's an artist, so he got some mud from the creek and sculpted a cow out of it. Then he gave us some mud and helped us make some animals too. I made a toto.

There's another story from this day...but it's slightly inappropriate, so I'll tell you when it's not on the world wide web.

Pictures from the day:

Baby goats.