Random thoughts

One of my first days in Mali, an American who had spent a lot of time in West Africa was telling us that one of her cultural limits is that she won’t suck juice out of a bag. I, on the other hand, feel the exact opposite – to me, sucking juice from a bag is one of the perks of life in Mali!

To explain: in markets here, many women sell juice in clear plastic bags – like sandwich bags, tied off at the end. They contain about 4-6 ounces of juice, and you bite off one corner and suck the juice out. Sometimes the juice is frozen, which is even better, because Malian juice is too sweet for most Americans’ taste buds, but when it’s frozen it’s like sorbet. Yogurt or porridge can be sold like this as well. There are a few common types of juice – dahblani, which is made from boiled hibiscus flowers with TONS of sugar and various other flavorings, jinbere, which is ginger juice (and a ton of sugar), and assorted juices, often bright orange, made from powdered mixes (and a ton of sugar).

There are a few health hazards associated with buying juice in this form. For one thing, you don’t know what water was used. Even though boiling is part of the process of making dahblani, some women make it by making a concentrated batch of the boiled flowers and adding cool water afterward. Besides the water, there’s other relevant conditions that there’s no way to know about (like hand washing). And of course, the outside of the bag can be dirty.

Every day, my host mother makes juice, freezes it (yes, we have a fridge, a huge luxury here), and sells it in the market in the morning to make a little extra income. It’s wonderful because I know that she uses robinet or tap water, which is treated, and I know that our courtyard is clean. This means I get a delicious supply of frozen juice that I know is relatively safe. Mmmmm. And back to my original point, I find drinking it from a bag to be vastly satisfying.

Right now I’m back at Tubani So, with only a few weeks left of training. There are four phases to training in Peace Corps Mali. Phase I was the first half of training, which was basically all language and cross-culture sessions. Phase II is now, which is some technical training and some “lang-tech” – i.e. learning vocabulary relevant to our jobs. Phase III is the first 3 months at site, when we are supposed to be integrating and doing needs assessment, and Phase IV is an IST, or in-service training, which will be two weeks of mostly technical stuff once we have an idea of what’s going on at our site.

Last week we conducted a baby weighing and a demonstration of how to make ameliorated porridge in our homestay village. Since our village has a well-organized CSCOM (centre de santé communautaire) that already has baby weighings twice a week, we just kind of helped out with theirs. They have a very efficient system. The babies that came to our CSCOM were mostly healthy weight, but there were a few that were slightly or seriously underweight.

But we did follow up with doing a little nutrition lesson about ameliorated porridge with the mothers, in Bambara. It is extremely scary to get up in front of a group and give a talk in a language that you can barely have a conversation in. But it turned out pretty well, because both the women and the staff were helpful, kind, and receptive. It was really good to get over doing that for the first time, since that’s a large part of what health volunteers do. You just have to realize that the worst that can happen is that they won’t understand you.

The purpose of baby weighings is to identify as early as possible which babies are underweight, because malnutrition is the underlying cause of most child deaths here. It can complicate basically any other disease. We are supposed to encourage women to exclusively breastfeed their babies until 6 months, then start introducing ameliorated porridge. Porridge is a common staple food here – it can be made from millet, rice, or corn. Many children who get enough calories do not get enough protein once they are weaned and no longer getting as much breast milk. This leads to the condition called kwashiorkor, which is when they have the swollen bellies and skinny arms, and sometimes pale, brittle hair. Ameliorated porridge is porridge that has peanut paste, peanut powder, bean powder, fish powder, or any other source of protein added to it. It’s easy to make and very cheap.

The kind we made had 5 different kinds of powder in it – millet, fonio (which is some kind of grain that I don’t really understand), rice, bean and peanut. It was actually pretty good. And it is really easy to make! You just mix the flours with a little water then add them to boiling water and keep cooking it for a while. Then you can add sugar and anything else you want. It tastes kind of like cream of wheat.

Which reminds me of a funny cultural thing about hot and cold. Malians are really into cooling things off. In the U.S., if you have a cup of coffee and it’s too hot, you wait until it cools a little and then drink it. Here, that is unacceptable. If my family gives me my cup of tea in the morning and they see that it’s too hot, they take it away and pour it back and forth between two cups until it is cooled off. When porridge has been cooked, the last step is to scoop it and pour it with a ladle until it is cool. And it’s not just my family – I’ve had lots of conversations with other trainees about this.

Another interesting discovery I’ve had from eating with my hands is that my hand is actually more sensitive to heat than my mouth. Sometimes I’ll scoop up a handful of rice and burn my hand, but if I can just get it to my mouth it’s ok. After a lifetime of eating with their hands and/or cooking over an open fire, most Malians’ hands are way less sensitive to heat, and my host family thinks it’s hilarious whenever I can’t start eating because the food is too hot.