Village (by Maria)

Yesterday we had our first day in the village of Fatoma as language students, it’s amazing what you can be able to communicate, even with the very few words we know. We are lucky to have a wonderful nanny for Mia, Lalla, that is more than happy to welcome us to sit with her family, and is patient enough to repeat the words we ask about. Taking pictures, and recording the right words at the same time, just taking in all that surrounded us. Chickens; only one day old, the thick millet drink, witch we later were served, Matthew managing fine, me giving what I could to Mia, leaving the rest to sit. They taught me how to make some local decorations (see picture), rubbing a stone onto a calabash, making it white and decorative. Quite a lot of work, so I ended up buying the ones Lalla’s sister already had finished. The big marked day was also held in Fatoma yesterday, and I was quite excited to find fresh goat skins at the butcher, paying only 20kr (3$) for beautiful brown skins with white spots. I left them for Lalla’s sister to clean and supposedly there is something she could treat the skins with to keep them soft. We also found (this is probably gonna sound a little tacky) a marriage pillow, that the Tuaregs makes out of leather. A few nights earlier “little Muhammed” came to our house trying to sell us one of those for not less then 1000kr (150$). We did not buy it, since the price was ridiculously high. We asked for the price at the market – 70kr (11$). Out of spite, we bought it, that felt really good, and I can’t wait to have little Muhammed come back, having such great proof of his efforts to rip us off! At least this one time he didn’t manage to trick us!

maria

marked

A taste of winter

Sitting here in the warm sun looking back at a wonderful taste of winter in Norway. We had quite a trip home, on the way to the airport Mia got covered in red spots, at the hotel the morning of our flight we got a hold of a doctor, afraid that it was the chicken pocks, since you’re not allowed to fly like that. This was the 22. of December, so we didn’t really have much time to loose if we were going to make it home for Christmas! The doctor stated firmly that this was just some kind of allergic reaction, revealed we continued our drive to the capital. That evening, only three hours before we were to leave for the airport, Mia’s fever rose to 104 degrees. We gave her Tylenol (paracetamol), and put her on malaria medication as well, hoping the fever would go down a little. It didn’t, at least not very much. We repacked our bags, Matthew was ready to bring the boys to Norway, I was realizing that staying behind with the baby, might be the only sensible thing to do. With great help from one of our missionaries in Bamako, we got a hold of another doctor, asking the question we did not want a negative answer to, “can she fly?”. She asked if Mia had any problems breathing, and made sure we had given her the malaria medication and paracetamol and ibuprofen. She said we should go, “the doctors at the airports in Paris are better than here anyway!” We waited for a while in Paris while our plane was snowed in at the airport in Bergen, and when we finally got to board the plane, I started throwing up. When our plane landed in Bergen, tears came to my eyes, I had never thought we where going to make it home for Christmas, and there we were, the 23rd of December at home, just in time. I can’t remember my parent’s house looking prettier, the food smelling or tasting better, the joy of being around family being greater. We had a wonderful Christmas, and were blessed to be home when my grandma died, we got to stay with her the last days of her life, and could be of support to our family in that time.

It was great to be united with friends and family once again. Having some maternity leave saved up, me and the kids got to stay with family in Bergen for a whole month. We also had a short trip to eastern Norway celebrating New Years Eve with friends in Kolbotn, Mias (and Regines) 1 year birthday was celebrated in Revetal, before we went back to Bergen for the funeral. The kids enjoyed the snow, I was quite happy to get back to Mali where it didn’t take me an hour to get the kids dressed!

aketur

andreas og tante line

Learning Fulfulde

Since we got back to our home here in Mali we have started learning Fulfulde. It is a great feeling to finally be working with the language that I will (hopefully) eventually be translating into. Maria and I have about 3-3½ hours of lessons ever day. For now, our lessons are mostly spent listening, pointing and “doing” verbs. We are learning to understand the names of animals, things, foods, utensils and so forth. We learn this by starting with two items, such as a cow and a horse. Our “teacher” points at the cow and says “nagge” and the points at the horse and says “puccu”. Then he asks “where is the cow” and “where is the horse” in fulfulde and we point to the right animal (hopefully). We then add other animals and things until we have between 10 and 20 new words.

Also, we learn verbs for things like “walking”, “running” and “sitting” by our teacher giving us commands “STAND!” “SIT!” “WALK!” or describing what we are doing “You are sitting” “Maria is standing”. Thus we learn a lot of different words and verb forms. Yesterday and today we did body parts for people and animals. Some of the easier ones to remember were “Elephant Arm” meaning “trunk” and “bird hairs” meaning “feathers”.

The picture is a typical sight from our daily sessions.