fait du bruit!

bambara is the language spoken by the majority of malians. those who have gone to school speak french, and occasionally i run into someone studying english. our sit bambara teacher also manages a hiphop group called need one - youtube them - and last weekend all the students went to a hiphop concert that need one headlined but which included tons of other artists. apparently it is difficult here to get only instrumentals of songs so since the music included the artists rapping or singing, on stage most of hte performers just lip synced which was kind of strange. but the concert was still fun and the music was great. there was also a dance battle fusing american hiphop and west african music dance and style.

in general, there is a noticable american influence in mali -- not english speaking malians, but used american toys and clothes and other items sold in the markets, english grafiti and other hiphop influenced things like tshirts with rapper's faces and murals of 50 cent and the michelin man (not together). the house before mine says "black mafia" in spray paint on the side, mine says "black men", another students says "ghetto" and we pick her up to go to school in the morning by a bridge that says "gueto boy" on it. the pics here are from a village in siby ; "black panthers" is another tag i,ve seen a few times.

white people are an oddity here. we are all over television -- most of the basic channels are french though there is at least one african channel that ive seen shwing music videos, political meeting coverage and "sensibilisation" shows -- sensibilisation is like education/awareness raising campaigns often targetted at malians in the village where traditional culture is more dominant and the politics arez not so 'progressive' due to a lack of education. this is the perspective of course of malians in the cities -- i dont mean to sound elitest or impose a western set of values... next month our group is doing a one week homestay in sanankoroba which is a rural village so after that i will be able to speak first hand about it.

white people besides on tv are an oddity. kids and sometimes adults yell "toubabou" at us all the time - that is bambara for "white person". i can deal, but also it gets tiring. its like the most blunt way to experience what it means to be objectified and othered because of ones race -- i am not calling 'reverse anything', i.m just saying, it lends some perspective. some students in our group get a kick out of it and yell it at other white people that we see in passing. i dont really think its all that fun but its also not hte end of my world. within my fam i've also been called nene blanche/ nene white, had my hair pulled played with and discussed as spectacle in bambara and had my skin compared alongside black skin. this stuff seems ridic to me and just weird... but i know that some of this is not far off from the way white americans still exotify black americans and other people of color. and we have much more exposure and access to information than do most malians.

another interesting thing i.ve been noticing is the treatment of resources and waste. there is def less of the latter -- when you buy a drink in a glass bottle you are usually expected to drink it on the spot and return it for reuse. plastic soda and water bottles are alqso reused. instead of paper to dry your hands off in restaurants there is cloth and most bzthrooms and malian households use a water kettle method instead of toilet paper for going to the bathroom. however when there is trash, you are expected to just discard it on the side of hte road literally. households can pay for trash pick up but many do not. trash pick up entails pick up and transport of trash to big fields where is just sits there and kids come to pick through it looking for anything salvageable. i am having a pretty hard time accepting hte fact that i am just supposed to discard my trash whereever -- and knoaing that for the most part there is no recycling...

more reflections later. we now have wednesdays off from school do do independent work or other things so thats why i have had time for this long update. yesterday our group visited the assosciation for the progress and defense of of the rights of woemen (apdf) and i went back there today before coming to this cyber cafe. i interviewed a women there to find out more about the org and the subject of domestic violence in mali because i think i want to focus on this issue and maybe work with this org for my last month in mali when we do indepenedent study projects...

i am working on a photo album right now as well. upload is painfully slow. you can check out what little is up, by following hte link on the side bar for the photobucket page. right now the facebook one has some captions so check that out too http://conncoll.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026935&l=60aa4&id=14102319

in other news, i have been selected as a finalist for the truman scholarship and will be flying into boston next month to interview! crazy huh? here are some sample qs for the interview; please share your insight i welcole any and all suggetions!

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Typically Truman Finalists are asked one or more broad questions with follow-up questions for clarification and to see how the candidate's mind works to help panelists assess the candidate's:
-general awareness, reasoning abilities and analytic processes

-understanding concerning some of the complex issues facing society
-thoughts on government approaches to address or ameliorate these issues
-communication skills, passions and potential for public service leadership, and broader interests

The following types of questions should help candidates prepare for Truman interviews:
What are the most legitimate objections to your policy proposal?
-If you could have taken part in any social movement of the 20th century, what would it have been? What would you probably have learned?
-Name two or three prominent public figures whom you admire or who inspires you.
-What conditions in society, other than the one you have addressed in your policy proposal, tick you off?
-What do you think are the 2-3 most pressing problems facing America today?
-If you could spend two minutes with President Bush, what would you encourage him to do to address these problems?
-What is your definition of leadership? What public figure with whom the panel is likely to be familiar best exemplifies this type of leadership?