http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8216568.stm

I am upset and disappointed about this news released today by the BBC. I had heard about the news of the passing of the law to set a minimum age for which Malian girls could be married, bans against female genital mutilation, give more inheritance rights to daughters, and to give equal parental rights, ownership of land and inheritance, wages and pensions, employment laws and education to women. I had naively had hope when I first heard the news about the law, that finally women would gain the rights they deserved. I had even written to a friend prior to this announcement the following about how free Mali was compared to Europe in many ways:

"It is the complete opposite of Mali. Absolute order (Europe) vs. utter confusion and chaos (Mali). I kinda got used to the chaos for the first time this summer. Something about it, I was walking in the market one day thinking what an absolute circus it was, but it felt really normal too. Like that is the way we ought to live instead of people being so insecure and nuts-o like they are in the ‘1st World’ or the ‘West’. Talk about repression! No wonder people aren’t neurotic in Africa like they are in the States, we are so downtrodden. Too many rules."

and his response:

"I question whether people in Africa are not neurotic. I would say in all their pain and suffering it's beyond neurotic. Using rape as a gun to repress villages and tribes. Using pre-adolecent boys to shoot AK-47's to kill their neighbors. To have corruption as the baseline for most governments, starvation, draught, war, genocide, rampant disease, repressive regimes that treat people like chattel. No access to sufficient medical treatment, lack of clean water and food. Prostitution as a given for many young girls. Parents selling their children? Girls having their clitoris's removed or mangled to suppress feeling. Insurgent wacko jihadist's. I mean the list goes on. We only have an inkling of their suffering.
I would say repression is first and foremost in Africa not here. Now I know what you are talking about as far as repression here, and that's true...it's all comes from the Puritans whities that came to America first. There is no place free from repression, we can only control that in our own minds no matter where we live."

He was right. I had on those rose-tinted glasses Marieke and I are always discussing. Today they are off and I am really, really sad and angry for the fate of my fellow Dogon sisters, but what can I do? I would appreciate your thoughts. Maybe some kind of discussion?

So, after I last left you all, I was stuck in Bamako. OK, we got taken back to the airport again that night/morning at about 1:00 am to do the whole deal all over again and it was really exhausting but I hung in there with my new friend, Julienne, (the nun), and we eventually made it onto the plane at about 4:00 am. We finally took off at around 5 or 6 (we were really late leaving), and made it to Casablanca at 8-ish. Now, you all know I, (and all Warren Wilson students!) don’t wear a watch, especially when travelling, because watching all the time zones change makes me nuts, but I was watching the time yesterday because I knew my connection in Casablanca to Frankfort would be really tight, especially now that we were so late.

Once we arrived, there was an announcement about which gate the flight to Frankfort would leave from, which was good since while I was in the line for the security check, they announced that the flight was calling for its final boarding! I pushed my way through the line, ran upstairs, to the gate, passing a chaos of screaming matches between passengers, Moroccan airline attendants and Sub-Saharan Africans, which I later gathered were related to the various African airline strikes which caused me and many other WOCAL attendants to either miss or be late for the conference. I arrived at the supposed gate only to find that it was not, in fact, the correct gate, though when I checked the departures screen, the flight wasn’t even listed! I tried to ask the airport staff for help, but they were so caught up in all the madness that each one at each gate gave me a different gate number, all of which were incorrect. Just as I was about to give up , since surely my plane had left by now, I decided to just look at the screen of each gate in the entire airport (it’s not very big) to find the gate for Frankfort, at least, I thought, I could see if I could catch the next flight.

At the very end of the airport, there it was, glowing in the distance, Frankfort. I made one final sprint to the finish line, only to find the door locked, no one at the desk, but a plane was still docked outside. Just as I was desperately fiddling with the emergency lock to open the door and get out to the plane, a guy came up behind me and asked in French if I was going to Frankfort. I frantically replied, that come hell or high water, I sure was cuz I had to be at that conference!

Suddenly, a woman appeared, let us in the door, and as we rushed down the stairs to the shuttle to take us to the plane, the man asked if I was American (I know, my Southern-States-French accent must not have had him fooled for long ;) He said he was going to a conference in Frankfort too, and I was like, “it caaaan’t be the same one…?” And he goes, “Are you a linguist?” I was like, nooooo way! Sure enough, he was also a participant for WOCAL; he was coming from a canceled flight re-routed onto a bus from Marrakesh, also trying desperately to get to the conference. So, I asked where he was from, and he said Canada, and I asked if possibly he attended UBC, and sure enough, Raphael Girard, your classmate, who I later realized I had in fact met at ACAL two years ago was standing with me on a shuttle bus in Casablanca, Morocco!

This was too weird to be for real so I invited him to stay with me at my hotel in exchange for helping me with my baggage (which I would later found out never left Casablanca) as my back has been really hurting again so I was worried about hauling my luggage by myself would make it worse.
So, we finally got to Frankfort (sans baggage) last night around 8:00 pm local time and and though I hadn’t slept, borrowed a shirt from him to wear over my gross pants I’ve been wearing for like 4 days in a row now, no meds in me (they are all in my luggage with all my cute outfits I worked so hard with my tailor to design and make in Mali especially for this conference), my gross tevas covering my beautifully henna-ed feet, we came into register this morning at like 7:00 am and, sure, I said, when asked, I will be happy to chair the first phonology session (with my Malian cell phone as a clock)!

I present tomorrow so I will have to update again after that as it will surely be another interesting tale but I had to tell you this one first!!!

Guess I just wasn’t allowed to leave without telling y’all one last bedtime story about my adventures in Mali. OK, here it is, the story of why I am currently stuck in Bamako:

So, I was supposed to leave Bamako for Frankfort on August 16th at 3:35 am with Royal Air Maroc so that I could arrive on Sunday afternoon in Cologne to check in at the World Conference on African Linguistics. Jeff had already left at around 10:00 pm with Air France. He had left me in the care of one of his assistants to make sure my baggage and I got to the airport safely, especially with my back acting up again.

I knew the only way I was going to be able to stay up all night was to go out. A few of us when to a couple clubs, but like any decent venue, none of them really get going until about 2:00 am. Unfortunately, I had to tear myself away at around 12:30 am to get to the airport by the 2:00 am check-in time. I got to the airport at about 1:30, having ‘fired’ my assistant because he was of no help as he was just constantly hitting on me, so I was better off with the assistance of the taxi driver. I was surprised to find that there was already a long line ahead of me at the airport, even though I was early.
I had had a great day yesterday, really feeling confident about my ability to get things done in Bamako on my own. I never spent much time here while in Peace Corps as I didn’t speak Bamana and didn’t really enjoy visiting the big city. But, now that I have been learning Bamana at IU for the past 3 years, I was starting to enjoy the city more and yesterday, I had been to the bank, had my feet beautifully decorated with henna, bought gifts for people back home, had a lovely lunch with friends, even had time to have an epiphany concerning my tonal analysis which I will be presenting on Wednesday at WOCAL.

As it turned out, every Toubab at the airport had had the same idea as I had, so all were also beautifully henna-ed. I struck up a conversation about that fact with another American woman who later told me she had been interning in Bamako for the summer with a local health clinic. This was to be her second all-nighter so when we finally reached the check-in desk about 1.5 hrs later, and a check-in person became free, I offered for her to go ahead of me since it was clear how tired she was and there was only one person ahead of me at the next desk. She gratefully accepted and I joked that it didn’t matter, we would be waiting somewhere for them to get all these people checked-in and seated anyways. That’s when the man in front of me turned around and I saw that he had a stack of about 6 or 7 passports sitting on the desk.

Fortunately, it would have seemed, he was held up as he missed a check point along the way to check-in so he was told to go back and take care of his error. The woman called me to come up. But, by the time I wheeled my baggage up and gave her my passport and travel information, the previous client returned. He pushed my baggage out of the way and told me to move as he was already in the process of checking-in. I told him in a mix of Bamana and French that the woman had asked me to step forward and could he please not move my baggage as the taxi driver had it perfectly stacked on the cart and I didn’t want it to fall over.

That’s when things really got fun. The pompous jerk first replied, “Parlez votre langue”, in that air of haughtiness that some Malians of the city portray about the usage of French vs. Bamana. Like it was beneath him to speak his native tongue. I burst out laughing as the irony of him telling me to speak my own language while he was not only not speaking his own language, in fact, he was telling me to do so in the language of his colonializers! In addition, he had no idea he was talking to the queen of linguistic prowess who can at least great if not speak with some degree of fluency a language among each of the major language groups of Mali: Dogon, Fulani, Bamana, Songhai, Tamashek, French, and Arabic!
Me pointing out this ironic situation to him did not help the situation, however, as he ignored me and continued to bully his way to complete his check in and the woman behind the counter was no help either. I patiently/stubbornly refused to move, much to his annoyance, either myself or my baggage from the counter, however, so as to not lose my place in line.

Finally, when it became my turn, the woman behind the counter simply looked at me and stated in Bamana, “a falɛn don”, “it’s full”. For a minute I thought I was at a taxi gare because that is the phrase used for buses, taxis, cars, etc. but a plane?! I asked for clarification and her assistant explained to me and the other stranded passengers, of which there were many, that they had indeed known since yesterday that the plane would not be able to seat us all as there was a plane which was cancelled the day before so everyone from that plane was on this one and that is why they were there so early; they had been given priority.

Why they didn’t contact the passengers ahead of time to let us know not to stay up all night or to haul all our baggage all the way out to the airport, stand in line for hours, and, of course, spend all our CFA since the currency is not worth re-exchanging, was beyond pointless to ask at this juncture. Oh, and by the way, everyone, including me, had used up all his/her phone credit either.

Of course I start crying in an effort to possibly gain some leverage, (I really couldn’t help it either), but it was worthless as even the nun from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the woman with over-the-weight-limit luggage and four whiny children were just as stuck as me and all the other passengers. We begged them the staff of the airport to help us as it was not nearly 4 am and anyone from Bamako had already decided to head home. Because of the cancelled flight from the other night, the staff seemed to know the routine, so promised us to take us to a hotel and give us lodging, food, and a ride back to the airport for the following morning’s 3:30 am flight.

I was skeptical, but sure enough, the sweet nun, the woman with the whiny kids, and I found our way into someone’s car and were taken to a fancy, old, mix of Sudanese and colonial style architecture hotel not far from the airport. I guess they did end up feeling sorry for us after all since we got transported ahead of the other passengers, including, and I hope you feel as triumphant as I do, the arrogant asshole with his 7 passports, belonging to his wife and 6 annoying children!

Upon arrival at the hotel, the desk clerks starting saying something about the rooms not being ready and I was sure that we would all have to share rooms, but instead, they shoved keys in each of our outstretched hands and off we were escorted down ever darkening hallways as a huge storm was approaching and there were power outages. I shined my trusty Nokia cell phone flashlight at my room number 125, feeling surreal as if I was in the Stephen King movie, Misery, and found the room to be lavish, with a bathtub, TV, air-conditioned operated by button right above the king sized bed, and a wall of windows overlooking the far-away city.

I took a bath and then headed downstairs to see if there was any way of gaining an internet connection so that I could send a desperate email to the conference organizers, pleading with them to hold my registration since it would be impossible for me to get to Cologne in time to register before the conference. Though I was already paid, they had sent a threatening email to all the presenters that if we were not registered in person, in time, they would remove us from the program! Though the airport staff didn’t care about my sob story, to me, this is, to me, the most important conference I will attend so far, the ‘One Shot’ to make or break my career as I will be revealing the fact that I am now confident to say that Bangime is an isolate language. To you non-linguists reading this, me stating this is like saying we, in the year 2009, have just discovered a new species of animal, like no other living organism on the planet. Who knows when I will have the opportunity to attend the World Conference on African Linguistics again as it is, naturally, held all over the world, and it just so happens that it coincides this year with my current trajectory of time and space!!!

As you already have figured out by now, I did gain wireless internet access in the lobby of the hotel. And, yes, the conference organizers and Jeff got my emails so it looks like all I will miss is the first day of talks. Thank you all for your well wishes, hope to post next from Europe!!!

So much for my promise to keep to my work and not be distracted by writing journal entries, but I had to get this off my chest !

I passed a group of men the other day in the market here in Douentza and overheard them saying, well, let’s just say, some undignified things about ‘Toubabs’ and I stopped and inquired in their language, ‘Um, excuse me ?’ They were so embarrassed and they burst out laughing. When they regained composure, they said, looks like we can’t gossip (literally ‘sew something’ for all you inquisitive linguists reading this) about the Toubabs anymore, they understand us now!’

Every single day I fight off the people who would simply consider me to be like the other foreigners here, and I do use the word, ‘foreigner’ carefully because it is not simply the color of my skin which separates me from Malians – even black Americans or French are called by the same term, Toubab. To me, it is an insult to be considered the same as the tourists who spend but a couple weeks here and don’t even consider to respect the culture by wearing their short-shorts and certainly they don’t speak any of the local languages. I’ve tried so hard to be a true Dogon that now that I am considered one, I am in fact, treated like crap because I am a woman. I am ignored, I am unimportant. I am secondary. And, for the very fact that I am, in fact, a Toubab, it hurts me. Not to say that it is any easier for the real Dogon women, but I guess I rationalize that at least they have known nothing different. For instance, I, heaven forbid, interrupted two men talking this morning, which is no big deal in Malian culture at all – except if a woman does it to men, there is even a special lexical item for that ! – and they were infuriated with me. They cussed me out in their language and thus I proceeded to cuss them out in my language, and then went into my room in Jeff’s concession to cry. I couldn’t even storm out because it had begun to rain and it was slippery (which was a huge relief due to the draught, so I couldn’t even be angry about that either) ! A total bust.

This is what prompted my FB status. I am moving. Douentza is too big but yet too small. I need either complete wilderness and tradition, like Bounou, or the big city, like Sévaré. That way, I can be a Dogon woman in Bounou and a Toubab in Sévaré. I am still treated with the upmost respect in Bounou because they value my work and they seem to think I am a good luck charm or something mysterious, and in Sévaré, since I used to live there, and the population is ethnically very diverse, I can just be part of another race, or tribe, or ethnicity, whatever the PC term is these days. That way I can have both worlds. Douentza is just too developed yet not developed enough and people like me get mashed in between and I can’t take it anymore. I don’t have any sense of identity anymore and I am fucking lonely! I miss my Peace Corps buddies so much and the current linguists in our research project are no replacement now that Laura is gone. I can’t even find refuge in myself anymore because I don’t know who I am supposed to be. I need the lines to be clearer. At least now it is almost over and now I know what I need. I am the only one who can make myself happy and that is what I plan to do from now on.

My last trip of the summer to the village was difficult. It was good, however it was challening. As many of you know all too well, every day spent that far from “civilization” always passes so much slower than life in the fast-paced, time-is-money modern world of which most of us are accustomed. But this time, with the goals of getting my last data points for my presentation at the World Conference on Africa Linguisitcs in less than a month, not to mention the continuing task of the grammar sketch and lexicon of this fascinating but difficult language, plus the information I need for my qualifying papers, combined to form huge stress. On top of all that my computer had crashed before I left Douentza, and then even though I had charged up my voice recorder fully, and my two batteries for my cell phone, both of these essential to the field pieces of equipment failed. I even ran out of notebook paper and there are no notebooks available in the village. My short wave radio hasn’t been working. I had no way to communicate with the world outside of the Valley of Jowol, (as it is called), and I had no way of knowing if my friends and family back home were safe or what was going on in their lives. I can usually assume the Enchallah, ‘if the Lord is willin’, attitude in the village and be flexible, but this time was different and for a while I felt lonely and freaked out.

In addition, this year has so far been a draught for at least the region of Mopti and those which are north of it. The I night I arrived it Bounou it poured but then they didn’t receive any rain for another week, which is a long time considering how hot it gets. Those millet seedlings were baking and dying. So I tried to gain perspective on this, until the chief told me that the fate of the Dogon people rests on the tip of my pen. He was right. If the rains don’t come and the people don’t get a good harvest, then I, (and my Dogon Language Project teammates among the other villages), will be their only source of income, which they will need in order to purchase grain to eat. In particular in the case of Bounou, where I am fairly well convinced now that the Bangerime language is a true isolate, the information gained from it could make a huge impact on the field of African linguistics, and I am not about to make my career on the backs of the people who have been so good to me; I plan to return a part of whatever I gain to them.

So what did I do? Well, I took a deep breath and flipped over to the clean side of the already gathered items from lexical spreadsheet I had printed out, (7000-plus words is a lot of paper), and concentrated as hard as I could to hear tone, vowel length and quality, and the array of odd sounds found in the language that I usually rely on voice recordings analyzed with Praat to assist me in measuring accurately. Jeff always says that we, the younger generation of field workers, rely too heavily on our fancy equipment and although we have had some heated discussions about this in which I fiercy diagreed with him, now I have to admit he is, (at least partly), right. But to prove that I could indeed decipher the multitude of minimal pairs found in the language by ear alone, I constructed this list of sentences for practice, they are here in the picture along this entry.

Now, I am in Douentza for the next couple weeks before heading to Bamako to fly out; I brought my two informants with me because I am teaching them to transcribe texts, (including tone), so it is much fasciliated with the use of desks and a computer, which, by the way, our Russian colleague, Kirril fixed for me!!! Things are going better now.

For each two-week trip I have taken to Bounou, I have spent at least one day in a neigboring cliff village, all of which are only accessible by foot, and I go a bit further every time. This is in part due to my ceaseless curiosity to explore Dogon villages among the cliffs, and also in part to check out the surrounding languages to see if any of them could be related to Bangerime. This time I took a trip to a village called Semaw. It was lovely and the people were wonderful but in fact what is more interesting is the other trip I took this time with my language consultant, Ali, to his field on the plateau of the cliffs across the valley from Bounou. I went to get the fruits of a tree species we had not yet identified, which was plentiful nearby his field, about a two-hour hike across the valley and then straight up the rocks and then another hour or so across the plateau! He goes there every day that he does not work with me, I cannot imagine his fatigue.

We left early in the morning and there was cloud cover that day so the sun was not too excruitating. Along the way we ate berries and fruits from trees we found and when we passed our Fulani friends at their encampment on the plateau they gave us some fresh cow milk. When we reached his field we stored our belongings in his ‘house’ by the field. I use the word ‘house’ in quotes because that is what he called it, but it is in fact a cave. The reason he calls it a house instead of simply a cave is because he stores his tools there, along with cooking pots, and gourds for utensils and bowls, even grain to cook for meals. There is a spring nearby so we took one of the hollowed out gourds and drew some water to mix with the millet cream he had brought with us to drink for lunch. Then, back at the cave, he used his fire starter – a piece of iron which has the oil of a specific tree rubbed into it and then he strikes it with a small white rock to create a spark. He boiled the milk to pasturize it and then combined it with the millet cream and then we brought it to an outcropping of rocks under the shade of a tree to drink with some more berries we had gathered. As small mongoose and other critters ran in and out of nearby caves, Ali noted how one could more easily survive in the wilderness on top of the cliff plateau than down in the village during a bad rainy season. With the strength of meal we descended back to the village and along the way bathed in the water flowing off a waterfall, one side of the rocks for men and the other for women.

My last day in Bounou, we had a small fête. All the women of the village gathered at my small house and even though we were baking as it is a little oven atop a boulder, and everyone ate out of one hollowed out gourd, no one complained. The especially loved the balloons and the bubbles (thanks for that idea, Laura!) that I brought from the U.S. The men gathered separately, but I was told their part was equally successful. I was even served the head of the goat for breakfast the morning we left. This is a huge honor, and, yes, the brains tasted slimy!

I don’t know if I will have time to write any more entries since the conferences are quickly approaching. I thank all of you so much for your dedication to my journey. It means more than you all know to think that some one is out there reading and sharing with me in my thoughts. Next year while I will be here on the Fulbright Hays will be different; I think it will be better, this summer was a real test of my patience and sanity at various points and for various reasons but the knowledge that y’all are out there listening makes me strive for success.

I hope all of you have also had wonderful summer journeys and I look forward to hearing about them when I am better connected with you in a less than a month! Until then, take care, and stay strong.

Before I go back to my last trip of the summer to never-never land, I wanted to update y’all on my last couple weeks in Douentza…

My friend and colleague, Hama, from Koira, is here with me working on Bonduso Dogon this week. I really wanted to work with him on their language because he is the person who was the most instrumental in the success of the literacy program in the village back when I was in Peace Corps, and it was this literacy program, (and the lack of literacy materials in Kindige, the dialect of Bonduso which the people of Koira speak), that inspired me to return to school to become a linguist. Unfortunately, last summer and then the first half of this summer, Hama was very sick with a rare eye-disease that forced him to travel to Bamako and then all the way to the west of Mali, the Kayes region, for treatment. He just returned about two weeks ago and met me in Douentza. The first day he was here we went in search of the small booklet which we used to teach the women and men of Koira and a few surrounding villages to read and write in Dogon, in order to form a micro-economic association which to this day still thrives.

Because the booklet was written in Kidomnye, a dialect of Bonduso which is very close to, but not exactly the same as, the language of Koira, it has been my goal ever since the literacy program to create materials for Koira in their own language. (Because of the high number of Dogon languages and dialects, our estimates are currently at 18 languages and up to 60 different dialects, Dogon people are not only aware of the differences, they are also fiercely proud of these differences as they reflect part of their identity.) As you all know, it took me some time to decide to return to graduate school after Peace Corps, thus, I was not sure that we would be able to find a copy of the booklet used so long ago which remained with an NGO which no longer worked in the village.

Hama and I scoured the streets of Douentza in intense heat for hours until finally we found Sana, a Dogon who now works as a school teacher and was one of the original people involved in helping me with the financing and organizing of the literacy program. He searched his modest, mud brick house for at least an hour and to our amazement, finally emerged with one dusty copy of ‘Sabe Dulee’, meaning ‘First Book’ – and as I told our friends back at Jeff’s house when we returned with it in hand, my ‘reason for existing’.

This little paperback booklet may not look like much, and our friends surely laughed when I pulled it triumphantly from my backpack, as they had expected a tome after all of our efforts, but to me, it represents the reason for which I am here.

Now, don’t get all teary-eyed yet, because I truthfully admit to you, for a moment when I saw it, I felt disappointed. I was suddenly swept back to over ten years ago when we first launched the literacy and micro-credit project, and I just felt as if I hadn’t accomplished much since that time. I mean, here I was still walking the dusty, hot, sandy roads of Douentza, with nothing except a few CFA and a little Dogon booklet in my possession. I was not on the way to becoming an Ambassador, leader of the World Bank, abolishing AIDS in Africa, or holding a position on Capitol Hill, like my other former Peace Corps companions. I happen not to have been having the best last two weeks, the rains are coming as they should be at this time of year which makes everyone on edge, my poor, abused computer finally gave up and died after shutting itself down numerous times because of the heat. In fact, my down-spiraling thoughts continued, I now live in an even more remote location than I did when I was with the Peace Corps and I don’t even have a sweet mountain bike like I did back then.

Of course you all know me and that I am optimistic to a fault so I quickly countered that thinking with the fact that I just got my very unofficial driver’s permit for the motorcycle, I am the only person on earth, as one of my Fulbright Hays grant-reviewers said, with the ‘linguistic prowess’ to describe one of the world’s rare language isolates, I have been given the opportunity to continue to work with my dear friends and family in Koira-Beiri on their beloved Dogon language, and have now begun to write down some of their stories so that they will have books to read to their children in their own language, I have an amazingly devoted and wonderfully diverse group of friends and family – in sum, I live a life of adventure and excitement that I wouldn’t trade with anyone.

So the cycle continues as I depart for Bounou tomorrow and it is with this note that I leave you – I love you all and thank you for hanging in here with me. For those of you who wondered about my latest FB update, the answer is that I believe that we ALL have the ability to accomplish anything we want.

In answer to mom’s question about how the Chief liked the internet: Bringing Malians to the internet is such a blast. Since my short wave radio seems to no longer be able to pick up BBC, the internet has been my only link to the outside world. I went to the internet here in Douentza with Hama yesterday and he loved looking at all the photos of my PC friends and our family and greets all of you!

The chief, on the other hand, was pretty overwhelmed by the internet when I showed it to him in Sevaré. He enjoyed the photos but he was astonished at the way I could chat with people if they were online at the same time as me, or that I could send and receive letters so quickly, or that anyone’s photos or news was available for the entire world to see. (One of the reasons I changed my Facebook profile pic from the one of him and me since he was a bit embarrassed that everyone could see it. I had explained to him that I was going to put it up for everyone to see, and he agreed to it, but then when he officially saw it and understood, I could tell he felt a bit intimidated.)

Development in places like Africa is such a huge and complicated issue. I look at it on a kind of spectrum, from places like Bounou and surrounding villages as being at the most remote end of the spectrum to cities like Mopti, Sevaré, and of course, Bamako at the other. Villages such as Koira and towns like Douentza are somewhere in between. In Bounou, and in all the surrounding geographically isolated Dogon villages in the cliffs, some elders have literally never left their village. Except for what they hear from the younger generations who have travelled, their reality consists of living off what the earth provides. As the chief said to me after seeing the internet, (and he is someone who has indeed travelled as far as Côte d’Ivoire), I am never allowed again to try to convince him that he and I are the same. That, he said, we are not the same. He lives an existence of dependence on rain as the sole and highest priority of his life, while I am able to look at the entire world if I care to and forget about rain. Yes, I explained about the droughts in the South last year, but he didn’t want to hear it. And, he is right, it is not the same. We do have the option at least of irrigation; all they have are wells which dry up very quickly.

Then back to the continuum, since we just happened to be discussing this at lunch time today. Douentza, for example, has internet availability, electricity, pump water, a bar, a restaurant, schools, but these are items are not available to everyone. First, they only exist in certain houses/neighborhoods, this being for the obvious reason which underlies it all, money. Someone told me the other day that Mali is great if you have money, but it sure does suck if you don’t. And, I thought about that for some time. I think that is where the in between places like Koira Beiri really shine. Places like Koira continue to flourish without much cash flow. Because of their prime location between the valleys of high cliffs, they have expansive gardens, irrigated by flowing waterfalls found so deep into the cliffs that they rarely if ever run dry. The people of Koira are also extremely savvy. They use a complex system of turn-taking based on family hierarchy to move small dams of mud in dug out ditches to irrigate their gardens at night. They therefore are able to grow vegetables not only when no one else has any, but also of different kinds, and cheaper, than anyone else in the Douentza market every Sunday. The Dogon of Koira are also motivated and creative; the profits which they have gained from their hard work has enabled them to collectively purchase a solar water pump for their daily water needs with the assistance of a local NGO, and now they have a satellite dish and a TV which they charge villagers each night to watch! If you go to the edge of the village, you can even get cell phone service. In essence, people seem content in Koira, more so than in the cities, they have what they need and they don’t wish for more because (at least for the current generations who have not travelled extensively), they aren’t exposed to the possibility of having more.

Therefore, did I mess up my Chief’s world, as Robin suggested, by bringing him to the internet? The answer is, yeah, I might have. Is it better to have sheltered him from the reality of the world outside Bounou? I don’t have an answer to that question yet, but when I see him tomorrow, I will discuss it with him and let y’all know what we come up with in the next series of postings!

I continue to ponder identity based on the comments from Claire (see previous entry entitled ‘Identity’). While what she says may be true for many people, that we are in a particular place to do research, I did not start out in Mali as a researcher. One of the goals of Peace Corps is to integrate into a community, thus, since once a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer), always a PCV, I continue to do all that I can to integrate into the village in which I live. Sometimes it works, and sometimes Malians even forget that I am a foreigner. The other day, for instance, I was climbing in the cliffs near Bounou and a man from a neighboring village who I didn’t know walked by down below and hollered up to me after greeting, “Was I herding my goats?” for that would be the most reasonable explanation for someone to be in the cliffs in the afternoon. He ignored the fact that that ‘someone’ was a ‘skinless’, (as some Dogon say about white folks), woman atop a cliff probably looking much like an episode of “Land of the Lost”.
(By the way, note to Claire – the Fulani griots here have a language game much like the English pig-latin games! You were absolutely right, this is a great way to examine the phonology, and especially since Fulani morphology involves mutation of the initial consonant. I so apologize to you for saying that this method of elicitation is demeaning, they in fact love teaching me about it. I will now ask for it in Dogon and Bangerime too!)
The days which really confuse my sense of identity are those where I find myself driving a donkey cart in the morning and then sitting at a computer in a cyber café in the afternoon, browsing the internet. While I was just in Sevaré, the town just adjacent to the regional capitol, Mopti, where I lived for a year and a half while I worked with the Woodless Construction mason group, I returned to stay with my long-time friend, my big brother, Peace Corps Baba. Many of you know him and if not, you should because he is a terrific person. Talk about identity! His real name is Oumar Cissé, and he began his early life as a garibou, a Koranic student who is made to go around to houses and beg for food in order to learn about humility. He is Fulani ethnically though he grew up in the mainly Dogon town of Bandiagara. He is known as Peace Corps Baba because he got his start as a merchant with the Peace Corps (long before my time) and he is now a world-travelled, extremely successful seller and displayer in museums of jewelry, carvings, clothing, everything African, though mostly goods from Mali and its neighbors. His website is here: http://www.farafina-tigne.com/mali.html I lived at the apartment above his shop during my time in Sevaré and it is there that I continue to lodge when I visit. It is rare that I happen to find him in Mali and I was very fortunate to see him this last week. Despite his overwhelming success, he still retains a humble existence, he fasts twice a week to, as he told me, “Communicate and be closer to God”, he loves his one and only beautiful wife, Mariam, and they and their parents and their children have a comfortable, though traditional-style house in Mopti. He employs his entire family in his business and I and the chief and his son thoroughly enjoyed our mini-vacation, chatting with them all day as they tirelessly strung beads and cleaned silver, only getting up to attend the boutique if shoppers came to see and buy their wares.
One of the older men who works there, Sembe, still rides his bike every day between Mopti and Sevaré, which, though it is only about a 12k ride, is very arduous because most of it is through plains which are flooded for rice cultivation so the wind is very strong and of course there is always the oppressive heat. When I asked him how he was still making this ride twice a day, now ten years since I last knew him, and I know his health is not the best, he responded that he does tire, but then he sees a fellow ‘commuter’: a 70 or so year old man who continues to do the same bike ride at the same times of the day with him, every day, and he says to himself, if he can do it, so can I. My family at Baba’s are models for all of us to live by and I love them like my own family, which, they all send their love to you, by the way!

The day I arrived in Sevaré, I was eating lunch with the women in Baba’s compound. We had, what is usual for them, a shared, heaping bowl of rice with meat and fish sauce. Now, this is not usual for me, though, since in the village I eat mostly millet paste and I hadn’t had any meat for two weeks and only had fish on one special occasion. I was surely approaching anemia. A few minutes into the meal, I looked up to realize that the women had all stopped eating and were staring at me! Little did I notice that to their shock and amusement, I was sucking the marrow out of the bones, picking the fish out of the eyeballs of the skull, ravaging through my portion of rice! I burst out laughing as did they. Baba’s younger brother’s wife who had cooked the meal asked me through tears of laughter, “Kadia, are you…ok?! Where in the world did you come from today?” Since I had not seen them since I had come from America and most of my time had been in either Bounou, Koira, or Douentza, all of which are considered to be the ‘bush’ or the ‘wilderness’ compared to metropolitan Sevaré-Mopti, they had no idea what I am like the day I emerge from there!
The other day when I was in Mopti at the market, a young girl called me ‘Toubabou’ (the name by which foreigners are all called, deriving from the Arabic word for ‘doctor’, Tubib. As mentioned above, since I spend most of my time in rural areas, I discipline all the children to not call me that and to call me instead by my Malian name, Kadija or Kadia for short if they wish to address me, since I hate being called a foreigner after spending so much time here (see all my ranting about identity for more on this topic!) So, I responded to the girl, “I am not a Toubabou.” And she said, “Well, you sure do look like one!” Maybe it was one of those, you had to be there moments, but I couldn’t even respond, I was laughing so hard, what a clever girl!

In Bounou, one does everything in collaboration with the entire village, everything, that is, except working in the fields. For example, communal fishing day is when all the males of the village, from young boys to old men, enter the pond at the bottom of the village to dig and grab and catch as many cat fish as possible which are then divided equally among every person in the village – even I got two huge fish even though neither I nor my brother or father participated!
Another day was brick-making day and the entire village, every man, woman, and child, even I helped that day, carries bricks on their heads from the ground below where they are molded up into the boulders of the village where a house is to be constructed.
Farming, however, is a different story. Every family has a field, the size of which is relative to the number of people in the house, therefore our family, the chief’s family, has two huge fields because he has to not only feed his only family but also any stranger or guest that comes to visit the village. When I lived in Koira-Beiri, I remember there being communal fields, and communal field days, but in Bounou, all the fields are clearly delimited and each person works with his or her family. Even if the children begin to stray into a neighboring field, they are scolded. And the competition for the best field is fierce! The day I went with my family to plant our millet, they were gossiping about how other fields were not properly slashed, burned, or cleaned in general from last year, or they would laugh and mock other families’ fields which had a lot of weeds because they had so much work ahead of them! It was like the village’s version of keeping up with the Joneses! And, it doesn’t stop in the fields – when someone stays back from the fields to work with me doing linguistic elicitation, for example, their friends pass and shout how we are the ‘lazy ones’ who sit in the shade all day with no work. And then when one returns from the fields, if they return before dusk they are heckled and everyone’s hands are examined for evidence of work: blisters, cuts, bruises, and of course, bulging muscles must be present if one is to have ‘street credit’ in Bounou! And the women, just as the school teacher who is from another village said one day, “The women here could pick you up by the wrist and throw you. They scare me!” It is true – from the huge gourds full of water they carry from the well up the rocks to their houses in the cliffs of the village, to farming, pounding millet, washing clothes, and then at night they go back into the valley below the village in search of the precious Ronier fruits which they sell at neighboring villages’ markets, they are a tough crew. The day one woman told me I was strong was the best day of the summer for me in Bounou so far!

One of my language informants, Ali, he cracks me up. I thought ADHD was an American problem until I started working with Ali. I usually work with him on complex grammatical questions, as he is extremely bright, and I often ask him to tell me stories or long sentences for examples of specific constructions. For example, I will be like, “Ali, tell me how to say, ‘It was the brown female goat, not the white male one for which I searched within the caves of the cliff range which borders the valley next to Bounou in the afternoon yesterday.’” I get completely ready, recorder is on, pen is in poised above the notebook, and as he begins to talk, I am listening as carefully as possible for subtle tonal or vocalism changes are these are essential to my work on the grammar, and then I notice that he is really speaking quickly and the sentence seems longer than it should be, so I pause from my frantic scribbling and look up only to find in dismay that he is carrying on a completely separate conversation with a passerby! I try not to get frustrated as I snap him back to the task at hand, “Ali!” He is so innocently turns to look at me with that widely-opened, shiny, child-like stare, “Yes, Kadija?”, he asked so inquisitly. He has completely forgotten my question and I usually just have to laugh and start over.
The day when I came back from Douentza to Bounou this past time, I found some eggs hidden under a mat in the corner of my house and I told Ali about it because I was working with him on that day. He said a chicken probably crawled under my door while I was gone and layed them there. In the afternoon, I had given my keys to my daughter to help me get some water for my clay pot in my house and she had accidently not locked the door afterwards. I entered my house to find my unpacked luggage was opened and someone had taken out my recorder and set it in the dirt of my floor. I was very upset that someone had entered my house without my permission and rifled my things, and that they could have ruined my recorder if sand or mud had entered it. So, I came directly down and told Ali, and replied, “That is not the work of a chicken.” Again, instead of being upset, I completely fell off my stool cracking up and forgot the whole issue.

I slept inside the other night for the first time in weeks because it was raining.  It is always odd to sleep inside after sleeping on the roof every night.  Being in Mali is in many ways like camping, but even when camping, we sleep in tents, here, unless the rains have begun, I don’t sleep under any covering – just put a mat or sometimes a mattress and a mat if it isn’t terribly hot, on the roof and crash out.  Even if sleeping alone we are so private about sleeping in the States.  In Bounou in particular, people have multiple story mud-houses, (which building those is a feat within itself), but mine is single story, so when we all get up when ‘the sun’s eyes begin to bite’ at dawn, everyone whose house is taller than mine can clearly see me and my ‘daughter’ Kadia so one has to be somewhat aware of one’s appearance first thing in the morning, which, after a night of wrestling sand storms and nightmares about tone, can be a bit daunting!  The way that people here compensate for that is that no one can greet or speak to you until you have ‘washed your eyes’.  Therefore, you can buy yourself a bit of time while people sort of ignore you and get yourself together and wash the sand off your face and shake off the dreams.  The word for breakfast in Fulfulde literally translates as ‘cutting dreams’ so even until breakfast is had, the process of waking up continues.  So, it seems that we all do have a need for privacy in sleep and awakening, no matter where we are.

The impetuous for my decision to get a motorcycle, (I suppose it’s more like a dirt bike, wouldn’t you all who are familiar with the DT say?), is because my bicycle that I bought last year is ‘missing’. I am really pretty frustrated with the loss of my bike, so I thought about why:
Last year I used the bike transport among the villages on the ground around Bounou, and it was also helpful for sending others in the village on errands if I could not go myself. But, this year I am all about trekking everywhere, so not having the bike is ok in that regard. Also, I can’t realistically see myself transporting both myself and my belongings the almost 200K between Bounou and Douentza every couple of weeks on the bike. Transportation has always been and the biggest thorn in my side or the literally thorn in my tire since I ever starting working in Mali, especially since the group which preceded ours in Peace Corps was the last to have motos, I was able to ride on them though not ever drive one. Now that Jeff is on board with it and my lessons have successfully begun, I think that having a moto will improve my efficiency as well as my sanity while working in the field.
So, why was I so upset about the loss of my bike if I don’t even plan to use it anymore? I have come to the conclusion that it is because of this: I left the majority of my belongings in Bounou, including my cell phone, so that my chief and his family could use my stuff while I was gone and I could then resume occupation of everything upon my return. In Bounou, everything was returned to me in perfect condition, even my cell phone was charged and had credit and was ready to be used which was great since I very much needed to use it when I arrived there. Villagers have so few belongings compared to city-dwellers, especially in Bounou; the calabashes, which are grown in the village gardens, and are used for everything from carrying water, to bowls for eating, are sewn with hemp when they crack rather than replaced with new ones, are a prime example of the lack of material possessions which villagers own. People in Douentza, particularly those who reside at Jeff’s compound, have all that they could possibly want: computers, cameras, motos, cell phones, fancy clothing, yet they, (well, one person in particular whom I thought that I could trust), have clearly lost respect for taking care of things the way they surely once did when they too lived in a little Dogon village and kept their few belongings as safe and secure as they would a child. It just goes to show that our perception of poverty does not always encompass the respect that people with few things have and the ironic opposition that those who do have material possessions often assume that something like a bicycle is just a disposable item.

Jeff is gone to Bamako for a workshop with the Malian linguists, so I am here in Douentza holding down the fort. Since this summer’s work is to towards my qualifying papers, I had to figure out a way to divide my time between Bounou (Bangerime, Isolate? language) and Koira-Beiri (Bonduso, Dogon language). Yes, in case you are wondering, this is confusing. The best way for me to keep myself from completely mixing up what language I am working on, not to mention the interference from whatever language I am using to communicate with people, is to separate the work as much as possible. Luckily, the projects themselves are quite different. For Bangerime, I am examining the tonal properties of nouns, working off the data I presented at ACAL earlier year concerning the tone polarity and possible floating tones found when looking at the singular versus the plural forms, and will thus present the expanded results at WOCAL upon the return trip to the states.
So, last week I analyzed all the recordings I had made in Bounou; staring at Praat for days on end and then Excel spreadsheets of scrolls of examples of the tone on nouns with numbers, different adjectives, determiners, etc. until I finally concluded that I needed more data to draw definite conclusions. Will there ever be a day where I sit down and say, ok, I now have all the examples I need or will it continue like this where I have a hypothesis, then one adjective ends up shifting the tonal patterns differently from another, and thus I need to test more adjectives to see if it is the OCP at work, consonant depressor effects, phrase-final effects, vocalic quality, just an off day(s) for my speaker, or even better yet, another, syntactic floating tone? I think the person who figured out that the determiner in Bamana was a floating tone was a genius. Really, I mean, we learners of the language take this for granted now, but imagine being in the field hearing the language for the first time and being like, “What is going on with the tone on nouns? It keeps changing?!” That’s how I feel right now, but at least I have a job for a while, right?
Sunday was market day here in Douentza so I took the opportunity to catch a ride with the bâché that goes back and forth to Koira on that day to talk to see if the chief would let someone spend the next week with me in Douentza working on my other project, the verbal morphology of Bonduso. I had already prepped him for this as I discussed it with him last week while I was there so he was very pleased and agreed with me about the person I already had in mind.
Now the challenge comes that the people of Koira know a lot about my previous work doing Natural Resources Management and the Dogon Literacy Program as a Peace Corps volunteer, and I used to have a Dogon tutor, but no one has ever worked with me as a linguistic language consultant. In addition, I have never worked with an “untrained” language consultant since Tiga had worked with Stefan for 7 months and Ali had at least seen how their work went even if he had not worked directly with Stefan. And, of course, our consultant for Field Methods was well prepared for our bombardment of boredom!
Language tutoring and linguistic inquiry are two very different tasks, especially since my goal is not to complete a grammar sketch since Jeff has already done so for a neighboring dialect, Najamba, but rather to expand upon my current study of how a language with both segmental and autosegmental morphemes such as vowel harmony and tone can be handled using current morphological theory. This means, for the speaker, lots of tedious verb elicitation paradigms. Luckily, he is doing terrifically well so far and we are working on a short dictionary, building Jeff’s one for Najamba, which particularly highlights the dialectal differences.
I can’t express to you all how meaningful it is for me to finally be starting what I came back to grad school to accomplish. In addition, the people of Koira, particularly the women who participated in the literacy program which inspired me to return to graduate school to become a linguist, are thrilled that I am finally going to begin to record their language and produce something for them to use. I was somewhat apprehensive that they would not be as excited and enthusiastic as they once were, but instead, last night and last weekend when I brought up the subject again, they were so pleased and Kunja, the mother of my best friend Howa described to me how she wished to write down the date our father (my chief) died and how she would like to be able to read their stories written down by their own people. This was exactly what I needed to hear to renew my own passion and make the 130 degree heat, sandstorms in the middle of night, 5-hour donkey cart rides, straining my ears for hours to accurately transcribe, and all the other *challenges* of Mali worth it all over again. Thanks to all of you for all your help along the way and for staying with me along this journey.

Seeing the Malian President yesterday was really cool. The Peace Corps crew and I got right up close to him on his exit because the gendarmes cleared a path for him to leave by either threatening or actually whipping everyone in the way with tree branches but they said they wouldn’t hit us so we were allowed to stay right up next to the area where he left. Unfortunately, he was surrounded by armed guards so I couldn’t get a good photo opp. I really wanted to borrow one of the Tuareg’s camels that were around the area and get up there for a good view, but I was intimidated to ask as they were all looking fairly threatening with their fanciest head scarves tied in bundles upon bundles on their heads with only slits for their piercing eyes showing through. If I were still a photographer I would do a photo-expo on the amount of fabric that men wear on their heads! It is unbelievable with this much sun and heat that meters upon meters of cotton, rayon, and even wool fabrics tied upon one’s head until there is either no skin showing on their face or the piled fabric on the top of there heads will literally fall off if they aren’t completely in balance is the most in vogue that a Malian man can be.
So, speaking of Presidents, the funnies thing that I heard this week from the folks from Koira-Beiri is that Obama is a Dogon. Since I did not want to shatter their hopes or confuse them, I simply agreed; he is, after all, a projection of a dream for all of us, isn’t he?

I brought with me the recently published “Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide”, by Claire Bowern. As I mentioned earlier, I thought the book was basically crap. One chapter in particular actually made me quite annoyed. She discussing what she terms, “loosing one’s identity” in the field. What does this mean? Well, I can tell you what it means to me: that she is approaching field work completely backwards. For me, I gain identy(s) here in Mali. This aspect of field work is both positive and negative. Malians who know me very well even comment that there are two people within me, Kadija Sangalbah, and Abbie Hantgan, (in fact, some villages call me by my true Dogon name, Eje, but that is a whole other story in itself, so I will stay on topic for now). These are not just names, but actual identities. I have lost part of myself, I have gained. As any of you who speak another language know, even this can create another persona. Mark and Chad (my Peace Corps brothers) can certainly attest to the fact that I am much wittier in Fulfulde than I am in English, for example!
I was struck recently with thoughts about this chapter in particular recently through a series of events which in fact ended up upsetting me quite a bit. While I was in Koira-Beiri just recently, I was walking back from Ibissa, and it was getting dark, and I was alone, so I saw some women walking along another path and joined them; it turned out they were also from Koira so that worked out well. But, as they saw me approaching, they began gossiping, as all people in all cultures do, and despite the fact that they were saying that I had forgotten all my Dogon, since I understood everything they said, this was obviously not the case. They were discussing my good friend in the village, Hama, who has had a problem with his eyes since I was here last year. While I was here I did what I could to help him but he ended up having to go to Bamako for treatment after I left. I sent him some money to help with cost of the treatment while he was in Bamako and I was in the states, and had not heard from him for a while before I returned to Mali since I was so busy with school work. Upon arrival, I learned that he had to venture again to Kayes, in the far West of Mali, again for treatment and that his wife was in Bamako.
The women I met on the road were discussing what I terrible person I was because I had not visited his wife in Bamako (because, as I discussed in an earlier entry, you may recall, we only spent a day there so there wasn’t time, plus I didn’t know she was there). In addition, I had supposedly not specifically gone to Hama’s father’s house, (though I had gone there that very morning, but no one had been home). The fact that I had in the past sent money did not even seem to matter to them in their evaluation of my faux pas. I apologized and promised to go to Hama’s father’s house directly after eating dinner (though I was exhausted!) and that I would call Hama in Kayes as soon as I reached Douentza.
The next event that occurred that brought this idea of identity to a culmination was that I was sitting in Jeff’s courtyard yesterday afternoon, Jeff and I were sitting on one side of the courtyard, while his Dogon assistant, Minkailou and his friends were sitting on the other side. This was not a purposeful separation, we just happened to be all involved in separate languages and separate conversations. Several groups of Malians came and left the house throughout the time we were sitting there; all of them greeted each of the Malians one by one, and said goodbye to them upon departure. To us, they neither greeted nor said goodbye; they did not even acknowledge our presence.
When everyone had left except Minkailou, I went and sat next to him and told him how offended I was and asked why his friends didn’t greet us for this is about as rude a thing as a person can do in Malian culture. He didn’t have much of a response; he just looked down and said I was correct to be upset. But, I was REALLY upset and in fact went straight to bed after dinner. I had to evaluate to myself why this upset me so much, since, of course in the States, this is not something that offends us at all: people don’t greet people they don’t know; I am forever explaining this to my Malian friends and they are horrified. And, we are not absolved of the responsibility here, if I enter a shop, for example, or certainly someone’s home, even if I don’t know them at all, if I do not greet first, they will be extremely offended and if it is a shopkeeper, he could be very well within his right not to sell me anything at all or even respond to my request.
Someone pointed something out to me in Bounou which can serve as a metaphor of how I felt: I was at the time wearing the traditional Dogon indigo cloth, and the villager to whom I was conversing was wearing a Western tee-shirt and pants. He commented on how I was wearing Dogon cloth, yet he was wearing American cloth, [which, by the way, in case you didn’t know, is sewn with fire, therefore it is very hot to wear in the sun here ], and therefore, in essence, we had switched places.
In places where the people know me very well, like Koira, I am considered to be a Dogon woman. In the city, no matter how long I stay here, to many people, I am still a Toubab, an outsider. Both of these identities for me are both an honor and a curse. To be completely integrated is what I seek, but then to be an foreigner, to be a stranger, is, in Malian culture, to be closest to God, as we have come from so far away and should be treated then with the upmost respect. The Malians who entered our courtyard probably thought they were in fact doing us, Abbie Hantgan and Jeffrey Heath, a favor by respecting our culture and not interrupting our conversation; the women in Koira expect nothing less of me than for Kadija Seini Sangalbah to be a perfectly polite, completely culturally knowledgeable and respectful, flawlessly perfect, Dogon woman.

I have decided to break up this series of updates from the last two weeks into three sections: work, adventures, and thoughts. Though there will surely be overlap, at least this way those who have more of an interest in a particular section can refer to it directly, and maybe these will one day become book chapters, who knows…

Whether you are interested in linguistic fieldwork or field study in general, I think this section will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn about or pursue research abroad, and since I just read the latest linguist fieldwork manual, “Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide”, by Claire Bowern, and found it to be close to worthless, I hope to provide some examples of what works and doesn’t work, at least for me and our team of researchers on the Dogon Languages Project (see dogonlanguages.org for more info about the team and our results).
My advisor, Dr. Botne said that last summer was more or less a practice field trip and that this year would be my first summer of real field work. But, I think that he underestimated how much he taught us in our year-long field methods class. I am actually impressed with how much data I did gather last summer, and, in fact, how much of it is actually usable and not completely riddled with mistakes! I have a good basis on which to build upon now and I am also beginning to be able to understand and speak some Bangerime as well, which means that I must be understanding how the language works at some level at least. I do not wish to be the type of linguist who does not speak the language upon which they work, though this is very common, at least for those of us working in the field, it really makes the work so much more efficient if we actually learn to speak the language. This way, we know if we have misunderstood or mistranscribed because either people will not understand us or they will correct us. I find the children very helpful to communicate with because they do not speak much Fulfulde. This is good for me for two reasons: one, their parents are continuing to pass on the language to them, meaning that the language is not in imminent danger of becoming extinct, and two, it forces me to not use Fulfulde to communicate with them.
My schedule in the village is basically the same as last summer, though now I work 6 instead of 7 days a week with my language consultants, Tiga and Ali, and my time is equally divided between them now, three days a week each (they gave me permission to use their names by the way, in case the human subjects folks happen to be reading this!). With Tiga, I work mainly on tonal paradigms as his tone is very clear to hear. I use a combination of impressionistic and recorded data; I find that it is important especially in speaking the language to learn to hear and use tone, and it would be impossible for me to record everything and then analyze it all since we work for approximately 6 - 8 hours a day. With Ali, we work through texts, grammatical items, and semantic questions for the lexicon. In the mornings, I work with each of them one-on-one, and in the afternoons we involve who ever else is around in our discussions, whether we collect texts or do backwards translations of lexical items and re-checking of transcriptions. These days it has been so hot, even I can’t get excited over nominal tonal paradigms in 115 degree heat in the shade, so we have been taking it slower than last summer, especially since I will be able to spend the year here next year, the rush is less pressing.
My way of working is a bit unorthodox in that I collect a ton of data without much analysis for a week or two, and then I take it to Douentza and spend another week or two doing analysis at Jeff’s place. I do this because, as you know, it is impossible to bring the computer to the village, and this system seems to work well for me. I still make some hypotheses of course while I am working, but I find that letting the data set for a while, so to speak, helps me to get enough distance from it to analyze it objectively and systematically when the time comes. Obviously, it is imperative to be very organized: I must keep my notebook in perfect order for this to work, and I have to be prepared in advance with enough questions to prepare beforehand in order to keep me busy for the time that I am in the village.
The focus of this summer’s fieldwork is thus to gather data to complete my two qualifying papers, one being on the complex autosegmental morphophonology of Bonduso Dogon, the language of Koira-Beiri, my former Peace Corps village, and one on the tonal system of nominal phrases in Bangerime. In addition, I am always plugging away at completing a grammar sketch and lexicon for Bangerime, and I have many of my personal anthropological/ethnological goals as well. The plan for the next two weeks, then is to stay here in Douentza and analyze the data I gathered, and if time allows, I would like to bring someone from Koira here to work with me while Jeff is in Bamako so that someone is here at the house but I am not alone either.