Becoming Kabré (Kabiyé)

Due to excess of excitment from last week, I was unable to give a basic description of my setting here in Africa. But here are the basics:

The family:Kabiyé families are unique in that they use words like brothers and sisters to refer to cousins and grandpapa or grandmama to refer to elders. Thus, it is always confusing about who are actually the biological children of the parents. In addition, children often lived in aunt and uncle's houses depending on whether those houses needed extra help. To complicate things more, men could also have multiple wives.

My host family is one of the less complicated cases. There's the mom (Justine) and dad (Monsieur Kofi). They have 5 daughters: Vivian (10), Destiné (9), Flora (6?), Florine (6?), Adeline (18 months). The girls are vibrant and intelligent, and the personalities of each family member is comparable to the girls in Jane Austen's novel.

The oldest daughter Vivian is like the eldest daughter who likes to be carefree, but she holds herself back because she knows that she has the most responsibilities. The second oldest, Destiné, is like Liz, in that she knows that she has lots of responsibilities, but she is free to express her feelings. She dances and sing the best out of all of them. Since she has more free time than Vivian, she gets to perfect her card-playing and hop-scotching skills. She is the most delightful to me, at least. The twins (Flora and Florine) are kind of overshadowed by their older sisters and by each other. Flora is girlier than Florine. The youngest, Adelline, is the darling of the family. Her forever-smiling face and tackle hugs warns your heart ever time you look at her. She can't speak quite yet, but she is always making noises like "Tanti" (refering to mom), and "Bee" (refering to me).

I actually have a Kabiyé name now, and it is Tchilalou, which means that I am the daughter of Wednesday, the day I arrived. Rui turned out to be too complicated for them to pronounce, so Tchilalou would have to do. Most everyone calls and knows me by that now. The other day, a bunch of children were chanting "En-Sa-ra," which means white person, to me. I told them that my name was Tchilalou, so instead of chanting "ensara," they chanted "Tchilalou" with a rythym that made me feel like I had my personal cheer-leading squad.

The family also has three other older boys who are middle school students. They are the cousins of the family, but they eat, live and cultivate with my host family due to reasons that I still have not figured out. I think that this family needed more help, so these boys help them out in return for food. They are super smart, funny, and good humored guys. They are Kofi (the younger), Tami, Aklam. I am not exactly sure how their Kabiyé names are spelled, but here's my best try. With these boys, I learned the several popular card games, including one that is called the American game. It is really like Uno but with playing cards. I am proud to say that I have won several games so far.

The rest of the household consists of at least 5 dogs, 10 chickens, several lamb, and a few pigs. I have never lived close to so many animals in my life, and I have never realized that each of them has a unique characteristic. For example, there's a crippled chicken who likes to go into my room a lot. I think that it thinks that my room is the grain storage or something. One time, I came back to my room and found two chickens under my desk. Aw, gotta love my family.

A typical day:
Each day, I get up at around 5:30am. Don't worry, this is fairly normal because due to a lack of electricity, I go to bed around 8:30pm or 9:00pm. When the sun rises at around 5am, I am up as well. Just this week, my host family decided that I don't exercise enough (meaning walking to work, going up the mountain at least twice at week is not enough), and got me to go running at 6am everyday. My host dad used to work with the Chinese at the hospital in the nearest big city, so he said that I should be more like the other Chinese who exercise every morning. I agreed that I needed to be in shape, so this Monday morning, I got my personal training schedule. Basically, I go running with one of the older daughters in the morning at the soccer field behind the middle school. It is refreshing, I have to say. I am glad that I am running with one of the girls, because at least this way, I can still out-run them.

By 7:30am, I usually have already taken a shower and have eaten my oatmeal breakfast. By 8am, I am at work shadowing the nurses and medical assistant. So far, I have gone through pretty much all of the functions of the small medical clinic. I will talk about my work more next time. At noon exactly, everyone leaves to eat lunch and rest away from the unforgiving sun. By three in the afternoon, everyone goes back or work, but the afternoon is never that important, so there are hardly any patients by then. I just take that time to reflect, write, or read.
Every Wednesday, I go to the market in the big city, Kara, and every Friday, I climb up the mountain to work with the villages and the medical insurance system. I am really excited about what I am doing, and I will tell you about it next week.