New Family

Okay, so I made it.  I have gotten over the latrine thing as well as the roach thing.  The hardest part now is the food.  At restaurants there are only three options:  riz sauce arachide (rice with peanut sauce), spaghetti, or benga (beans).  I have completely exhausted all three of those options.  At home with the host family, I usually get spaghetti with way too much oil and tomato flavoring and a Fanta.  I was finally able to identify a spice that I cannot stand and they know I am not a big fan of the to.  To is a gelatin substance made out of flour and water and a ton of stirring.  It doesn’t have much flavor so it all depends on the sauce.  My family’s favorite sauce happens to be snot sauce or they call it sauce gumbo.   It is not gumbo; it is green slime with leaves.  Hungry yet? 

My host family is wonderful.  I know I complain a lot but they really are wonderful and happy people.  My father is a traditional medicine man and I have 5 siblings:  Assanatou (F 19), Abdoulye (M 15), Mazou (M 12), Nehmata (F 12), and Ahmed (M 4).  Everyday there is a line of people outside the courtyard waiting to meet with my father.  I wish I could observe some of these meetings but I am afraid to ask.  I also don’t know how to ask because of this whole language barrier thing.  My siblings in school speak some French as a second language.  My family really speaks Moore.  Every evening I come home, fumble through some French but mostly just make grunting sounds to convey a yes or no answer to a question I didn’t really understand and then my brother Mazou teaches me more Moore.  Just to clarify, I study French everyday at Peace Corps school, I greet my family in Moore and practice that language with them, and in two weeks I will start learning Gourmatchuma, which is the language I will be speaking when I go to site in the Southeast.  Rumor has it, lots of elephants in the Southeast so I am super excited.