Sunday at Fanta's

I spent Sunday at Fanta’s house again, hanging out with her kids and helping them practice French plays they had to put on for school. Fanta always tries to overfeed everyone and we had haricots (beans) for dinner, as usual Malian-style, with the entire family sharing the dish (right hands only). She kept pushing the massive chicken towards me and was unsatisfied when I told her that I was content with everything else. First, everyone in the family helped me with my eating technique (you have to roll the beans together a little and then use some palm action to eat). Fanta was still upset that I wasn’t eating the frightening chicken in the middle of the platter, so I told her that when I lived in the states, I was a vegetarian. It was a Big Fat Greek Wedding moment, because she was immediately concerned and asked me why I hadn’t mentioned that before, and served up a huge chuck of beef on top of the dish of beans.
As with most Malian families, Fanta’s family is so big that it’s unclear how each person is actually related, especially since Malians call their friends brothers and cousins all the time as well. But seven of the entire family decided to pile into the massive, white pick up truck to drive me home after dinner. I couldn’t tell if they were just really curious about where I lived, since Sikoroni is known to be a really poor neighborhood, or if this was just a family outing in a ridiculously tripped out car. I had forgotten that Mali’s soccer team had just won against Sudan 3-0, and that the entirety of Bamako was celebrating. I’m really glad they didn’t let me take a taxi home, because for the entire ride home, I was terrified- hundreds of kids were screaming and running into the streets to celebrate. When each car passed, they would try to tap the ground right in front of the car so we would just swerve or honk really loudly to scare them out of the way. This just confirms my feeling that the biggest threat to my health here isn’t malaria or contaminated water but the insane motos and cars which completely disregard any pedestrians. Motos will drive at full speed directly through the most crowded parts of the market, just expecting that the women balancing massive platters of fish or baskets of mangos will duck out of the way.