A Week of Donoso-did us a world of good!

Joe and I live in a Dogon village. The people here have a unique culture different from the other Malians in the country. Dogons have not yet(or very little) been influenced by the western world.

When we were in training Joe and I both were taught French. French is the working language here. In schools children are taught in French and in their local dialect. But beings only 29% of the country is literate, knowing French only helps us at work. (Because French is not spoken in the home and only learned in school). In our village 2 out of 800 people speak French(only speak, not read or write). So needless to say French is useless where we live. After we made a few phone calls, Peace Corps decided to send us out a Donoso tutor for one week, 30 hours of tutoring.

SIDE NOTE: For those of you who know Joe well, Imagine him living in a village for 5 weeks and not able to talk someones ear off---I guess I got the brunt of Joe's uncanny ability to talk since he had no other choice than to talk to me, and I had not other choice than to listen.

Last week was out BIG Donoso week-and it did us a world of good. We sat in a mud structure with a thatched roof made of millet stalks with a make-shift chalkboard (that was half-broken)and in 95F heat and took in all the Donoso we could...We also managed to eat quite a few peanuts too(it is harvest time here so everyone is always giving us peanuts!)

We learned everything from greetings, to transportation and market lingo to the phrase, "Snakes scare me."Another useful phrase we learned was, "In America, American men only have one wife," Malians are polygamists so they are always trying to give Joe another wife.

Anyway, we took in a lot of language and were exhausted when the week was done. The village is quite pleased with our progress and with that they all make a joint effort to help us with our language any time they can.
Knowing the local language is all part of the integration process. People respect you more when you speak their language (and you get better deals at the market if you know the local language, and you know how us Martin women love bargains).

Joe and I have made a few goals for ourselves so that we are diligent in our studies. We are to learn one Donoso verb a day and it's conjugations. With that we have two questions and one blessing that we practice each week by walking around our village every morning and greeting folks using the questions and blessings(blessings and greetings are HUGE here if you don't say them to everyone you encounter, it is considered very rude).

So cheers to the Dogons, Donoso, our tutor and to our goals. Donoso will come slowly but surely.

Pinanni Segeremo(until next time),

Yamba and Ambobu

Joe playing a little dancing music for some of the kids in the village