Finding my nitch in Koutiala

This week it felt like I had found my nitch here in Koutiala. Since Saturday I have been going on a bicycle ride every morning. For the last five mornings I figure I have been doing 22 km round trip. This has changed my whole outlook on the day. I bicycle out the main road to Sikasso south of Koutiala. The mornings are cool; the birds are singing and all the industrial city is left behind for a while.

Monday when I reported to the Union where I go to work everyday for a couple of hours there was a metal workers formation (training) going on. It went on all week and the Bogolan women was there too so being at the Union was interesting. I took pictures for the first time in a long time, drank tea, and watched the metal workers build their fabricated structure.

I have been in Mali now for three months and Koutiala for one month.

Bogolan Fabric

Every morning Monday through Friday I go to "Work" if you can call it that. I report into the Union Associations of Artisan's of Koutiala. Go through greeting everyone there and then sit with the President of Bogolan Association of Koutiala. Drink tea and just kinda be there. She doesn't speak French (my French still is not that good) and I don't speak Bambara.

Through language difficulties we have become friends. She knows my host mom. Several times a week I buy tea, now drinking tea in Mali is a ceremony as much as its the actual drinking of the tea.

Here is some information on Bogolan fabric and how its made;

Bògòlanfini (sometimes bogolan) is a traditional Malian fabric dyed with fermented mud, particularly associated with the Bambara. The name is a Bambara word meaning "earthcloth."

In the creation of bògòlanfini, simple cotton cloth is woven, shrunk, and then soaked in a preparation of leaves from certain trees. An artist then outlines an intricate design with a mud dye, often taking several weeks to cover the entire cloth. Yellowish areas of mud are then treated with a caustic soda, bleaching them back to white for a stark black and white design. Traditionally, a man will do the weaving while a woman will do the dyeing.