Grinds My Gears

I've tried to keep all my posts up this point as positive as I can. Sure, I hint at things and mention my frustrations, but I've been trying to paint everything is a positive light. Not today. I've got a few annoyances to share, which I feel is appropriate to write about now that I've been here for a year.

You know what grinds my gears about Mali...

When kids see me and they stop what they are doing and start jumping up and down yelling "Too-baa-boo" over and over and over and over and over and over.

When I'm riding my bike in the city and someone sitting on the side of the road starts yelling at me come over to him for no other reason than I'm white.

When people tell me to give them my stuff.

When people tell me to go into my house and get the loads of cash I obviously have... or to send home for money for them.

When I try to take a bus between cities and I hear the baggage handlers tell each other to charge me a lot for baggage because I'm white.

That nothing ever happens "on time".

That community leaders in my village make agreements with me all the time that they don't keep.

That I have to greet everyone all the time... or I'm a jerk.

When people come to the bureau in Segou looking for the tailor shop next door and then can't figure out why there aren't any sewing machines in our room.

Beggars.

When people say "bon soir" (good evening) to me at 7 in the morning.

When my counterpart laughs at me when I explain to him that something that he or others in the village are doing is bad for reasons that seem quite obvious to me (not washing hands, not treating water, not beating kids or wives, not using safety equipment in dangerous situations, having dozens of people share the same drinking cup, the advantages of plates and forks, to name a few).

When people continue to speak to me in French when I tell them I only speak Bambara or English.

When people tell me to get them papers and money to go to America.

When people give me a blank look when I tell them Spain and America aren't connected.

When kids poop in the street outside my concession gate.

The wait at the bank (minimum 3 hours).

Street vendors who try to sell me stuff because they think I'm a tourist. (I am not their friend, which they claim with some insistence)

Gendarmes.

That my counterpart asks me every day if I want to eat some of his moni (millet porridge), which I hate and refuse to eat... and he knows it.

That people will pick up a large spoon and start eating with it when 10 seconds earlier it had been entirely covered with flies.

That bad rap music and pro wrestling are a big portion of the American pop culture that makes it over here.

That my counterpart's radio seems to have two settings... off, or deafeningly loud. He lives next door.

Most music played on the radio.

The lady that tries to see me bread every time I go from Segou to my village... and I NEVER buy anything from her.

That when I try to buy things at most corner stores it often seems that me trying to give the shop some business is more of an annoyance to the shop owner than anything else. Apparently I've interrupted them from the whole lot of nothing they were doing beforehand.

That no one ever has change! (shops, market, bars, taxis, etc.)