ii - Where are the cows?

Let's face it: I don't speak a lot of Malinké. In fact, if you were to scan through this blog and pick out all the various Malinké words I've thrown in, you'd know the language about as well as I do.

I arrived in a Malinké village four months ago, previously having lived in a Dialonké village and, prior to that, a small Susu town. When I got here, I could say, "i ni ké" (hello/thank you). Not a whole lot has changed since then. Unlike in Sandenia, where I had over a month of integration into village life before teaching, in Cisséla I reported to the school the day after moving in. Having expected to take over somebody else's classes already in progress, it's not surprising I was rather taken aback when I learned I'd be picking up my programs from the very beginning of the school year. Basically, I had less than half a school year to cram a year of knowledge into the students' heads. Needless to say, my hands were full. Learning a new language was the last thing on my mind.

In spit of my complete lack of skill in her native tongue, my neighbor is always thrilled when I correctly answer her questions in Malinké.

She asks the same four questions every day. I give her the same four answers every day. And every day, the result is the same: she appears absolutely floored by my apparently bottomless vat of knowledge in the mandinka-kan dialect. She claps her hands, shouts "Uh-huhhhh!" in approval, and flashes a smile big enough to be seen from a place where they might speak something I can actually understand.

Always a fan of praise and congratulations, I decided it was finally time to give my Malinké comprehension a boost. So one day, while walking back from one of our runs, I asked my friend, Bangaly, to teach me a new phrase. He taught me to say, "I just went running."

"Nanta bori diya," I repeated over and over, committing the phrase to memory. When I got back to my hut, I was going to say this to my neighbor and it was going to BLOW-HER-MIND.

I got back to my hut.

I said it to her.

She nodded and walked away.

...

Hold the phone... what had just happened? Talk about anticlimactic! I'd practiced it so many times with Bangaly, I must have said it correctly...

The next day, I said it again. This time, I managed to earn a verbal response. "I don't speak French," she told me in Malinké. As she said this, Bangaly's father chimed in to say it wasn't French, that I was, in fact, speaking Malinké. She looked at me again.

"Nanta bori diya?" I offered, though with a bit more timidity this time around.

"Nanta bori diya! Nanta bori diya! [something something something] nanta bori diya!" she cried. She'd lost it - clapping, smiling, laughing, telling the other neighbors. She could not have been more pleased.

The next day, I had Bangaly teach me a new phrase.

"i la nisii alu fandjon?" I asked my neighbor - "where are the cows?"

She regarded me as though I'd just asked if the sky was blue. "They're up on the hill, eating," said said, as she shook her head and walked away.

...

I dunno.