Freggetable salad…

So, Michelle thought she would be able to deal with the girl (Bintou) who comes twice the week. Let me tell you what happen last week!!! So, last Thursday Michelle gave Bintou some instructions on what she had to wash, buy, and prepare besides the actual meal she makes every time. Michelle asked her to buy a pineapple and cut it up and add some other fruit to it. When we came home after work, I went to the kitchen to check what she had made for us. I found in the oven a dish of rice and another with beef peanut sauce. (Typically Malian) Then, I opened the fridge and found two metal bowls one with the washed lettuce and in the other one the fruit salad Michelle asked her to make. You won’t imagine what was in the fruit salad!!! Pineapple, bananas, apple and carrots, tomatoes, parsley and strange of all, ONIONS! Since then we’ve been trying to find the right name to call we thought maybe we could call it freggetable salad and en français, salade de fregumes. You may be curious as to how it tasted…not bad, but the tomatoes were too much. Otherwise the beef peanut sauce was really good. Finally, I said to Michelle that I would take over from now on and show her exactly what we want and what we mean when we ask for a fruit salad.


Bintou


Lots of people have been asking how Alou (our guard/house boy) is doing. I would say that it’s not that easy to have someone living with you and who barely understands and speaks French. This past week was quite interesting, one day he asked me for 1000 CFA (around $2.5) to buy a phone card to call hiswife who is sick. When he asked me I just thought “what!? you are married??!! (this was the first time we’d found out he was married. We honestly think he’s 17 years old!!) and you are also asking for money when we just gave you 15 000 CFA for food a week ago??” Don’t think I’m being cheap, because this is not the case; I’m just trying to be fair and help him in another ways. My concept is that you cannot always help someone just by giving him money because who knows what the future will bring and also the toubabous (us white people) won’t be there to help forever. Instead I’m trying to teach him new skills, buy him tools, and give him some kind of work ethic that will benefit him for the future to earn more in the future. After he asked for the money Michelle and I talked about what we should do. We were still surprised that he had a wife and kids in another village. The landlord hadn`t mentioned this to us and Alou was living in the house fulltime. We decided that I would talk to him and ask him, if he wanted to be paid every week instead of once a month. I ask Alou to come so we could have a chat. I had my note pad with me, so I could write down numbers. I started the conversation and told him we were worried because he already used the 15 000 CFA we gave him a week ago and we wanted to help him find a solution to managed his money. (Just a quick FYI- we always have a ^plate of food for him when we`re eating at home. The 15,000 CFA we gave him was for him to buy a meal when we weren`t eating at home- which is really just lunch time during the week. ) When he got the idea where I was going, he stopped me and said “attend je vais chercher mon frère”. Here he comes back 10 mins later with another guy his age. He presents himself as Alou’s brother who has a degree in computer science and has been looking for job for 3 years. I’m thinking in my head ; “ I`m sorry but I can’t help you. I’m already trying to help your bro.” Finally we chatted together and I explained to him that I want to help Alou and I’m also worried because we gave him 15 000CFA and he already spend it all. »I stressed that he needed to keep some of this money for himself in case we aren`t home. I told him that we might be away 2 weeks at a time and he`d have to buy his own food. After 10 mins of discussions we decided the 1000CFA would be an advance on his next pay check and that next month he would keep money aside in case something were to happen to him while we are away.


Alou

In the last two days we’ve been trying to decide on the limits we need to fix Alou in terms of what he can eat in our fridge . On Saturday when we came home at midnight Michelle went to the kitchen to get some water and he followed her. Michelle asked him if he had eaten something and he say no, so Michelle had to heat him up something. If you have any ideas/comments on how we`re dealing with this situation, don’t hesitate.
Thomas