I love Dramétou!

I went back to my original village this week for Tabaski, and it was one of the best times I've had in Mali. There's not a lot of phone reception there, and not many people have phones, so prior to my actual arrival only one person in village even knew I was back in country. After borrowing a bicycle from another volunteer in Bafoulabé, my old market town which is 9 kilometers away, I met the first Dramétou-ite while crossing the river. Mahmet and I were pretty close during my time there, so the look of shock quickly turned into a big grin as we shouted our greetings across the water. We were going in opposite directions, so I climbed out of the boat and headed off on the still familiar trail into the bush.

Once I was within sight of village, my excitement was tempered by nervousness. Most people didn't know I was coming, how would they react? Also, had any of my friends moved away or died? Things don't change very quickly in rural villages, but they do change sometimes, and I hadn't had any contact with Dramétou for over a year.

A young girl saw me right before I passed the first group of huts and started sprinting into town. I couldn't make out what she was saying, but a few people emerged from their compounds to see what the fuss was about. Two men intercepted me in the road, their mouths open in surprise. When I told them I had come back to celebrate Tabaski they rattled off numerous blessings and continued on their way. The first compound I entered was Sané's, one of my old homologues and the one person I had been able to reach by phone. She had gone out to work in the fields for the day and would be back in the afternoon, her niece told me, so I continued on to Modibo's, my other homologue. He also wasn't around, but his second wife was there taking care of the children. Her hand flew up to her mouth in surprise, 'Eh Allah!' We exchanged greetings and I continued up the path towards my old huts. I stopped to say hello to one of my host sisters and her family. She jumped up from her stool when she saw me and her husband's other wife started shouting to the next compound over that I was here. After exchanging greetings, I extricated myself and continued on to my old compound. The reaction there was the same as everywhere else and a small crowd gathered to escort me to my host family's. When I got there most of the family was off working, but my favorite two host sisters were there and my two favorite host nephews as well. My sisters' mouths literally fell open. I spent the rest of the day hanging out there and napping as person after person came through to greet me and welcome me back. At one point in the day, an older man that I didn't know very well came over and told me how good it was that I had come back for the celebration. 'I've been really sick and I was going to get better,' he told me, 'but now that you've come back I will.'

The next day was Tabaski itself. I got up, put on my fancy new complet, and had my favorite breakfast of moni, then went out to the prayer area with my host mom. Since Tabaski is the biggest holiday of the year, the village mosque isn't big enough for everyone and instead we all headed out of town to an area designated for Tabaski prayer specifically. I sat down on a mat in the back with the women, and the leaders began the ceremony up in front of the men, draping a light cloth over their group and leading prayer in Khassonké. I mostly observed and took pictures, but also stood and kneeled with the group, throwing in an 'Amiina' (amen) every once in a while. There was a sadness to the proceedings this year, as our Imam (muslim religious leader) had died the previous week. I didn't know the ceremony well enough to notice much difference, as I had only gone once before, but on the way back to my family's compound we stopped to sit with his family briefly and deliver funeral blessings. Similar to the old man the previous day, one of the Imam's good friends told me how grateful he was that I had come and blessed Dramétou again after it had suffered from this loss. Throughout the day, we all ate a ton of meat, and different families exchanged bowls of food so that you could have a little bit of everything (if your stomach could handle it all). The evening was capped off with a traditional dance party in the middle of town. My sisters and I arrived pretty early and chose our spot on the edge of the circle as boys began hauling brush to the opposite end, where it was lit to make a bonfire. After the drums had been rolled over to the fire and heated, the music began. The women danced and sang while I watched and clapped along with them, everyone showing off their new clothes and dance moves. Unfortunately the party got cut short when a little girl got sick, with promises to restart in a couple days. Also unfortunately, I would be gone by then...

The next day, Tuesday, was my last day in village, for this visit at least. I spend most of the day hanging out with my host sisters, then went over to Sané's in the afternoon. I ended up going out to the peanut fields with her, which seemed very appropriate for my last day of village. We sat together on the ground pulling the nuts from the plant and chatting until the sun started to set and we had to head back into town. That night I kind of wanted to stay up with my family, but everyone, especially myself, was so tired and full of good food that I didn't make it past 8pm.

The next morning I got up and got my things ready to leave. Sané had come by the evening before after I had gone to sleep and delivered a big bag of peanuts that we had harvested together. Fortunately, I was about to make some extra room in my bag: it was time to deliver gifts. Before I had left the US I had gone to get some simple gifts for my host family and close friends in village, knowing that I couldn't go back to Mali without going to visit Dramétou. That morning, I handed out the hats, fingernail polish, and squirt guns and then tied my bags on the back of my bike. As I prepared to leave, my family and friends gathered around and shook my hand to say goodbye, even getting the legendary left hand handshake from both my host parents: in Mali the only time it's appropriate to shake the left hand is during leave taking, the premise being that it's wrong, therefore you must come back again someday to make it right again. Some people took their leave as I left the compound, but a group of women and children walked me out past the edge of village to the first bend of the road, apologizing for not taking me further. It was as if I was getting the goodbye that I hadn't gotten last year, and I felt incredibly loved.

Now, as I sit in Manantali writing, I am so thankful that I was able to have the village and the experiences I did. Hopefully I'll be able to go back again before I leave Mali, or later on in life, but this visit is going to sustain my love of Mali for awhile.

I work with some truly remarkable people. I’ve just completed an 8 day stint out doing visitations in my villages, and I am astounded by how extraordinary some of the local workers that I have the privilege to be supervising are.

A week ago, I had just finished my supervisory visit in the village of Koro and was getting ready to bike the approximately 7 kilometers back to Tetou, where I was camping at a friend’s house. One of the local workers that I supervise in Koro, and my main contact there, had some papers to drop off at the health clinic in Tetou and wanted to speak with the doctor there so he suggested that we bike back together. Since I still don’t know the roads incredibly well, I was grateful for his company. Especially in rainy season, which is now, the roads are extremely difficult to navigate in certain sections: nomadic herders have established many spur roads that wind their way back into remote parts of the bush, and this is further complicated by the rains creating large swaths of mud which eradicate signs of the main road and also contribute to slowing the pace of travel even more. There are certain parts where it is simply easier to dismount from the bike, take my shoes off so that they don’t get pulled off by the mud, and slog my way to the other side of the muddy patch where I promptly seek out a Malian to ask for directions since I have inevitably lost my way (or at least suspect that I have). The first time that I biked out to the villages of Borokuy and Kira, it took me 3 hours and one tire repair to go what should have been 9 kilometers. That time and the previous trip to Koro I am fairly certain I took a wrong turn but was then lucky enough to take another wrong turn and still ended up in the correct village.

So, I was grateful that Dabou wanted to bike back to Tetou with me. While I had been in Koro for the day, he had bent over backwards to be a good host. I drank several rounds of Malian tea, was offered innumerable bowls of toh (the local food), given the best parts of the meals that I was actually able to partake in, and practically forced to take some recently ripened corn back with me to cook and eat later. Just like with all our favorite grandmas, in Mali food is love. When it was actually time to leave, I strapped my notebooks on the back of my bike, threw on a camelback and climbed onto my mountain bike. I had Dabou start ahead of me for 2 major reasons: he knew the route better, and I also suspected that he would be slower than me. I was right. This man, who is probably over 6 feet tall, was riding a Flying Pigeon, the endemic bike of Mali which was originally provided to a select few by UNICEF but is now widely available. These bikes come in one size only, which means that children ride them by sticking one of their legs between the crossbars, and men of Dabou’s size are hunched over as they ride. I don’t think that it’s possible for me to be more acclimated to Malian temperatures than a Malian, but the discrepancy between our bikes resulted in his shirt being soaked in sweat by the time we reached Tetou, whereas I was essentially dry. After he dropped off the paperwork, he turned around and headed back to Koro, hopefully completing the approximately 7 kilometer trip just before sunset.

I remember last time I went to Koro, Dabou said to me, ‘This is a simple village, and we are very simple people.’ The way he said it, I felt as though he was apologizing for the state of things there, and I was struck at how much effort my people actually make to improve the lives of their neighbors. Dabou had grown up there, only completed the 6th year of school, and then embarked on the life of his parents and grandparents. Despite these adversities, he has managed to become fluent in French and been working as a relais, or local health worker. His story is not unique within my project, but through my experiences here I am constantly grateful that I was born into the life that I have, and grew up with the opportunities that I too often take for granted.

Throughout my life, I keep being reminded of the great importance of context. The most clear-cut example of this was in University, when I even had a series of courses referred to as the ‘Context Sequence.’ During my study with Glenn Murcutt in Australia, I was reminded of his aversion to design outside his native country because he has a legitimate concern of misunderstanding foreign context. Here in my work in my villages, I am also constantly reminded.

Even after I have over 2 years of experience working in Malian villages, there is still so much that I don’t understand about culture and custom. Not only am I now working in the somewhat different context, being over on the other side of the country, but there are still aspects of the pandemic Malian culture that I don’t grasp thoroughly. Just the other day I was eating dinner with some of my co-workers and was informed, for the first time that I know of, that shaking my eating hand down and away from the communal bowl is bad. There are simply so many small nuances that I have not yet experienced, or have experienced but not had someone willing to explain their cultural importance and meaning, that I am constantly learning new things about Mali. All of these little factors come into play when I am trying to work in what is still a very foreign context.

I’ve spent the last 3 weeks traveling around to all of my villages, most of them twice, and I have been continually reminded of the importance of noting all the slight indicators for how and when to be most effective in my work. The first 2 weeks of this month I was biking around by myself, staying in the compounds of friends and village chiefs, so I had sole responsibility of overseeing and motivating the local health workers that are part of our project. I found myself often unsure of how to best go about getting the results that we want: Do I do what comes more naturally to me and point out how and what truly needs to be done? Or should I taking the more passive aggressive approach, since in Mali it’s not normal to openly criticize? I found that I usually ended up somewhere in the middle, which is dangerous territory (try to please everyone and you please no one…). I was disappointed overall in how much work my villages had gotten done, but still felt fairly accomplished by the end of those 2 weeks, having logged about 160km of biking, and reached 8 of my 9 villages. There were a few really good times, too. The most project related was when I went to the village of Koya and within my first hour there had introduced the idea of a cheaply made hand-washing station and actually built it (check out some of my pictures posted on facebook to see how excited the kids were to use it). Another more cross-cultural one was when I went to a dance party with my friends in one of the villages where everyone was thrilled when I actually worked up the courage to dance awkwardly with them.

I’m to the point now that I feel comfortable greeting in the three most commonly used languages in my service area, and I know which places are most likely to use which language, so several of the towns I don’t even work in but do bike through know me by sight and greeting, if not by name. Many of the people in the villages I do work in, don’t work with personally still know me and greet me by name. Furthermore, those random people I meet while biking out in the bush, especially when I’m worried about being lost, are constantly getting this big grin on their face when I greet them in their native language and then ask whether I’m on the right road. Every time I hear that recognition in their response or their use of my name even when I have no idea who they are, I am reminded of why I came back to Mali. All of these little incidents make me feel like I’m at least doing something right at far as cultural integration goes.

This last week one of my supervisors came up from Bamako, and he and 2 of my other co-workers went around to all 9 of my villages by car. At first I was concerned about the lack of progress that I had made in the last few months: Would the slow progress of our local workers reflect poorly on my supervision, or would they recognize that this is Mali?

As it turns out, and probably thanks to the fact that all three men are Malian, I experienced far more of the latter sentiment. I could tell that there were also disappointed in the slow progress, and I admit that I was secretly pleased to see them showing the frustration that I had been feeling, especially since it was not directed at me. Lest I give the impression that this last week of visits was an overall bad experience, I must point out that I think this show of frustration from a fellow Malian was more effective in motivating people than mine ever would have been on its own. As integrated as I can ever get in these villages, I will still always be seen as a bit of an outsider who brings their own approach, and I have personally been told on several occasions that ‘this is Mali, and that’s just not how it’s done here.’ So, I was very pleased to have the support of Zana, Kone, and Tounkara this last week, and I have great hope that these dual visits will have a catalyzing impact.

Going back to what I was saying in the beginning of this post, about context, I’ve found that in the Mali it’s just as crucial as ever. I’ve also found that, while I will never be as good at the cultural context here as your average native Malian, I still do okay. I try my best to adjust when I can, and I’ve found that it’s usually not only effective enough, but also greatly appreciated. Probably even more so than if it came from one of their own…

Now that I have spent several weeks in the San part of Mali, I have discovered a number of differences between here and the area around Bafoulabe.

The most disappointing change is definitely the lack of peanut butter. I’d always heard that Malinke/Khassonke country was the land of tigadege, and I was aware that we had the best tigadegena (peanut butter sauce) in Mali over there, but it still didn’t sink in until I looked all over market and didn’t find any peanut butter at all for sale. Fortunately crises has been averted and I was able to procure some this morning here in San. While that’s far less convenient that it being in my actual market town, I will survive. I’m far more concerned with my ability to find food for wale now than I was while I lived in Drametou, because this time around I don’t have a host family (yet – I’m looking for one right now). When I had a host family I ate almost all of my meals with them, and only cooked for myself about once a week right after I had gone into market. This resulted in a significant lack of variety (millet porridge for breakfast, millet with sauce for lunch, millet with a different sauce for dinner), but I knew that I would be getting some protein, some greens, and three meals a day. Keep in mind that I chose to eat with my host family regularly, not only for the convenience of availability, but mostly because it was important to me to be eating the same kind of food that everyone else in my village was eating. This time around I’m going to have fresh vegetables at every opportunity, but those opportunities are going to be pretty limited.

One of the most visible changes is the types of animals that I’m seeing on a daily basis. The most obvious of these is the existence of pigs. I was definitely the only Christian in my village before, although there were a few in my market town, so no one was raising pigs. Now there are pigs everywhere. Yum. I’ve decided that pigs are to me now what goats were to me before. Somehow, even though they are disgustingly filthy 99.9% of the time, they are still really adorable. The other animal that I see all the time now are horses. In the Kayes region, only wealthy people had horses, everyone else just had donkeys. Here, I see horses almost as much as donkeys, which is fantastic, because donkeys are surprisingly really loud. They even eat loudly. There were times in Drametou when I would literally be woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of donkeys chewing. I’m really excited that that doesn’t appear to be a problem this time around.

Other than those two really big changes, and the different language (which is a whole different problem), San is really similar to Kayes. People are still amazing. Rainy season still floods the road and makes transport hard. I still worry about my ability to effectively work with all these barriers. So, not that much different. And, the most important thing is that I am really glad to be back.

After leaving Mali a mere 7.5 months ago, I'm back! I arrived safely last night to Bamako with all my luggage and will be here for a few days before heading out to my site.

Seeing as how my last entry was so long ago, here is a short list of what I've done in the interim:

travelled on 4 continents in 5 countries

been in 22 airports

moved about 5 times

held 2 jobs

spoken in 3 schools

attended 1 epic concert (GAGA!)

got in 1 painful bicycle accident

and

met innumerable awesome people

Now I am back in Mali with Peace Corps Response, working alongside Helen Keller International in the town of Tominion in the eastern Segou region. My assignment is working with community health workers, women’s groups, and school personnel to promote improved hygiene behaviors in an effort to reduce disease transmittal, and I will be here for 6 months this time. It seems like such a short time in a lot of ways, but I'm hoping to get a lot accomplished. SInce I will be in a different part of the country I will be learning a new language for trips out to small villages, and hopefully improving my French for more professional atmospheres. I'm excited for the opportunity to make a difference again here and Mali and also to get more experience and contacts in the international development community, since I think it's what I would like to do for a career. I've been looking at graduate school programs and checking out a few jobs, but all of that is being put on the back burner for a little while so that I can concentrate on doing my best work here. Wish me luck!

I am in Morocco! I flew into Casablanca without a hitch, even getting in a little before schedule. And then the problems began. My friend Colleen and I had arranged to meet outside of baggage in the airport since I was supposed to get in a couple hours after her, but she was nowhere to be found. I searched for a good 20 minutes or so before realizing that her flight had been delayed....for 4 hours. Good seeing as how I hadn't been able to find her, bad seeing as how we were supposed to check into our hotel shortly. Slightly before panic set in she came through the gate and we hugged and went to get some money. Unsuccessfully. Apparently all of the ATMs at the airport hate us. So we exchanged some cash and headed into town. Our hotel was fabulous, easy to find, and a great comfort after the debacle at the airport. We went out to explore for a while, then came back and slept.

The next morning we had a mission: get money. We failed at our mission. Apparently all the ATMs in Casablanca hate us. We wandered around for literally hours, trying at banks and hotels for some way to get money, finally going back to ours, our small little budget hotel which to our great surprise was able to help us out. Now that we weren't panicking about going broke and being stuck indefinately with no money we went to see the one sight in Casa that we wanted to: the Hassan II mosque. It was really big, really elaborately decorated, and actually allowed us infidels inside to look.

Now that we were done with that one thing in Casa, taking into account that the city appeared to regard us with loathing, we set out for Marrakesh.

Marrakesh loved us! First of all we were finally able to get money, but even better: the city was a bustling sensory experience: tons of color, spicy scents, music....it was fantastic! We walked around the square and market all the time, checking out all the wares and goodies, watching the snake charmers and musicians, and fending off women doing henna and vendors selling everything from spices to fresh squeezed orange juice to silver jewelry to leather everything to rugs to clothes to everything else. And yes I bought some shoes.

After Marrakesh we headed to Essouira on the coast to relax a little. For a few days we wandered around, walked the beach, and ate fresh seafood. Once we were completely relaxed from that we headed back up north to Rabat. Rabat was really nice. It had the feel of a functioning city that was just very comfortable with itself. Whereas Marrakesh had felt a little divided, with one part of town a little stuck in the past and the newer part of town trying so hard to be like a hip western city, Rabat just really seemed to have it together while still having some beautiful sights. While there we went up to the kasbah overlooking the sea and also checked out an old ruins on the edge of the city with some Roman, some Islamic influence, took lots of pictures and even did some sketching.

After Rabat we headed off to Fez. I was kind of expecting Fez to feel a lot like Marrakesh, but it really didn't. Once again we stayed in the medina (old town), but this time it felt like it was still functioning for more than just tourists. On our first afternoon there was a parade through the streets complete with horsemen, camels, musicians, singers, and dancers, and we were able to watch it all from the roof of our hotel. The next day we wandered through the tiny narrow streets, getting out of the way for pull-carts and mules overloaded with goods and supplies (the streets are too narrow for cars to be allowed) and at one point got so lost that a couple little boys had to help us find our way back to the more easily identifiable part of town. In the hopes of that not happening again, we tried to stick with more recognizable routes from then on and on our trip to the Jewish quarter we even allowed ourselves the luxury of a bit of a guide. He took us around, and then, surprise, surprise, we ended up at a big shop full of goods they were just looking to unload on us poor unsuspecting tourists. Little did they know how many times we had already fended off such attempts at parting us with our hard-earned money, and little did they know just how little of that money we actually had at our disposal. Of course, little did I know just how good these guys actually were. Now I don't want you to think that I don't love my beautiful, gorgeous, lovely Moroccan rug, but I was shell-shocked for the rest of the day that I actually bought it. It felt like it happened so fast, but I know it didn't. We were probably in that shop for over an hour, drinking mint tea, learning about the different types of rugs and materials, but when they actually tried to start selling us stuff it just happened so quickly. I had noticed my future purchase at the very beginning, so to be polite I said I might be interested. He wrote down the expected price. I then wrote down my insultingly low offer. He countered. I didn't budge. He countered. I didn't budge. And then he said ok. Oh my god. I couldn't believe he actually said ok. So now I have a rug. It's beautiful and I love it, but what on earth am I going to do with it? I don't even have a place to live yet! C'est la vie...

I did finally get over my shock (Colleen did, too: she also got a similar, though smaller rug), which is good, since we had another day to enjoy Fez before heading north to Chefchaouen, which is where we are now. This place is stunning. It's almost unreal how beautiful it is. It's set on the slope of the mountains and in the medina where we are all of the buildings have been coated with a blue-tinted lime wash. We've been seeing postcards all over Morocco that have pictures taken here, but it's so striking here in person. The other night we were wandering around and I looked down this little side street that was just gorgeous and it took me a minute to realize that, no, it wasn't the lighting that made the blue look so pretty, it was just the color of all the walls.

We're now heading off to Tangier for our last little bit in Morocco and then heading across the straight into Spain. It's getting obvious how close we are to Europe with all the other tourists and the menus translated into French and Spanish and sometimes even English. Oh yea: the food here is amazing! We've had tons of couscous and tajine (slow-cooked meat and veggies in a spiced, savoury sauce) and pasteries and flatbread sandwiches. I don't think we've had anything that I didn't love. Last night we decided to fix a simple little feast of flatbread and cheese and olives and even that was amazing. Mmmmmmmmmm....

Here's hoping that Tangier treats us as well as the rest of the country (Casa nothwithstanding), and we cross into a new adventure in Spain soon.

Today is my last official day as a Peace Corps volunteer. Tomorrow I will wake up, not at the Peace Corps house, but at a friend's, because I will be an RPCV. The R stands for Returned, and, even though I don't actually leave Mali until Monday morning, and am traveling for 10 weeks before returning to the US, returning is what I suppose I'm doing. It makes me nervous. My time here in Mali has been this amazing, enlightening, challenging, slow-paced while still intense two years. I will be returning to an America that I may not altogether recognize, and I know that I've changed at least a little. I suspect more than just a little, but I suppose I won't actually realize how much for quite some time.I left my village on the 28th of August. It was really hard to say goodbye, even though I had kind of been looking forward to that day since I got back from Ghana. Due to the loss of my project I had been more than just a little depressed about the course my service had taken, but that didn't really change the attachment I felt to the people in my village. I started packing way ahead of time (big surprise to those of you who know me well), sorting what I would give away to friends in village, what I would leave for friends in Peace Corps, and what I could actually fit in my bags to go home. Since I'll be traveling for so long before getting back to the US I am only taking one bag with me, and that has necessitated a lot of purging. I also burnt a lot of stuff...mmm, fire.When that Saturday actually arrived, though, I wasn't ready. For one thing, I thought I wasn't going to be leaving until the afternoon and the car showed up in the morning. For another, I hadn't come to terms with the fact that I was leaving, probably for good. Since I am not being replaced in Drametou by a new volunteer, I was moving all of my stuff out and thankfully being helped by a car and driver from Peace Corps. When they showed up, I said final goodbyes to as many friends as I could, but many were still out in the fields working, as they had intended to come in in the afternoon to see me off. I'm not entirely sure which would have been harder: not getting to say goodbye to everyone, or having to say goodbye to everyone. Regardless, I was upset and still in a little bit of shock as I pulled out of village, silently crying in the back seat.I didn't actually have much time to dwell on my loss, as we promptly got stuck in the mud. Really stuck. As in I could see the growing panic in the driver's eyes, thinking we were never going to get out. Thankfully, a group of men from the nearby village came to our aid, and after a couple hours of digging, scraping, and cutting branches to put under the entrenched tires, we were free. Bakoye cew: i ni ce, i ni baara ji. By that point in time I had stopped crying, and since they wouldn't let me help (it was muddy, and I was a white woman wearing a complet, and therefore completely inept), and I knew that even if we were stuck for the night it would still be okay, I admit I found the whole situation kind of comical. The downside was that I also felt guilty: the car wouldn't have gotten stuck if it hadn't come out to my village to pick me up and had all of my crap loading it down. But, we did get out, and from that point on it was pretty smooth sailing, or at least as much as it can be on the road between Bafoulabe and Kita. In Manantali we unloaded most of the stuff. I left all my furniture, a lot of my clothes, and various other small things there for a new volunteer that wasn't immediately replacing a previous volunteer. Best of luck in the next 2 years Jorie! We also unloaded a bunch of soak pit construction supplies for another volunteer who is planning to take advantage of the benefits that my village didn't and restart the project in Manantali. I took one last look at my favorite place in the country, the stage house overlooking the river, and briefly mourned the loss before climbing back in the car and heading to Kita for the night. I parted with the car and driver the next morning and spent a few days moping in Kita before heading into Bamako myself on my final stint in Malian public transport. Of all my frequent routes on transport, this is/was by far the easiest. The bus was basically on time, not too crowded, and in good condition running on a paved road. Of course, there were also frequent stops to pick up more people along the way, a handful of those people sitting in the aisle, a few crying babies, a few people getting sick, and the unavoidable midday heat, but nothing unmanageable or out of the ordinary.I actually came in to Bamako a day earlier than I had originally planned since my friend Alaric was going to be leaving a day earlier than I had thought. I'm glad I did, because it turned out that there was a concert that night at Tubaniso, the training facility just outside of Bamako, by Vieux Farka Toure that I got in just in time to go to. When I was in training out there we didn't get any private concerts like that, so I chose to consider it a little bit of a send off for me as well.The next few days were a whilwind, filled with lots of hanging out, going out on the town in Bamako, and reminiscing. On Friday, 3 September the new stage of volunteers swore in at the embassy in the midst of a huge rainstorm. In the few hours between my morning run and leaving for the embassy, several feet of water accumulated in the streets, and my 2 minute walk from the house to the bureau to catch a car resulted in a full soaking. When I arrived at the embassy I literally wrung out the bottom of my skirt. At least it wasn't too hot I guess. There were a few short stints of sunshine in the afternoon, but it was still pretty cool and drizzly when we went out with the new volunteers to celebrate that evening. As in previous years it was a good party, and then it was over and I spent the next few days recovering from the sleep deprivation of the previous few.After the weekend's festivities I had to buckle down and get the last of my work done. I had unknowingly chosen the worst week ever to try and close out my service. Officially, today is my last day. However, today happens to be the last day of Ramadan for most of the world, and the day after the the last day of Ramadan for Mali (don't ask me why, I'm still a little unsure), so Bamako is pretty much non-functional both yesterday and today. Oh yea, and Monday was Labor Day, which means our office was closed then, too. So I only had Tuesday and Wednesday to get the last two years wrapped up. Throw into that mix the fact that all of those new volunteers that just swore in were moving into their villages this week and you have a seriously reduced number of staff actually in Bamako on those two days and you get a somewhat panicked me. Fortunately I was still able to get everything taken care of at the bureau and now I am just waiting. I've gotten a lot of practice waiting in Mali.So.....Inchallah, I will fly out on Monday morning for Casablanca. My friend Colleen will meet me there and we will embark on 6 weeks of traveling in Morocco and then up through Spain and France to London. Once in London we'll catch up with our friend Kelly who currently lives and works there and then Colleen will head back to Spain and fly to America, I will fly to Mumbai/Bombay, and Kelly, well Kelly will go back to life as normal in London. In India I will meet up with my friend Jen who also just finished up her Peace Corps service in Mali, and we will travel around for a month before getting back stateside.Here's to Mali, here's to travel, here's to the world! Oh yea, and i sambe sambe!

In my last entry I mentioned an upcoming trip to Ghana, and it was epic. But first a little bit of background information:

Immediately prior to this trip was probably the low point of my entire Peace Corps service. As many of you know, I have been slowly working towards a big (or small, depending on your perspective) project in my village, and we were finally to the point where funding was going to be coming through in about a week. I was really looking forward to having a visible, tangible result from my 2 years in Mali, but as time went on it became clear that I was far more invested in this project than my village. One of the things that I respect most about Peace Corps is its focus on sustainable development, and I no longer felt that completing this project was going to have sustainable results. So, after a few really difficult days of deliberation I made an executive decision to pull the funding. It was one of the hardest, most heart-wrenching things I have ever had to do, and my village was (and still is to a certain extent) very upset with me, but I still feel that I made the right decision.

Needless to say, I was really looking forward to my vacation in Ghana, and it fortunately lived up to my expectations.

The first step of our adventure was to take an overnight bus through Burkina Faso and down into Ghana to the city of Kumasi. There is a PC house there that we were able to spend the night at, bathe, and then continue down further south. After being on a bus for about 30 hours straight it was a welcome relief with the added bonus of getting advice from a current PCV in Ghana (thanks Mikey!).

Our first stop was in Accra, but it was really just a stop-over in a failed attempt to get our Burkina visa extended and save some money, but we had a lovely night at the YWCA and our first Fan Ice - so good. From there we went to the beach at Kokrobite, which was nice, but not enough to get us to stick around for too long, so our next planned stop was in Apam.

Oh Apam. I had gotten this idea in my head that I wanted to stay in an old slave fort. In our guide books it says that this is possible in a couple of different towns along the Ghanaian coast, and Apam seemed like one of the cooler places to do it, so we headed on down. When we arrived it was just gorgeous - I'm talking French Riviera gorgeous. The fort was at the top of the hill overlooking the fishing harbor that was full of big, brightly painted boats, and the aging stone building was just as I had imagined. Creepy history aside it was kind of romantic. The three of us each had our own individual rooms on the top level of the fort with a breezeway in between where we could all hang out together, so we relaxed for a while then went down to check out the town. After getting a little harassed along the harbor (as expected) we headed back up to our refuge on the hill and started settling in for the night. We were having a lovely game of rummy accompanied by a fine box of Don Simon sangria when it became increasingly clear that the 4th room in the fort, the only one not occupied by us, the one right next to my room and opening out into the breezeway where we sat playing cards, was being rented out by the hour. Yup, a couple of times. Awesome. So, okay, we weren't the only ones to find the fort setting a little 'romantic' but we did our best to deal with the situation (I did have to make a *little* fuss), and the next morning we had the fort to ourselves again and all was well and beautiful. But we didn't stay for another night...

Next on the agenda was Cape Coast. A lot of other volunteers had very good things to say about it, and I have to agree. It was a nice town on the beach, we had a nice room at the Red Cross hostel with good access to the rest of the town, there was good seafood overlooking the water, and, perhaps most importantly, it gave Jess an opportunity to flesh out her obsession with the Obamas visiting Ghana. Nothing really remarkable happened while we were there, other than lovely site seeing, and then we went up to Kakum NP to the north.

Kakum was pretty amazing. It's famous for its canopy walk, but we did a little extra and spent the night in the park. Since the park closes at 4pm and you have to be spending the night to stay any longer, we had the whole park to ourselves for more than 12 hours, which was pretty cool. We also realized that we were really good at being cheapskates. Instead of splurging on a lunch in the park (about $4) we walked down the road and spent about 1/5 of that, and because we had thought it would be even more expensive than it was we also brought food with us for dinner. Well done us. The next morning we got up relatively early and took another guided walk through the park and then headed off to the beach again.

This time we went to a highly recommended eco-lodge that's kind of out of the way called the Green Turtle Lodge, and basically fell in love with it. Joelle essentially spent every waking hour in the surf, while Jess and I took some breaks for books, food, and bathing. We met some other travelers and shared stories, walked into the nearby fishing village for lunch every day, and just relaxed for a while. We also made some tentative plans to open our own eco-lodge next door, thus having this be our day to day life.

From the Green Turtle we headed back up to Kumasi, where I got to have a short visit with my old site-mate Brooke, who is living there for a while. We also went to the zoo, where I got spit on by a chimpanzee and actually ran into some of our friends from Mali who were also traveling in Ghana. Kumasi was mostly just a nice place to relax (since our time on the beach had been so stressful), do a little laundry, etc. and then we took a little side trip to a crater lake nearby before continuing on up north.

Our final big stop in Ghana was Mole NP. On the way to and from there we were able to stay at another PC house in the town of Tamale, which was really nice and convenient (thanks again Ghana PCVs for sharing!), but Mole was infinitely better. You always hear about all this great wildlife in Africa, but after a year and a half here I had hardly seen any, so I was skeptical of the claims of all these baboon/monkey/warthog/antelope sitings. They were all true! It was crazy! The warthogs were probably my favorites, running around with their little tails in the air, grunting with several little ones following behind. The baboons were really cool, too, but also a little scary. They weren't afraid of people at all, going so far as to steal the ketchup bottle literally off our table at lunch one day. And then there were the elephants. Our first full day there we saw 2 of them from a distance and it was very cool. Our last night there we had a guide take us out away from the hotel and slept on a platform next to the watering hole. We weren't able to really see anything because it was so dark, but you heard all the jungle-y sounds and then we had to start hiking back out at about 2am to catch the morning bus, along with our armed guard. On the way back in we were almost back to the hotel when our guard signalled us to stop walking and then made us start backing up slowly because there was this massive elephant less than 100m away, staring us down. I was grateful it didn't charge or anything, but that didn't stop my heart from leaping into my throat until we starting walking again. We hadn't gone 50m before we had to stop again. A bunch of antelope were running across the road ahead of us, and as we slowly continued after they had passed we saw another elephant that had come along. It was pretty spectacular.

Afterwards, we headed back to Tamale, got our stuff together, did some last souvenir shopping and then got transport back to Mali. Just in case you thought our adventure was over, though, we got to see yet another elephant up close right after crossing the Burkina border. It was standing in the opposing traffic lane as we rode by in our bus. Crazy!

So, our Ghanaian adventure was over, and it was a great one.

I didn't go straight back to site, because we were having our 'Close of Service Conference' in Bamako right after the trip anyways. Instead a made a quick stop in my friend Gemma's village and then went the rest of the way to Bamako with her. The conference was good, mostly because it was one last chance to see all the other volunteers that I came to Mali with almost 2 years ago. I still can't believe it's been that long already, but time flies when you're sitting in village with no running water!

I ni fama....(it's been a while)

I'm surprised that it's been so long since I have written something here. I have had internet on multiple occasions, and a lot has transpired over the last 4 months.

Following the festivities of the holidays, I sequestered myself in village for about a month to try and get some things accomplished, and to prepare myself, my hut, and my village for my parents' visit. The most notable thing about this time was that I was able to start a Water and Sanitation committee with help from my Director. Since then (for the most part) we've been having bi-weekly meetings to try and improve conditions in Dramétou.

As for my parents' visit: They came to Mali for 2 weeks in February and I am so proud of them! I came into Bamako to meet them and they were just thrown into West African craziness from the very beginning. One of the things I convinced them to do on their very first day in Africa was go to a market and pick out some wax print cloth to have made into traditional complets (outfits). I think Mom was more into it than Dad (big surprise!), but he was a trooper nonetheless. We walked around the part of town that I am most familiar with, met a lot of people in the Peace Corps office here that I work with, and adjusted to being in Mali together. It was certainly more of an adjustment for them than for me, but, well, you know how in middle school when you saw your teacher at the grocery store it threw you for a loop? That's a little bit what it was like for me seeing my parents in Mali.

After 2 nights and 1 day in the most westernized city in Mali, I once again pulled the rug out from under them and we left Bamako to head to site. Since Peace Corps was sending a car that way already, we were able to hop in and make the trip a little less foreign. We had an overnight stop in Manantali, which made me very happy since it is probably my favorite place in country, and then headed further north the next morning. In true Malian fashion, even though we were in arguably the most timely, safe, and reliable transport in Mali, with a great driver to boot, we ran into an extended delay merely 9 km away from Dramétou: the infamous ferry. As some of you may remember, I've run into problems with the ferry in the past, but this was possibly the most frustrating encounter, and amplified by the fact that I was feeling responsible for the well-being of Mom and Dad as well. Basically the ferry engine was broken, and had been for some time. However, they were still able to use it by having half a dozen guys with bamboo poles pull it across the river. Very very slowly. If only that were the only problem here....but no, it was also windy which meant that it was going to be even harder and slower. We ended up waiting for about 6 hours before the driver started to get nervous about being able to reach his final destination and I made a bit of a fuss as a result. (Talk to Mom and Dad if you need details....) We finally got across, got to Dramétou, and Mom and Dad got a taste of my little African life! We had a little dance party, some thatching of huts, some celebratory slaughtering of animals, some cooking of my favorite Malian foods and a few of my Mali-ized American ones, some sleeping under the stars and some long awaited time just hanging out with my parents. There were definitely stressful moments, since I was the only translator between them and the village and 3 people inevitably have more needs than I alone do, but I think it went really well and I am so happy that I was able to share Dramétou with them.

The trip back to Bamako was no more or less eventful than the trip up, but certainly different. It started out with a 9km donkey cart ride to the river, since there's really no other transportation option available for multiple people, then my friend Mori was waiting to take us across the river in his pirogue. We got the car the next 6km to Mahina with no problems, got our train tickets no problem, and, for the first time ever, the train was on time and we boarded for our 10 hour trip back to the city. Phew. If the return was any more difficult than the trip out it was the exhausting nature of 10 straight hours of being en route, and I know we were all really happy when we finally arrived safely in Bamako.

I allowed no time for them to catch their breath before we were on the road again in the morning, this time with a hired driver and headed east. The rest of the trip was up into Dogon country with side trips to Djenne to see the famous mosque and Mopti to get a slightly different glimpse of the bustle that is Malian commerce. For Dogon itself we had a great guide and a great group of people and then it came to an end and we headed back, once again, to Bamako.

So, I give myself, but especially Mom and Dad a big pat on the back for a good 2 weeks. We saw a lot of different aspects of the country, took a lot of different types of transport, met a lot of different fantastic people, and did a lot of catching up. Yay! And then we were exhausted...

After Mom and Dad took off to go back to the states, I took off to go back to village. Another month of the normal day to day life was enhanced by these committee meetings, and we put together a project to improve the situation. There's still some stuff that we need to hammer out, and there have been a few problems recently, but I'm *hoping* that we'll be able to pick it up in mid-June when I head back from........Ghana!

Yep, I'm going to Ghana next week for 3 weeks. I'm really excited because I haven't taken a real vacation since last September. Yes, I've left site for breaks many times, but this trip should include lounging on the beach, visiting my old site mate in bustling Kumasi and going on a mini safari to look at elephants. Woohoo!

The holiday season has come and gone, and it was fun while it lasted! It all kind of started as soon as I came back from America at the beginning of October, because everyone was excited to see me and hear about the wedding and my family, and has just continued on and on until now, alternating between Peace Corps/American parties and Malian ones. The next celebration was my birthday at the end of the month, which I came into Bamako for (as it was the big 25) and went out dancing until all hours of the morning. I followed that up with a Halloween party in Kita. I was a superhero, of course, and, yes, you can get red spandex tights with rhinestones in a Malian market. After that I had a short window of time back in village before leaving again for Thanksgiving. Every year Peace Corps volunteers do a sort of pilgrimage to Sikasso, otherwise known as 'the land of plenty,' for Thanksgiving, complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin and apple pies. This year was a little more complicated than most though. This year Tabaski, the biggest holiday of the year in Mali, was on the 28th of November, just 2 days after American Thanksgiving, which means there were a lot of volunteers (myself included) that wouldn't be able to attend. So we just moved Thanksgiving to a Monday. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and while some of you might horrified at the sacrilege, it was totally, deliciously, worth it.

After stuffing my face in Sikasso, I did my 2+ day journey back to site and arrived just in time to prepare for Tabaski, complete with henna on my feet and donning the special bezon clothing. Once again I stuffed my face and then went out and watched my village dance the night away.

After Tabaski was over I expected there to be a lull in village, like last year, but this was not the case. Mid-December we hit a week of part after party. Last year we didn't have anything like it, but first there was a party 'because the men fixed the road' and then we had a special chicken lunch to celebrate the 15-month mark of my service and then we had an engagement party for my host-neice and then we had another party 'because people are happy!' It was an exhausting week. That's right, all of that happened within a week. Talk about a lot of special food and a lot of dancing.

Finally, after all of that Malian celebration, I had a little bit of time to relax, and then I had to start getting ready for Christmas. I headed down to gorgeous Manantali and had a lovely Christmas by the river, complete with barbequed pig, cookies with rainbow chip frosting, and hot chocolate (yes, most of my delight in this holiday season involves food). After Christmas was over I headed into Bamako then the city of Koulikouro for New Year's celebrations, and met up a few friends for a lovely night of music and games with just a few people.

Now I'm getting ready to head back to village in the morning, and after all this partying, I am looking forward to a few weeks of settling into village, trying to work on some projects, and preparing for Mom and Dad's visit. Yay!

Since Peace Corps prides itself on being a sustainable development program, there is a pretty common debate about providing funding. In a nutshell: if we are providing outside funding it is a one-time (or at least only during the volunteer’s service) thing and therefore not sustainable for the community, BUT there are a lot of projects that are not possible without some funding assistance. Most of the time we try to strike a balance between these two, requiring ‘community contribution’ in funding applications and promoting payback systems.

Many of you know how fiscally conservative I am (I have heard the word ‘stingy’ on occasion), so I find myself on the more conservative side of this debate. So far the stuff I’ve done in village has not technically required any funding: I’ve done classes with different groups in village using Peace Corps provided materials (paper, pens, etc.), and I inherited supplies from a soak pit project that a volunteer near me did. Even more so, I engaged in hundreds of conversations in stunted Bambara/Khassonke about simple sanitation interventions like washing your hands with soap.

After making it through the first year without asking for financial assistance, I came back from an extended period of time away from village and I found myself pulled in the direction of giving. Another volunteer has become involved in Global Smile, an organization that does free cleft-palate surgeries, and they have come to Bamako. As there is a girl in my village with this condition, I approached her family with information, telling them that if they were able to send her to Bamako for the week of the surgery that they wouldn’t have to pay the doctors. Since this time of year is not the most destitute, I thought it would be difficult but possible for them to find the money. I was apparently wrong. My emotions were all over the place: I had spent the last year avoiding giving money to my village, but here was this 13-year-old girl who had a pretty great opportunity (in my opinion) at very little comparative cost. After thinking long and hard about whether this would be a violation of my funding-related values and consulting a few friends, I decided to give it a go. My homologue, my church back home, and I created a payment plan that worked for the family, and on Thursday the girl, her older brother, and I took the train into Bamako.

Not only did I have some qualms about money, but there was also the possibility of the surgery not happening. If the girl was anemic, or had some other condition that might cause complications with the surgery she wouldn’t pass the health screening and would have to simply return home after having hopes deflate and unnecessary money spent as well as time away from work back in village. Since the diet here has made me anemic despite taking supplements in pill form and trying to eat nutrient rich foods whenever I’m outside of village, this was a significant concern.

Now for the good news: yesterday afternoon I found out that the girl, named Tagati, passed the screening and will have the surgery tomorrow! If everything goes well, she will be back to Drametou ahead of schedule and have a brand new smile to show off when she arrives! So, despite all the stress about money, the inevitable complications with transport (i.e. the train was running 10 hours late), and the many other things that could potentially cause failure, everything appears to be working out for the best.

Now if we can just get this soak pit project hammered out…..

My first year as a volunteer in Mali is coming to a close. As I prepare for a trip back to the states and help out with the training of new volunteers I'm evaluating my service thus far and planning for the future. (See I haven't changed that much!)

While I wish I had gotten more tangible work accomplished in the past year, I recognize that it was about a lot more than project work. I've become conversational in Bambara/Khassonke, I've developed friendships across cultural barriers (harder than I anticipated), and hopefully I've taught my village about sanitation. And I got one soak pit completed! Yay! With more in the works! Yay! I'm starting to feel competent in my Malian life, and as I answer questions for the new volunteers I realize how much I've learned. If I can learn a fraction of what I've gained this year in the upcoming one, I will be ecstatic. With my still improving language skills and increased cultural confidence, I anticipate my second year to be more obviously productive. Drametou and I have a lot of stuff in the works for my return and the end of rainy season, so here's hoping I go and return safely, and that my house and nyegen are still standing when I do - there were some heavy rains this weekend resulting in a lot of destroyed huts. And the wall of my nyegen lost some of it's outer coating of cement my last day in village before this trip. So we'll see. I think the time is going to fly by pretty quickly since I plan to be busier in the upcoming months and I've saved all my vacation days for my second year. My months in village have been flying by since the very beginning, but the past few months my days and weeks have been rapidly disappearing as well. I am approaching old age - or at least my Malian friends keep telling me how I need to get married and have kids before it's too late. Being nearly 25 I should have produced a couple of offspring by now - terrifying! I have been thinking about my big 'life picture' recently, since my brother is getting married, I have several friends back home who have bought houses, and I will be living in a mud hut in the African bush for another year. Honestly, I still wouldn't trade this experience for anything. Technically I'm a home-owner, too, my house just happens to be made of mud and thatch instead of wood, steel, or concrete.

I have been contemplating my return from Mali and how that may work out. At present there are two options at the forefront: some time working stateside before entering grad school or the option to extend in Mali for a third year and put the previous option aside for an additional 12 months. The former is more likely since the latter would require me to find work rewarding enough to justify another year without cheese.

Growing up, my mom told me I was special. In some ways, I now that's true, but in some ways I'm still just your normal middle-class white girl. And then I came to Mali. In Mali, I'm not just special. In Mali I am a BIG deal.While I'm sure I've changed during my year in Africa, for the most part I'm the same girl I've always been, it's how I'm perceived that's changed so drastically. See, in Mali it's not what you've done but who you are that matters. Let's start with my family connections:In my village I have a host family that I spend time with every day, primarily mealtime, even though I have my own house. The patriarch of this family is the acting 'dugutigi' of Dramétou, which literally means 'village owner' but is essentially the chief. So, my dad is an African chief which makes me and African princess!For those of you familiar with Malian custom, I also have a significant family name. I'm a Kanté, which makes me a blacksmith, which is by far the best group in Mali. All you donkeys and bean-eaters are my slaves.* Next we'll address my appearance:I am a pale Caucasian. Unfortunately, this makes it rather difficult to blend in visually and also causes most people to assume I am rich and speak French. Neither of these assumptions is correct, but the former results in automatic attention that goes beyond noticing the color of my skin. (Just imagine what they would think if I *gasp* showed my knees which haven't seen the sun since my arrival in Mali.)This attention I receive can be obnoxious or great depending on the person. If it is a street beggar - obnoxious. If it is some random guy I've never met before that wants to marry me on the chance that I will take him back to whatever rich country I came from or just to show me off to all his friends - obnoxious. If it is a non-beggar who nonetheless thinks I want to throw away my (non-existent) riches on them and has no problem asking me for it - once again, obnoxious. Lest you start to identify a negative pattern here, I will now tell you that, despite the aforementioned annoyance, and the children who chant 'tubabu, tubabu' (white person, white person), being this 'tubob' has its advantages. It also causes me to be the recipient of friendly advances, largely unearned respect, and grins and waves from children (sometimes the same ones who chant). Finally, there's my gender to consider:I am female, and, when combined with my white skin, that opens a lot of doors. My site mate and I have identified what we refer to as the 'vagina discount.' Even though he gets the preferential treatment of a white person, I tend to be even more popular. I've gotten free stuff in shops, been bumped to the front of lines, and received lowered prices. Now, some women may be used to this, but I am not, nor have I done anything remotely resembling flirting in order to obtain these advantages. You may be thinking, okay, so that's nice and all, but aren't women in Mali pretty repressed? Don't I get less respect because I'm female? The answer is: yes, sometimes, but the vast majority of the time the disadvantages associated with my gender are trumped by my race. Another term we use here is the 'third sex' phenomenon. White women are kind of a different category. People recognize that tour cultural background does truly set us apart from the typical Malian woman** and I have participated in things a Malian woman never would, like constructing a house and going fishing. Yet, I am also obviously not a man so I can also enjoy the advantages of being female. I've often thought it must be harder to be a male volunteer here, because it would be so hard to connect with the women, whereas I have largely felt accepted in groups of both genders. These 3 factors are things completely out of my control, and in some ways I am ashamed of them. My cultural upbringing has taught me to believe in what I am capable of achieving regardless of who I happen to be. However, the things I have achieved have brought me where I am (that's Mali, for those of you not paying attention), so I am going to use all the tools at my disposal to try and achieve a successful 2 years of service. So - when I come back to the states for a visit or for good, please be patient with my inflated ego. *This is all just part of the 'joking cousins' aspect of Malian culture. People regularly refer to other ethnic groups as donkeys, bean-eaters, and slaves, but it truly is all in good fun and even a good way to diffuse a tense situation with laughter.**GAD (Gender and Development) is just getting off the ground here in Mali as an effort to empower women and other disadvantaged populations. Thank you Caroline and Amber!

Just in case some of you were worried about my health care, I have a little story to share.Thursday night I had just gone to bed when I felt a pain in my back. I tossed and turned for a while thinking I was just laying funny or something, but the pain just kept increasing no matter how I changed position. Two hours later, after some other unpleasant symptoms and increased pain, I had moved to the harder surface of my bento outside, and was thinking of kidney stones and appendicitis. (I know virtually nothing about anatomy, so these were both pretty wild guesses.) Since I know nothing about either of these conditions and didn't feel like I was capable of diagnosing and treating myself under the circumstances I was also checking my phone constantly to see if I had enough reception to call the health center. Thankfully I'm one of the lucky volunteers who has 30 second windows of cell phone coverage scattered throughout the day, and I was able to get through to Bamako. Now, if some girl out in the African bush called to wake me up in the middle of the night with abdominal pain I would have been kind of upset with her, but our PCMOs are far more sympathetic than I. She not only suggested I come into Bamako, but also arranged for a car to drive all the way out to pick me up (about 16 hours round trip). The response from my friends and family in village was just as supportive - after hearing me on the phone in the middle of the night, the family I live with realized something was wrong and went to tell my host family. After a small group had gathered around me, offering blessings and rides into the hospital in Bafoulabé, I was finally able to fall asleep. They did not. Instead I know that my host father spent the night in a chair by my side and my friend Gundoba (the mother of the family I live with) couldn't sleep either because she was worried about me. Gundoba even admitted to crying a little because I was - and this is a pretty big deal in Mali, since crying is mostly reserved for little kids and funerals. My host father's vigil took a short break in the early morning, but then he returned to wait with me until the car arrived.

Does anyone remember that episode of friends when Phoebe is giving birth and Joey has 'sympathy pains' that end up being kidney stones? Well, apparently life imitates art. (That's right, I'm calling 'Friends' art. Suspend your disgust for a bit and appreciate the metaphor.)

While I was curled up in the fetal position outside, my cat Basi was giving birth inside. 24 hours prior I was still a little upset with her for getting pregnant at such a young age, but the cuteness factor of 4 tiny little mewling hours old kittens has a cathartic effect! And it took my mind off of me and my own pathetic state...

Unfortunately I had to leave my new little babies behind and head to Bamako. The car never actually made it to my village, because the ferry was broken somehow (again?!) and they couldn't cross the river. Instead I got special permission to ride on the back of a moto to the river, provided I wore my bike helmet for safety of course. I got to the river safely, avoided getting completely ripped off by the pirogue drivers who were trying to convince me that since I was in a bit of a hurry I should have to pay 5 times as much, and successfully made it to the car on the other side. Thanks to significantly diminished pain, the car ride was uneventful.

On a Saturday morning in Bamako there's not a lot open, but I was able to get all the appointments I needed, and now I'm stuck in the city until Tuesday (they observe Africa Day on Monday) so that we can make sure everything is back in order.

Moral of the story: Make sure you stay super super super hydrated at all times especially if you have a pregnant friend or cat!

I’ve spent the last 3 weeks traveling around Mali, and it’s been amazing!

Following my last posting, my friend Audra and I took the train back to my site where she spent a few days helping me get used to village again and then returned to her village over in the Sikasso region. I had decided to spend 9 straight weeks at site, only leaving to go to market in Bafoulabé every 10 days or so, and the plan was to use that time for a series of educational meetings. I wanted to do one session a week with two separate groups for the men and women in Dramétou, and after a couple weeks of preparation and delays my two homologues, Sané Kanté and Modibo Dembélé, and I started meeting with members of my village. Due to multiple delays the women’s group was much more successful than the men’s and they even expressed interest in continuing to meet while I was gone. Despite my still limited language skills I feel that I can count the “formations” as a success, and I hope that the things that we talked about during the sessions (mostly diarrhea prevention) will act as a catalyst for community initiated development. Inchallah!

Since I was only doing the sessions weekly I also had a lot of time for other things. I’ve been experimenting a lot baking without an oven (there’s a lot of flipping involved as well as messing around with lids and temperatures - basically I have to stand there the whole time so it’s really hot work, especially now during the hot season…), and I’ve even used my solar oven successfully once with hopes for a repeat not yet achieved. I also planted a garden, which promptly got attacked by chickens and mice, decimating my tomato and carrot sprouts (damn!). Fortunately my moringa survived and has inspired quite a bit of interest amongst friends and acquaintances – hopefully that interest will expand beyond just amazement that the Ameriki muso can actually grow something! I also managed to get my house reroofed and new doors put on my hut. All in all I feel like a lot got accomplished in those nine weeks, especially considering the pace of Mali that I’m still getting used to!

At the end of those nine weeks I said good bye to my village for a while and headed down to Manantali to celebrate Jewish Passover with a few friends. Jake Asher, the volunteer from my training class that lives closest to me put together a truly impressive celebration. After some time there, all of us headed for Bamako, with Jake planning to get off in his village along the way, and we left the house at 5:45 on Easter morning. After getting to the bus station we all loaded our bags onto the top of the bus (next to the ram that was also tied up there) and then waited for our names to be called so that we could board and pick out our seats….and waited….and waited. About 3 ½ hours later we finally left and arrived in Bamako about 9 hours later, and my seat mate got peed on by the sheep directly above his window a whopping 4 times. 10 points for Malian transport!

I spent one night in Bamako loading up on food that’s not couscous, rice, or nyelenkino (I have no idea what it would be called in English – sorry kids), and then was able to take Peace Corps transport out towards my friend Gemma’s village. We rode bike’s the 6km from the paved road out to her village, and I, in my infinite grace, wiped out in a sand pit on the way and barked up my arm pretty well. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective and level of self-consciousness) we were just on the outskirts of Kouro, so I was able to clean myself up right away and then spend the next few days hanging out with Gemma and her friends in village before we headed back towards Bamako on our way to our friend Kira’s site of Faragouran. We were also there for a couple days, in which we watched a couple soccer games, I was able to do a little bit of technical exchange thanks to her current soak pit, wash area, and potable water project, and also got to spend more time catching up. The three of us headed back into Bougani together, with Kira going directly back to her village, Gemma staying the night with me at our friend Jacqueline’s before going back to Kouro, and me getting on a bus for Sikasso.

Since I recently lost my phone, my arrival in Sikasso was a little stressful. I didn’t really know where I was going, so I told the taxi driver to take me to the mission next to my friend Diane’s house and then the plan was to ask around for the ‘white woman’s house.’ Unfortunately there is more than one mission in her part of town, so the people I was asking had no idea who I was talking about. I eventually went into a payphone shop and she had to bike across town to rescue me, but everything worked out anyways. Diane and I left the next morning to go down to visit our friend Beatrice, who was doing a formation in her village. We observed her and her crew in action for a while and then headed over the nearby waterfalls, which were spectacular (if you have facebook you can check out a few of the 70 pictures that I took there…), and then headed back to Sikasso to help one of the new volunteer transfers from Madagascar settle into to her new house there. The next day I hit the road again and went up to Koutiala, where I waited for my friend Audra to get back from a visit with her boyfriend and spent the afternoon with another volunteer, Maridee, at the house there. Audra and I then went to her village for a day before returning to Koutiala, where I finally had a completely relaxing day of no travel and no technical exchange. After that I was on the road again, this time up into the Segou region. I had to transfer in the city of San, but I went all the way to my friend Alaric’s site that day, including a10km bike ride. After a couple days there I got back on the road, and after a short night in Bamako I was back on the road on my way to Kita.

In Kita I was able to see a bunch of my friends, because we were doing a 2 day IST that went fairly well, and now I’m finally getting ready to go back to village. Yay! I have had a really busy, but really great time seeing new parts of the country and catching up with friends, but I truly miss my friends in village, and am looking forward to some down time as well as starting some new work ideas that developed over my 3+ weeks away. Dramétou here I come!

My in-service training is officially over. For the last 3 weeks I’ve been at the Tubaniso training center with all of the people from my stage doing follow-up studies, and for the last week all of our homologues have been here with us. It was quite the experience, I learned quite a bit, and now I’m heading back to site with a ton of ideas swarming my brain. The best thing about the whole experience, though, is not how much knowledge I gained, but rather how I’ve been re-inspired to help my community. It’s not that I was down-trodden before, but after sitting in village for 4 months the honeymoon period of being in Africa (!) was beginning to wear off. I’d like to think that we’ve now moved into a more mature state in our relationship, if you will… My friend Audra, who lived with me in Sinsina will be going back to site with me tonight on the train. I’m very excited for her to come visit and see Dramétou, and I think it will help my transition from seeing 70 Americans every day and speaking English for 3 weeks to living in village. We stayed in Bamako last night for one last evening with a few friends (watching the Superbowl, actually – it’s amazing how much American culture I’ve packed in this month) before we once again scattered across the country.

All of the volunteers here in Mali were invited to the American Club here in Bamako to watch the inauguration of President Obama, and I think everyone from my stage and a few others went. It was exciting to see and I’m grateful that I was able to watch both the election and the inauguration – two things that I don’t think I watched in entirety until this year, but both of which have taken on greater importance now that I’m out of the country. I would have to say that the inauguration was more fun though, since we were basically at a clubhouse with burgers and a bar, whereas I watched the election lying on a foam mattress on a Malian friend’s living room floor until 3 in the morning.

Yesterday I went back to Sinsina, my homestay village, with fellow Sinsina-kaw Audra and Dave. We’d always been taken in Peace Corps transport before, so it was a little complicated getting to and from village (multiple bachees), but I’m so glad that we went. My Bambara is better than it was when I left 4+ months ago, so I was able to chat fairly well, and it was really nice to see and be seen. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back again sometime in the course of my service, maybe at the 1 year mark or so…

I may not be able to achieve internet access again until April, but I still love to hear your comments and I will write again as soon as I can!

While my ‘American’ holidays were spent with my fellow American PCVs, I chose to spend my ‘Malian’ holidays in village. I’m actually a little worried about the fact that these two schedules happen to coincide in the same period of time, because with all 6 of these celebrations occurring during my first 4 months at site, how am I going to party for the next 8? I’m sure we’ll figure something out…

My first feti in village was the feast at the end of Ramadan. For the month of September, give or take a few days, a large number of people in my village fasted. A lot of women and most of the children don’t fast for various reasons, but the majority of the men don’t eat or drink from sunrise until sunset, despite that fact that they were still working in the fields. I did not fast, not being Muslim and all.

My second feti in village was Tabaski, which commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, and the sheep given by God/Allah to save Isaac. We therefore killed not only sheep in village, but also a cow. I was really interested, so I asked my host dad if I could go with him to get our family’s portion of meat. I followed him out to the dirt square in the middle of town where, spread on top of a sheet of corrugated metal and 2 cow hides, there were about 45 individual piles of meat and organs to be divided among the 32 concessions in my village – some families are much larger than others and presumably got multiple piles. The men who were making the piles tried really hard to make sure that each of them got the same share of heart, liver, intestine, etc. on top of the actual meat, and then when that was all complete my dad went out and pointed to the pile he wanted. He got to select our pile first since he is the dugutigi, or chief of the village, and I think that’s why he also wanted to stay and supervise the rest of the proceedings. I headed back to their concession with my nephew to deliver the beef (plus some various chunks of non-meat cow product) to my sister, and then she taught me how to prepare it Mali style.

My third feti in village was New Years. I had been invited to a party near Bafoulabe, but I asked my family whether it was celebrated in village, and, being told yes, I decided to stay there. Silly me, I thought New Years was celebrated on December 31st/January 1st, but I ignorantly didn’t remember that the traditional Malian calendar is based on the lunar cycle, so we instead had our annual chicken dinner on the 5th.

Now you may be saying to yourself, thanks Karmen, but what does it mean to feti in Mali? Well, in my experience it mostly just means that you get to eat meat. Those 3 holidays I mention above are the only times I have had meat in village. Ramadan there was also some praying, blessing, and greeting in new clothes around the village to accompany the day-long meat consumption, but the New Years celebration was pretty much confined to my chicken and rice dinner. Tabaski, however, was a big affair. I actually got henna put on my feet, along with a lot of the women in Drametou, and they also braided their hair especially for the day. Since I just look bald and tend to burn my scalp, (spring training in Phoenix, as you may recall, was painful shortly afterwards,) I declined the offer to braid my hair in cornrows. I did however get a new complet made, which matched a bunch of other women in my host family, and I wore it that evening for the dancing. Malian women are apparently all amazing dancers. We imported some drummers for the music and then there was one giant drum which had to be reheated over the fire several times through the evening to keep the head tight, and the only other instrument was a cow bell. The women would sometimes sing along, but what I enjoyed the most was the dancing. I went out to the square in a procession of women following the drummers, and I intended to just watch, but was persuaded to dance a few times as well. Most of the time a couple women would go out in the circle together and shake their groove thing, but there were also a few individual performances and a few group dances. All of them were impromptu, and all of them put me to shame. Thanks to band, I’ve always thought I had a good sense of rhythm even if I was lacking in the dance moves, but I’ve got nothing on the women of Drametou. It was spectacular getting to watch them jump, sway, and bounce in the firelight, and even my 3 months of African dance class my last term at the U of O couldn’t begin to prepare me for it. They manage to dance beautifully even with an infant strapped to their back – amazing!

Wow – I can’t believe my Peace Corps service is 1/6th complete….well, complete is the wrong word, but I think you know what I mean. Since I haven’t been able to write since mid-September, I have many stories and experiences to share, far too many for one entry, so I’ll try to hit the highlights for you:

Perhaps the most significant event which I could possibly articulate is that I am now a mother. In mid-November I adopted a little girl who has become a daily joy (and frustration). I’ve named her Basi, which means both couscous and trouble depending on the context, and it’s proven to be appropriate for both, considering our diet and her precocious nature. She’s mostly white with some black patches and has become quite the mouser in the last few weeks, for which I am incredibly pleased (this was perhaps my main reason for getting her). She also curls up in my lap on a regular basis while I’m reading or writing, sleeps on my chest while I nap, and just generally gives me the affection I’ve been craving. She’s also well known throughout my village and if she happens to stray too far from my concession a small boy usually finds her and brings her straight back to me, which is unnecessary but very sweet and they always look so proud of themselves for helping me!

Other animal news: One night during my first month at site I was sitting in my concession studying after dinner when I caught motion at the edge of my lamp light. I stood up to confirm my suspicion, and, yep, there was a giant green mamba crawling across the compound. My surprise and poor language skills only allowed my to shout “Sa file!” (“Look a snake!”) to the woman in my concession who caught its fleeing tail in the beam of her flashlight as it rounded her kitchen hut. She, in turn, notified the men in the village and they set out to kill it before it got too close to small children or livestock. I, in the meantime, went into my hut to try and wrap my head around what I had just seen and only emerged after I could hear a group of people gathered outside. Shortly after I joined my village outside the dead snake was brought back on a stick, paraded a bit and then probably eaten. I’ve since then had one much smaller snake crawl through a small hole in my screen door as I watched, but it was quickly dispatched of as well. I have heard talk of many other snakes in the village, but I’m ok with only having seen the two.

I’ve taken 3 multi-day trips from my site in the last 4 months, all of which were a nice break from village life. In October I biked down to Manantali with my fellow volunteer, Brooke, which was a much more traumatizing ride than I had anticipated. The trip was just under 100 kilometers for me, more than twice as far as I’ve ever biked in one sitting before. The first 2 hours were really pleasant, with gorgeous scenery and pleasant temperatures, but the next 6 started to really suck. The weather was just getting hotter, the entire trip was upstream along the Bakoye and therefore slightly uphill the whole way, and I was just not quite prepared for that kind of endurance. Fortunately the next 4 days spent at the Peace Corps house in Manantali were run and relaxing and I definitely took a bush taxi back…

For Thanksgiving I took the train up to Kayes to meet up with a different group of volunteers at the house there. Kayes is the hottest inhabited city in the world, so I’m glad it was the cold season, but it was still significantly warmer than my village. Kayes, being so much bigger than Manantali, and on an important route, is much more of a city, so I was even able to partake in some soft-serve ice cream while there. For Christmas I met up with people again in Manantali, and, like Thanksgiving, feasted and celebrated the holiday amongst friends.

My homestay is now officially over and training is coming to a close. There are a lot of emotions running through me right now as I move into the time for actual service, but excitement and apprehension for the future and sadness for what I'm leaving behind are those at the forefront.

Despite the improbability of the people that the following message addresses ever having access and the ability to read it, I'd like to include a piece that I wrote about Sinsina first, and then a thank you to my host mother, because I found it so hard to express myself in person:

To Sinsina kaw:

N ye degeke caman nin kalo fila temenen. Awn ye Bamanakan kalan, awn ye ji ni saniya kalan, awn ye Mali dumuni tobi, ni awn ye baroke caman. N ye ji taa ni n kungolo, n ye dumunike ni n bolo, ni n ye n ko ni shiyo kelen. Kungolo dimi, kono dimi, kono boli, ni mura tun be n na, nga minogo ni kongo te i la. Aw ni ce kosebe, aw bee nyanafin be na n na.

I have learned so much in the last two months. We have studied Bambara, we have studied water and sanitation, we have cooked Malian food, and we have talked a lot. I have carried water on my head, I have eaten with my hands, and I have showered with a bucket. I have had headaches, stomach aches, diarrhea, and a cold, but I haven't been hungry or thirsty. Thank you all so much, I will miss you!

To Kaja:

In the last few weeks I have come to the realize how much you mean to me. I couldn't have asked for a better host mother. In the beginning of my stay you gave me the space I needed to learn about culture and language, but also helped me to learn the little things that are so inherent to life as a Malian woman. You were the person who allowed me to work on my grammar in the concession, sitting with me in the evenings, and, amidst the “sho dunna!”s and the “di a”s, you asked me relevant questions that I could understand and respond to. You fed me wonderfully without question, which I didn't even recognize as a rarity at first, and provided me with my shower bucket every night without fail, even knowing which mornings I would want another. I was amazed and grateful that last day that you did my laundry, remembering exactly which clothes I had already worn and taking care of it, despite my repeated forgetfulness. Despite everything that you did for me, you are also the only woman in your concession who never asked me for anything. You are an amazing woman and mother, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to live with and learn from you. On Sunday as we were leaving, it was the tears in your eyes that brought mine, and you are the person in our family that I am most exited to see when I do make it back to Sinsina. Thank you so much!

I will miss Sinsina immensely in the next few months as I adjust once again to a Malian village, but I also remember that a lot of the things that I'm worried about now are the same things I was worried about before going out to homestay. I only hope that Drametou can accept me and forgive my cultural and language faux pas as readily...

And so:

Friday I will officially swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali. In the morning I will put on my new complet (traditional Malian skirt and shirt that I had made by a tailor in Sinsina from fabric I bought at the market of a nearby town), and we will all head off to the embassy in Bamako. After swear-in we get to go to a bbq at the American Club in our honor, complete with a huge swimming pool (by Mali standards) and volleyball, tennis, and basketball courts. Afterwards there will be a big party at a couple different bars in Bamako before we finally crash at a nearby hotel. It should be a lot of fun, and, perhaps more importantly, it is a last chance to spend time with all of the people that I won't be seeing again until January's In-service-training (if at all).

On Sunday (I think) I will head out to Manantali, where I will stay at the stage house while buy all of the household items I need to outfit my two huts in Drametou that are currently sitting empty awaiting my arrival. Then on Tuesday I will head out to site. Due to the fact that the closest internet connection is a 4 hour train ride or a 6 hour bus ride away, and the fact that I have to bike, boat, and then hire a taxi to get to either of these forms of public transport, I probably wont be online again until January. So, I'm now going to give you a break-down of what I expect for the next few months.

Once I'm installed at site, I will get to work integrating into my community. Because I have been learning Bambara for the last 2 months, I intend to continue with it during my sessions with a local tutor, but because people in my village actually speak Khassonke instead (the two languages are closely related, and everyone can understand me when I speak Bambara properly), I will be picking up on that language as well. I will also be trying to get to know everyone in my village and make myself familiar with their daily patterns and sanitation practices, esoecially water usage. Later on, when I have the language skills, I will be able to utilize all the information I have gained through observation to teach and implement sustainable development projects. I will probably be going in to Bafoulabe every few weeks to go to market and/or the bank, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to cook for myself a couple times a week with the supplies that I get there. The closest volunteer to me lives in Bafoulabe, so it will also give me the opportunity to speak some English. Erin, a female volunteer that I have gone through training with, will be using Bafoulabe for market and banking, so we will likely meet up there. As of now, we are also planning a ~50km bike ride back to Manantali in late October to celebrate my birthday with another volunteer from my training class whose birthday is the week before mine.

Obviously, many things will happen in my next 3 months in Drametou that I could never anticipate, but it will be an incredibly challenging, exciting, sometimes lonely, often overwhelming time. As new volunteers, we aren't supposed to leave our region for the first 3 months of service, but I'm guessing that I will have enough to do(or at least enough fears about traveling alone on Malian public transport) so that it won't really be an issue. I'm very sad that I won't see any of my friends from homestay for that period of time, as none of them are in the Kayes region with me, but we should be able to keep in touch by phone or messages sent via Peace Corps.

Oh, and sadly, my camera is officially broken, so any hopes I had of posting pictures of my times here, and any hopes you had of seeing pictures have now been dashed.....sad!

Until next time, k'an ben!

My site is beautiful! I just returned from my village of Drametou, and it is your quintessential West African village, complete with round thatch huts, lots of little children running around, and gorgeous views in every direction. (I did not, however, take any pictures of this. Every time you bust out a camera here you are swarmed by small children, so I’d like to put that off for a least the first few months at site so that I’m not viewed as the foreigner with all kinds of fun expensive gadgets. Sorry…) Another aspect of Drametou that is quintessential West Africa is how brousse (remote) it is. In order to arrive in village I took a train for 14 hours (they stop for a few hours during the night to let everyone rest), followed by a 6 km trip in a bachee (old van gutted out and filled with benches, people, and rice that is used not unlike a taxi) to the town of Bafoulabe, then a trip across river in a pirogue (large canoe-like boat steered with one paddle and a pole), followed by a 9 km bike ride into village. It was an adventure to say the least. This was our first real time in the metaphorical “deep end” of the Peace Corps pool, but I was taken out to site by my future language teacher and then I remained in village for 4.5 days with one trip into Bafoulabe to set up a bank account for the next 2 years. I will also be going into Bafoulabe for market every week or so, picking up cooking supplies, mail, etc.

The three people I will be working with most closely in Drametou are the local teacher (the one who brought me out to village and will be teaching me Khassonke, the local language), the local mid-wife (my first homologue, otherwise know as the local person who will help me integrate into the community and help to spearhead projects), and my second homologue (who is also a baker and farmer). I live in a relatively large luo (grouping of huts that are usually surrounded by some semblance of fencing and lived in by large, sometimes extended, family) with a remarkably small family. The family is only a man and his wife and their two small children, but I was routinely visited by many more people from the village during the day. My meals were brought to me by one of my neighbor girls, who also ate with me three meals a day. For breakfast I had porridge, typically rice, but sometimes mono, which is mildly sweet with balls similar to tapioca and made from some variety of grains. Lunch was always rice with either peanut sauce (runnier that Thai-style, but very tasty) or a green sauce that I can best describe as spinach-like. Dinner is prepared all day by the women because it is millet couscous, so it must be pounded with an oversized mortar and pestle, sifted, then cooked. The couscous is accompanied by a slightly spicy sauce, and both it and the rice are eaten with your hands, the porridge with a gourd spoon.

About 2 days into my site visit I was checked on by PC staff and taken into Bafoulabe for banking and to meet the current PC volunteers closest to me. We also figured out at that time that I would try and catch the train back to Bamako on Thursday, so I returned to village for one more full day and then headed out.

On Thursday homologue #2, Modibo Dembele, and I biked and boated into Bafoulabe where I learned from the PCV there that the train had derailed earlier that week and wouldn’t be running, instead a Peace Corps vehicle came to pick me up and then I proceeded to the stage house in Manantali (if you look at a map of Mali it’s right next to the big reservoir in the southwest). The house is actually 2 large huts, one of which houses a current volunteer and the other which serves as a place to crash for other PCVs while in town. Great things about Manatali: there’s a butigi (store) with a lot of American-like food (meaning junk food) that includes a soft-serve ice cream machine (unheard of in Mali and brand new), and the house is also on the river complete with hippos (yea! My first sighting!). I stayed in Manantali for one night and hung out with the other trainees and volunteers there and the next morning headed for Kita, which is on the way to Bamako.

In Kita we met up with several other trainees and volunteers that were coming out of site visit and spent a couple of days just decompressing, sharing stories, watching movies (they actually have a lot of amenities at the house), and eating more familiar foods (which the volunteers there were generous enough to fix and then share). It was kind of surreal and like being in mini-America for a few days.

Yesterday I left Kita and came to Bamako on a bus laden with PC people, so much so that Malians would stare at the bus in wonder because of all the white faces. We arrived in Bamako, unloaded our gear at the bureau and then headed out to a tubob (foreigner) restaurant for a burger and ice cream. After that we took Peace Corps transport back to Tubaniso for a day of training, and tomorrow I go back to my little village of Sinsina for 3 final weeks of pre-service training and then….(drumroll please)….I will swear in as an official Peace Corps volunteer!

I got my site assignment today! I'm really excited and really nervous...it's in the Kayes region (pronounced kie) which is the area of Mali closest to Senegal, and in a village of about 550 along a tributary of the Senegal river near Bafoulabe and Mahina. The village is called Drametou, but you probably can't find it on any map because it is so small. I'll be heading out there for my first site visit in about a week, so I'll have a lot more information then...

I heart pygmy goats! They are (so far) my favorite thing about Mali. I just completed my first two weeks at my homestay site of Sinsina living with a Malian family and taking Bambara language and Malian culture classes with 4 other Peace Corps Trainees. Sinsina is a town of about 2000 people, which is deceptive, because about 1200 of them are children under 15 and the families are big, so there are probably less than 100 families. My family is one of the big ones: I haven't totally deciphered how I am related to some of the members, but I do know I have 3 moms and 14 known siblings. Normally I get up in the morning, make (instant) coffee for my dad and I, eat breakfast and go to class. We have about 4 hours of language instruction from our really amazing teacher, Salifou, with a break for tea and then I return to my concession for lunch. I usually eat lunch with the women (and girls) in my family and spend some time attempting to communicate with them through my broken Bambara and pantomime before returning for 3 or so hours of class in the afternoon, which is usually a combination of language and culture. After class, we (the PCTs) have started to either take a walk on this path towards another village or play frisbee before we head back to our concession. I then have dinner with the men (and boys) in my family and then continue with the same Bambara/pantomime accompanied with sketching and (thanks to the genius of my fellow PCT Audra) some singing. The name song (Karmen, Karmen-bo-barmen, banana-fanna-fo-farmen.....) and the kissing frog song (mm-ah went the little Mr. Bullfrog....) are popular due to repetition and hand movement, and I'm currently in the process of translating The Itsy-bitsy Spider into Bambara.

All in all I am enjoying my stay in Mali. I genuinely feel as though Mali, Sinsina, and my host family are exactly where I am supposed to be at this point in time. Although I am happy to be back at Tubaniso right now, able to check email, visit PCTs from other homestay villages and having food that resembles what I'm used to (eaten with utensils instead of hands), I'm also excited to return to Sinsina tomorrow!

***I apologise for my lack of photos, hopefully I will have some worth posting on my next trip in to Tubaniso***

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for the first 2 weeks of my home stay in the village of Sinsina. The village is relatively small, with about 2,000 people, and is south from Bamako. The homestay is essentially a dry run for the site I will eventually be at, and I will live with a Malian family, have meals with them, take language and culture classes from my “Language and culture facilitator” in Bambara (the most prevalent local language in Mali), and generally try and integrate myself into this community alongside 4 other PC trainees who are also going to be water & sanitation volunteers. We’ll be taking 10 ceremonial nuts with us to present to the village chief, and this is where I’ll be doing most of my training for the next 2 months.

Yesterday, in preparation for our entrance into Malian society, we had a cultural festival here at Tubaniso. There was a dance troupe with accompanying drummers as well as a Tuareg band (from northern Mali near Tombouctou). Several people were selling bright African print cloth and there was also a tailor with his treadle sewing machine in the middle of the courtyard taking orders. I purchased two 2 meter pieces with the intent of getting “tafe” (tah-fay, or wrap skirt) with matching head wraps made, as well as some bracelets beaded by an organization that has been started by a PC Mali volunteer. The fete was really great, with quite a few trainees joining in with the dancing, though I was unfortunately waiting in line for the tailor for most of that and couldn't bust out moves from my African dance class. There was a flurry of color and excitement that was only a small taste of what I will probably experience in a real market town, although with all of the information we’ve been receiving for the last few days I’m happy that yesterday was such a simplified version.

I ni ce! (Hello in Bambara)

I've successfully made it through 2 days and 2 nights in Mali! We (all 77 PC trainees) arrived at the Bamako airport Thursday evening to a full-on welcome wagon of PCMali staff and current volunteers, and, amazingly, my luggage arrived as well. We've all been learning the ropes of the nyagen (pit toilet), some language and cross-culture classes, and the proper way to combat malaria (pills, nets, and bug spray - there aren't actually as many of the little suckers as I was expecting).

All of the other trainees have been pretty great and the Malian staff are incredibly friendly and helpful. We had a friendly tarantula waiting outside our hut's door yesterday morning, and I've seen several geckos racing around. There's a ton of vegetation here at the training compound, but now there is also a fair amount of mud, as it stormed last night with a heavy downpour from about 0430-0500 this morning. It may also come as a surprise to some that our food here has been really good...and I haven't gotten sick quite yet.

All in all, I can't believe I've only been here for such a short period of time. Our days have been pretty packed, and the "camp atmosphere" feels really comfortable. I've got a couple more days here at Tubaniso (it means "dove house" in Bambara and is the training center) before I head off to my home-stay village with about 5 other volunteers, when we'll be doing a lot more cultural and language (probably Bambara) lessons with a Malian instructor. I'm so excited!!