I don't know if I said this in other blogs but Fatim was pregnant! I had not been felling well and we were supposed to meet in Segou for her brother's wedding. My APCD had come to my site to do a site visit and I asked him if I could get a rid out with him because I was going to go see a friend. My APCD tries to act like my father sometimes cause he definitely tried to do the 20 questions bit. Then when I would not answer all his questions he tried to tell me no he could not take me. Oh he took me alright. I thought I was only going for the weekend so I only packed a couple Malian outfits and locked my cat in the house with three days worth of food.

I called Fatim and told her I was leaving site and she told me she was having horrible stomaches and had to get off the phone. I was so worried. I prayed to God that she had credit to call someone to help her. When I got to sevare, I called her several times. I was not until the afternoon around 4pm that her husband picked up and told me she had the baby and that it was a girl. I was so happy. I called everybody from B.Camp and told them the good news. I told here husband that I would come down on Sunday to see the baby. I then told my APCD that my plans changed and I needed to ride all the way down to Bamako with him. He of course asked me why and I told him and told me I did not need to be there. This is an example of the hating that goes on when it comes to Fatim and I. You know that God has a way of working things out because that night I was having terrible tooth aches and called the PCMO and told me to come down to Bamako. My APCD was mad and thought I mad it up and then tried to go off on me for coming down to Bamako for too many reasons. I did not care what he said just as long as I got that free ride to Bamako.

I got to Bamako and had my APCD drop me off near her house and of course he wanted to know where I was going and if I was staying at the stage house. I told him I did not know yet. He wanted to know so he could track how many days I spent in Bamako. I could not give him that satisfaction. I got to her house and Fatim looked the same. She was up and walking around like she did not just have a baby. I thought that women had to take a couple days of rest before walking around and going back to business as usual. I asked her if she had a baby or not and she told me no. I saw her stomach was still big so I believed her. She then told me she was joking and showed me the baby. I could not believe she had a baby!!! She was so tiny and clear. I was just in disbelief. I hold the child in order to believe it. She is so cute and looks just like Fatim.

So I got tied of begging family members and being sick so I decided to have a Sunday dinner with my family. I went to host father in the morning and asked him to buy beans, onion, and chicken. I gave him six mille and went back to my house. When I started felling better I went to the grand family and saw they had bought the onions and beans. I helped cut the onions and word got around that we were having beans and that I bought them. Wit this information everybody wanted some. I did not care who ate just as long as I got a breast and lots of onion sauce I will be good. All the children of course were crowded around the onions begging their mother's for one and I told them no! There are like 60 children and I like a lot of onion sauce. Then Geneba came over cause her son was whining about not having one and she came over and gave him one. All the children told her that I said that they could not have any and she looked at me and took one. Then gave it to her son and then her son took one bite and threw the onion on the ground. I was made because that was one less onion in the sauce and I gave Geneba the dirtiest look and I know she was shame!! She thinks just because she is the chief's daughter she can do whatever she wants. As my mother says, "She'll learn!" I did not know that I was Geneba's turn to cook either. The beans were not the best, I don't think she can cook that well. The beans were not cooked all the way and the onions were not soft and delicious. I thought that we would eat the chicken at the same time with the beans but that did not happen. We ate the beans and then they brought out the meat. I got the a tiny drum stick and some parts of the chicken I did not know existed. I was still waiting for the breast. The women just looked at me and wondered what I was waiting for. I tried to explain to them that I wanted the breast and they said that it was coming. When all the meat was served I asked again and they acted like they did not know what I was talking about. I was pissed! Some ninja don ate or gave away my chicken breast and I am the one who bought the damn chicken!!!! NINJAS!!!! My host mother could see that I was mad and tried to give me her meat. I saw the meat they tried to give her and I was even madder! People could not understand what I was mad at. I went home and found my tutor who speaks English and he said he would try to fix the problem. I did not trust him for he is not like my homologue, on top of stuff. That night I called Fatim and told her what happened. She told me that the women gave the good parts of the meat to their husbands because that is what good wives do. Bullshit!!! I then told her I was going tell my family that that was not cool. She told me not to say anything because that will embarrass them. I did not care and told her that. She then said that she was embarrassed that I was going to do that. My take on it is that my family needs to be embarrassed. They think that they can treat me like a Malian woman! That ain't gonna fly. And to the women, they know I paid for the chicken they could not let me choose the piece I wanted? That would have been the logical thing to do but these people are not logical!!!

So the next day I go to my host brother's house and tell what happened and he told me he would buy me a chicken and that was the end of it. No I am sorry for not thanking you or eating all the good parts of the chicken. Whatever I took what I could get. Later that day, his son brought me my chicken and that was that. Lesson Learned. Don't give the meat to the women, Dogon men feel entitled, and No one knows how to say, "thank you!"

When I got back to site, I cleaned my whole house and realized that someone stole my birthday jewelry!!!! I was so pissed. I sent out a text message to everyone who stayed at my house and no one respoded to it. I am pissed!!! I let people into my house and my shit gets stolen!!! That is all I can write right now!

I survived the three day hike!!! It was great and I am glad I did it. There were times I wanted to quit and go back home and other times I wished I had never come. I was nice to see Dogon country it is so pretty. I loved every minute of it.

After the hike, I was going to stay at site but I met someone in Bamako that I wanted to see. We all pilled in the shuttle and went to Sevare. I was rushing to get my stuff packed in the chaos of everyone else and make sure everyone's accounts were straight. With all of that, I forgot my bank card and only had a little money. I remembered that I ordered a bank card and decided that I would go to the bank the next morning.

The next morning the group was split into two groups, those going straight to Bamako and those going to San. I was in the San group. We all needed to go to the bank. We got to the bank really early and pulled numbers. In reality we should have been 4th or 5th in line but actually we were 25th and 26th in line. What happened was people picked up the numbers from the day before and used them. while they were dealing with that I was trying to get my card. I had an PC admin person talk to the bank people and they just brushed him off and refused to look for my card. I had to go to the director who had to call down stairs several times and ended up going downstairs and finding it him self. By that time everyone had left to go to the bus station and then I saw my mayor gave me a ride to the bus station. We ended up missing the bus. So we waited for another one. After a while we started asking people when the next bus was going to come and people would just lie to us. My friend Dina and I were asking in French and Bambara and we were getting frustrated from the lies. Eventually, I we found a bus and got to San safe. During the trip there was a prendtiki who kept yelling and me and we got off in San I told him that I am not Malian but American and I will cut his dick off. He shut up after that. The next day we tried to find a ride to Bamako. I felt like I was slowing everyone down. I forgot my phone at the San house then I took to long at the bank and they almost left without me. I know they were irritated with me and I felt so bad. I gave myself a pep talk on how to be and do better on the way to Bamako.

We finally go to Bamako and stayed at the stage house. It was my first time to stay there and the house is very nice. During IST, when Admin explained the house, I thought it was going to be strict and uncomfortable. Then some people broke the rules and got kicked out the house. However, if you follow the rules the house is really a nice place.

For new years we went shopping. I had so much fun shopping with the girls in th Bamako market. Even though the market is crowded and annoying it was still fun. We all got cute outfits. The person I came to Bamako to see had to leave town. To make a long story short with that one. The person was stupid and had to be dropped and fatim was made at how I handled the situation and decided to drop the situation. So back to new years, I had so much fun but in the beginning I got a little too happy and tried to sleep it off but no one would let me. It got better in the end. It was a fun night though. People were nice and right, there was drama, there was dancing, connections, and people just bared it all. The night was kinda spoiled by a certain someone who kept taking pictures of people who were baring it all. The person was asked several times to stop and the person did not. Not cool! I better not see any of those pictures on facebook or it is on! It was fun. I text happy new year to the person I came to see and got one message back. I was too happy to care at that moment. I stayed a day or two after and then went back to site. Over all it was fun, I hung out with the home girls and saw Fatim.

It is a tradition for the volunteer in my site to host Christmas. I had such a hard time with this because the volunteer before me was my site mate and still had his hands in things in my site. If it was not him or his girlfriend then it was his old community. So I live in a different part of town then the previous volunteer. I am technically the fourth though. The first lived in mission, the second and third lived in Dini, and I live in Bongo. The second volunteer in at my site started the December in Dogon tradition and everybody she dealt with thinks that all the Peace Corps business has to go to them. I don't live close to Dini for it is about an hour walk from my house. I decided to ask my homologue and the other volunteers homologue for a schedule and their prices. My homologue of course gave me his in a timely fashion but the others decided to call the other volunteer and bitch. I never got anything from them. Then people did not want to pay to stay in a hotel and want to stay at my house. Then I made the executive decision to have everything in Bongo so then my site mate and his girl friend sent out an email to everyone in their stage saying that they were having Christmas in Dini. During IST, people from the other stages were mad at our stage because they were not invited to our Christmas celebration. To make a long story short I went and told them the truth about what was going on and then they calmed down. They told me that that is how he is. F that crap! He almost got his ass whooped! I was diplomatic about things but it was not satisfying. Part of me just wanted to show my color and get ghetto with somebody. Anyway that is the short version of the situation.

After IST we take the shuttle up to Sevare and the next morning had breakfast at Max's and then took the shuttle I rented to Sangha. I found out later that people who did the other thing had to find their own way to Sangha. Then my site mate texted me and asked me if their was room for them to come. You know what that answer to that question was and then the wanting ghetto side was a little satisfied. It was smooth until we got to Bandiagara and then we stopped for a moment to get somethings. Now in Mali there is no personal spac and people pack transport like a certain ethnic group we refer to in the States (trying to keep it PC alittle). So when we stopped of course there were a butt load of people who asked my homologue and the driver for a ride and they said that people had to ask me. Some did not ever approach me and one dude came up to me and said, "you know me?" So I said, "NO!" I told them no one is getting on this bus that is not American because everyone paid to be on this bus. The ghetto side got a little satisfaction out of watching their faces as we pulled away. People pray for my ghetto side. Jesus and Oprah can only do so much. I need the prays of the community as well.

We get to sangha and the boys go with my homologue and the girls come with me. Now we had three couples and they wanted to stay in the Mayor's hotel and I was cool with that cause there were alot of girls. Everyone put their bags in my house and it was just crazy from there. I felt a little embarassed because my house was so small and people could not move around as much. People had a good time sleeping on the roof, porch, and my bedroom. We had one incident when someone did not clean up behind themselve in the bathroom but other than that it was cool. Everybody took a shower and just relaxed. I was relieved that everyone got to my site and everything was going well.

So it is Christmas today!!! I spent all day cooking when I wanted to start in the afternoon. I was miscommunication because my homologue thought I was cooking lunch. It all got straightened out. While I cooked, the group went to the festival. Originally, they had to pay 5 mill but my homologue is the greatest and got them in for a mille. Then I heard that the other group had to fight just to get the price down to a mille while my group just walked right in. The ghetto side was cheesing extra hard. The diplomatic side of me said nothing but just let the ghetto side just cheese in silence. When they came back, I was happy to hear that they had a good time. Everyone got clean up for dinner and I there were some French guys were staying at the hotel and were going to go to another hotel to eat Malian food for Christmas and I invited them to spend dinner with us. For dinner I fixed corn bread, candied yams, dressing, green peas, and we roasted a goat. It was great even thought my site mate texted me to see if anybody in my group wanted to come eat pork with his group. The diplomatic part of me held the ghetto part back and just respectfully declined. The evening was so great that nothing made it go wrong.

After dinner, the women came and danced for us. The brought each one of us and made us dance as a presentation dance. We had a lot of fun and my homologue gave them ten mille as a gift. It was great even though I was a little embarrassed to dance cause I can't dance that well. Anyway it was perfect. Now we just have to get a good night's sleep and start the hiking tomorrow. This is my first hike and I am excited/ scared. I am not the hiking type but I did go camping and fishing a couple times with my dad. We shall see.

So there is a girl who was transplanted from guinea and she has the same birthday as me!!! For the record I had a great birthday. I had a cute outfit, I went to a concert, almost died, ate good food, and clubbed like I was in the ATL shawty!!! Let me tell how it all happened.

So I had a birthday outfit made from when I was in the BGA during installation and i wore that. I also went to the tubab market and found some shoes to match. I looked real Malian. My shoes sealed the deal. They had my heel sticking way out with a big crystal on the top. Girl that is how they do it here. I had some jewelry made and the jeweler f***ed up. I still looked Malian. The LCFs could not believe it though. It is because I don't dress up really cute because I don't want anybody trying to hit on me. Here if a woman looks cute and she gets harassed by men it is her fault...Right!... No comment.

Anyway the homologues were there and I walked around and everybody complemented me on my outfit and fatim sang me happy birthday, it was really nice seeing as the last week we had so much going on. I was sad though that I had sessions on my birthday. At lunch, I had a birthday cake made and V brought it out. I was kinda sad though that my mother sent my cake mixes to BGA when I told her BKO but the cake the chef made was full of love and I saved some for fatim. Also V surprised me with some bracelets and she told me she was going to pay for my Sean Paul concert ticket. She is a true friend and I appreciate her. Also my roommate bought me a bottle of wine and my region mate made me a card and bought me a twix. I tore it up!!!!

Now for what happened at the concert. Baybe I am too shame at how these people acted a fool!!! So we all got there safe with a couple people forgetting their IDs. After finding people and getting tickets straight we able to enter the stadium. I was so excited! I don't even like Sean Paul like that but I was just happy to be at a concert and chill with people. I also should have picked a better outfit cause I looked Malian and everybody else looked too cute. At first it was real chill and we were all just standing around and talking and waiting till the concert started. Then people just started walking in front of us and bum rushing so we had to hold our ground. People were pushing and shoving. Then the crowd got pushed back and I almost fell. I should have known at this point that things were going to get worse but I was not thinking about that just trying not to get lost from the group and get as far up front as possible which was the goal every other person there. My friends managed to get me at the front of the five mille section and it was great at first until people started acting a fool and the police had to regulate on people. The youth here just don't respect lines of any kind. So there was a line dividing the 10 mille section and the 5 mille section and the people kept trying to jump it and then they would try to push through the line. This of course made the police mad and they had to ask people several times to push back but no one listened. Then they started hitting people to get back they would skip over us Americans but it was just a shame that they had to do that. Then some how we got into the 10 mille section and got all the way to the front. The people up front told us that we could sit there as long as when Sean Paul came out we did not block their view. I was cool with that. Then more people started coming and the people sitting in the seats got the police and the police took those people away. After a while the police stop doing that and more and more people started crowding up front. I should have left at this point but something in me wanted to hear the only sang I liked from him. So we are waiting and waiting for the him to come out and an hour goes by and I think another half hour and then some whack people come on stage. After another hour of whackness the concert started. At first this big and I mean big light skinned dude came out on stage and I was like "dang Sean Paul don blew up, literally." That was not him because as soon as the crowd reacted he came out. As soon as he came out, this girls sitting next to me just starts screaming and trying to pull her hair out. then she jumped on a police officer and was screaming. The officer pushed her off and then all the police bum rushed the area. Me and my crew go out the way by stepping back and watched the police hit people in order for them to calm down. It worked for a little bit but it seemed like every five minutes we were having to not get hit. Then a off duty police officer befriended us and when ever the police would come he would pull us to the side. There was one time the police came and I got separated from the group. I was mixed in with all the other black people and that was not fun. I was trying to run away and get out of the group before I got hit. Then there was a female police officer who came over yelling in bambara, a language I don't know, and I was yelling french that I don't speak bambara and I am American. She told me to go to the left if I did not want to get hit and then as I was moving she tried to elbow me but I only felt a little nudge. I eventually found the group and we were good for another ten minutes when the crowd started pushing up again and the the police cleared the whole area. The dude we were with was trying to talk to the police and then all of a sudden got taken away by them. I was like we are all going to die! I was trying to text people to see where they were but there was not that much reception and it was really loud. We then move to the side of the stage and by this point he is singing songs I don't know. Then so many people were up front that the people sitting in the chairs were standing up on the chairs and then the people behind them could not see and then people just went crazy. The police just went in and started beating everyone. People were throwing chairs on the stage. Sean Paul was asking the police to stop beating the people cause was about peace. Then a translator came out and was telling the people to calm down and that this was not Malian culture. This happen twice and the second time I saw a huge hummer come in and I thought a whole bunch of police were just going to come out and start shooting so we decided to leave. The group we got separated from had already left and the group in the stands was still there. when we decided to leave there was another big rush with the police and then all the doors were locked. We found the off duty officer from before and he said he would need money to get us out so we left him. We tried to ask to be let out but we could see outside that people were throwing stuff and there was a line to get in. One officer told us if we want to leave just walk out the door then we saw people getting beat for that. People were paying to get out and people were trying to jump the gates to get in. We were finally able to get out and one guy standing in line kissed my friend on the cheek. We did not have time to whoop his ass cause we were trying to get hit by the flying objects. when we left, realized that I only had one shoe and the other shoe was completely destroyed. I was forced to walk the streets of Bamako with one shoe. I was praying to go that I did not step in the water.

Some how we made it to the relax and ate dinner. We saw other volunteers and we all exchanged war stories. The plan after that was to figure out something to do. The initial plan was to go to the Concert after party but we figured Sean Paul got on a plane and put up those always faithful two fingers and deuced out! We decided then to go to the club that was next door. We took the back entrance to get in for free. We get in and then I see the girl who has the same birthday as me with a cake, wine glass, and people singing happy birthday. I was like man!!!! She is such a nice person that she told everyone that it was both of our birthdays and gave me cake and champagne too. We had free drinks all night and danced till we could not anymore. We left around 4am to go back to Tso and it was the greatest time I had ever had on my birthday. I can't wait for next year!!!

One of the things that has kept me alive was not only seeing my friends but my teacher who came to my site, her name is Fatim. Now I feel a little bit more comfortable talking about her cause the Americas are cool about it. I don't know about the Malians though. In my life, I was always the one who would experience things with people but never become close to them. A good example is when I was in Senegal. It always seemed as if that happened with other people. The last thing I had like that may be I force or made something out of nothing. Everytime I start over or something new I try not to carry the baggage from the previous thing. So this is how I treated the thing with Fatim. I thought that we would talk more and have more inside jokes. I don't know, be closer friends. Well that did not happen at least not the way I wanted it to.

Well the first day I saw her, I did not have an image of how she looked or anything but when I saw her it was another Damn!! situation. She had a short weave which everybody liked but me. I don't know why I did not like her hair. Then her stomach was extra big. Now I don't know if I stated this earlier but at B. Camp we were both mean to each other because we did not want people to think that we liked each other you know the whole we are both black bond. I wanted to keep the hateration to a minimum. Any way maybe the same thing happened again. When I saw her she of course ignored me. I hoping for a big I have not seen you in a while hug. I understand that is not her culture but I explained her the meaning behind a hug. I forgot how we finally saw each other but it was an okay moment. The rest of the week was really hard for me. It seemed as if she was distant when we were around Malians and she definitely would do things that I told her annoyed me on purpose. Now my mother always told me to never tell people what annoys because they will do it on purpose. With that I have always just ignored when people did that because it was done on purpose.

There was one incident in particular that really made me mad with her. In the beginning there was one LCF that I did not know and I joked with her because they said that is how you can get to know someone. Well I think this particular LCF took my joking to offense during PST. During IST, she told me that she is afraid of me and that I don't like her. I wanted to laugh in her face for that thought but held back. I think she told fatim and I even went to fatim to tell her the ridiculous story and she basically confirmed what the other LCF said. She told me that I don't like the LCF. Now I have never been one for people putting words in my mouth and I told her if I don't like someone, I will definitely tell them. She did not believe me. The next day I was walking to the cafe with her and the other female LCFs trying to be cordial and mature. As they were all talking in Bambara, a language I can not understand, I kind of felt a little left out because I know a language that they were forced to learn while others know their mother tongue. I don't know what was said in Bambara but all of a sudden fatim says my name and coughs up the biggest wad of spit and slowly spits it out. As I am writting this I am trying not to gag. I hate spitting and people spitting near me! When she did it I freaked out because at my site we had some private conversations and we both told each other secrets and stuff. Now at the time she was the oldest (alpha female) there. The ultimate alpha female was not around and I know that if she was there that would not have happened. I cannot tell you how mad I was. I just yelled something at her and walked away. Now if she did not want me to walk with her she could have just said so. I think I sent her a text message that night and told her I was really mad. I don't think she cared because she did not return the text.

I think things were just going down hill and I did not know why. I got to the point she would avoid me almost. She was always with the other female LCFs and never wanted to leave their sides. I would invite her to eat with me and she would refuse and then I cooked breakfast for her and we could not even eat alone but we sat with the other female LCFs. I felt like a fool! I felt like everyone Malian and American was like can't she see! Then I stopped talking to her and she knew I was mad and stopped talking to me. There was a session where I completely ignored her and she tried to get my attention by throwing things at me and then making faces. It was more annoying then funny. Then there was an incident that was the straw that broke the camel's back. We had language tutoring after sessions and I would go to her for bambara. Well one night we had a session and she was acting very strange and saying she was tired and I was like look please lets just get this hour done and you can go. The session was bad let me just put it that way. I was really mad at her that I said something in anger which I try to never do. Basically I said that if I was white she would have found the energy. The details have faded but somehow a third party got involved and tried to make me take back my words and they told me that she loves me dearly and I was like she ain't acting like it and I just stormed off. Part of me felt bad for letting loose like that but the other half was like finally but next time let it all out! I think I found V and talked to her about and I asked her to do a third party on her cause it was just bad at this point. V did the favor for me and the third party did not work because the way V described how she approached her, fatim did not want to hear any of it and the response she gave too just sealed the deal. Eventually I just swallowed my pride and wrote her a letter to read. I get tired of always being the mature one or the one who has to swallow my pride and go to other people.

She then found me or I found her and she said thank you for the letter and asked me a question about the letter. One thing I learned is that she was afraid. When she first started in PC she had a volunteer who was very close to her PC basically separated them and the girl ETed. Fatim was blamed for it and she did not want that to happen twice or have people think that she was distracting me from my work or inhibiting me for integrating with others. That is a load of crap for me cause I ain't ETing I don't care who you are! I have a feeling that this feeling will linger though. For right now things are okay we are hanging out just a little more and we have both made compromises. We just have to go forward from here.

Now I really did not think that I was going to make it to IST but the devil is a story and Jesus is real!!!! I made it to IST!!! When I got there I found out that we had another ET. So far we have had 5 ETs including this one. Anyway Before I tell you about how happy I am to be at IST let me tell you what happened before we left for IST.

I came in from village to the bureau we have up north and everybody was there. I was really glad to see everybody in my region at least. So the day before we got on the shuttle to go to IST, we all went to the bar. Now one of my region mate suggested going to a bar and playing a game. I agreed along with alot of others. I had not spoken English in a minute and certainly had not played a game in a long time as well. We go to the bar and he explains this dice game to us. It sounded fun and I was fun. The person who lost had to buy us all drinks. Well as the game progressed all of us had to buy everybody a drink. There was one person who never lost but she made us brownies for the road trip. Now when we ended the game, there were two people who had to buy two rounds of drinks and one person who had to buy four rounds of drinks. Now I paid for the drinks I had to buy. I also left the bar early because the longer I stay here the earlier my bed time is. Mali-la has forced me to become a morning person. I still don't like the mornings! Anyway by the end of the night there were two people left at the bar. Now when I left one of the people who had to pay for two rounds came with me but they only paid for one round of drinks. When everybody came from the bar, there was an announcement made about at 22,000 cfa bar tab that one person had to pay. Now I am pretty sure you have looked up the exchange rate on this (about 40 dollars) and it might not seem like alot of money but we all live below the international poverty line. My host family makes more then me in a month. That sucks that people left without paying their tab. I think the person who had to buy four rounds just left the bar without paying. It is funny but sad. Welcome to the north!!!!

Now about IST. I am so happy to be here. Even though we are going to be in long drawn out session about boring things, I am still happy to be here. I especially am glad to see my friends and Fatim! They sent the big bus up north to pick up Moptikaw, Sankaw, and Segoukaw. I was so happy. I got to see my home girls!!!! Normally I get car sick and am sleep the whole trip but I was awake for the most part and talking to people I had not seen in three months. It was great. We got to Tso and I grabbed a big hut because for PST we are cramped in a square hut. I can't even redescrib it. This time I roomed with one of old roommates and my homegirl from my region. This hut has so much room!!! I also remembered that I am always my dirtiest a Tso. I just can't feel comfortable there and the Negens are not the best. Anyway I set up my tent on my bed and made it work.

Now there is one thing I hate about anything at Tso and that is the boring sessions we have there. I just wish they would skip the sessions and we could just hang out with our friends and LCFs. I don't plan to talk about the boring sessions or the good breakfast we had that would make this post even more boring. Anyway, I see Fatim in a day and I am excited!!!! I can't wait. Also I hope my counterpart makes it in okay.

I spent thanksgiving at site because my transport is every 5 days and I would have missed a huge holiday in my village. called Tabaski. It is like the muslim new year. Also they pushed I ST back just so we could celebrate it in our villages. Im still yet holdin on! For Tabaski, the women in my family get dressed in the same clothes. My host dad got this fabric from the Ivory Coast or something; its cute. Since I had my accident and no one in my family has a cell phone or tried to call and check up on me like that, I was told late about the outfits. I thought I would get my outfit maybe a couple days for the holiday but that did not happen. Let me tell you what did happen. I was supposed to get my outfit the night before tabaski and then someone told me that I would have it in the morning in time for service. Then morning came and everybody is getting ready to go to the mosque so i go to the tailors's house. He, of course, did not it done and had the nerve to say he did not know what the model looked like. So I had to wait until one of my family members returned from the mosque just so he could see the model. then he told me to come back at noon. I came back at noon and he still was not done! He kept saying, “ten minutes” and instead of working for ten minutes he was talking to his friends and drinking tea. I was not until four in the afternoon when got my outfit. I was pissed. I did not get to go around a greet everybody with my family because I did not have my uniform nor was able to go to my female homologue's house to greet her. One of the women in my family had to go to the tailor and rush him along. Then he gave me the pieces of fabric that had the stickers on it and expected me to take them off. Then his machine broke and he did a horibble job on the stitching. Then he could not even fold the clothes up and iron it for me which is what every tailor does. Instead he threw the cloths at me. He lucky I know Jesus cause when he did that, I said, “You got me Jesus?” and picked up the cloths and walked away. To top it all off he told me I owed him another 500 cfa. In the back of my head I said, “Ninja Please” but actually said, “I'll get it to you later.” Meaning I'ma make you wait like I waited. Now this blog is tittled, the brother from Bamako because he is part three of the negen story. The story begins with the women in my family telling me that a brother is coming from bamako. His two wives live in my concession. Theirs names are Kadijah (wife 1) and Aissa (wife 2) and since the beginning they have always joked with me about being the third wife of their husband, Adama. This is because, I sleep alone and that is not good I guess. I like it cause I can do what I want in my bed like pass gas! I would have a hard time doing that with someone else in the bed. My fear would be having them wake up and smell my gas and give me the WTF is that smell look. If they asked me if I passed gas, I would instantly say no. Atleast alone I know who did it and can go back to sleep. Anyway, two days before tabaski, I come home from my daily routine of being at the office and then eating at the mayor's house and see this man stand in the stair way to the porch area of my house. He did not introduce himself or nothing just stood there. I came outside just to wash my face and relax. He then tried to approach me and he said some thing about a key but I did not pay him any attention because he did not greet me and in Malian culture that is really rude. When more people came to the compound, he was asking everybody about a key and i concluded that he was talking about the Negen. I really did not want to be involved so I go in my house and just chill. Then it is time for family dinner and I walk to my host dad's house and I greet everybody and everybody greets me back instead of Adama's ass. Then after dinner I see him talking with the chief of the village and he did not look happy. I passed them in conversation and greeted the chief and he stopped the conversation to greet me. This did not make Adama happy because he storms off. The next morning, at 6am, my next door neighbor knocks on my door. This never happens. I did not answer because one I was sleep and two don't knock on my door at no 6am for nothing! This made me not like Adama because he sent his little brother to ask for the key to the negen. Then my homologue came over and I told him what happened. Maybe i was not understanding him right but he wanted me to give him the key and he would only let Adama have it to bath and use the bathroom. I was like Oprah off the color purple when I said... well you know what she said. Then he told me that the negen was not built for me and it is originally Adama's and all this jazz and I was like not my problem. I don't share negens. Men are nasty that is why in America we have a separate bathroom for men and women. That got back to Adama and he did not like me after that. I called my PTO and my APCD and told them what happened. Also I called the safety and security person too just in case people wanted to get crazy over a negen. My PTO wanted me to think about sharing the negen because of the politics around it even though Peace Corp policy states that we are to have our own private negen. My APCD was not having it and he told the mayor that if they could find a solution for the negen situation my the end of business today then I was moving to Dini. After that message I went to my female homologue's house in Bini and got my hair braided. I told her what happened and all she could say was that is not right. Now here is the mess that almost made my superlative come true. Now I was walking back to my house through the cliffs and just as I am getting close, I see a man in a white shirt in front of my Negen door. As I get closer to the edge of the cliff ( there is a valley the separates the cliff I was on and the cliff my house sits on) I can make out the man. I thought he was trying to break in and I start yelling. I thought he saw me and tried to act like nothing happened. I was so mad that I wanted to go straight to my house, lose my religion, and place hands on brother man. Instead I want to the cave and found my homologue and tried to tell him what happened but my vocabulary was not cutting it. I think he told me he saw that the man used my negen and he told the chief. I tried to tell him I just saw it and I can't go home without an exscort. He took me to the cyber cafe where the mayor and the chief was there and told him what happened. The mayor told me that my host dad and my older host brothers all talked to him and he refused to listen and had a whole bunch to say. Then he called Adama to come to the cafe and the mayor talked to him. The brother was so silent when the mayor was talking it was unbelieveable. He is a punk and that is all I needed to know cause he just needed look at my negen and I was gonna be real ready. After the meeting the brother greeted and shook everybody's hand except mine and when I mentioned it to the mayor he told me that Adama is crazy and it is because he studied arabic that he is like that. I wish I knew french better cause I shol would have told him that I'll jump stupid with him, he don't know about railroad ave in g'ville!!!! So tabaski came and went as described above and the day after tabaski, I went to my female homologue's house to show her my outfit and apologize for not coming the day before. She understood and I ended up spending the whole day with her. Then we walked over to the Bongo together in the late afternoon and went to the mayors house. While we were there, all these women came into the compound and started singing and dancing. It was wonderful. The mayor asked me if I had my camera and I said no but I can go get it. I run to my house while everyone is lining up in the house and greeting and eating. When I get to my house, I almost lost my religion again on Adama. Baybe this ninja was having a party infront of my house!!! Girl had chair lean up against my door, had his salidoga on my porch, had tea all set up, just posted!!! So when I walk up the stairs to my porch his friends see me and then decide to dip on out. They could not even greet or look me in the eye. There was one girl who had her back to me and Adama was trying to lay some lines on her did not get up. I had to tap her on the shoulder and Adama told her to move the chair from infront of my door. She got up and I gave her the “you got 2 seconds” look and she booked it out of there. Adama just sat there and finished his tea. I just want ya'll to know Jesus had me that day. I go in side get my camera and when I come back he gone. I say to myself don't trip, cause maybe he is going to clean up his crap by the time you get back. I go to the mayor's house and film the dances and had a great time there. After the dance was over my female homologue and I went to my house to find the crap was still in front of my house! I told her what happened before and she said that that is very disrespectful. With that I decided to remove his crap from infront of my door. He stood there as I did it too and he did not say nothing to me. I think he got feed up and left. He so luck I know Jesus cause if I was a hood rat girl he would been got!!! After my female homologue left, I saw Adama's wives come in so I decided I was gonna post up infront of his house like he did mine. Now his wives like me and I really feel sorry for them. They are all stressed out everynight because they have do everything thing but chew his food and crap for him. The children cry and the mothers are just stressed. The first couple of nights he slept in aissa's house and switched to kadijah's. This day I was playing with aissa then we sat on her porch and talked. Then she pulled out the mat and I made some coffee milk and we just chilled. Then her three year old daughter came out and was playing with me. By that time, Adama rolled his happy go lucky, 9 month's pregnant santa clause belly self in the compound. He sees me in front of his wives houses and playing with his kids and does not even try to end the porch area. Aissa gets up and greets his friends that came with him and she sets out chairs too. They were going to side down but he told them to get up because they were not staying long. So aissa took the chairs back. He is just lazy and I am sorry that they have to sleep with such a nasty man. I wish I had success in taking his picture so you could see him but his ugliness broke my camera. Seriously my camera does not work. Very sad. That is all for the brother from bamako the rest of the time he did not talk to me or go near my negen. I pray he does not try to get bold while I am gone because I have to go to a memorial service in bga.

I finally got back to site from being in the hospital! I was so happy but my happiness faded when I walked to my Negen (bathroom). It looked like someone tried to pull back the latch bars because they could not unlock the lock. When I open the door (with out unlocking it) I found all this burn black crap in there. Now I sweep my Negen out everyday. I mean it is spotless so it being dirty means someone was in there who does not know how to keep crap clean (A Malian Man!). Also the cover to the hole was turned vertically when I always turn it horizontally. I was pissed. I called my homologue and he rushed over. He thought something happened and was disappointed to see that it was as he put it “nothing.” That made me mad and all my french went out the window. I had to call my teacher and have translate everything. That was a great big welcome home sign. Now I just gotta keep it together for IST. That is what is keeping me sane right now, seeing the people in my stage in December. Give me the strength Lord!

While in the hospital, I missed the Halloween party in Mopti and the day was actually halloween. I was just going to go back to site and just rest under doctor's orders. By the way, I was told to not go to work for two weeks and just relax at site. Well I have adopted the idea of not making definite plans and just live. So in Segou, we picked up volunteers going to San for Halloween. I asked if I could tag along and they said yes. I was happy because I got to see my best friend in Peace Corps and party with people I had not seen since swear in. We all go to San where I had to spend the night anyway because the drivers can not drive at night. I had the greatest time of my life just going with it. It was just like when I visited a friend. I may have to do this more often in the states. Anyway. I did not have a costume and did not have any money but seriously I had sooooooo much fun. After seeing people put on their costumes and make up, I decided I was going to dress up too and noticed that no everybody had on a costume. So we all went to dead tubab and pulled out some cloths. My home girl nique found a dress that made her look like New York. I still could not find anything until we were having a conversation about Malian ladies of the evening and then I remembered some clothes I was. Some of you may have already seen the pictures on facebook. Yes I dressed up as a Malian lady of the evening. The ones here don't look like the ones in the states at least not the high priced ones. They look worse then a two dollar one because they don't match, their weave is never on point, and they wear white people make-up cause they want to be light skinned. I tried to mimic it but I don't think the Americans got it. I went out with someone to get more drinks for the party and forgot I had on my outfit and I did get some pretty hard stares from the Malians. I have to say it was an success.

I was coming home from work on a tuesday and I came to the steep hill before you get to my village. the hill is very very steep and curvy. so usually I go on the left side down the hill because when I get to the bottom there are less rocks I hit. so that day, when I was coming down the hill, there were three motos that came up the left side and I could not break very well. usually I take the whole road to break. that day I tried to break and felt like I was going to flip over the front so I just road on the right side of the road down the hill really fast. When I hit the bottom of the hill, there was a moto on the left side where there were less rocks and I had to take the right side. I am trying to keep my bike straight but the front wheel of my bike hit a rock and I fell of my bike. I just remember waking up and having my bike on top of me. The motorist stopped to help me and the little children herding the animals ran across the field to help me. I did not know how hurt I was but rather more ashamed that I was in my 20's and crashed and burned like that. the kids took my bike to my house and others held my hand, took my bag, and helmet. So glad I was wearing it by the way because it would have been a different out come. the mayor happened to be on his way out of town and passed me on the road. He asked me what happened and I was so out of it that I showed him my bloody elbow and he told me to get in the car. I was actually covered in blood and got in the car. I showed him where I fell he took me to the CSCOM. I called the PCMO and told her what happened and while I was on the phone with her I suddenly could not breath and my whole abdominal area hurt. When I got to the hospital, the doctor was in surgery and had to wait for thirty minutes. The PCMO called every ten minutes to see how I was doing. I was the first person he saw after surgery. The PCMO talked to the doctor and told him what he needed to do and what his results were after he examined me. She then talked to the mayor to see if he could take me to Bga, where PC staff was waiting on me. He agreed and him and my homologue carried me to the car and drove me to my house. I could not walk to my house because I live on a cliff and could not climb up there so my I tell my homologue who is a man to go get me specific items. Even in pain I should have known that men do not follow directions. I reminded me of when I would ask my dad to go to the story and get always with wings and he would come back with kotex and tell me there were no always. Bullshit! So anyway my homologue brings my whole medical kit instead of the medicine the doctor told him to get, my african cloths on the second shelf instead of the amerian cloths on the third shelf, no underwear which was hanging up on the laundry line in my room, and no toiletries which were on the top shelf. So I was in pain and mad cause I had nothing and time was of the essance. It took the mayor an hour and a half in the dark to drive me to bga. it normally takes 2 hours during the day cause there road are for the most part not paved and are rocky. Vehicles always break down on that road. In Bga, PC staff pick me up and drive me to the mopti hospital where I am examined again and then told that they can not peform the egography on me so I have to go to another clinic where I was examined again and then had an egography performed on me. The PCMO needed that to see if there was any internal bleeding. there was none so I did not need to be rushed to bamako or have any other emergency action taken. I was given something to eat and taken to the sevare office on medical hold and waited for a driver to come from bamako to take me to the medical office.I had to wait a whole day befor leaving sevare and going to bamako. Also I could not sleep because my whole chest hurt because I was still in shock from the fall and there was a person occupying the sick room. All he had was a cold and he did not have the manner to give up the bed for me. I was forced to sleep on these uncomfortable beds that were really high up and if I were to fall off I would be bad versus the bed in the sick room is very comfortable and low to the ground. Anyway dude was a dick! There was one girl who helped me to get food even though it hurt to eat. Finally I went to bamako and arrived at the medical unit. I did not have any credit but my teacher called me and was relieved to know that I was in bamako and she told me she called my homologue to see what happened. she told me she was so worried. I was in the medical unit for about three day and could not move and then I could kind of move so I went to the PC office where I saw my old Apcd and she was saddened by the accident and told me she wanted me to have language while I recover so of course I had the language coordinator call my teacher up. She tutored me be for three days. I was sad when it was over though cause I was all alone in the med unit. The PCMO wanted me to stay in the hospital for 2 more weeks and I had already been there for about 2 weeks. I said no and then came back and told her I think I need the two weeks and she drilled me with questions about why. I decided that maybe she did not believe me or something but I was just tired of being alone and wanted to go back to my village but then I thought about how I do need to relax and make sure I am healed before I go back. I told my teacher I would stay two more weeks but forgot to tell her I was not staying. So I left with a shuttle and two days later she called me and asked me where I was, I told her I left and she was really mad. She had just got through convincing someone to take her to the med unit by moto and decided to call me before she came. I wish I had stayed because she would have visited me just about everyday. I really know how to mess stuff up!

I got back to site after crap that happened in bga. I get to my house and it is the way she and I left it. I slept in her room and I listened to gospel all night. I was very sad and did not know how I would make it for two years. I think I slept like that for two days and then I cleaned up my house and looked towards IST when I would see everybody. I am going to start going to work since they finally sent my bike up when my teacher was here. I am still sad and one of my villagers called me out for crying when went over to her house. I guess she was standing outside my house? Creepy!!!

the good times at my friends house came to an end because friday came and she was leaving but she wanted me to stay with my family and relax. I told her I did not want to go but today was my market day and I needed to go or wait five more days. Then I reminded her of the promise to the guy in bga. I was so mad I made that promise and that is why I don't like doing that because my plans change or I will want to hang out with someone else. My friend she did not want me to go and did not get me up for the 8am bus but I insisted that I needed to go because we could not find a solution for the boy. i know t is simple, just don't go but wante to keep my word and it was my market day and all this other stuff. So she puts me on the 12pm bus and I was really sad to leave her. I did not want to go at all. So with this sad note I get on the bus and go back but three hours into the trip the bus breaks down and we are stuck there for 8 hours. I was on the phone with my friend and we said over and over that I should not have left. Then the guy called me and asked where I was and eventually I told him the truth and my friend helped me explain the situation. He said he understood but I was still like why did I need to tell him for he is not my boyfriend but wants to be my boyfriend. One thing I am learning about malian culture is that they don't have the same rationale as americans.

so I get to sevare at midi night and asked the guy for a ride to bga but he could not help me. He told me not to get mad because I lied to him. at that moment I remembered my mother's words, “don't change your plans for a man!” The next morning he called me tried to apologize and stuff but I was done then my friend called and told me to call him. I made it to bga and he met me at the gare and tried to go off on me for lying. I was still like you not my man. so we don't have a house in bga and I stayed a night in his house which turned into two nights. I just had the worst time there and realized I don't like him or want to be in a relationship with anybody. He likes me but I don't like him.

I finally got out of village. It was so random. I had planned to go somewhere else but ended up going to visit my friend. this is how it happened. I was in bandiagara and actually I had received a text from a guy I knew in bga and he said he wanted to me to come out. I did not come to see him but I did come into town for him but he thought I did when he saw me. I had really come to do work and saw my Malian friend. She was going back to her family. I talked to her for a second because we were waiting for transport. The guy who sent me a text message saw me and thought that I had come for him but I said I did not come for him and he looked disappointed. My Malian friend said I should be nice to him and spend time with him because he is very nice to me. I listened to her but something in me told me not to take her advice. I tell him that I will be back friday and we can spend time together before I go back to villag. I go back to talking to my friend and I tell her that her family is near another volunteer that I am friends with and would go with her to visit but I did not call before hand. That day was the day I got introduced to Malian culture and just living life because my friend asked me to come with her and I excepted. It was so exciting. We sat on the bus and talked the whole time. We get to her house at night and her family welcomed me. I just had a great time there. My friend would say, “I want to you to sit next to me.” Just saying that made me feel welcomed and it was not weird because I don't know bambara and my french is functional. I just had a really good time and me and my friend became much closer because in sangha there was so much going on and instead of being my french teacher is now my friend. Just chilling with her and her family just made me love her more and our friendship just blossomed. It is unbreakable!!! I think I have what I have always asked God for.

Everything has been going well so far. Everymorning I wake up at three or five, there is no difference it is still early, with the cat. the cat and I have not been on the same page since after day one. It poops on my stuff and whines all the time. My neighbors are always telling me to buy meat for the cat. My rationale is why am I going to feed the cat better then I am eating! Anyway, I locked the cat in my room so that it would not bother my teacher but the fact that it whined and I got frustrated with it woke her up. I felt bad because she is not sleeping well and she does not want to eat that much because she does not want her stomach to get big. Ima leave the last comment be cause we exchanged words over it. Anyway, after the cat, I wake up and clean the whole house and I start breakfast. I fix her oatmeal like how my grandmother made it. God, I miss Ruby Lee! She loves the oatmeal! some times she will fix the Malian version of oatmeal it is called siri. I use the NIDO milk because it has a lot of vitamins and stuff that is good for her cause she eat toh a lot and claims she likes it. I personally think Malians lie when they claim to like toh. I equate that to people saying they like chitterlings. At 8am or 8:30 we start class. It is very hard because the young girls in my village love me and they like my teacher too. We have to study inside because everytime we go outside the children come and sit outside my house and annoy us. I know they want to be near me and my teacher but we have to make use of this time because everybody thinks that we are just going to vacation and not do work. Also she is still trying to leave early. At first she was going to leave on saturday with the peace corp car but because I was so heart broken and sad she said she would stay until tuesday. I am still sad. she promised me she would stay for two weeks and told everybody she would stay. I don't know what the real problem is and I will probably never know.

We go to the mayor's house for lunch and she talks in bambara with the mayor's wife about the soap operas and some times they discuss me. she has taught me some bambara and told the mayor's wife to only speak bambara to me. Then she told her that I like the onion sauce and then told her the story about how one day I was so hungry and I came to her house and she had beans and I ate so much that I dreamt about them for a week. Now the mayor's wife knows my secret and will now expect me to eat a lot of beans when she prepares it. everyday I become sadder and sadder that she is going to leave soon. I wanted to spend two weeks with her and just be happy. she wants to leave on tuesday the last straw for me was sunday when we were at the mayor's house and the mayor could not find a car leaving on tuesday but on monday. I could have swearn that she said that she would leave on monday with that car. Anxiety just took over my body and I felt so sick. I wanted to cry so bad!!!! I excused myself from the house and went to my house and cried. I was so angry and I had no battery. I grabbed my solio and went to the cliffs to make a phone call. It was kinda funny. I had my solio propped up and connected to my phone. With a tear stained face I called my closest friends but no one picked up except Ali. I was so glad she picked up. I poured my heart and soul out to her and she begged me to come out to site for the national hand washing day. I told her I would and hung up the phone. When my teacher came back she asked me if my stomach was ok. I just had a bad attitude. At night, she told me she was not leaving on monday but trying to get out on tuesday. I felt bad because I reacted so badly. I have just decided to enjoy the time we have left. Also I was supposed to have a meeting with the women but it rained that day and got rescheduled, I guess.

When i saw my teacher for the first time, I was suprised. she was big!!! I knew she was pregnant but DAMN! she blew up. she showed up in market wearing the cloth that we gave the female lcfs for a gift at b camp. she got on the moto and drove to my house while my homologue and I tried to turn an hour walk into a 30-45 minute walk so we could eat at the mayor's house for lunch. When we got to my house, she moved my chair from the back room and was sitting inside in the foyer area nearly half naked complaining that it was hot. I don't know it was weird finally having her here. I was excited and nervous at the same time. I was praying that my house was nice enough for her and she would enjoy her stay here.

when I told her we would needed to go to the mayors house for lunch, she said she need did not want to go because she had not bathed and just got here. I was shocked and told her she had to come or she would offend the mayors wife. At the mayors house I eat very well and was not going to have a bad relationship with the person who give something other then rock hard toh and babab sauce, so I made her come and told her she could take a bath when we come back. She agreed and we went to the mayors house. At first she was not having a good time and wanted to go but then the mayors wife brought out the tv and to a watch a soap opera and my teacher told me she wanted to stay because this was her favorite show. I was like really but thanked God she stayed. After lunch we came back to my house and she took a bath and relaxed. At my site there is malitel and orange cell towers and I told her that her family would be able to reach her. It turns out her mother had been trying to call her while we were at the mayors house, where there is no reception, and was very worried. she finally talked to her family and some how got in an argument with her husband. so she was in segou for a long time and had not been at her house for a minute. I don't know why she left but her husband called her and was like when you coming back and why did you leave. then he wanted her to start teaching me today so she could come home sooner. when she told me this it made me not like him.

Once we settled down, she told me she needed to leave after a couple of days. I was out done. tears started coming down my face. I just thought of the last month and a half that I was sick and depressed and the only that got me through was counting down the days until her visit and one phone call from her husband and she needed to leave. I just remember going to my room and crying hard and she was like don't do it. she was sad about it and when we talked she told me how none of her family wanted her to come up here. Her mother and father told her to tell her boss to send someone else and her mid wife said if something happened to her baby it would be her fault for coming to sangha. Then I told her how i had to ask the lauguage coordinator, my apcd, and even the pto several times for her to come up here. everybody wanted to know why I wanted her and I had to give them a good reason. I told her how the lauguage coordinator told me not to feed her and to find her a place to stay. she was mad he told me that but it was true every body wanted to know why I wanted her they said that she is crazy, which she is not. I don't think that they think she is a good teacher. After we realized that we both worked hard to get to this point, it was a little bit more relaxing. I had sent for a chicken to be slaughtered for her arrival and I was making her chicken noodle soup because she had not been feeling well.

I told her she needed to go to family dinner with me so she could meet my family. she told me she liked toh but she did not want to go to family dinner. I know it was dark and she was scared but she at least needed to come once. She did not know that the dogons are very inclusive and territorial people. If a guest comes to my house they need to meet everybody. I would have been disrespectful for her to not go and I tried to explain that to her. She ended up going but did not eat that much because she was disgusted by having five women to a bowl and everybody touching the sauce in the middle of the toh. She wanted wanted to leave right away and the women in my family were concerned. They asked me why she did not eat that much if she did not like them or the food. I made a joke that she was pregnant and that she is fulani. Then I told them that she was tired and I made her come to dinner and that we would be back tomorrow. So we go back to my house and have what was supposed to be chicken noodle soup but turned out to be smothered chicken with noodles. It was good. she wanted to eat outside because my house was really hot. I did not think that was a good idea because we had just come from dinner where she did not eat that much and left early. People would be coming back from family dinner and would see us eating chicken. I just felt like that was throwing it in their faces a little too much but we ate outside anyway and to save some for the people in my concession. She liked the dinner I fixed for her and took another bath. i did not know she required two baths a day, before she came, I had the girls in my village pull a lot of water so she could have water to drink, bath, cook, and clean dishes. well in dogon country there is not a lot of water and she was taking two full bucket baths which depleted a lot of water. Then because i have a cat and she hates cats (me to but I have come to like my cat and it is nice to have it in the house), she did not want to drink from th same canary as me because cats are dirty and i touch the cat therefore the canary is dirty. I was hurt but not broken so I gave new water and she put it in a hanging canary I have hanging in my kitchen. then she cleaned one of my already clean cups and placed it on top of the canary and used one of her head wraps to cover it, refusing to use one of mine. It is fine. I am just glad she is here and I will just blame everything on the pregnancy.

So what has kept me sane these first weeks at site is knowing my language teacher is coming. I love her and we are friends. I can't wait for her to come, I have cleaned my house and rearranged it several times over just so she will be comfortable. I got a bracelet made for her because in B camp she gave me a really pretty bracelet. Today is the day she comes and I am kinda nervous. the last time I saw her was at swear in. I told everybody in my village she was coming. I asked the mayor's wife if she could come to lunch with me everyday and she agreed. I went shopping for all her favorite foods and made sure I had fruit and other snack foods stocked in my house. My homologue arranged for a moto to drive her from the market to my house. I can't wait. She told me she would spend two weeks with me at four hours of tutoring a day. the last weekend I a going to surprised her and take her to bandiagara where we will chill with another lcf. we will spend the weekend together and she can go back to bamako and I will see her at IST. It is going to be great!

So I worked it out to where I will eat at the mayor's house for lunch and with my host family for dinner. I tried get in the habit of greeting my family in the morning and then going to the mayors house for lunch. at my house family's I drank this millet porridge. at the mayor's house there is rice and sauce, and meat!!! for dinner there is dogon toh but the women don't want to wash their hands and one night I came to dinner and they gave me food that had already been eaten from. I ate a little but went to bed hungry. see the dogons crap on the cliffs and don't take water or tissue nor do they wash their hands after. then they work in the fields all day and when they wash for dinner they just use water. anyway the next day, I was filling sick, very sick. My stomach was making all this noise and had liquids come out everywhere but not like in B camp. I was popping pepto like it was candy and then I got a throat infection. I had all this for about a month and a half. One day when I felt better, some volunteers came to my site before they cosed and I went to meet them and I lost my keys in the cliff. luckily, that morning I gave my clothes to be washed to a woman in my compound and there was a key in my pocket that I forgot to take out. thank god cause being sick in some one elses house is not cool!

So it is friday and I was installed at my site! My apcd showed up at the hotel with a new canary that he bought the other day when he installed people. I was happy and he told me not to get angry so easily. That is easy for him to say his stuff was not taken. I was just glad got a canary but he did not apologize for going off on me about my bike and water filter. There is a girl who is cosing and she told my apcd that I could use hers but I still want my water filter because it is new! so we take the two hour drive on really crappy roads to my site. I saw my house and it is nice!!! I have two rooms, an area for the kitchen, foyer, porch, and they put another window in my house. On the door to my room they put a sign that says , “no smoking” in french and english. then in another room the kids drew me pictures of dogon country and signs that said welcome. While i was enjoying my house, all the children of the village brought my stuff from the car. It was so beautiful. The mayor was right the people of bongo would take care of me.

It seemed, though, that my apcd was rushing for some reason but I was the last one to be installed and he was really tryng to dip out with stuff half done. I told him that i needed to get stuff from the other volunteer's house and then I saw my gas tank in the car. I guess my apcd was stressed because he starts going off again about how he asked me if this was my tank and that I am not the only one with problems and he has to go. i was confused because I told him I needed this done. He told me my male homologue would help me with it and I said I have a lot of stuff and requires a car. after some time he agreed to take me and get the stuff I needed. After getting my stuff he realized that i would have been difficult for me to do that by myself. I like the old apcd because she was cool and i seemed to have a connection with her and she is understanding. this dude is crazy. I was proud of myself for not going off but just remaining calm but he not going to be yelling at me like he know me! Anyway I like my site.

Before we left so before we left for our regions we had meeting after meeting about logistics. we were split into groups by region and cercle. Luckily my APCD was my installer and the majority of the volunteers in mopti are environment sector. so in our meeting, we discussed logistics again and my apcd asked if there were any problems with the schedule. One guy raised his hand and said he was concerned about his site and not having his stuff. His situation was kind of as bad as mine. during site visit he told me he slept on a rock for a week and ate toh. He has a house but it is empty and does not want to be with out his stuff so my apcd changed the schedule around to accomadate his needs. because of my situation during site visit, I am getting installed last and now with changes in schedule, me and my home girl abra can chill in bandiagara for nearly a week and shop for stuff. I am so excited because I was going to be alone. I am excited! I want to know what my house looks like too because I was told it is nice. Shopping in Mopti so we got literally one day rather a couple of hours to buy stuff in Mopti for our house. Abra and I bought these cute small canaries for our house. We baragin for 5 for five mille. Then when we were loading the stuff on the truck, the guy who brought the canaries wanted a mille for the basket he brought them in and told the driver that he negotiated with us that situation. we told him that he did not say that and we would pay 500 cfa. He bitched for a mnute and kept demanding for one mille each from us. Then I told him he could kept the basket cause I did not need it and proceeded to take my canaries out the basket then he got the hint and said he would take 500 cfa from us. I love shopping with abra, we get good prices and are not afraid to walk away. So we also went to a larger market near the river in mopti for the rest of the stuff we needed. There was only one person from the previous stage that was helping us and she could only speak french, which raised the price on things. It also did not help that we had a huge group of tubabs trying to buy stuff. I could not do it anymore so I started doing my own barganing and came out pretty good. Also there was one girl who went to pick up the stoves and asked some one to pick up some items for her. No one got her anything and then in the middle of shopping she calls us and says that the stove and gas is 55,000 cfa instead of 45,000 because of bad negotiation before our arrival. I just got a gas tank which was 25,000 instead of 10,000. Moptikow got jipped!!! Also on the mattress the guy negotiated a certain price and then when we showed up as tubabs, he raise the price. I did not get a matress. the things we got jipped on, I had at the other house at my site. when we got to Bandiagara so my apcd arranged all the installations from really good site visit to horrible site visit and who was close to whom. so we did protocol in bandiagara and met the mayor, police, post master, suprefet, prefet and some other officals. While visiting the other officials I saw my mayor. I was so excited to see him! He gave me a hug and I greeted him in the dogono I had learned during site visit. I was impressed with what I had retained that he hugged me infront of everyone. I was so proud to see my mayor and greet him. It was just really beautiful and I told him in french I would be there on thursday or friday. The first day was just really good. the next day, everybody except abra and me were supposed to go to site. Well that was not the case. I think people got cold feet or got scared because when it came time to leave people kept making excuses and asking for a different plan of action. so for installation, we got money to buy stuff in our house and money while we waited to be installed and for transport to site. so there are people who are really close to bandiagara, who wanted to save a couple mille and ride their bikes to site and leave all their stuff for the installer to bring which was not the original plan. They were supposed to take their luggage on public transport and wait for the installer to bring their things they brought in market and do protocol. Instead of the installer putting his foot down and sticking with the plan, he changed plans everytime some did not want to go to site. He spent so much money then was budgeted for him to spend. It made me mad too that people waited till the last minute to say they problems they were having, when they were clearly asked several times if the plan was ok. the installer did not have enough money to house everyone at the hotel so he took them to sevare where he had hotel vouchers and allowed them to stay there. While I laid in waiting, there was a guy at the hotel who approached me. He said that he noticed me during site visit but was afraid to approach me. So he got a second chance when I needed to get into the bathroom at night. He got the key for me and asked me out. he is a little too skinny for my taste but i decided to give him a try or atleast keep him on the side for when I come into bandiagara. so the next morning when I woke up, he told me to come to the roof of the hotel and there he had breakfast waiting for me and abra. I was inpressed. right now I don't want a boyfriend I just want to live life and what ever happens happens. I tried to tell him that in the best french I knew but he took it as I did not like him. I told him we could be friends and that to him meant that I he was my only male friend. He sent me nice text messages and continued to have breakfast for me. Then one night he asked me if he could take me to have a drink after he got off of work and I agreed. he took me to a hotel and we watched tv and he bought me two fanta oranges. then he was waving the mosquito off of me and telling me he did not like the fact that they were trying to bite me. That was really sweet which is why I agreed to a second outing with him. We went to a different hotel and it was more private and there he tried to kiss me. I was a little taken back but let it happen because I just spent three months with the same people. anyway, i tried to turn an inch into a mile and I had to give him the I am waiting til marriage speech. He tried to tell me that all American women do and I had to let him know that I was his exception. He then said that there were many white women who tried to sleep with him but he said no because he likes black women. He was really trying. After he saw that I was serious, he said that he would like to continue to see me and promised to violate my virtue. I was really happy on the inside. I slept well that night Thursday came and I was the only person at the hotel so my apcd moved me into my own room instead of sleeping in the dormitory of the hotel. as we were moving my things in the room i notced that one of my canaries was missing. I was really mad because I tried to keep all of my stuff in one spot so people would not touch it. My apcd was no help with this matter because he said no one touched my stuff. Then my bike was not in there and neither was my water filter. Then I could not find the coffee cup or spelman necklace. My apcd starts going off on me about how my bike and water filter was not labeled properly and was in the wrong room. I told him that I labeled everything properly and people have been moving my stuff around all week and even when we were at Tso. I said the people loading should have read the labels and took some initiative and put my bike and water filter on the truck. I was too mad. No one could say anything to me. Then I asked when I would be getting my stuff and he said after ramadan!!! I was so mad, I called my home girl batta and broke down because I could not believe this happened. this is why I like to stick to the plan because when they change things happen. It seemed as if everybody was getting mad at me for being mad but their stuff did not get taken only mine for some strange reason! I need to find the person so they can never come to my site or I will not have my stuff around them.

So last night was great. I did not got to the second club because I was tired and as my friend know when I am tired and I try to drink or party I can't do the whole night. The crunk juice was a success everybody loved it.

Anyway today was the family dinner and my LCF told me that my sister Assitan was not going to come but La was. I was sad because I really wanted to see Assitan. So my host mother and La showed up and I wore my house of karite fabric so everyone at Tso could see it and of course everyone complimented me. My other N togo ma, sam, told me that I looked good and that I knew I looked good and that is why I hid all my good clothes. He is funny.

The dinner went great. B. Camp we repped hard. Sara's host dad gave a speech and when our families went up to get their certificates we all yelled and cheered. All the other homestays did not get that. I was a little saddened because my host mother did not eat all of her food and put some in her purse. I asked her why and she said so she could share it with the members of the family where not here. I was touched but looking at her strange at the same time. I went and showed her that there was plenty of food here and she did not have to do that. I also got everything for her and people were like why are you getting so many plates of food and I said I was serving my host mother who for two months served me. The malian kitchen workers were getting mad at me and one guy put a cigarette in my face and started going off on me in bambara I went real American on him cause I know he thought I was malian. It seemed like everything I brought out my host mother ate half and stuck in her purse. She didn't even drink the soda I got her. So I made her drink some of mine and La and I share the rest. It kinda hurt me to see my host mother do that. It was a little shameful. Anyway, the son of the dugutiki who I thought was cute came to dinner. We had a little convo and he told me he has four fiances and he had to marry them because he is the son of the dugutiki. I stopped like him or thinking about the possibility of us. I think he could tell because I tried to translate the bambara my host mother was speaking to me. Then at the end of the night, before he got on the bus, he turns around and says I am single and I only want one wife. So i decide to mess with him. As I am waving at my mother, I see that he had sat two seats behind her and is look in my direction I thought he was looking at Dina but our eyes kept meeting so I blew him a kiss which shocked him and everybody saw me. I think he blushed and then he blew me a kiss back. I don't know if he was playing with me but I might have to go to B. Camp and check that one out.

After my family left, I called Assitan and she told me she was going to school now. I am so proud of her for she will have a BA in teacher in four years. YAY!!!!! I know I will visit B. Camp for my birthday!!!!

So I am officially a Peace Corp Volunteer in Mali. My LCF brought my outfit to me yesterday and it is wonderful. I have the prettiest outfit in my stage. That is that Spelman inside of me baybe and it just won't leave me alone cause it is in my blood!!! SPELLLLLMAAAAN!!! Okay I really should not be repping this hard but I my outfit was the bomb!!! When all the LCFs saw me they all gasped and complimented me esp. the female LCFs. The guys were staring a little too hard but I gave them a pass since I was looking oh so great!! It was crazy too because I was the last person to get on the bus and all the buses were full so I got driven in a car and it was like I had a personal escort service drop me off infront of the embassy. My LCF she brought me some hills and fixed my head wrap for me. She was look hot, she had on this vintage 1930's bit that was hot. She told me she was going to bring it and for that reason I could not show her my outfit.

Anyway swear in was cool it did not rain and there were not bomb threats or terrorist strikes. We went to the American club and had this huge lunch. After lunch I went with my friend and here friend who lives in my site and just hung around bamako. It was fun.

For tonight, I am going to make the juice that gets you loose. Holla!!!!

So after site visit, I was too glad to get back to homestay. I was sad though that environment and SED had to stay an extra day at Tso because we had a field trip in Siby. Now I love the women in Siby but I really wanted to see my homestay family. So we visited this gum arabic plant in bamako ( just the environment people going up north) then we joined everybody in Siby for the afternoon. I saw my old friend and we joked about here being a american woman and me being a malian woman and I bought some cloth to support their association. As soon as a I get time and energy to post pictures I will.

Thursday we go our home stays and my heart is beating to see my host mother and Assitan. When the bus pulled up to my house. My whole family ran out the compound to greet me and get my bags. Everybody on the bus was like how does you family love you so much, you don't speak any bambara. I said I think me pooping and vomitting in my room had something to do with it. Anyway, I got huge hugs from every body except La. I was like were is this child. She was supposed to be back!! They told me now she is studying the koran. I mean I am all for religion and school work but can she come back.

My host sister Assitan took my keys after my host mother yelled at me for taking them and cleaned my room. She swepted and mopped my room. I have it on video cause it was so funny to watch. I had her all wrong. I am thinking she is a glamour girl but she is really a malian who is progressive but does malian woman's work so she does not get called a tubab. Hey do you. I got a kick out of it. I asked her why she did it and she said because she loves me and I love her. I was sad that I had a little over a week to be with them but I tried to make the best of it. Every night Assitan and I took a walk and talked. I found out a little more about the divorce every day.

As far as old dude goes. He started claiming me by sitting outside my house and cock blocking other guys. I was starting to not like him and infact I just stopped talking to him. My LCF was like let him down easy and be nice to him. Anyway I can't tell the whole story on that. More on boys cause while I was dealing with that I missed out on a great guy. I might have to make something happen when I come back to bamako for IST.

Sunday dinner went well and I got my swear in outfit. It is pink with green design. Very pretty but it is not done yet so one of the drivers is supposed to go get it for me when they go get the rest of our things from homestay. So the biggest thing that happened for sunday dinner was finding sweet potatoes. Also I gave Djongo a list of all the things to buy and this girl did not get everything. I was not going to go to the museum trip because I wanted to start cooking but I needed some stuff from bamako so I went. It was interesting. At the resturant we went to I had a darn good fish sandwich, fries with mayo and salt, and a milk shake. It was so good!!!! However when I got back to home stay things did not go as I planned. Djongo, stead of getting me sweet potatoes, got me yams which are like potatoes. I was livid. My host mother was worried that I was fixing alot of food and I was like if you would just get me the ingredients I asked for and put on the list we would not have this problem. So because I don't know bambara and my host mother does not know french, I had to go get sara to translate because they weren't getting it when I called demba to translate. I love sara!!!!! After sara left my host sister and I went in search for the correct sweet potatoes which we eventually found at another trainee's house. Assitan and I cooked dinner and everybody loved it. Because this is Africa and you can't waste food I cooked the yams but they were not good and did not cook all the way so people did not really eat them but the fried chicken, greens, corn bread, and candied yams turned out great. I gave some to my LCFs and all the food got eaten. At the end of dinner ol dude dropped by and was like why didn't you invite me to dinner and then my host mother chimmed in and tried to cosign on his request. First of all that is not my man and inviting him to dinner means you go together which we don't and now that I think about it is not that cute. So I told him I forgot which I really did because I was worried about the sweet potatoes.

So the week flew by so fast. I am so sad homestay is over. I really miss my family. Also the tailor ourside my house made me a really nice outfit out of the house of karite fabric I bought and I wore that to the going away party. So for that I was 30 minutes late to because I was getting my hair braided and I did not pack so I had to leave early to pack up. Anyway at the celebration there was not music since it was ramadan and I gave the french thank you speech and sara gave the speech in bambara. Everybody loved my outfit by the way. What can I say, my malian clothes are the truth. I have to keep up with my sister who is a fashion diva. When I am able to put up pictures you will see them.

My last day at homestay I chilled with Assitan the whole day. We had a private talk and she told me all about the divorce and why she left her husband. I told her about my parents divorce so she would have some strength to get threw. Then in the middle of our convo, ol dude the who tried to claim me by sitting outside my house, came by and inturrupted our convo. I was mad. I really don't like it when guys inturrupt the girl time. When I tried to tell him to leave Assitan told me to be nice because that was still her younger brother so I let him stay a littl longer but then I told him I had to discuss private business with Assitan. Then this fool had the balls to tell me how long that would take so he could come back. He annoys me!!! So then La and Djongo come and we have a huge sister moment. I realized I wanted Assitan all to myself and didn't realize that La wanted to spend time with me too. So played the middle sister role by being a little sister to Assitan and a big sister to La and Djongo. We had so much fun. They were hitting me and I was like Assitan why aren't you saving me and she just let them hit me. I remembered how one of my LCFs told me if you run behind someone then that person will protect you and the people chasing you will stop so I jumped behind Assitan and she immediately started hitting La and Djongo and they did not try to attack me until I came from behind her. I had so much fun.

Also my host mother had a photographer come and we took family pictures. The tailor brought me my house of karite clothes with an extra panga which my host mother asked if I would give it to La to have the same outfit made and we took pictures together. We look like twins. When I am able to put up the pictures I will put them up.

So we had a going away ceremony and after the ceremony, we took pictures at the dugutiki's house and I was standing off to the side after the pictures talking my roommate at Tso when I here this guy say my name. Now I was shocked because he knew my American name. I turn around to see who it was because it did not sound like one of my brothers. Well it was the son of the dugutiki! I guess one of the women in my compound liked my outfit but did not know English so he told me what she said and then told me that he like my fabric and that I looked nice. He is really cute!! I wish I had had my head on right cause I shol would have been dating the dugutiki's son for two months. I can't even describe him cause it is too painful. I didn't know his name and he was kinda shocked I didn't know it. See his younger brother tried to holla at me and would wink at me and never noticed him. I am so sad cause boy is cute and he know three languages!! Man!!!

The next day, we had to take the rest of our stuff to the dugutiki's house and wait for the shuttle and the guy who tried to claim me helpped me with my stuff. When we got to the house he didn't stay long but gave me a hand shake in front of everybody and left. So everybody knew that he like me from that action. That day was so hard. I cried so much and everytime I cried, my host mother cried. I cried when I locked my door and Assitan had to tell me to stop because N togo ma was crying. When the shuttle came it cried like five times before I got on the bus. Sara's host mother was crying too and she made me and sara cry. Then La broke down and cried and I was a mess!!!! I really love my host family and they are my family. It was so hard people were rubbing my back and I was holding my host mother's hand and hugging La. Whew it was really tough. When we pulled up to Tso I did not want to speak to anybody really and I did not want to get on the computer and blog. I just wanted to exist with my homestay family.

The days before swear in were hard because I missed my host family, I did not get to say goodbye to Assitan, and I had to take so many test. I was looking foward to the day after swear in when we had the host family dinner because I invited Assitan. Hopefully she will come.

So site visit. Bayby let me tell you!!! Drama!!!!!! Drama!!!! So our counterparts came to tubaniso for a couple days to the PACA session with us, as you know, so that when we did it with our community we would have someone with a mastery of the language help us out. So after the PACA session we went to our site with our counterparts. So at first they told us that we would be taking public transport and they would give us the money to do that. Then plans changed and the public transport ended up coming to Tubaniso and they paid for our fare to our site. So I was on the bus with the volunteers going to Mopti (my region), San, and I think Kita. This bus ride was the longest ride ever because Mopti region we were the last to get dropped off. So we were supposed to leave at seven in the morning to head towards mopti region but we did not leave tubaniso until 8am. Then we sat at a gas station for another hour. I thought it was because the guys were gasing up but you would think they would have done that before. Anyway this is Africa and welcome to Mali. That is my phrase now, "Welcome to mali!" Just like how we used to say, "Spelman thy name we praise!" The same meanings and usages. So after sitting there for an hour, we moved a little bit farther out of Bamako but we did no leave bamako until 10:30 or 11am. So we are at this conjuction and something happens with the tires and they are fixing them. All the street vendors see a bus full of white people and see an opportunity for advancement. It got to the point I had to personally escort some of them off the bus because they were annoying me and the back of the bus. By the way the back of the bus was mopti region, we cool!!! Anyway I was ready to go and I saw people getting off the bus to buy stuff and go to the bathroom. Then I saw a girl selling cake and I was kinda hungry so I went to the front of the bus to buy some. Well there was this rude counterpart who started pushing people out of her was inorder to get back to her sit. She knocked me into the laps of Jessica and Amanda. I was so shocked and pissed off. She lucky it took me a minute to get out their laps because I would have lost my religion on her. This lady by the way did the utmost the whole trip.

So we finally leave Bamako and head towards Mopti region. The bus was full except for two seat and the driver of the bus stopped at every little town to try to fill those seats. Also he even let people on the bus who sat in the isle. Welcome to Mali! I also say it so I don't curse. Then every time we stopped this one guy kept getting off the bus. I don't know what he was doing and then some times we would buy stuff but everytime he got off the bus. There was one time, the bus broke down and they had to jump start the bus and so people got out help push the bus but we told him to stay on the bus. Why as soon as the bus has a roling start we see this fool waving at us as the bus passes him. We were like how did he get off the bus!!!

Now back to the counterpart who was doing the most. So one village we stopped in this woman took a baby from the crowd. The young boys who work for the bus company were standing in front of her and preventing her from grabbing the baby bag. I thought the woman was buying food because she was getting off just as much as ol dude was. When I saw the baby being brought on the bus, I almost lost my religion! I was like what is she doing trafficing children now!!! If she bring that baby on the bus she owes peace corp 15,000 cfa for a trip from bamako to dogon country. So like I said one of the boys was standing in her way so she asked the man sitting next to her to help her. So we have two people in the rear door of the bus trying to get around this boy is not letting this woman bring a baby on the bus. Finally the busy goes full speed and I thought the baby was still on the bus but I was told she had to give it back. So one of the volunteers who speaks bambara asked here what that was all about. She told her that she really missed her granddaughter and asked her family to bring the baby to the bus station so she could see her. I guess the woman had plans to kidnapp her grandchild because when she was trying to get her there was some yelling. I don't think the woman told her family she was going to take the grandchild. When I heard that mess I was floored. I could not believe it!!!! All I could say was Welcome to Mali! Then we get to the half way point around 2pm and I think that is either segou or san. Anyway, we were there for two hours because the bus broke down again!!! I was also mad because the egg sandwich guy did not know french and the locals were cutting in front of me. Then he over charged me! Now you know I am tight with money... that is all I can say. Then the little kids were stocking us for our bottles of water and begging us for money. If you don't have money to give you are supposed to send a blessing so I told the kid may peace be upon him and he did not go away. Also the kids were getting a little too close to my pockets which had no money but still it is my body and if you violate that a kid will come up missing. I am not promoting or advocating murder or making little street kids disappear but I'm just saying. So it is 4:30 by the time we pull off. For the mopti region people, we did not get into Sevare until 9pm or 9:30pm. Oh but after we dropped people off in san, we sat there for a minute, I don't know why but I think the bus broke down again. Then it started to rain the driver was speeding and hit a cow. When it happened, the driver swurved really hard and you just heard this loud thud sound. I was heated by this point and was like if another tire blows out, I am going to go crazy. My seat partner was like no we hit a cow. I was relieved. Anyway we make it to sevare safe and the peace corp cars had to come pick us up at the gare. The sevare people walked to their hotel and the bandiagara folks took the peace corps cars to bandiagara for the night. I was so tired and did not want to see another African until the next day. My counter part tried to say good night to me but I was so done, I gave a little hand signal saying bye and went into the hotel.

My nights sleep was ok better then most nights at Tso. I was the first to be installed for site and my installer was a little stressed out. After we came back from the bank, we were supposed to meet up and do protocol but me and another person had to go back to the bank to take pictures. By the time we came back people had left I guess to go to the market and get breakfast. This made the installer really mad and I had to deal with this person all the way to my site because I was the first to go to site.

Now site is a whole different story. The week I had there almost made me want to ET!!!! So we get to my site in the afternoon and the mayor is not there and my counterpart tells my installer that there are two places in the community for me to stay plus the old volunteer house in another community. Now my APCD told me I had a choice in where I wanted to stay because she wanted me to be happy. They showed me the first place which was one room and next to a hotel. I can't do small spaces so I said no. Then they showed me a house that had a green pool of God knows what in it but the negen was nice. The house was not finished and animals were living it it and it was dark and small and I was like Hell na'll. F being welcomed to mali!!! So then we saw the third house in a different community. I loved it. It had two huge roomes, made of stone, a kitchen, and foyer area with a hammock. It was like heaven. It was my site mates old house and the host family was used to volunteers. The house is central to the mayors office, market, hotels, and my working community. At first I told my installer I would spend the night at the house and go to the other houses for the rest of the week but I could not got there.

The next day when I woke up I called my installer and told him I wanted to live in the big house and he drilled me with questions on why I wanted to stay there. Then he called my counter part and the mayor who told them that the community would not like me living somewhere else and request my presence everyday in the community. When we talked to the mayor he told me I could stay in the house for the week but I would be living in the community for my service. I was crushed and half wanted to cry. Then next day my site mate left to go to his house in another village so I was left alone with this problem. I was so glad I had bought a phone because one day I could not take it anymore and called one of my LCFs about to cry. She was just the person I needed to talk to. I told her I wanted to go home to America and she told me that she did not want me to go and would be very said if I left. I needed to here that and I was able to stick it out the whole week. (I have decided to not go into detail about our relationship because I have noticed that people are jealous of how close we are and will hate.) Every day I went to my community and greeted the people, dugutiki, and the family of the mayor. They had a naming ceremony for me with all the old me of the village and the mayor. There was a man who spoke English who translated everthing for me. They told me that every child is named by the oldest person in the village. At first they told me the old man was in Bamako and that is why his brother was here. Then I found out he died so they gave me the name for some one when they can't find the oldest. My dogon name is Yatemelou Dolo. I like it. After they gave me my name, they wanted to talk to me about the housing situation. I was so uncomfortable and did not know how to handle it or what to say. Peace corps has people on the payroll who are trained to be culturally sensative and negociate stuff like this and none of them were here. So I give them a sideways answer on why I don't want to live in the house and they tell me why they chose the house and then we went to look at the house. I don't know whether I told them or if my installer told them that the house was too small but I ended up drawing them a plan of my site mates house. The mayor called my installer and my installer called me. I didn't think that he was on my side cause he was kinda yelling at me. So the whole week I felt like crap. By the end of the week, the village had the tour guides of the area bring me to a specific house and there they asked me to look at this house. I told them I wanted to live in the other house and they told me if I lived in the other house, they would not want to work with me. I was really stuck between a rock and a hard place. I looked at the house they were going to repare and it was similar to the other house so I told them to start reparing it. I was kinda forced into the situation but I like the place. It is on the edge of town by the cliffs and in between two water falls. I hiked everyday for free. People pay thousands of dollars to visit where I live.

I felt a little close to my village because we kept it real with each other. I got over my fear of offending them and just flat out told them and they tried to find me a house that I would like living in so it was some sort of compromise.

Now we get to the trip home. So saturday I leave my site to go to Sevare to meet up with all the volunteers. Well let me explain that I live in what we call the country and what they call bruse area. The roads are horrible!!! The driver of the little bus I took, was driving horrible and ended up tearing up the bus when he hit a rock. Then he drove to the next village and we waited there for an hour as they tried to repair the bus. Then we got to Bandiagara and waited there for two hours while they fixed the bus. I left my site at 10am and did not get to Sevare until 5pm. I was so frustrated all I could say was "Welcome to Mali!" When I got to Sevare, moptikow could tell I had a long day. I was the second to last person to show up. Also as soon as I got in people were telling me I needed to pay for this and pay for that and give this person money because they spotted you for this expense. I wanted to be like don't pay for anything on my behalf without my permission. Then one guy kept begging me for the money I owed him and I was like my money is in my suit case and I don't have exact change. I found out later he spent all his money.

The next day we left to return back to bamako and Tso. I loved the driver on the way home. We got to bamako in 10 hours!!! He was really booking it. The only thing I hated about the bus was the horrible Malian music videos we had to watch for 10 hours and seeing peoples private parts as they peed next to the bus. I know who is well endowed and who is not. Not that I am judging but I just now know. Also on the way back my LCF called me to see if I had made it to bamako. I was happy about that. When we got to bamako finally I called her and we talked for a minute. Since all of us came back after the shuttles to Tso stopped running we had a special shuttle arranged for us. We all ended up going out to a resturant to just eat good food, relax, and chat. So earlier comment I made about people be jealous applies now because there was one girl who was all in my business about me and my LCF. Now we have nothing to hide, she and I are just friend, sisters rather but still people always want to know what we talk about and what we do when we have breaks during class. Anyway that is site visit/Welcome to Mali!

Yesterday we went to the village of Siby to do a PACA meeting. Basically we helped them to determine and assess the problems they are facing. We did ours on a women's Shea butter association. Before I say anything. There products are the bomb!!! I got Shea butter grease, soap, and lotion. If you want any products let me know. They have some much stuff and they do international orders. The are women are beast! I have respect for them at the end of the day. When we first got there we were greeted so warmly they were so happy we were there. There leader, who is not the president, is the bomb. She is a strong black woman for real!!!

There were like six or seven people in my group who led the meeting with the help of the LCFs who translated what we said into Bambara. We gave them an introduction about Peace Corps and gave them our objectives for the meeting. They greeted us and gave us background on their association and answered all of our questions. We learned that our meeting was only one day (I am so glad ours is one day and we get to sleep at Tubaniso but today I just relaxed and caught up on some needed sleep!!!). Then we introduced ourselves and our counter parts. I think the women were a little shocked when I stood up. I was a black woman sitting in the front of the meeting with a whole bunch of men. I stood up and greeted them in bambara and introduced myself and my counterpart in French! (My French is definitely improving) They were excited to hear my Malian name because some of them have the same last name, Keita ( which is the masculine form of Sacko). After introductions, we had a break. I tried to make the cafe milk my host mother makes for me every morning but it was not the same. I really miss N togo ma!!! Then they served us this sandwich with roasted goat meat, onions, and cucumbers. It was sooooo good!!! After the break, we worked on identifying the associations problems through Venn Diagrams, Pairwise table, and problem tree. I presented on the Pairwise table and the leader, Fatimata, started joking with me (a good thing). She kept calling me a Malian women and saying I was going to stay in Mali and marry a Malian man. I told her if she could find me a husband that would let me own my own land, cook, clean, and give me pedicures, I would stay. All the women started laughing and Fatimata attempted to hit me (that is a good thing which means she likes me). I think I gained some respect from them because the saw me a black women leading a meeting and demanding a good man. After that, they would try to get my attention and say stuff in Bambara to me which I had to get someone to translate for me.

Lunch was the bomb!!!! I had fried rice, goat meat, okra, cabbage, and this spicy sauce. It was so good. They threw down on that food. The afternoon was filled with another problem tree and problem solving tools. The PCV in the village was there and she got a chance to facilitate the second problem tree because she was not trained on PACA like we are being now. I was so shocked to that we were running late during the morning but ended early in the afternoon. I have to say that those women inspire me to be great and I had some one translate that for me. I was sad a little today because I found out that women are not allowed to own land in fact it is illegal. The makes it so that a foreigner can own land before an native woman. Also some one is building a building on the land the chief of the village gave to the women's association. They went to the Mayor to have him stop it but he did nothing because he felt like the women were trying to be independent from the men. There association is so nice that the president came to visit and they told him of the problem and he mandated that the construction needed to stop. So now it is illegal for them to build but they are continuing anyway and the mayor refuses to up hold the law. That is all I can say about the situation because you already know how I feel and I believe in civil disobedience by any means necessary so that is all I have to say.

While we waited for the bus, we went next door to the hotel to sit and relax while it rained. The village of Siby is beautiful and is popular with the rock climbing crew. I have some pictures below. I will probably write after site visit and will do as much picture taking as possible. Also if you want to send a package please do. I feel so lonely especially when there are a table full of packages and half of them are for one person. As soon as I get settled in my village I can do more letter writing and personal emailing. It is hard to put pictures up so you will have to get them off my blog because it is a pain to up load them and to have to do it individually in email is not cool and still I am unable to post pictures.

Tomorrow I leave at 6am to travel to my site. Keep me in your prayers for safe travel. Love you all!!!

So we left my village a day early because peace corp took us on a field trip to a hotel and we swam and ate hamburgers. It was so good!!!! I practiced my french skills on the owner who found out that I was not Malian and gave me free food. I think I ate like 50,000 cfa of food and beverages that day. My friend Gloria and I also saw a guard getting a grapefruit from a tree. We asked him for it and he gave it to us. That was the best grapefruit ever. It was so big!!! I felt like a pimp for a day OK for 4 hours. I have to admit I was looking too kitty kat fine in my one piece bathing suite with my bright orange towel on.

Also I was sick again because there is an increase of smokers in my stages. At one meeting 5 people were lighting up. I started feeling light headed and had a huge headache. It got so bad that one of the trainers had to tell all of the volunteers smoking to go smoke somewhere else. The next day I woke up with congestion, a fever, body pain, and a very nasty wet cough. I was hecka mad!!! ( I would have patted my head like my cousin does but it hurt to move my arm and my head was hurting. Now as I am writing this I feel better.

This week has been crazy because our counterparts have come in. I am excited because I found out my stuff on my site. For all the useless info people you are gonna have to do your own research I don't have time put up a blog about it. I am sad about that because I love useless info (shout out to Coo-cat!)! So I am going to Sangha which is in the Mopti region on Mali. Right now I am learning French because there is no LCF that can teach me the Dogon language in Sangha. I am 45 km outside of Bandiagara and Severe is an hour from Bandiagara When I found out my site officially, every body immediately was like "Oh Sangha!" I was told it is the first place people go in Dogon country to hike and it is beautiful. The culture is huge and very unique versus the tourist influenced Dogon culture in Bandiagara. I saw on a map that there is an airport in Bandiagara and Sangha so you can come visit me. I think I am staying with a chief of a near by village and biking in Sangha so far. Site visit is on Sunday and and Saturday night we learn the details. I am excited/scared/ready. Peace Corps bought and arranged out travel there but we have to arrange it to come back in a week. Also I don't know the local language but the national language and in many areas of Mali you get charged more if you don't speak the local language and some people who are not educated may not know French. Pray I get there and back if not mom and dad you will be receiving a life insurance check in the mail.

In Sangha, I am excited about the shopping I still have not found a swear in outfit and I heard that our swear in is televised so as a Spelman woman I gotta look fly. I know my host sisters are gonna hook the hair up I just gotta get the fabric and design to match the Spelman woman I am. With that attitude I have realized that I get alot of respect from the African staff. One of the APCDs, who is a native Malian woman, told me she liked me because I was strong. The Malian men who are in high positions respect me and may fear me because I don't back down I am aggressive in a lady like manner some times and then just have no tolerance to somethings. I like how I am treated though and perceived. I just hope I inspire some of the female LCFs that I don't know to walk and talk with confidence and be proud, black, and strong!!!!

Sorry I still cannot post pictures yet I have alot but that will have to wait still. Check back again.

Hi all

I will post several blogs while I am at Tubaniso so that you can know what is going on. We have a busy week because we are getting ready for our counterparts, PACA sessions, and Site visit, but this one will explain my homestay after being sick. So I was all better by the time I wrote the last post and had to head back to home stay. On the way to my village, the LCFs stopped by and got food for the week and I got my host mother and cousin some cloth as a thank you present for the TLC they gave me during the last visit. When I arrived at my village and walked to my concession, I was instantly greeted by the servent girls and some of the neighbors. My host mother was not home yet which made me a little sad but I was ok. I felt like a hero or long lost family member because they ran to me and grabbed my bags and walked me to my room. They were all touching me and asking me was I ok, have good health, and blessing me. It was a beautiful home coming. My host cousin was home and she opened my door. My host mother left my room just as I had left it. I gave my host cousin Dijongo the fabric I bought for her to her and she was shocked and thrilled. She ran out of my room and showed everyone. I cleaned up my room until my host mother came. This time she did not knock but just opened the screen door and said, "N togo ma!" She name me after her so instead of calling each other Adam we call each other "same name." Anyway, I gave her a big hug and kiss and we embraced for a minute. I almost wanted to cry because I was so glad that I had her and I can honestly say I love her. The week and half I spent there this time was incredible. My host mother and I are so close even though we speak two different languages. She speaks only bambara with some surviver french and one or two words in English. I speak English, some french, and basic bambara. I still love her dearly.

Lets see french is till going. My teacher is okay but it is okay because my language skills increase by talking to the other LCFs who are great. I gave them nick names. Like Assitan is Madam President and Salif is Le grandpere Salifu at out village. My LCF Cisse is the prime minister/stand in president when he wears his grand boo boo. Fatim is my favorite I have not given her a nickname save my good friend. When ever I was sick she let me sleep in her room during the day and our relationship just went from there. I love her and she calls me her little sister. I love it. My mother was right the people here will fall in love with me. LOL!

There have been a couple things that happened this time at homestay. The biggest was when I cried after being called a Tubabu. It was not like I had not been called that before but it was the way I got called it. It was friday morning and I woke up after having another aweful nights sleep. I have not been brave enough to attempt a midnight trip to the NEGEN yet so I think I was holding all of it in. Well I wake up show and on my way out the NEGEN I greet which is what you are supposed to do. Well everybody greets me back except a couple people. When I got dressed and came out for breakfast, I greeted again and this time my host brother, host cousin, and one of the survant girls responded back by saying Tubabu, which is disrespectful. In Malian culture you are supposed to greet first then joke so the fact that they did not engage in the greeting process was disrespectful. I was so crushed. My host mother saw my face and immediately went off on them but the damage had been done. All I could do was take my breakfast and go to class. As soon as I got to class, I started crying. No was else had arrived yet but the LCFs. They greeted me and tears started streaming down my face. Fatim came over and thought I was joking but when she saw I was not she took me in her room and demanded I tell her what happened. I was pretty sure my host mother handled it but they still wanted to know so that they could ensure the situation got handled. I still love my host family and that was the end of it. Things went back to normal.

So I don't know if I mentioned my oldest host sister Assitan not to be confused with the LCF Assitan. So if I have not mentioned her let me give a little back ground on her. So I didn't think she liked me because she never talked to me when came over and she is a french teacher who never helped me with french. That is really it. So saturday, after class (yes we have class on SATURDAY!!!), Assitan was there with her children who I finally got to see in the light. Alot of the time they would visit in the night and I would get introduced to them but I could not see their faces and if they visited in the day time, I did not know it was them. Kids just come and go in this country. So Assitan was on pins and needles everytime her phone ran. If her phone was in the other room and it rang she instantly started yelling for a child to hurry up and bring her phone to her and she would disappear for a long time and then come back. Well during one of the times she was sitting outside with us, I decided to not be tense around her and talk to her. I went in my room and grabbed my photo album and showed her pictures of my family. She loved them!!! She loved the pictures of my as a baby and says I look like my mother. At the end of showing her my pictures she told me she was getting a divorce today. I could not believe she said that!!! That is like personal, need to know info! I was shocked!!! After she said that she had to take a call. Then my other older sister Sira came over. Sira came over like Oprah came over Whoopi's house in the Color Purple. Baybe I was TOO SHAME!!! She was going off in Bambara and then Assitan came out and then both went inside and all you heard was loud bambara. I so wish I knew bambara so I could know what they were saying cause they were fired up. I thought for the longest that her husband hit her and she divorced him. I still don't know!

So now I absolutely love Assitan!!! We just hit it off. I had really bad stomach cramps one day and had stay at home during the afternoon session of class. During the lunch break I was not hungry and just slept. After I while I came outside to sleep because my room was so hot. My host mother fixed a bed for me outside in the shade and went back to eating. I had taken some medicine which made me sleep but while I was half sleep, Assitan pulled a chair up to me and started fanning me. I guess in my sleep I was making pain noised and physically cramping up because I could feel her hold my stomach and fan me at the same time. I woke up around 330 or 4pm and I was starving. My host mother had my food ready for me. Everyday we eat every meal together. When I woke up I noticed that my host mother had made bed for her and Sira next to mine and I had a little circle. I love them. I cannot say this enough. While I was sleep my mother sent one of my brothers to school to tell them that I was sick and was not coming to class. She is the best.

Once they made sure I was ok, Assitan put a sow in weave on Sira. They got called Tubabu the whole time. I even put this bright pink lipstick on Sira which looks horrible on dark skin and everybody was laughing. I must point out that this is an exceptable time to joke about being a Tubabu. Anyway, Sira went in the house and looked at the lipstick. Assitan told me that Sira was gonna beat me up for doing that to her but I know Sira would not. Assitan told her in bambara to come out the house and chase me. We had a grand time. Then I tried to put the lipstick on Assitan and she ran. I had fun with them. Afterwards, I found out that one of my brother's friends likes me. He was out side the house across from us, which is the house Assitan is renting a room in, showing off his pictures. I took them and started looking at them and noticed that he posed with alot of girls. Everytime I asked him if those were his girlfriends or wives he said no and the girls around the house would say yes. He tried to shut them up but I separated them and asked them to tell me the truth and they said, "Tante yes!" He was too shame! Then he told me those were his friends from school. I can't hate the hustle he got school boos and was trying to get a village boo. I mean I he could be a potential Mali boo. NOT!!!! Anyway I told him if he wanted to talk to me he needed to ask Assitan or my oldest brother. Then I tried to get him to marry Assitan. Assitan is 32 and he is 23. She said she did not want to marry him and I told her she better jump on it because he would go to work and she could boss him around. I told her women in America do it all the time. She still refused and tried to hook him up with me. After talking with him he is ok. I was told he really likes me and wants to dance with me. When I left I gave him a hand shake in public which is a big deal because PDA is not accepted here. I guess more to come on that.

So last visit Sira did my hair and when I took it down to wash it Assitan wanted to braid my hair. My hair has definitely grown and I can make a full pony tail naturally. Here it is an honor to do somone's hair especially if it is long and since Sira did such a nice job, I let Assitan do my hair. Girl let me tell you about that. Assitan braided my hair so tight we had to take breaks!!!! Everybody was laughing at me. I was so scared that the hair line I worked so hard to grow back was not there anymore. It was cute but I could not move. By the end of the week, I had bumps in the back of my head and I had to take it out. So saturday after class, I took my hair down and just let it air out. My sister Assitan had told before the week ended that my hair was going to get redone because it would be old and I told her she was not braiding my hair again because it was so tight. Before I continue this story, Assitan and I are really close as stated above and when you love and like some one you hit them in a play manner and joke with them alot it is when we call in the states "playing too much" it goes here. I never tire of it though because I love them and I can joke and prank people all day. So every time I would attempt to play a prank on Assitan, would remind me that she fanned me and took care of me when I was sick. I can dig that she is good. I think we have the same personality and that is why. We both get in each others business too a little too much. She will accuse me of drinking liquor and being a drunk in the states and act like she is a innocent good muslim woman. I know she is bad! Anyway, I decided to get her back in a good way for helping me out so I gave her a pedicure but I messaged her feet very intense. Malians don't know how to message or really how to enjoy a message so this was the best thing to do to get her back for braiding my hair tight. She knew I was messaging very hard and kept saying good and that feels good. She is good. I got here when I cleaned the dirt out from under her nail. Now Malians diets don't a put much nutrition in their nails so they grow thin from the sand and they have to take razors to prevent in grown toe nails. Well Assitan is educated and has had a pedicure before but never has she had someone clean the dirt out and that is where she was yelling for a pause. It was so funny. I did not realize that everybody in the neighborhood was looking over my shoulder seeing what I was doing. It was cool. I feel totally integreted. I pained her feet a icy pink color, the color she wanted, and told here to relax for 24 hours while the top coat hardened. It was fun.

Friday night we had dinner with our LCFs. We made hambugers!!! After my technical session for environment I came back and dropped my stuff off at home. I told Assitan and my host mother that I would not be home for dinner because I was making hambugers at the LCFs house. They said okay and then asked me when I was going to return it was like 4pm at this time and I said IDK. Assitan said to be back in three hours because she made dinner for me and it was fish. I was hecka mad she wanted me to eat fish and hambugers. My stomach has literally shrunk and I can't eat that much. She also told me not to eat too much because she was making fish. I told her ok and left. Well the hamburgers were to die for. I put laughing cow cheese, ketchup, mayo, vinegar, salt, pepper, and cucumbers on my sandwich. I ate half of it and was bloated!!! I was praying so hard to God to give me room for the rest of the sandwich. I ate the rest of it but I had the Itis too bad. Baybe I was too brave!!!! I returned home and Assitan was like were is the American red sauce and how come you did not bring it. I thought she was joking and then my host mother jumped in which only happens on serious situations so I went back to the LCFs house. I told them what happened and they laughed at me and said my family was joking but I was not sure about that. The only thing left was some fries and ketchep so I took that back to them. I made all of the eat every last fry. I kept yelling the word in Bambara to eat and people kept saying they were full and was stuffing french fries in their mouth. 30 minutes later we ate dinner. I had fish and bread and everybody else had toh. I felt horrible because I thought everybody was eating fish but my sister fixed three whole fish for me. I barely ate one. Everybody generally gets my left overs and sometimes they don't really want to eat what I did not but this time they were too happy to eat the fish I did not want.

Also my family is wonderful when drama goes down here after things are settle the situation is really squashed. They don't apologize here but they forgive and forget. In saying that I have to tell you about what happened when I was getting my hair braided by Sira. So when I took out my hair to let it air out, I cleaned my room and realized that my roommate's phone was charged so I took it to her house. The neighborhood had a heart attack when I had my hair out. The mother of my roommate was looking at my hair and about to ask me to braid it when I stopped and told her my sister was braiding it. When I walked home and finished up cleaning, Assitan dropped by and told me that my hair was going to be done immediately. I told her that she was not doing it and I was gonna walk around like this and she told me I did not look good. She is so evil. So basically me walking to my roommate's house to give her the phone with my hair in a fro made my mother look like she does not know how to keep her guest well kept so they woke Sira up who was sick in bed to come braid my hair. My friend sara was over for a visit and she is learning bambara and my family loves her for that. Well something happened where we got on the subject of Sira's son Fanto who I love. He is his mother. Sira has so much personality and so does Fanto. Sira is also ride or die for her son too. Well Selli, my host mother's sister in law so my host aunt, made a comment that Fanto was mean and I said he was not and that Assitan's son was mean because he is just flat out mean to his younger brother. Then Selli tells Sara that Fanto is a mean eater or something and then Sara was asking if Assitan's son questions and then my host mother decided to jump in and say something. Once again I wish I was fluent in bambara or had recorded this because then it turned into an argument. All I heard was the word for eat and the word for peanuts. They went on for a long time. Sira was getting angry and she was braiding my hair too tight and my host cousin saw my face and tried to stop the argument but it did not stop. I think my host mother and aunt ganged up on Sira and told her about how she raises her son. Sira was yelling and braiding my hair at the same time. Then she started to cry and I was so sad. I don't know waht was said but I felt bad. I tried to give her a hug and she turned me around and continued to braid my hair. I handed her some tissue and she turned me around again and finished my hair and left. Fanto stayed and played with him.

Also Assitan gotta a boy friend already!!! She was caking on the phone all evening and night with him. She told me while I am gone she will either visit him or he will visit her. Some people wonder how I survive without tv and now you see how I survive. Stuff happens in my concession and it is interesting. Despite everything that happens we all love each other.

I think that is all on homestay. I love and miss my host family. I am sad that this trip to Tubaniso is for two weeks!!! I tried to post pictures but it is not working. Sorry check back later.

So alot has happened since last talked to you. Home stays are two weeks long so I will right as soon as I get to a computer and will try to put pictures up. My home stay family is great! I love them. My host mother is just the bomb. I am so glad I got up the courage to be uncomfortable and come around, if that makes since. From what I have gathered about my family is that my host mother is married to a man who lives in another city with his second family. I also found out that my host mother was married before but her husband died and then she married the second guy. She had 8 children but one died. I am so sorry. My host mother looks good though for having had 8 children. I want to say she is late fifties or sixties but I am not sure it is not polite to ask about peoples ages.

There are two older girls who are married off. I think the second daughter is 29 and she had two boys. Next are three boys who are 26, 24, 15. The two oldest are engaged. Then there is the youngest girl who is nine. She is so cute. She had a friend who is so cute. I would seriously adopt her if I could she is the cutest thing in the world!!!. I love my little sister, we call her la. I think she likes me too because we go everywhere together. When I go to class, she carries my books and unlocks my door for me. When I shower she sweeps out my room for me. She is just so nice.

When I first met my family, I was relieved to finally met them and see my room which is nice. I have a bed, couch, table, mat, trunk, lamp, and a hanger rack. I have the nicest room!!! It is a hot box when I go to sleep at night but I love it still. My family helped unpack my stuff and get settled. When I came out side to hang with them I just spoke in french and was excited to practice the few words in bambara that I had learned, even though I am studying french. As soon as they here all the phrases I could say they were convinced I was Malian! They brought the whole neighborhood over to see me and everyone was speaking in bambara to me and I was so confused. I tried to speak french to them but they would respond in bambara. when I asked them why they did not speak English or French they said it is because they are Malian and asked me why I did not speak bambara. I told them I was American and did not know bambera but some french! All I could do was laugh!!! When we learned the greeting in bambara they taught us the proper way to say them so when I was saying N ni Tilen they looked at me weird and were saying N ni cle instead. I did not know what was going on but it was funny. They did not know whether to call me a tubab or Malian. Think I am a condition tubab for right now but for the most part they call me American noir, which is black American.

My Malian name is Adam and I am named after my host mother so we call each N togo ma, which means same name. When I asked her why she said simple because you are a tubab! I just shook my head and laughed. I really like my host family. There is one guy who speaks to me in some English and French but he mixes some bambara in there and some times we have disconnect but I love spending time with them.

My host mother is such a mother to me and I am so attached. I eat with the family for every meal. One day we had rice and potatoes for dinner and everybody put all the potatoes on my side of the plate. I tried to explain to them that it makes me happy to share with them and I gave everyone back their potatoes. I so surprised that they thanked me for that action. I should thank them for feeding me good food. She gives me my space when I needed and just lets me be. We have an understanding. There was a party at the LCFs house where cooked for and everyone participated and I declined because I wanted eat with my host family. I am sprung!!

In my family I think there are two servant women. One is married and the other is not. I think my family is comfortable around me because they all just openly breast feed in front of my. I see there body parts more then I see my own. That is kinda sad but it is the truth. They keep asking me for photos of my family and when I go back I will have remember to bring them some. I showed them a picture of dad, me, and Jessica and one of the brothers told me Jessica was very pretty. I did not know how to receive the comment so I just didn't respond for fear that acknowledgement could mean a contract and agreement between parties.

In my village I am close to other volunteers. I can see their windows from my house. I go over their houses when ever and just chill with them. I like that about Africa, you can just show up and people will receive you and not talk about you or make you feel uncomfortable or bad for showing up unexpected. At every house I am welcomed and they make tea and offer me food. I love it. The people are so nice and hospitable.

Last weekend I went to a wedding and it was nice. They celebrated all day and when I say all day I mean all day!!!!! it was not until dark that the reception stopped. There was endless food and dancing all day. Some pictures are below.

As far as classes are going, they are going. I a learning dooni dooni (bambara) or Petit et petit. Which mean slowly. I am going to be fluent if it kills me!!! So if you could put up some prayers for me that would be great.

Now the most recent thing that occurred was be becoming sick. Now it was not my fault but the doctors think that it was food poisoning. I am so glad I have the host mother I do because I never would have made it. So this past Sunday, we were supposed to come back to Tubaniso for a couple of days. We were to be picked up at 8am by the tire shop which is about a 5-7 minute walk from my house. Well about 4 am I start throwing up and going on myself. I think I did this for an hour before I could get enough energy to get out of bed and unlock my door. I don't like sleeping with locked doors but for our safety we have to. I grabbed the only thing clean which was my panga and ran outside to tell my host mother I was sick. I thought she was mad at me because I had crapped in her clothes and there was crap on the floor. She just cleaned it up and instructed her niece to run my bath water. I did not have enough energy walk to the Negen (bathroom) so I went to my room to lay down but that did not last long because I was up running to the Negen and so after throwing up washed my self and got into some undies. For three hours I was vomiting and going at the same time until my family called Demba who spoke to me and called the doctor. The doctor and demba told me and my host mother that they were going to tell the driver to come to my house to pick me up. The doctor had me take all kinds of medicine so I could sustain the ride home but the symptoms continued. That was 7am. At 8am, chris came by to see where I was and he saw that I was in poor condition. I was near death, everything was coming out of my body at the same time and I had not energy. With my last few breaths, I told him what demba and the doctor told me and I thought the driver would come after chris told them. Well that did not happen and they left my village with out me. It was not until 11 or 12 that the doctor called to tell me there was a mishap and that a driver was on the way. Meanwhile my host mother is trying to get hold of someone because she was afraid I was going to die. She went to the chief of the village and had another volunteers mother call people. I got a couple more phone calls from demba and the doctor but the driver did not come until 1:30pm. While I waited, I was throwing up everything, even water. My mother washed me, cleaned up behind me, and physically fanned me until the driver came. Someone told me she wanted to come with me to bamako to ensure that I was OK. I don't speak bambara but I do think she gave the driver a piece of her mind for taking nearly all morning to come get me. I love her she is so great. When we go to bamako tomorrow for a tour I am going to get her some nice fabric along with Dijongo because she washed out the buckets of poo and vomit along with my underwear. I got back to the medical unit where the doctor attended to me and got me back to health. It took some time though for I was so dehydrated and weak. My whole body was throbbing and in pain. Even today my stomach muscles are sore from throwing up so much. That night I had "vegetable soup" I guess Malian style which did not agree with me and I threw that up. It had milk in it. Then I tried to eat a chicken sandwich and was disappointed with that. First of all I wanted a turkey sandwich which I guess they don't have in Mali. My choices were cheese, chicken, and something else. I choose the lesser of two evils by going with the chicken sandwich. I'm thinking I am going to get a grilled chicken breast no I get shredded chicken and with other parts that they did not bother to cut up. Keep in mind this food was not peace corps but from a hotel's restaurant. I was not happy when I tasted a chicken liver in my sandwich. Not cool. Now I can laugh about it but at that moment, I just prayed I did not get sick again.Also something really crazy happened when I got to the medical unit. I was in my bed with extreme body pain and dehydration. The doctor had checked all of my vital signs and had left the room to let me rest. I was going in and out and my respond time was very slow. Well while I was out of it, I guess I was crying in real life but in my mind or dream I was with my grandma. I was crying on her couch and she came to me and I was laying on her lap while she stroked my hair. She told me that everything would be okay and to be strong. She kissed me on my for head and told me she was so proud of me. Then it was like God called her back because she started floating up to heaven and I was left at her grave site and I was crying because I missed her. Before she disappeared for good he touched me but then I realized the doctor was in the room and was touching me. She did not know that I was not aware of what was going on. She thought I was crying because I was sick and Africa was hard but I told her I had a dream about my grand mother and then she asked me questions about her. I did not want to talk to her about it. After that encounter I was able to get up and go to the bath room before the pain came back to my body and I had a fever.Well until next time guys, I love you and keep me in your prayers. Enjoy the pictures below.

Me and my host mother-N togo ma

The brides

My host sister la and her cousin Djongo and Kadija. The girl on the far right is La's friend.

One day during class, these kids came to our house and were taunting us. I was the only one they would let take a picture of them. They ran from everyone else.

When the girls saw me taking the boys picture they began to wipe the paint off the wall and cover their face with the white dust too.

In this picture, a girl is putting the powder on her younger brother so he can get into the picture.

I just want to say my parents are soooo great right now. After hearing about my first day of frustration, they did not get mad at me or sound agree at me. They were encouraging which is what I needed. My best friends also were laughing at me and telling me it was OK. It is the other people that bothered me about their reaction to my first day. I have come to the conclusion that this blog is not for everybody especially those who just read one post. I entitled my blog this journey called peace corp for a reason; it is a journey. This blog is for people who want to experience this journey with me and to better understand the person I will be when I return home after my two years of service. There are lot of people who don't know me but think they do and want to act like they know how I am or can imagine how I really reacted. The people who really know gave me the correct reaction and I noted that.

Training is going well. We had a diversity session yesterday that got alot issues put on the table that I did not existed in Peace Corp. I am glad we all made a commitment to call each other on it and make each other accountable. I cosign. We also recieved security, cross cultural, malaria, and sector training. Sometimes it can be a bit intimidating and overwhelming but everybody is nice and understanding. I do like it here even if you are not doing or looking so good people ask you how you are doing and are concerned. My classmates really care and I care about them so it is all gravy baybe!!!

I have not really had a good nights sleep in two days but the doctors told us to day that the malaria meds can cause insomnia. I have lost my appetite also. I think it began when we ate out of communal plates the other day and one of the trainers said I could not eat with my left hand. It was hard eating with the right. He was trying to show me the technique and I kinda got it. It just feels weird eating with my hands in front of strangers and eating with my right hand. He was really patient with me and even put the correct size portion of food in my hand and instructed me how to eat with my right hand to maximize the food in take. I appreciated him but I just got kinda sad eating like that. Taking to other PCVs help because they told me that no one will really understand the sudden ups and downs while you are in PC. I definitely saw that. I am very glad my parents were encouraging and really are pushing me to just be strong. My appetite lose continued to dinner where I ate only a couple of pieces of potato. This morning I took one bite of my bread and did not want to eat anymore. I have it in my bag just in case I get hungry but I still have not touched it. I am not home sick or sad I really can't tell you how I feel. I am happy that I wake up and I feel adjusted. I am cleaning my area up, closing my bags, and have really gotten used to the bathrooms. I am in close quarters with two great girls and that makes it easy too. We talk all the time. We go to home stays tomorrow and I might not have the Internet so I will write when I come back.

OK so yesterday was a frustrated and my mother and my aunt gave me some advice. Thanks guys! I am better now believe me!!! I am very positive infact I smile all the time except for when those incidents were occurring but I smile 95% of the time. One thing you must know about me is that I vent and while venting I try to find a solution. I am over the passport picture thing and actually talked to my APCD about using a picture she took of me for my passport photo. She told me yes and that if the picture did not look good she would arrange for me to get picture. See once I got it out I knew it would be gone. I am finally getting used to being here. I no longer feel like I am in Africa but just a regular place. The toilets really don't bother me and I had my first poo today. That was really good. I thought I would share that. I have more good news and pictures today.

This morning we had a storm at 5 am here. I woke me up out of a really bad dream (it is because of the malaria meds) We have a tin roof and it made the storm sound ten times louder. I don't know how long it lasted I was half sleep. It is so crazy because the other day my hut mate said she wanted to see rain since we are in the rainy season. When we had the storm I remember saying, "God answered!" I went back to sleep and woke up at 7 am. I had my interview with my APCD and based on my background I will be probably be placed in Dogon country. The project did not spark my interest at first but I am glad for the opportunity to learn more French possibly become fluent!!! When I get more information I will let you know as soon as I get all the details right now it is very vague. I was happy about that!

Also I passed my oral french exam!!!! I am was so worried about that. I was told I am intermediate which means I passed and I may or may not have french classes. I really want to become better so I need to ask my LCF for help. There are about three other people who are going to Dogon country. We don't have a professor to teach us the local language so we have to learn it through french. God is so good!!! I also forgot that I still have my Rosetta stone and so I will try that as well and I am charging up my ipod so I can listen to french podcast!! You have no idea what a relief it was to hear him day you are intermediate!!!

Also we had a cultural fest and had music and vendors. I got an outfit made. I might wear for swearing in but I don't know yet. I drank Hibiscus which was sooo good. I ate to which I am not a fan of but the other food was good. To kinda taste like jello and corn bread. The natives love it and I am happy they like it.

As far as the nurse is concerned we are cool we joke with each other about the incident. Malians love to joke and kid and so do I. It was funny because I told her she was not allowed to touch me and she came over and sat next to me and put her arm around me and said, "Sam why?" We both started laughing and the whole day she was telling everyone I was her best friend and calling my name. The doctor is cool too. She look just like venita, it is crazy. I think venita came from the Carribean because the doctor and her look just alike! It was funny and I ignored her which made it even funnier. It kinda made my day sort of because the language test sky rocketed my day!!

We go to home stays on Wednesday and I am excited!!! I really want to go to a village that had never had an American there before. If I don't though I will still be excited because I get to leave the training site and go into the country. It is like Spelman freshman year when we could leave the gates after a weak of having to be in by 12am. So Stocked. I am not sure if I will have internet or not.

Oh I forgot my post has this title because at 8am we had training on diarreah and the nurse affectionately calls it Mr. D. Mrs. C came when a voluteer came to her office and told her she had Mrs. C and the nurse asked her what was that. The girl told her that it was the opposite of Mr. D, constipation!!! I thought it was funny too because the doctor thought I was constipated as well. I gotta tell her I pooed and I was not afraid to go in the hole!!

My place of residence

Sippin on Hibiscus

My food!! The to is at the top with sauce on it.

My outfit

So I am finally in Mali. I arrived last night. The plane right from Paris to Bamako was better then the flight from Philly to Paris! Thank God! When we touched down and got out the plane it felt so good! I was worried about my baggage and someone opening the bag during inspection and taking stuff but God so good because all my stuff was in my bag and I made it out the airport in one piece!! I liked how the pc staff met us at the airport aided us in getting through customs and baggage check. They even created a line of volunteers to help guide us to the bus and the truck to put our luggage in. I was so tired and hungry when I got there that I became really grumpy. I think the fact that my hut/ (word I cannot say just in case someone from pc reads this. face book me to find out the word.) had no electricity and the volunteer who was showing me where I was staying was not really being specific did not help. The toilet and shower may have added too. Then when I was getting the "snack" in the cafe, one of the volunteers made a joke about you have some food if you don't get it with your left hand. I was already pissed off and I eat with my left hand so I was just going to sit down and not eat. I guess the girl so I was offended and said I could get something. I really did not need here permission but I just was not in a joking mood. The volunteer that brought me to the cafe was in sensitive to the fact that I did not appreciate the joke that did not make my mood any better. I kept apologizing for having a bad attitude but now that I think about it I had the right to be bent out of shape! I had a good nights sleep after I was brave enough to shower. I was very proud of my self for not having my stuff all over the place but burning the midnight oil to make sure my stuff was secure.

I had to wake up this morning at 8am to make it to breakfast by 830 to be at training at 9am. I still wake up at the last minute. I don't think that is going to change while I am here. I think I would have paid more attention in the morning session if the flies were not annoying me. I was really upset/frustrated with the fact that I had filled out two visa applications and when I turned in my forms, the guy asked me for more passport pictures to extend my visa. I was hot that he would ask me and I told him I did not have any and I filled out two applications and put two pictures with both. Then guy told me I would have to go buy some more. He could tell I was angry and tried to calm me down with "it is okay you have a year to get the pictures" That only made me angrier. All the white people were just staring like "oh shit something is about to happen. Mad black women!" That did not help either. I am not getting anymore pictures when I already bought some and did what I had and was asked to do!

The next story I have tell is about the nurse who pissed me off. I am deathly afraid of needles. Every nurse that has ever stuck me did it in such a way that when I realized that the needle was in she was about to take it out or was in the process of taking the needle out. This on did not. I told her I was afraid of needles and she thought I was joking. She kept asking me if I was crying and I said do you see tears. This was while I was filling out the paperwork. When it came time to inject me she was not slick and I ended up hyperventilate and the doctor came in and was trying to calm me down. The nurse could see that I was not joking and I think she felt bad. I took a break from my vaccinations and she wanted me to come back tomorrow when I was calmer but I told I am never calm when it comes to needles. The nurse then took me to the area that had the beds and injected the second vaccination which hurt like crap. She had me lay down for a while and I needed that because I was hurt!!

Final story, I have to go to bed. Look at the clocks to see that I am 4 hours ahead my people in the ATL, 5 hours ahead of my Memphis folk, and my Cali people are 7 hours behind me. So I go to dinner by the way I am discouraged when I pee because I have to squat to do it and that is not fun because it goes everywhere! I know TMI. I figured I'm uncomfortable you might as well be too! So dinner, we had a Malian version of spaghetti. It was okay lunch was better (rice beef and sauce) as well as dinner the night before (chicken and potatoes and sauce). So Idk what happened but all these bugs just came in and I was sitting underneath the ceiling fan and the bugs seemed like they were doing suicide missions on the table. When I got my food, I tried to be a G about the bugs but I punked out. First one touched my bread and I was still going to eat it but then I saw one crawling all over it so I set that aside. Then a bug got in my water and I pushed the cup away. I was trying to eat fast but I was being a fat kid and got a lot of food cause I was hungry. While I was eating a second bug landed in the water in my cup then a bug landed in my food as soon as I slurped up the food. I nearly threw up and got up from the table and threw the food away. I was going to not eat but I needed to eat so I got a smaller amount and ate that. I had to just leave after that because that was a lot.

So based off these stories I bet you think I am coming home but I am not. I am here to stay; the good bad and the ugly! I refuse to ET!!! Also I have to give a shout out to Dineo. I wore the pink and white skirt you gave me and everybody loved it! I was getting compliments all day long! So if there are more things in your closet please send. I like the compliments especially from the cute guys!!! I will put up pics latter so check this post again.

I am so happy to be on the ground!!! the air France flight to Paris was so turbulent! I thought about all the flights that went down recently and kinda panicked. I think i kinda slept through the rest of the turbulence. I just remember a stewardess waking me up to tell me that i needed to put on my seat belt. The food on air France made me sick though. I know what you are saying, "Samantha is sick already!" I don't know what was in that food. I had this salmon potato stuff that was good going down but gassy and smelly coming out. I looked horrible when i got off the plan and took some Dramamine to cure my motion sickness. we have basically spent the whole day in the Paris airport and i spent 13 dollars on a foot long sandwich and a small thing of juice. The euro is kicking the dollar!!! So out of 70 people that were supposed to come three/ four did not show up ( the slash four is the married couple) and one girl went home because she was sick so there are 66 of us trekking it Bamako. This next air France flight is supposed to be five hours. I pray it is not turbulent and I will not die.

So with the group leader thing: The staff kinda got on my nerves constantly asking me where my group was. I really wanted to tell that "I got this!" rather i said idk because i had not looked for them. They are grown!!! hence grown! I when the time came all of my group was here and accounted for. I believe on of the staff tried to tell me I was slacking but I am not sure. If she did then I am not stressed it. I am so glad though that I have already taken the yellow fever shot and was in and out. Because i am allergic to latex, the nursing staff put a red flag on me and was asking all these questions about what happens when i come in contact with latex. I was trying to tell them I took the vaccination already but in between answers were more questions. When i finally got it out they had a sign of relief on their faces. We had to get up at 7am to be at the clinic and i walked out a half our later because i was seen first. This gave me a chance for some me time and a little site seeing in the historic district in Philly.

Once again everyone in my group seems cool and i have had some one on one time with just about everybody since i met them. I still have a few more people to meet and get to know. On this Journey called peace corps, i decided to do things different like being more out going and showing my true colors and letting them shine. I miss my family and feel weird being here sometimes because I am so used to being around them and taking care of my grandmother. Anyway I gotta board the plane so I will TTYL!!! LOVE YOU!

So yesterday I got 3 hours of sleep. Not because I was excited rather I was still getting somethings ready. I woke up at 5 in the morning but did not get out of bed until 6. I did not have time to call people in the morning like some had asked and I had hoped. Side note, there was one particular person who was like why didn't call me back and when I told the person I had been really busy, the person got mad. I was like it is too early for all of this! Anyway back to the story. I get to the airport and my bags are over weight!!! So I take stuff out and Delta/NWA gives me two pounds. So the flight was long!!! THREE HOURS!!!! I was hecka mad. I arrived at 12pm EST and freshened up as much as I could in the bathroom and made my way to baggage claim where my bags were about to be put in lost in found. I was like that is quick!! I am so used to Atlanta's airport and having to wait nearly two and three hours just to get my bag!!! Anyway another PCV was waiting for me and we took the shuttle together. We made it to the hotel and immediately had to go to staging which was 5 HOURS!!!! I was cold, smelly, and hungry because I had not eaten. All they had for us was lays original chips and oreo. We also had water and lemonade to drink. I was so happy when it was over because we went to this cuban place to eat and I got the hugest BBQ sandwich in then joint and ate it all! I was so happy!!!

Everybody in my group is cool. I some how volunteered to be group leader. I will probably have stories of those duties later. It works out for now because I know what is going on first hand and can relay it back to people in stead of just being annoying and investigating to find out what is going on. Well that is all for now. I gotta check out in five minutes!! TTYL!

Today is my last day with my dad. I have a had a good time spending time with him and getting stuff packed. I kinda teared up one time and my dad just said he loved me and gave me a hug. The other day, I went riding in the sunset with my dad and we walked along the river til it got dark. It was wonderful. Before that, we went to go do what? You guessed it "look at land!" Normally he does that by himself but I let him slide on it this time since he won't get to see me for two years. Today I spent with my cousin and her two children. I got my license renewed and then I took the boys swimming and Coretta got caught up on her stuff, slept, and we just chilled. We watched movies and ate food. I had a great time!

I will miss my dad's land stories and I hope he gets his land when I come back. I will kinda miss how my mother is turning into big momma and my father is turning into grandpa. NO, I won't miss that at all. I will miss my mother always telling me I am loved. My dad's random comments. Playing the ultimate practical joke with Coretta and having Stan turn state on us (You are still light skinned! I will miss Nikki saying she is hecka mad. Tink doing the stanky leg. Aydan saying, "Do you have something for me?" and pimping the old women at the nursing home. Ayan taking in a deep breath and then starting his sentence. There are some other things I will miss that my family does but they must remain between us. You know what is! I am extra mad that I am missing the new Harry Potter (July 15, 2009) and Chronicles of Narnia (2010) movie. I love those movies!!! Atlantic station and ABC family will be having a Harry Potter marathon and I will be in Africa!!!! I will really miss my Spelman Sisters!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!

I am kinda sad that I am leaving but then I am not. The month of June really helped me to relax and get away from the drama on the other side of my family. I pray for the day when the other side of my family can be at peace and there are not people doing the most on purpose cause grandma raise them better! I try not to get involved in the drama but it just sucks you in and I kinda look forward to it some days to fuel my day. That is so sad and I need to not be like that. Every time something happens I remember the words of one of my church members who told me to stay away from gossip! I see why she said it. Gossip is a killa shawty!

I will miss my family greatly and I hope that when they read this, they will get a better sense of me. I greatly dislike it when people who don't know me, think they know me, or get the wrong impression of me, have something negative to say about me. That is not cool nor kosher! I am just me and free. I am trying to work on my diplomacy in all situations. I have gotten it down to a certain extent with educated people but to the people who are doing anything with their life, I am having trouble. With my family it is hard sometimes too because it seems like no matter what I do or say people still don't see the good and the change. I kinda know how Jesus felt when he would return home. Even my parents are guilty of this.

This post is not to down anybody but to just say how I feel. I look at characteristics of people especially my own and analyze them to see if they are good, bad, or something I can handle or deal with. When my conclusions come I make decisions. I need help though because some family members are doing the most. I wonder sometimes how I can reach them as a young Christian through my deeds and words. I still need help on that and diplomacy when it comes to certain family members.

Anyway, I am looking forward to this transition into a new life. I pray that I develop into the woman God wants me to be and to have the woman I want to be and the woman God wants me to be are the same. I wish to be humble, respected, well rounded, a pillar in my community, mature, Christianly, well dressed, well looked after, passionate, an effective communicator, great debater and orator, fun loving, proper, a even better listener, a person whose word is there bond, real, professional, perfectionist, and there are some others that I can't think of yet. I have high expectations for myself and the ones I love and care for. I know that you can't help everyone, some people don't want to be helped, and you can't people who don't help themselves. I still want the best for everyone and to have more successful and well rounded African American women and men. There are so many things I want to do in my life. I would list them but my mother told me that if you let everybody know your dreams there will be people who will purposely steal them away from you. Not that I don't trust you but I have a whole life time to accomplish them.

Going back to my fare well to Memphis, everybody keeps asking me am I excited and I don't even know. I just want it to happen. I am praying that it won't hit me that I will be away for two years. I hope people write me and tell me what is going on and definitely send packages. I don't care if it cost me to receive it, I just want one and to have someone send me love! Thank you for your prayers, concerns, love, brain power, and thoughts.

So I made it back to Mississippi! I am home, well my dad's house. So I have so much packing and unpacking to do to get ready. I can't believe this is happening! Everybody that I have talked to in my group is really cool I am so excited!!!! I can't wait to meet everybody. I am worried about my French still. It seems like the majority of people keep saying not to worry about it and then some people say that French is important. I am not going to stress but just become a little concerned because as the song says, "Its already done!"

**Happy Birthday to Everyone I know that's birthday is today: My sister (Jessica), Anne, and Kim.**

I tried packing and thought I could knock it out in a day. Boy was I soooo wrong! I got maybe about 55% of my stuff packed and had to call it quits. All the things I planed to pack could not fit. I planned to have a suitcase of clothes and hygiene items but I think I packed too many clothes. They said to pack for a week but that is hard!!! I gonna have to do something the next day because I have to fit all my items and I have a couple more things to buy like food. I finally got a camera case!!! I forgot about a French English Dictionary, and I still need to get a solar shower, other hygiene products from wal mart. I am trying to meet all the requirements and be as prepared as possible. I won't have a cell phone after the 8th of July and I'm trying to remember how I lived and survived without a cell phone! I hope I have time and talent to go print off pictures to put in my photo album so I can remember peoples faces. Anyway that is all I have for today. TTYL!

So today is my last day in Atlanta :( I had so much fun while I was here. I have to make a side note though but I finally made the Spelman website!!! Okay so back to leaving Atlanta. So some of the things I did while I was here was had a fish fry with my family and the friends I had still in Atlanta. Of course I went to church when I was here, went to Spelman to see people, hung out with friends, spent the night at my bosses house, worked at my old job for a day, had lunch with some of my church members. I also went shopping with my aunts, went to a barbeque with my spelman sisters, and watched movies with my mother.

Top Events (no particular order)

Playing Laser TagPlaying Wii until 5am with my cousinWatching movies and relaxing with my motherGoing Bowling with my Morehouse BrotherSeeing America I AmGoing to a Barbeque at Atlantic Station

I want to say thank you again for my trip to atlanta fun and eventful. Here are some pictures below.

IDK

Group Pic

Spelhouse!!!

Vanna Spelman

Wow! I can't believe that Michael Jackson is dead! It happened so quickly! Thursday June 25, 2009, I went to the Jazmyn Sullivan concert at the Tabernacle with my home girl Allyson. We got there extra early and decided to go to the CNN Building to get something to eat. While we ate, we watched the coverage of Michael Jackson being rushed to the UCLA medical center. The CNN commentators were talking about Michael as if he was dead! I could not believe that they would do that to him. I think that they did not want to say he was dead just yet. When we finished eating, CNN announced that Michael was in a comma and I was like, "what is going on?" I just started praying in my head for him to be okay. In the short amount of time it took for us to walk from CNN building to the Tabernacle, Michael Jackson was pronounced dead!!! Everybody in line pulled out their PDAs and tried to get on CNN's website. I tried as well but the CNN website was down. So I called my mother and she was not home and so I called my aunt and she confirmed that CNN had announced his death. Instantly, the music playing in Centennial Park switched to Michael Jackson. When they finally let us in the Tabernacle, they had Michael music playing. Jason Lesley had a moment of silence for Michael. I had a wonderful time at the concert!

The next day, I was down town and all the stores and vendors were playing Michael Jackson music. It was so beautiful. Everybody just celebrated Michael. I am sad though that people are focusing on the negative and are all in his business. It does not matter who is executer over his will or who has guardianship over his children or why his ex wife is not in the will or why his father was written out. Stop saying he has skin cancer, begged for pain killers (that black nurse needs to be a shamed!), or sell his stuff. Stop trying to turn a dollar off his death because too many people did that when he was alive! Stop dwelling on the fact that Jo Jackson is starting a record label. The more energy you give to that the more publicity he gets; good or bad. His family just wants to be left alone and mourn the lose of their family member. You are a true fan you would respect their wishes.

Below are my favorite songs and music videos from Michael Jackson. I am praying for his family and his children. I hope everything goes well with his final wishes and everyone can live in peace.

You Rock My World

Thriller

Remember the Time

Black or White

Bad

Man in the Mirror

Wanna Be Starting Something

Whatever Happens

Currently I am in Atlanta, GA for a couple of weeks before I leave for Mali. Yesterday, June 9, 2009, was my father's birthday, D-Bax's birthday, Sharity's birthday, and Stephanie's birthday so here is a birthday shout out to all the crazy June Geminis in the house. I also went to Spelman yesterday to take care of some loan business. While I was there, I ran into a whole lot of people I had not seen in a very long time. Once people found out I was going into the peace corps they all asked the same questions: Where are you going?; How long will you be there?; Are you excited?; Will you have electricity?; and Will you have Internet?

Today I got an email about staging! Yesterday, I was telling everybody I was not that excited but today, I am very excited and looking forward to the trip. As I get closer and closer to my leave out date, I get more and more excited. I have been talking with some people in my class on facebook and cannot wait. The staging email stated that I needed to call SATO to set up my flight arrangements. My flight is Wednesday July 8, 2009 at 8:45am out of Memphis, TN. I am flying Northwest Airlines and I will arrive in Philly at 12:30pm. I am going to have to find my way to the hotel by myself, so scared. I have never really done this by myself before but I am glad I have to do it because it is making me more independent and I can't wait to be independent. This is my schedule during staging.

Wednesday July 8, 2009

12:00pm

Open Registration

official registration as a Peace Corp trainee-- turn in completed forms

2:00-5:00pm

Welcome to Peace Corps and start of Training Program:

Background to Peace Corps, history, mission, & goalsAnxieties and aspirations for serviceManaging RiskPoliciesReflection on commitment to serviceLogistics and departure/arrival information

Thursday July 9, 2009

7:00am

Meet in lobby to depart for clinic

Lunch & Check out of Hotel

1:00pm

Bus arrives for loading and departure to Philadelphia Airport

6:40pm

Flight departs for Mali

They gave us the schedule for the international flight but I got confused after we landed in Paris, France. So far I have pretty much all the items on my list. I just want to say God is good cause my friends at Spelman College, my church family, and my real family have helped me out so much. I would like to thank Sonya and Mrs. Chambliss so much for helping me out. To all who read this please drop me a line and packages if you have any questions.

For everyone who followed my other blog, I had to change it because I tried to put this really cute template on my blog and it messed it up so when I tried to fix it, my original template was not the same. When I asked Google for help on fixing the corrupted code problem, they never answered me. So, I just created a new blog and the address is very similar it is called "This Journey Called Peace Corps" which is not much different from the other one, "This Journey Called Peace Corp." I also had to resumit my blog to peacecorpsjournals.com to get my old one taken off and my new one put on. I just requested it, they said it would take a week. I have all the same post and information but just a new address so that everything works and looks great. I could not transfer the four comments I had on two post but it is okay. I am just happy my blog looks good. So continue to enjoy.

I have decided to post useless information about Mali (I gotcha cousin). When I first found out I was going to serve in this country, I put up some information on Mali but this post is a thorough investigation on Mali. It was crazy because I did not know that Timbuktu was in Mali or that it was a real city. I know I sound ignorant for that but I did my research. I am so glad I did! My parents always taught me that you have to understand the history in order to understand the present. In school, I had to read about the "adventures" of European Monarchs and they were interesting but learning about the rise and fall of the Mali empire is very interesting as well. Before you read about Mali here is some useless information about Timbuktu.

1.The ancient mosque in Timbuktu has a door which has never been opened. It is said that opening the door will signal the end of world.

2.Timbuktu, in French ("Tombouctou") means "well of the woman named 'Bouctou'". And "Bouctou" is a word that means, "belly button".

Origin of the name Mali

Also know as Manding Empire or Manden Kurufa. From c. 1230 to c. 1600 the Mandinka ruled the area. The empire grew from an area know as Manden or Manden'ka (ka meaning people of) known for its Mandinka inhabitants. This area was originally established as a federation of Mandinka tribes known as Manden Kurufa (Mandinkan Federation). The name Mali came from the Mandinka's neighbors, the semi nomadic Fula, who resided in the western, southern, and eastern regions.

The Kings of Mali

Contrary to popular belief, there were kings and empires in Africa and especially Mali. The Mandinka kings were referred to faamas who ruled in the name of Ghanas. After the Ghana empire control was lost, the area was split into twelve kingdoms with their own Maghan (prince). The Mali empire would be divided until the first King of the Mali empire would unite them. This path was chosen for Sundiata of the Keita clan (AD 1217-1255), formally know as Sundiata Keita or Mari Djata, the Lion Prince (for all the Spelmanites reading this, we learned about Sundiata in ADW).

*For those of you who do not know the legend of Sundiata here is the story from wikipedia*

In the Epic of Sundiata (also spelled Son-Jara or Sundjata): Naré Maghann Konaté (also called Maghan Kon Fatta or Maghan the Handsome) was a Mandinka king who one day received a divine hunter at his court. The hunter predicted that he if Konaté married an ugly woman, she would give him a son who would one day be a mighty king. Naré Maghann Konaté was already married to Sassouma Bereté and had a son by her, Dankaran Toumani Keïta. However, when two Traoré hunters from the Do kingdom presented him an ugly, hunchbacked woman named Sogolon, he remembered the prophecy and married her. She soon gave birth to a son, Sundiata Keita, who was unable to walk throughout his childhood. Despite his physical weakness, the king still granted Sundiata his own griot at young age; this was in order to have them grow together and provide constant consultation as was custom. With the death of Naré Maghann Konaté (c. 1224), his first son, Dankaran Tuman, assumed the throne despite Konaté's wishes that the prophecy be respected. Sunjata and his mother, who now had given birth to two daughters and adopted a second son from Konaté's third wife Namandjé, suffered the scorn of the new king and his mother. After an insult against Sogolon, Sundiata requested an iron rod from the blacksmith Nounfari, which he used to pull himself upright and walk. Nonetheless, the hatred of Sassouma Bereté and Dankaran Toumani Keita soon drove Sundiata, his mother, and his two sisters into exile in the Mena kingdom.

Meanwhile, Soumaoro Kanté, cruel sorcerer king of Sosso, attacked the Mandinka kingdom, causing Dankaran Toumani Keita to take flight in fear. The oppressed Mandinka people then sent for the exiled Sundiata. Forging a coalition of neighboring small kingdoms, Sundiata waged a war against the Sosso, finally defeating Soumaoro Kanté at the Battle of Kirina (c. 1235). Soumaoro Kanté disappeared in the Koulikoro mountains. Sundiata was later crowned with the title "Mansa," or "king of kings," as the first ruler of the Mali Empire. He soon set about organizing the nucleus of the empire, presenting the Gbara of nobles and notables at his coronation with an oral constitution known as the Kouroukan Fouga. His model for government would guide the empire into greatness and beyond its zenith toward its eventual dissolution in 1645. His exploits have even been compared to those of Alexander the Great by some griots.

The Djata Lineage 1250-1275

The next three kings were all sons of Mari Djata. Mansa Quali, after his father's death seized the throne. As king he conquered the gold producing provinces of Bambuk and Bondou and the created agricultural reforms by making soldiers work as farmers in the newly acquired provinces. After the death of Mansa Quali, his adopted brother Mansa Quati took over through an all out war with another adopted son (It was customary at that time for the king to adopt his general's sons and raise them as his own in order to reward and control them. These sons also felt that the throne was rightfully theirs.). Mansa Quatiruled for four years and nearly destroyed all the two previous kings built by lavishly spending money and ruling in a cruel manner. After his death in 1274, the other adopted son, Mansa Khalifa took the throne becoming far worse then the previous king. He was insane and found it amusing to shoot arrows from his roof at the people on the street. During a revolt he was killed by the people. He was replaced by Manding Bory in 1275.

The Court Mansas 1275-1300

After the chaos of Ouali and Khalifa’s reigns, a number of court officials with close ties to Mari Djata ruled. The first court appointed ruler was Abubakari I who was crowned as Mansa Abubakari. He successfully stopped the hemorrhaging of wealth in the empire. In 1285, Mansa Sakoura was crowned king. He started out as a slave freed by Mari Djata and served as general. His rule like Mansa Quali's was one of conquest. He helped acquire the copper producing areas and opened direct trade negotiations with Tripoli and Morocco. Sadly, the king was murdered near present day Djibouti by a Danakil warrior who tried to rob him.

The Kolonkan Lineage 1300-1312

The Kolonkan Mansa rule was characterized by non-militant rule without any crisises. Ko Mamadi was the next Mansa crowned as Mansa Gao. His lineage came from Mari Djata's sister, Kolonkan. The Kolonkan Lineage is marked as the Golden Age because they maintained the developments of Sakoura and Abubakari I. During this time the economy flourished because trade. Gold nuggets were considered the property of the Mansa and were illegal to trade within the empire. Nuggets were handed over to the imperial Treasury and gold dust equivalent was exchange, for that was the local currency. Also Salt and copper were traded as well. During this time the Army was unified and was strengthened. After the death of Mansa Gao his son, Mansa Mohammed ibn Gao was crowned five years later and continued the stability of the Kolonkan line. The Last Kolonkan ruler was Bata Manding Bory who was crowned Mansa Abubakari II in 1310. During his rule he sent two expeditions into the Atlantic because of his interest in the western sea. On the second expedition, in 1311, the Mansa abdicated the throne, 1312, and left power to Musa, Kankoro-Sigui, the expedition never returned.

The Laye Lineage 1312-1389

The next line Mansa ascended from Faga Laye, the son of Abubakari I, who never ruled the throne. The first ruler of the Laye lineage was Kankan Musa or Kango Musa (pictured to the right). He was crowned Mansas after a year of no word from Abubakari II. Mansa Musa a devout Muslim and tried to make Islam the faith of the nobility but kept the imperical traditions. He celebrated Eid after Ramadon which is still celebrated in Mali today. Fluent in Arabic, he peacefully annexed the city of Timbuktu in 1324. He transfored Sankore, the center of learning in Timbuktu, into an Islamic university and flourished under his rule. His most famous deed was his two year journey to Mecca, a journey caused the price of gold to go down because of his lavish spending. Mansa Musa was also known as generouse man and he was so generous that he ran out of money during travels to Mecca and had borrow money just to return home. Because of his spending, Mali and Timbuktu got attention from the outside world and appeared on 14th century world maps. When Musa returned home brought with him an architect, Es-Saheli, to beautify many of the cities. Mosques were built in Gao and Timbuktu as well as magnificent palaces. In 1337, Musa died and his son, Maghan I was crowned king. He was a lackluster king that spent wastefully. The economy was so strong that the spending did not affect it. The power was then shifted to Musa's brother, Souleyman in 1341. Mansa Souleyman helped Mali to get back in good financial shape. Because of his miserliness reputation, the Qasa (queen) and several of his army generals decided to over throw him. Successful in his fight against the military incursions, the Qasa and the generals were imprisoned. Mansa Souleyman continued trade with Morocco and Egypt and held court with provincial governors. In 1360, the king died and the thrown was succeeded by his son, Camba. After nine months of rule, Mansa Camba was killed by one of Maghans I's three sons and as a result, Konkodougou Kamissa was crowned Mari Djata II in 1360. He was an oppressive king and bankrupted the country with his lavish spending. He did keep ties with Morocco but fell ill in 1374 and died in 1374, leaving the country in bad financial state. The next King was Mari Djata's brother, Mansa Fadima Musa or Musa II. Mansa Musa II did act as king but rather was a ceremonial king. Kankoro-Sigui Mari Djata influenced the king to hand over power and nearly ran the empire by squashing several rebellions but lost the Songhai settlement in 1375. In 1387, Mansa Musa II died leaving the country solvent and in control of most of its provinces which totaled to 1.1 million meters of land. The last king in the Laye lineage was the last son of Maghan I, Tenin Maghan, crowned Mansa Maghan II in 1387. He only reigned for two years and was assassinated in 1389 by Kankoro-Sigui Mari Djata.

The Obscure Lineages 1389-1545

From 1389 onward Mali will gain a host of mansas of obscure origins. This is the least known period in Mali’s imperial history. What is evident is that there is no steady lineage governing the empire. The other characteristic of this era is the gradual loss of its northern and eastern possession to the rising Songhai Empire and the movement of the Mali’s economic focus from the trans-Saharan trade routes to the burgeoning commerce along the coast.

Mansa Sandaki was the first non Keita clan King, being a decendent of Kankoro-Siguie Mari Djata. He only reigned for a year before he was removed by a decedent of Mansa Gao, Mahmud. Mahmud is believed to be either a grandchild or great-grandchild of Mansa Gao and was crowned as Mansa Maghan III (also Mahmud I) in 1390. During his reign the Mossi emperor raid Mali but the area remains under Malian rule. In 1400 Mansa Maghan dies and is succeed by Mansa Musa III whose real name is Sérébandjougou. His origin is unknown but under his reign, Mali lost Timbuktu (1430) and Oualata (1433). After the death of Musa III, his brother Gbèré became emperor in the mid 15th century, as Mansa Ouali II. During his time as king,1450's, Portugal began sending raiding parties into Malian territories. Seen as the most powerful empire among Portugal, Mali was loosing face in the north and northeast to the Songhai Empire. During Mali's downward spiral, Mansa Mahmud II ascended to the thrown in 1481. His origin is unknown but his reign was marked with major losses in old possession and increased contact with Portugese explorers. Still in battle with the Songhai empire, seizing the salt mines of Taghazza in 1493, Mali engaged in trade with Portugal and a failed alliance between the two nations by 1495. In 1496, the last Mansa came to power, Mansa Mahmud III or Mansa Mamadou. Mali, during this time, suffered its greatest loss in territory by the Songhai empire in 1502. Soon after the kingdom of Great Fulo was warring against Mali's remaining provinces while the Songhai empire seized the copper mines. Mali continues to as Portugal for military assistance but no add is given. Mali is forced to watch each province fall one by one. In 1545, the Songhai empire occupies the Mansa's place and forces Mahmud III to flee for the mountains. Within a week, he regroups with his forces and launches a successful counter-attack forcing the Songhai out of Manden proper for good. After liberating the capital, Mahmud III abandons it for a new residence further north. Still, there is no end to Mali’s troubles. In 1559, the kingdom of Fouta Tooro succeeds in taking Takrur. This defeat reduces Mali to Manden proper.

When you accept you invitation into the Peace Corps there are alot of things to do. As you have read in my other blogs, I have had a lot of paperwork to fill out. Well this blog is intended to show you the aspiration statement and the evironment questionnaire I had to fill out. Of course there were other documents that I had to fill out and send in such as my visa application, no fee passport application, and press release statment. My staging paperwork, Life Insurance, insurance, and domestic paper work (I signed up for the Correspondence Match Program with my aunt's third grade class), I did so that I would not have to do latter. I am not do yet though I still have to get my tax and student loan information together. Anyway below is my aspiration statement ( I left the resume out) and the environment questionnaire.

Aspiration statement

A: The professional attributes I plan to use are my diplomacy, good listening skill, quick thinking, planning and strategizing, communication skills, and my level of professionalism and maturity.

B: I hope to build a bonding relationship with my host country partners. I will aide in every way to have open and effective communication. Also, I want to gain respect on both sides and mutual trust.

C: As an Army brat, I have had to move and adjust to new environments my whole life. I plan to listen more then I speak and gain an understanding of my area and surroundings. As soon as possible, I will develop friendships to create a social network that can help and protect me. With my core beliefs intact, I also plan to show respect for Malian customs and be open minded as a guest in their country.

D: The skills and knowledge I want to learn during pre-service training are to become fluent in French and semi fluent in a local language. Also I want to learn, through cross-cultural experiences, a new culture and way of life. During pre-service training, I want to learn how to survive in a developing nation and how to maintain my health while helping others to become sustainable.

E: My Peace Corp service will have a great affect on my personal and professional aspirations by giving me a better understanding of the problems that affect people physically, emotionally, culturally, and socially. After my service is complete, I plan to go to medical school and would like to be an international doctor and help to change the world one patient at a time. I believe my service will aide in my compassion as a doctor so that I can better serve my patients.

Environment Questionnaire

May 3, 2009

Dear Environment Invitee:

Peace Corps Mali is eagerly anticipating your arrival here in July. We have already identified a list of sites within Mali that are also looking forward to welcoming their new volunteers. As an environment volunteer, your assignment is to help accomplish our project goal, which is: Malian men, women, and communities will increase income, improve health and nutrition, and actively conserve and restore the natural resources and biodiversity their communities depend on, as a result of adopting locally proven and sustainable resource exploitation and management practices.

Your ability to swear in as an environment volunteer is contingent upon the successful accomplishment of clearly defined learning objectives which we will present to you during your orientation to Pre-Service Training. Your challenge during PST is to pursue the skills and knowledge you will need to be able to contribute to the project goal. The environment sector requires technical skills in three main areas: gardening, forestry and agricultural extension. Our training calendar naturally follows the seasons, and the first activities in which you will be engaged after swearing-in will be related to gardening. Therefore, your first objective is to acquire technical competence in gardening by the end of PST. We will provide an introduction to the specific activities related to forestry and agricultural extension, but these technical competencies will be fully developed during your first In-Service Training.

While you have already submitted resumes and aspiration statements to Peace Corps, we have developed the questionnaire below to help us determine which sites may be an appropriate match based on your prior experience and interests. We will not make any final decisions based on the information in this questionnaire, of course. It will help us prepare for our first interview which will largely determine your assignment for the next two years. I advise you to prepare for this interview carefully, by reflecting on what you really need from your working environment to be effective and productive during your assignment.

Thank you in advance for submitting this information as quickly as possible to facilitate our efforts to prepare your training program.

One reminder: ANYTHING you can do to improve your French before you arrive in Mali will help you in getting started in understanding the local culture and languages here. Listening to language tapes, downloading language lessons onto your iPod from the Peace Corps website, watching DVDs dubbed in French and/or with French subtitles, eating in French restaurants, whatever. Most environment volunteers will go straight into local language study soon after you arrive, so any French background will be advantageous.

Your answers can be typed directly into this document. Please save your completed survey with your name and sector (ENVIRONMENT) in the title and e-mail all responses as soon as possible to the Country Desk Unit (CDU) for Mali at mali@peacecorps.gov.

July-September 2009

Invitee/ Trainee Name:__________________________________

(Please also include your last name and first initial in the name of the document you send to us. Thanks!)

General Questions (please be sure to include the questions at the beginning of your response)

1. Please describe your educational and practical experience using French or other Romance languages.

J'ai assisté l'université de Spelman où j'ai reçu un Célibataire dans le degré de Science dans la Biologie et un mineur dans la science Ecologique. Comme une jeune fille, je gardened avec ma mère et a aidé mon père avec ses affaires d'aménagement. Ces expériences m'ont enseigné à cultiver la terre, les compétences organisationnelles, m'a donné l'indépendance, et m'a enseigné de la nutrition.

2. Please describe briefly your experiences in a multi-cultural environment. What techniques have you used to communicate in situations where not everyone was fluent in the same language?

A multi-cultural environment I experienced was when I went to Senegal, West Africa in March 2008.

We traveled to city of Kaolack where the majority of the people did not speak English or French but rather Wolof. My host sister spoke some English but was fluent in French and Wolof, however her grandmother and aunt did not speak English or French, just Wolof. The dilemma came when my host sister was not around and I had no one to translate. In the mornings, her grandmother would fix me breakfast and would ask me various questions in Wolof. When she realized that I did not understand what she was asking me, she would point to the object she was asking about. When it came to breakfast, I learned she asked about cream and sugar for the tea and gave me a choice on which kind of jam did I want. If I wanted something from her, I would have to act it out or draw a picture, actions which would help to understand what I was asking.

3. Describe your strongest asset allowing you to promote development in Mali.

My strongest asset which would allow me to promote development in Mali would be my ability to listen objectively and give an objective perspective of the problem which would allow me to find a solution that would work for as many people as possible.

4. From what you have heard about Peace Corps in West Africa, what do you expect to be the most satisfying aspects of your Peace Corps Service? What do you expect to be the most frustrating?

The most satisfying aspect of my service would be to know that I am doing my part to help the problems in Mali to get solved. The most frustrating would be learning the language and culture so that effective communication can take place.

5. Please describe the kind of work environment where you feel most comfortable and productive. Include comments on level of structure, types of working relationships, experience working in teams, etc.

My ideal work environment would be one where my boss and I have a professional relationship based on mutual respect and trust and my co workers have mutual respect, good work ethic, and do not gossip. In the work place, ideally, I would like my boss to be very organized, a leader, has high ethical and moral standards, someone who is not lazy, and someone who is objective and finds solutions not indulges in drama. When it comes to co workers and team work, my ideal situation would be where everyone pulls their weight, dependable, passionate about the subject matter, and cares about the level of professionalism that the project needs to have.

6. Please give a few examples of activities where you have been a "self-starter,” creative problem-solver, and/or innovative in your use of resources on hand.

I am not sure if I have had an opportunity to be a “self-starter.” I do believe that I have had opportunities that have caused me to find creative solutions and become innovative with my resources. An example of this was when I worked with the Office of Alumnae Affairs at Spelman College in preparation for the College’s reunion. Our theme was a choice to change the world and we had to draw the world form foam board and somehow make a dangling globe on the board that greeted everyone. We did not have a map to draw the continents nor enough foam board for all of the continents to be drawn on. We were given some paper mache, a beach ball, and some fishing wire for the dangling globe. Well since we did not have enough foam board we only drew three continents (Africa, South America, and North America) and Europe we had to cut from the scraps and make it look like a continent. We had to glue pieces of scraps together to make the North Pole and Antarctica. When we tried to paper mache the beach ball, the ball deflated and the paper mache started to rip and the fishing wire did not even hold the ball up. We tried to prop the ball up but it still looked bad. There was no more time or money to go and buy something else so I got together a search team to search the school for anything that looked like a globe that we could hand or put in the middle. We luckily found a Styrofoam globe that we spray painted as a globe and hung it up on the board. The board was a success.

7. Do you think you would prefer to build off the work and reputation of previous volunteer(s) or open up a new site that has never had a volunteer before? Why?

My preference would be to build off the work of a previous volunteer but if I had to start a new project I would do the best I could. I think starting my own project would be fun because I would not be held the expectations of the previous volunteer (good or bad). On the other hand, building off a previous volunteers work would help to alleviate a current problem and move the community toward a higher level of sustainability.

8. Most volunteers live in small villages (500-1000 people) within a 10-mile bike ride of their market town and/or the closest volunteer. What do you see as the advantages of these kinds of sites? What concerns might you have with such a site?

The advantage to living in small village 10-miles from the next volunteer or market town would be having a closer relationship with my community and practicing my gardening skills so that I could further live as the locals live. The only concern I have about this set up would be I was very far away and if I needed medical attention, would help come in a timely manner.

9. Name one thing that you cannot live without.

I cannot live without tweezers.

10. If you have not already above, please describe any special areas of interest that you have within the environmental field.

The special interest I have in the environment field would be going green and conserving energy and resources to reduce global warming, drought, and extinction of animals.

11. Please comment on your interest and experience in the following areas: HIV/AIDS education, Gender and Development, Information Technology, Water/Sanitation, Youth, Small Enterprise Development.

In college, I was a member of a group called Student Health Associates and Peer Educators (SHAPE) and I was a member of the HIV/AIDS/STD/Abstinence committee. Our goal was to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and STDs and educate the college community and the surround local communities through seminars, candid talks, HIV/AIDS and STD drives, and health love parties. In terms of water/sanitation, my senior research at Spelman College centered on using microorganisms to clean up the water. I purified a strain of bacteria that was known to biodegrade RDX which is used in ammunition and perflorinated compounds found in everyday life. Gender and Development has always been an interest to me and when I went to Senegal, I worked with the 10,000 Girls Initiative.

12. Do you have any other characteristics or interests that might make a certain site more appropriate for you?

I am interested in health and health education in terms of teaching math and science classes to ensure that children and especially more young girls are interested in math and science.

Environment - PST 2009

Objective: Understand the prior experience of trainees to inform decisions about future work assignments.

Using the scale below, please rate your experience and abilities in the following technical areas and briefly describe your related experiences:

Rank: 1 = No familiarity, 2 = Basic understanding, 3 = Solid theoretical foundation, 4 = Experienced in implementing principles 5 = Could teach/train on subject matter

Invitee/ Trainee Name: _________________________________________

Technical Area

Rank from 1-5

Brief Description of Experience

Gardening

5

Ever since I was in the 3rd grade, I have had a garden and have taken a master gardener course.

Field crops (on farm experience)

2

My grandmother and father are from the country and taught me basic knowledge because they used to pick cotton.

Farming (academic knowledge)

2

My grandmother was raised on a plantation and taught me basic knowledge.

Integrated pest management techniques/ Use of natural pesticides / Chemical Pesticides

3

In biology and ecology class we learned about natural pesticides.

Soil erosion control

2

I took an intro to environmental studies course and we learned about erosion

Reforestation techniques

1

Technical Area

Rank from 1-5

Brief Description of Experience

General botanical knowledge

3

Wildlife management

1

Small animal husbandry (chicken, rabbit, sheep …)

1

Large animal husbandry (cattle)

1

Arboriculture/ Tree nursery/ Orchard management

1

Agroforestry

1

Promoting Conservation of Biodiversity

4

Minored in Environmental science in college which allowed me to take courses on the subject and was a member of the environmental task force at my school.

Sales of agricultural products

1

Organizing workshops/events

4

In a lot of my organizations I had to do event planning.

Technical Area

Rank from 1-5

Brief Description of Experience

Organizational development

1

Marketing

2

Adult education and training techniques

3

In SHAPE we had to train people on various subjects such as nutrition and fitness, chronic disease, women’s health, and HIV/AIDS/STDs

Community needs assessment

2

Project design and management

3

In my environmental biology and senior seminar course, we had to design and manage environmental and biological projects

Public speaking, conducting meetings, making presentations doing training

5

In college, I had to take public speaking and as an MBRS-RISE scholar, I had to present on projects and journal articles bi weekly.

Working with community groups, youth groups or professional associations to improve their functioning

5

In all of my groups and classes, I had to work with other in order to solve a problem.

Solar energy/ Alternative fuels

2

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS WALDO!!!! This is my first response because I have only found one other person in my group that is going to Mali in July. Where is everybody? I have been on other sites trying to find people but alas I have had not success. I feel like Will Smith, kinda, in I Am Legend. Well if there are another members of my group going to Mali in July 2009 stop by and say, "Hi!"

So while I was searching for other member I found one guy and he directed me to Connected Peace Corps. Everybody on there is so nice and helpful. The group I joined is called Mali RPCVs & Friends. If you read my previous blog you will know that I was stressing out about what clothes to bring and the language situation. Still stressing, even though God is good, I decided to post a question on the message board of the group. The post are as follows (names have not been included for I did not get permission from them to post there names).

Hey my name is Samantha and I have been invited to serve in Mali in July. I am really excited and have a couple of questions. If you could answer them I would really appreciate it. First, what clothes did you pack? What kind of clothes do women volunteers wear? Lastly, how difficult and what did you do the learn French and the local language? (when I tried to copy my response from the message board, it disappeared so this is a rough cut of what I asked. The other messages are exactly as they were written.)

Hi Sam, congratulations on your PC assignment to Mali. I had a GREAT experience (though it was a LONG time ago!) Paul Miller posted some good advice. See comments below. PCVs usually wear loose pants or skirts with loose tops. I wouldn't pack too many clothes. Anything that shows above the knee shouldn't be worn. There are tailors there that can copy most any article of clothing. I'd bring some simple (but comfortable) shirts and skirts that can be copied. You'll appreciate having a few nice outfits for special occasions. Don't bring anything white, though. It won't stay white for long. A good pair of hiking boots and a sweat shirt are good too. My experience in PC was very good on the whole. It's not anything you can't do, if you remember to bring your sense of humor and a desire to learn. The good parts are unbelievable, but the bad parts can be tough. You'll make some great friends that will help get you through all of it. The harder you study the languages, the better off you'll be. (It's tough, but you can do it.) You'll really be able to integrate into your village. I wish I had spoken Malinke better - none of the women in my village could speak french. Good luck and I hope you have a great experience!

Congrats on going to Mali! I agree with [the previous Volunteer's] advice so I'll just add two points. First, learning the language is one of those majors fears that most PC trainees have and yet on the way out of training, they often reflect that it wasn't as hard as they had thought it would be. It is still difficult - my Songhai was never perfect - but learning through immersion is so rewarding that it makes up for all the effort in language classes. Plus PCVs tend to bond with their language tutors, who are usually pretty great. Second, in terms of packing, bring pictures, books, and small gifts for your host family. You'll want to show them items that demonstrate who you are, and that might include personal photos or books with picture books from your hometown. And small gifts are good to have (anything from the U.S.) for your host family in training and at your site. But don't go overboard. It's also nice to bring candy or some food item for the current PCVs (and for those tough moments when a granola bar would really hit the spot). Have a great time!

Sam - a bit of advice on the learning of local languages. (I've studied in 7, & was one of the few people in my Japanese class @ UCLA that could already ready a Japanese Newspaper. I also wasn a TEFL instructor in Europe: 1) Keep uppermost in mind that the basic purpose of language is to COMMUNICATE; what you need, thing or are offering. Focus on vocabualry/simple sentence structure, & DON'T get bogged down in "grammar"; 2) The bolder you are in using the language, & being willing to make some roaring laughter errors in the process, the more self-confidence you gain, & the faster you improve; 3) All language is stored in our Sub-conscious brain areas; learn how to draw it forth when needed, & the cumulative process goes much faster/smoother. Even when we haven't had the need to use a language, "re-learning" it is at least 150% more efficient than the initial effort. So learn to use that part of your brain as a "CPU", & the "key" that reloads it on your currently active screen. Finally, the more languages you study, the more that largely un/under-used part of the brain is exercises; consider taking on other area/national Ethnic group languages, once you have the primary lingustic need area in some (even marginal) comfort area. Hope this helps: I'll try to contact you when in Mali.

Be bold with the language... even if you know your grammer sucks. This especially applies with french because a lot of the people in the villages who learned french, learned it in school, and their grammar sucks as well. To the extent that I tended to be understood better than volunteers who had spent time in France and my grammar really sucked.And I found it helpful (while living in a border town mind... where there was quite the mix of languages) to try and learn at least the greeting and the way to say I only know a little. I said that repeatedly in different ways in the market,me: hello, them: my god you speak whatever, me: only a little.The little old ladies loved me.But most important as I said, be bold. I was not good at any language... I know you're afraid you won't be able to learn them, because I was too. But people over there are thrilled that you are even trying... they don't expect you to try.So don't mumble, or speak too quietly, because they won't take it for granted thats what you're doing. Be bold, even if you only know the greeting. They will appreciate it.I guess thats more for afterwards than passing... but if I could pass, I'm pretty sure most people can. As said before, the language tutors are great, and you'll be spending a lot of time with them.

Hi Sam, I'm in Mali now I'll be done in 3 months. Bring clothes that you would wear in the summer in the States. My biggest regret was that I didn't bring cuter clothes and make up and jewelry. I thought I was going to be all hardcore and never shave my legs or see Americans and then I got here and realized how silly that was. Don't bring shorts or skirts that come above the knee but tank tops of any shape and size are totally fine. I wear strapless dresses and tops in Bamako all the time when we go out clubbing. If I got to a formal event at my site I usually wear Malian clothes. Malians are conservative but that really just means keep your legs covered. I wear yoga pants around town when I bike places. I wear what I'm comfortable in, I never wear skirts because I never wear them in the States and it's hard to bike in them but lots of people do. Bring a sweatshirt and a couple long sleeve shirts and a ski hat for cold season, a pair of jeans (cute jeans, I wear jeans all the time in Bamako) and sweatpants. For Pre Service Training you can wear any tank tops that cover your bra straps and skirts that go below the knee, so use that as your gauge to know what's appropriate.

As for language. Don't even worry about it, the Peace Corps language tutors are incredible. Peace Corps takes good care of you (almost too good) in your first two months. They don't just drop you in a village with flint and French/English dictionary, they prepare you thoroughly for Mali. I also don't speak French (not well, anyway), I learned Bambara and get around Mali entirely in Bambara which is totally normal for volunteers. Malians are really laid back about speaking French since most of them don't speak it well.

Also, I was pretty disappointed when I got here because I didn't bring enough clothes. They tell you you can buy stuff here and you can, but I prefer American clothes to Malian clothes and you won't have a whole lot of opportunities to buy Malian stuff in your first two months. I had to have my mom send me boxes of clothes. I do have some Malian clothes but most volunteers wear half Malian clothes and half American, like a cotton tshirt and a malian skirt. Someone commented below not to bring too many clothes and my sister who is an RPCV said the same thing and I don't think it's good advice. I'm not saying bring two bags full of clothes but bring enough to last you about two weeks or so, things get beat up here. You will eventually acquire more clothes but not often in your first two months. Tailors here are okay, they cannot copy ANYTHING and usually you have to take the item back several times before they get it right or before you give up. That said I have some cute stuff made by tailors but not without lots of effort on my part, so don't count on this as your primary source of clothing.

Definitely bring snacks. You'll be so glad you did. I would almost encourage you to bring a whole suitcase filled with tuna fish packets, kudos bars and crystal light juice powder. You should think about this seriously.

I would caution that while folks may wear tank tops in Bamako and elsewhere, there are parts of the country (rural Northern villages) where that would be frowned upon... or, more importantly, could cause your host community to take you less seriously and treat you more like a child than a professional.If you do wear a tank top, a scarf to cover your shoulders would be advisable in certain areas and places (workplaces, mosques).My advice, for what it's worth, is that it's not always what you are permitted to wear but how you are perceived that really matters. Err on the side of being over-conservative in your dress and behavior, and you will be respected no matter how well (or poorly) you speak the language(s). Good luck to you!

Sam - a quick note about women's clothing from a Northern volunteer. I was outside of Gao and things are a bit more conservative there. I only wore long skirts in village, covered my shoulders, and my head. I didn't at first and the villagers would give me a hard time about it. I finally just covered up a bit more and that helped. Having said this, there are other female volunteers in villages around Gao who did wear pants, tank tops, and didn't cover their head. It all depends on what you're comfortable with. Good luck!

So for any future volunteer who happen to stubble on this page, here is some great advice in regards to what to pack and any language concerns. I hope all-in-all, my blog is informative. I am one of those people who have to have every little detail described to me, know all the useless info on the matter, and ask alot of questions. For anyone reading this, if you have any questions please ask them in the comment area and I will gladly address them in the most recent blog I post.

For the most part, I am very excited and part of me still cannot believe this is happening. I am so glad my excitement for it all motivated me to get my Environmental questionnaire, visa, no fee passport, life insurance, staging, domestic, and media paperwork done before the weekend. Now all I have to do is get the paper work for my student loans together and pray that Spelman will defer them. The college is closed currently and the person I am supposed to email, I don't know when she will be back from her summer break. In the back of my head I am not stressing. I am praying the month of June goes by very fast so July 8, 2009 can roll around. Also I hope everything will fit in my suit case as well.

I plan to bring my camera and take lost of pictures and videos to post for all the visual learners and just so everybody can picture where I am and see all the amazing things I am doing.

For the past couple of days I have been filling out paperwork and reading everything in the invitation pack. Being an over achiever, I completed my aspiration statement and resume the same day I called and accepted my invitation, May 26, 2009. Yesterday, I took my visa and passport pictures, they were horrible! I mailed off my visa and no fee passport information and the press release information. I am sad because I forgot to put Birmingham, AL on there for other cities that my family are residents of. Most of my mother's side of the family resides there and I know they are going to not be pleased.

In the mist of all of the paperwork and reading manuals, I began to stress over my French! I have not taken a French class since I was a sophomore in college and I had a translator when I went to Senegal. Realizing that my French would only allow me to converse with a three year old, I cracked open my french 202 book from college and started making note cards last night. This afternoon, however, I got an email saying that I was selected to receive free Rosetta stone and that there were tutorials in my online toolkit that I could download to my ipod. Can we say "God is good!" Let the church say "Amen!" I don't know why I even stress. Oh I remember because I read in the hand book that if you do not pass pre-service training your service is interrupted and it is up to your country director to determine if you are good enough to be transferred somewhere else or just sent home. Regardless, I am going to lean on the Lord and trust in him. It never hurt anybody to do that. Still I plan to practice my French and do really well in training in order to stay in my assignment or if I don't pass the training to be deemed good enough to be transferred somewhere else. I am praying for the best and hoping I am good enough. Also, I started a total packing list.

I have included everything except my clothes cause I am still debating that since 90% of my clothes do not fit the requirements for Mali. For dress code, "women wear long skirts and keep the upper part of their bodies covered...It is also important to recognize that dressing inappropriately (e.g., not keeping legs covered) puts a female Volunteer and her peers at risk. Wearing short (above-the-knee) skirts or tight clothing will serve as an invitation to sexual harassment as this style of dress connotes "loose" behavior in the eyes of Malians." Now I consider myself to be on the conservative side of things including my dress with some occasions of sexiness, kitty katness, or thunder katness. When I go to church my dresses are at my knees and I generally wear a Cami and sweater. I look like a lady. The restrictions with this dress code are a bit much to me. I have never worn a dress below the calves or at the ankles! I am a jeans and tee shirt type of gal and am told that I clean up nicely. I am going to have to pray over my clothes some more to see which ones I pack. Also I might buy some over there depending on the money situation which I will discuss on another blog. So far here is what I have decided to go out and buy to pack.

Packing List

Hygiene

Degree clinical strength

Trimmer*

Shick intuition razor

liquid Black soap

pads

Shave Oatmeal body lotion

SPF 30 sunscreen

Ambi fade cream

Ambi complex soap

Ambi facial wash

green Tooth brush

pronamel tooth paste

act restoring mouth wash

ped egg and pedi set*

nail clippers and mani set

Summer’s eve feminine wash

ear plugs

loofah sponge

floss sticks

lip gloss

baby whips

Hair Products

Relaxed and natural shampoo and conditioner

Grease*

silk scarf*

hair bonnet*

combs*

brushes*

Hair clippers

hair ties*

bandannas

Medication

One a day women’s vitamins*

Benedryl

Aleve*

Mucinex

Day and Night Quil

gold bond

Abreva

Electronics

camera*

USB*

iPod*

iPod Charger*

light weight speakers

ear phones

flashlights*

storage card-4g or higher

digital thermometer*

battery Alarm clock

Solar Powered Battery Charger with Meter Charges 2 "D" - "C" - "AA" - "AAA" Batteries

Rechargeable batteries

Solio Magnesium Edition Universal Solar Hybrid Charger

LED reading lamp

battery powered fan

baby g watch

light weight speakers

Bed Dress

Sleeping Bag

Sleeping Pad

sheets

Atwater Carey Sleep Screen Mosquito Net

off fan and refills

pillows*

Kitchen

Swiss pocket knife

scissors

leatherman

can opener

multi purpose tool kit

combination lock

plastic bowls

plastic cups

Nalgene water bottles

zip lock bags*

silverware

detergent

wet ones

sanitizer

Bath

Solar shower

Towels*

Wash clothes*

Oil and bamboo sticks air freshener

toilet paper

tissue

Stationary

Pens*

Pencils*

Note Books*

Journal*

Address Book*

French/English Dictionary

Webster’s Dictionary

Envelops

Stamps

Calendar

Chalk

Food

Mac and cheese*

tuna*

power bars

apple cinnamon and peanut butter chocolate chip granola bars

jelly belly jelly beans

cheese and crackers

just bunches cereal*

lunch box

Gatorade packets

tea

splenda packets

flour

rice

apple and cinnamon oatmeal

nutella

peanut butter

Clothing

7 tee shirts*

2 pairs of jeans*

2 pairs of khakis*

3 dress shirts*

sweats*

rain coat*

tennis shoes*

brown flats*

one piece swimming suit

hat*

sports bras

2 regular bras*

tank tops

spandex shorts

basketball shorts*

underwear*

socks

jewelry

So far I am good with this for the first couple of months. The challenge will be having my luggage fit the Peace Corps' requirements and the airline requirements. Also if anybody feels the need to send a package, you can always replenish my supply listed or add stuff. Once again my address is Samantha Houston, PCT Corps de la Paix B.P. 85 Bamako, Mali.

I want to first apologize for not writing in a very long time. On May 17, 2009 my grandmother died of brain cancer, something she had been battling for about four months. This past saturday was her funeral. If someone had told me that last week, I would have encountered the drama I did, I would not have believed them. My biggest dislike in the world is FAKE PEOPLE!!! I cannot stand them and sure enough I encountered them last week and past weekend. I guess death really does bring out the best and worst of people but also people's true colors. Aside from the drama, I am proud of myself the way I handled myself. Death is a funny thing and God knew what he was doing by letting my grandmother battle with cancer. He was preparing me to deal with her dealth. Thanks God! It was fun hanging with my family and eating good food. I am so glad I was not able to take my original nomination and leave May 19, 2009 because I don't know what I would have done. Even though I am sad that my grandmother is not here, I am glad to say I got a new assignment. I want to thank the peace corp for being flexible with me. They found me another assignment in a short amount of time. I got excepted into a program in Mali, West Africa as a Agriculture Extention Agent and Community Development Agent. I am so excited but it is still bitter sweet. I am nervous because I have to retain a certain amount of french and manage my time to be able to focus on the local language I must learn. Tomorrow, I am pulling out the french book. Below are some information about Mali and my assignment.

Assignment: Mali

Program: Agriculture

Job Title: Agriculture Extention Agent, Community Development Agent

Dates of Service: July 10, 2009-Sept. 12, 2011

Orientation Dates: July 7-9, 2009

Pre-Service Training (in Mali): July 10, 2009-Sept. 12, 2009

Primary Duties: As an agreculture Volunteer you will work as an extention agent with local communities and individuals to improve horticultural, field crops, and livestock production in the area to which you will be posted. You will be assigned to work in partnership with the Malian government organization responsible for rural development activities as well as with local non-government organizations (NGOs) that are working in collaboration with the government.

Secondary Duties: There are innumerable opportunities for interstin secondary projects as an agriculture volunteer in Mali. Some examples of secondary projects are as follows: Promotion and construction of fuel-efficient wood-burning cook stoves. Agriculture Volunteers also collaborate with Natural resource management Volunteers on tree production for agroforestry systems, Health Volunteers on educating people about the nutritional benefits of vegetable consumption, or Water sanitation Volunteers on establishing or improving water sources for community gardens. Also all Volunteers take up HIV/AIDS education and play a key role in the Peace Corps' HIV/AIDS Initiative which addresses the multiple health, social, and economic problems related to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Address

Samantha Houston, PCT

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 85

Bamako, Mali

Mali

Economy

Mali is among the poorest countries in the world, with 65

percent of its territory consisting of desert or semi-desert.

Economic activity is largely confined to land irrigated by the

Niger River. About 10 percent of the population is nomadic,

and some 80 percent of the labor force is engaged in farming

and fishing. Industrial activity focuses on processing farm

commodities. Mali is heavily dependent on foreign aid and

vulnerable to fluctuations in world prices for cotton, its main

export. In 1997, the government continued its successful

implementation of an International Monetary Fundrecommended

structural adjustment program that is helping

the economy grow, diversify, and attract foreign investment.

Mali’s adherence to economic reform and the 50 percent

devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994 pushed economic growth

to a sturdy 5 percent average between 1996 and 2000. Growth

is projected to continue at this level, and inflation should

stay below 2 percent. In 2005 the per capita gross domestic

product stood at $380. The overall GDP composition by

sector was 36 percent agriculture, 22 percent industry, and 33

percent services.

People and Culture

There are more than 20 major ethnic groups in Mali, each

with a distinct language, geographic region, and social

infrastructure. Approximately 50 percent of the population

belongs to the Mandé group, which include the Bambara,

Malinké, and Sarakolé. Other groups include the Peul

(17 percent), Voltaic (12 percent), Songhai (6 percent),

and Tuareg and Moor (10 percent). Ninety percent of

the population is Muslim, with about 9 percent following

traditional African beliefs and 1 percent practicing

Christianity. Though the country’s official language is French,

the most widely spoken languages belong to the Mande group,

with 60 percent of the population speaking Bambara. Other

languages, such as Fulani and Songhai, are also widely spoken

in certain geographical areas.

Environment

Mali, a large country in West Africa, covers an area greater

than New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas combined. It is

landlocked, bounded by Algeria to the northeast, Mauritania

to the northwest, Senegal to the west, Guinea to the

southwest, Côte d’Ivoire to the south, Burkina Faso to the

southeast, and Niger to the east. The country is mostly flat,

except in the south, where the Futa Djallon highlands and

the Manding Mountains rise; and in the east, featuring the

Bandiagara plateau and the Hombori Mountains. Central Mali

consists of flood plains of the Niger delta, while the northern

part of the country lies within the vast Sahara Desert and is

dominated by the plains of Tanezrouft and Taoudenni. These

plains are covered by shifting sand dunes called ergs. Mali has

two major rivers, the Niger and the Senegal.

As most of you know, I love the Golden Girls. Since Bea Arthur died on this past Saturday, I decided to give a golden girls tribute. The only information concerning her death is that she was battling cancer. Since my own grandmother is battling cancer, I am praying for her family and especially her grandchildren. It is something about the death of your grandmother that is different from all other deaths. I have never been a person who likes to cry in many cases I laugh unless my heart is truly hurt. So instead of this being a sad blog, I am going to make it a happy one by remembering the good times. Here are some videos that will make you laugh and remember. I hope you laugh as I have laughed and appreciate those who you love and care for. So here are the tribute videos for Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty but first I have to some funny moments. I hope you will laugh as I did. I am the type of person that laughs instead of crying so I want you to laugh first then remember.

This first video is my favorite scene from the Golden Girls

Here are some bloopers.

Some more funny moments

Here is A Look Back with the Golden Girls

Part 2

Part 3

RIP Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty!

Bea Arthur

Estelle Getty

This post is going to be positive because I don't like being negative rather real. So last night I had another sleepless night. I fell asleep at light 10:45 and woke up at one something in the morning (OK so it was not totally sleepless, I had a little nap). I could not go back to sleep and just laid there staring into the darkness. I was still thinking heavily on my grandmother, one of my best friends being in the hospital, and my placement for the peace corp. Then about five something in the morning, my phone rang with an indication that I had an email. I thought it was the placement office because it seems like they always email me in the morning. I normally don't sit by the phone for no one because I just don't have feeling for anybody like that and pray to God that I will never be sitting by the phone waiting for someone to call. I must confess though that lately the placement office has me sprung and I have been anxiously waiting a decision and praying for the call to be sooner then later (the full three weeks). Well I decided to see who emailed me and surprisingly it was my Aunt from California. The message read as follows:

Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine.I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word 'refrigeration' mean nothing to you?How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched 'Jeopardy' on television?I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, 'How about going to lunch in a half hour?' She would gas up and stammer, 'I can't. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty... I wish I had known yesterday, I had a late breakfast, It looks like rain.' And my personal favorite: 'It's Monday.' She died a few years ago. We never did have lunch together.Because Americans cram so much into their lives, we tend to schedule our headaches. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect!We'll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Steve toilet-trained. We'll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet. We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of 'I'm going to,' 'I plan on,' and 'Someday, when things are settled down a bit.'When anyone calls my 'seize the moment' friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes, and you're ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Roller blades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process. The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-Decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.Now...go on and have a nice day.. Do something you WANT to......not something on your SHOULD DO list. If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?Make sure you read this to the end; you will understand why I sent this to you.Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight or gazed at the sun into the fading night? Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask ' How are you?' Do you hear the reply?When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head? Ever told your child, 'We'll do it tomorrow.' And in your haste, not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch? Let a good friendship die? Just call to say 'Hi?When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift.....Thrown away..... Life is not a race; Take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

After reading this email I was rejuvenated and stopped thinking about myself and how I was hurting and realized that others especially in my family were hurting as well. When the morning daylight came the anxiety pain in my chest was not there, as it has been there every morning for about a month, and I had a positive out look. My friend and grandma are still in the hospital and I don't know where I am going for the peace corps. I was even content with leaving in October that is how happy I was this morning.

After talking to my friend who is in the hospital and hearing her tell me to not carry the world on my shoulder, I looked some peace corps journals and found out that some pacific island programs left out in the summer and I started to feel way better. I just pray that I am competitive to get into a slot, I feel that I am but I am not the one with the power to put me there. I just have the power to except or reject the invitation. Also my recruiter emailed me back and told me it would probably take three weeks for a decision because they were having to find me another placement which is tough. I can understand that but I am qualified to do so much that I feel it should not be that hard but I don't know what crosses others have to bear. In my process of reading the email from my recruiter, I remembered something that I had forgot to put on my resume and detailed email I sent so I emailed the last person in the placement office I talked to and updated him. Even though, I did this during the summer before my senior year in college it is a relevant experience. Well now I continue the waiting game and try to avoid those questions about when I leave and where I am going.So while I was typing this, I got an email from the placement office in response to my email last week and it seemed like the person was adding time to the timeline he gave me before and made me feel as if I was not qualified at all nor a good representative for the peace corp. I am not sure if that was intentions or not but I am trying to take it with a grain of salt and decided to ask him a couple of questions regarding the email. I pray everything goes well.

Yesterday I was with my grandmother who is in a nursing home dying of brain cancer. My grandmother was a very lively and independent person and seeing her on the bed being non responsive was very hard. She is in her final days and I think she knows that. One day I asked her why she does not smile and she told me that the tumors took her smile away. That hurt my heart. She is also asking me when I leaving for the peace corp and all I can say is I don't know yet. Some times she says to me, "my doctor is leaving me." At first I thought she was talking about Jesus so I told her that Jesus will never leave her cause the blood will never loose it power. She then looked towards me and said my doctor is hear now and pointed to Cynthia Irene, my doll that she has in her room. I instantly knew she was talking about me. Back in January the doctors gave her 2-3 months to live. At that time I was planning on leaving for the peace corp in may and what ever happened I would deal with. Well it is the end of April and I still have not heard anything from peace corp about my invitation. I really wanted to leave in May so I sent my recruiter an email and the placement office email letting them know how badly I wanted to be a part of my nominated program but I got no response. My life is really unsure right now. I can't really explain it but I kinda feel like a failure. My friends tell me I'm not and to be positive but it is hard. Part of me is mad that the PC nurse wanted to do the most with my medical paper work and did seek clarification until april and part of me is mad at myself. This is all just falling on me too heavy and I'm trying not to get stressed out. I pray and read my daily word which calms me down. Some times it is short lived because I will hear that my grandma had an episode or that she is not eating. We have to feed her now or she won't eat that much. I think it is hitting me that my grandmother is really gonna die and there is nothing I can do about it. That is hard to swallow when I want to be a doctor. Some times I wish I had judt gone to medical school like everybody wanted me to do. People don't realize how hard it is to be African American and want to go overseas. A lot of my professors discouraged it and said I was wasting my life doing that. I wanted to prove them wrong so bad that I took the nomination that left a year later. I wanted to go somewhere other than Africa and promote a positive black image to people who may have never seen black people or only watch BET and get hyper sexualized image of black women. This is crazy cause I put Africa on my application and then my recruiter, who is African American, showed me other programs I was qualified for. She told me that she went to a spanish speaking country and told the peace corp to not send her to Africa just because she was African American. I definitly feel her on that. I was lloking at people's blogs who would be going to the pacific islands and all I saw were non minorities esp people who would be leaving in May. Part of me feels like the placement office does not want me to go. I was talking to a RPCV who is African American who went to the pacific islands in the 80s and she pretty much understood where I was coming from and said it was like that when she was applying. I'm pretty much at a stand still moment in life. I don't know where I am going for the peace corps and I don't know how long my grandmother has to live, which is driving me a little crazy.

The year 2009 has really been a lesson in patience. In May 2008 i was nominated for a health extensions program in the Pacific Islands so i was working off of that date to get my stuff in. In January I mailed my medical packet out and the Peace Corp medical office did not get it until February 12th. I was trying not to be the annoying applicant but I was stressing out for nearly a month trying to figure out if they got my packet it or not, they did though. At the end of February, got a letter from my PC nurse saying I needed to provided extra documentation for certain things on my physical and I was to get that to her asap. It took me a month to get all of the things she requested and I was extra stressed out. Then she emailed me saying that the documentation that i provided required a six month deferment but she would try to see what she could do. A couple days later I was received a letter from the nurse saying that I was on a two month deferment. I was so shocked! I did not know what to do so I picked up the phone and called my recruiter for advice. She told me to write an email to the nurse and explain my situation and to put everything in a very pleasant way. She also said that if I were to be deferred it would be okay and that I would be place in an African program or a Pacific Island program since that is what I put on my application, Africa. I did just that and the next day, April 8, the nurse medically cleared me. I was so happy for I had gone through the worst of it. During that time I was so frustrated and so wanted to go off on certain people for being so slow but expecting me to jump when they said "jump." Then a placement and assessment person emailed me and told me that i need to supply a copy of my degree, transcript, and resume. I quickly emailed all the documentation to her with hopes that I could still make my initial nomination. After emailing this person back and forth for a week or so, she finally told me that I would not be making my may nomination. I was so crushed. All my efforts seemed to be in vain. Then another person from the placement and assessment department contacted me for a follow up and I gave him the required paper work the same day. I found out that by the time I emailed him he had gone on leave and would not be back until today. I got an email from him yesterday saying that a placement and assessment specialist would do a final review of my file within the next three weeks. So now I am in a in between stage where I am sad that i would not be leaving in May for the Fiji islands and trying to be optimistic that something could happen to where I could leave in May or possibly June.