Site Assignment

I actually made a post yesterday, and maybe it'll show up, too. If not I'll fill in later. We got our site assignments today. I am going to be near Kita, in the Kayes region. I am going to be 5k away from another PCV from my stage, and her town is my market town. She is actually from Boulder, so we are going to hook our parents up and send them out to lunch together. Then our banking town is, indeed, Kita, and another really great PCV is going to be there, so we'll see her often, too. And, she has a REFRIGERATOR! I'll have my own place, right next door to my host family. I'll be replacing somebody who was well liked and really liked her village and the work they did with her. And best of all, Sam and Mark are in my same region. They are kind of far away in my same region, but we'll be able to visit, and we'll get together for regional training things, too. Kita is considered the peanut capital of Mali (peanuts equal protein!!!) and apparently it is really pretty and lots of fun things to do. Well, back to homestay for a week - more later...

A little slice of heaven

We have had a couple days here in Tubaniso between stints at our homestays, and it has truly been a little slice of heaven. Homestay may in the end prove useful, but it does indeed make Field Camp seem like a luxury resort spa vacation at Disney World that I would enter multiple sweepstakes for the opportunity to go to. Every year for the rest of my life.

My homestay is in a little village called Kabe. There are 800 people there, and I would imagine twice that many donkeys. Some of the other trainees have things like bars and pools and internet cafes in their homestay sites; we are lucky when we have bread at the boutiki. But what that means for us is that we are going to be rich by the time we get done with homestay, because we cannot buy anything, because there is nothing to buy. And, unfortunately, PC was a little tardy with the bikes this year so we are stranded in our village - can't even make it to the next town over to visit or buy or do anything.

I almost called it for good about halfway through this first homestay stint, but things have gone much better since. The language is progressing just fine - Bambara is interesting - there are no conjugations and no declensions. But unfortunately for me, I tested as an intermediate-level French speaker, which equals that my Bambara classes are taught in French, which I don't actually speak at all, much less to an intermediate level. We have one woman in our class who, though she speaks French, is painfully slow, though, so it works out for me because by the time she has begun to figure anything out, I've pieced together what the French means.

I live in a family that I am now starting to think is less multiple wives and more lots of aunts, but I still am having some interesting times trying to figure out. And Malians aren't actually the least bit helpful when it comes to that, because they just claim all children as their own and such. We have recently had a lice outbreak in our concession, but so far I seem to be safe. Lucky for me I am the anti-toucher (which the children don't really like and I think is a sign of a bad PCV, but I'm just going to go ahead and be that way) so I haven't been in too much direct contact with those children. I had a friend, Awa, who I liked a lot (as much as you can like a nine year old you can't communicate who the only reason she is your friend is that you know her name and she doesn't shout directly into your face all the time) but she disappeared somewhere and every time I ask what happened to her they are so amazed that I constructed a complete sentence that they just run around repeating it to each other. Either that or I'm saying something else that doesn't make sense and they don't know that I am asking them a question.

The food is pretty truly atrocious. I would not have guessed that it would be possible for food to be so bad. If you ever have the opportunity to go to a real Malian restaurant, don't do it. Really. Just don't.

We're also doing some technical training with our entire sector, which is a blessing because we get to see some other people every once in a while. We have "prepared" and planted a little garden, which we completely abandoned for the last several days, and we will again for ten days in a week, and so we'll see how that works out.

That, though, brings me to an interesting point. The more I am here, the less I understand what I, and PC in general, am doing here. If I ever figure that out I'll be sure to let you know. Maybe things will become more clear when we get to our permanent sites.

A little bit of bad news here, and I think Jim will appreciate this more than most, but for the time being, Timbuktu is off-limits to PCVs, so unless things stabilize in that region, I may not even be able to go see it. And, really, what would be the sense in being in Mali for two years and not going to Timbuktu? I just don't know. But Mali is reportedly a pretty stable place, so hopefully things'll calm down.

We have our site assignments this afternoon, so it is potential that I can get back on here before I go back to homestay and let you know where I'll be spending the next two years, but don't hold your breath, for sure.

Have a great day, I'm thinking of all of you (probably a lot more than I do in the US!) and miss you all very much.

A Call from Kelly

Kelly called briefly this morning. She is in Tubaniso - the training center -for a couple of days, but their internet is down, so no e-mails or blog updates. And, her phone was short of power, so it shut down shortly after we started talking.

She sounds a little hungry. I think she has been subsisting on rice, and recently, peanuts. Sure hope she took some multi-vitamins with her!

Hopefully we'll hear more soon. the Mom

Life in Mali

I was going to post some pictures from a cultural fair we had yesterday, but my camera and I are in disagreement about whether or not to transfer them. So hopefully I'll get this little thing worked out and get some pictures posted for you. We had drummers and singers and fabric and jewelry sellers and a tailor. We ate some fried fufu, which was awesome. The drummers were a local African drumming/dancing troupe who performed a welcome to Mali dance for us.
When Malians eat, they don't each get their own bowl with a fork and a spoon. There is one bowl in the middle and everyone sits around it on the floor with no shoes on, except we learned today that ladies are allowed to sit on little stools. Everybody holds onto the bowl with their left hand and eats with their right. People don't talk during the meal, because since you all share the same bowl, you better eat quickly or somebody else is going to eat your share. We practiced this afternoon, because tomorrow we are going to our host families, with whom we will be eating in that manner for the next eight weeks. At first I will be able to say this to them: Hello, how are you? How is your family? How is your father? How is your mother? How are your younger siblings? How are your older siblings? And when we are all together I will be able to count them. Imagine how strange that would be, some stranger who looks weird and acts even weirder comes into your house to live for two months and spends her time counting things out loud and being proud of it. We have been told that we will simply be laughed at for, essentially, the rest of our time here. Should be exciting!

Welcome to Mali

We arrived in Mali in the rainy season. It took a full twenty-four hours for any rain to come down after we got here, but this morning at four a.m. it came down with a vengeance. The thing, it turns out, about rainy season in Mali is that the flies go crazy. So it's been nice and cool here, but the flies are driving everybody a little wild - we call ourselves fly popsicles.
We're at our training center just outside of Bamako, the capital of Mali, for a couple days here, and then we are leaving for our homestays. What that means is that there are all these families in individual families in villages surrounding the area have been contracted to let us live with them for the next two months. They don't speak English and we don't speak Bambara, so we'll learn really quickly. I did learn today that in Bambara Mali means hippopotamus. And I greeted a Malian in Bambara and got it mostly all right. Which was awesome.
So, Megan, I don't know the significance of Ramadan, but I do know that we are still going to be with our host families for Ramadan, and maybe by then I'll be able to communicate with them a little, so I'll go straight to the source for you. The Peace Corps has promised us that we won't have to fast during that time, and there will also be a big party at the end. I'll be sure to let you know what I learn.
Well, it kind of looks like dinner is on its way out, so I'd better wrap it up here. I was going to take some pictures of our compound this morning, but it was raining, and then the lock fell out of our hut door, and then the new one was non-functioning, and it's basically been a pretty busy day, what with all that and then the greeting Malians thing. So I'll get some taken soon, and get them up here somehow. Until then, we have lots of thin trees with white trunks and big leaves, the ground is orange, I've seen two terrifying red bugs, one of which was the most gigantic tic I've ever seen, they feed us all the time, and its not nearly as hot as I thought it was going to be.
I wish you well.

You've just landed!

Hi Kelly - Just noted that your flight has just landed in Bamako! Welcome there - we miss you here.

You have comments on your original entry!

Eager to hear from you. the Fam

Hello, Friends

Well, friends, tomorrow is the big day for me - I ship out from Colorado Springs to Philadelphia for a couple days. There is a lot of confusion here about what's going on for me the next few months, and I don't really know either, but I can let you know what I do know.

I'm going to be in Philly until next Wednesday, with all the people who are going to Mali with me. There are only going to be people who will end up in Mali, and we will not all go to the exact same place, but we are all going to train together. While we are Philly we will get to know each other, learn how to be safe, learn how not to be sad, and get shot. Then we will fly to Mali through Paris. I figure that airport food in Charles de Gaulle will probably be delicious, and I am taking Euros for just that experience. After we get to Mali our in-country training starts. There is a big central training compound where we will start out, but in very short order we are going to be farmed out to private families to learn what it is to be Malian. At that time we will have very, very little language in common with our host families. I've heard rumor that I express myself well, anyway - we'll see how that holds up. While we are living with our host families, we will be taking language lessons, cultural lessons, and technical lessons. As I understand it, we are going to be having language classes in both French and Bambara, which is the Malian language that 80% of the population speaks. As for technical training, I don't know exactly what that will entail. I am in the natural resources sector, which ranges all the way from forestry and agriculture to water resources. Some people end up building fish farms. I'll let you know about that. And then, after we've been living with a Malian family for a while, we take a test to determine whether or not we are competent, and if we are deemed so, we are sworn is as Peace Corps Volunteers. This will occur in September. So that means, if you are up on your calendar, that we are going to be living in Muslim households during Ramadan. PC says that they have made arrangements that we can still eat even if our hosts are fasting, and then at the end of the month there will be a big party. That will be fun and interesting. After we are sworn is as PCVs (which means Peace Corps Volunteer) we will move to our permanent site, which is somewhere other than where we have been, and start doing our jobs.

So that's all I know that is going to happen for the next few months. Have a great rest of your summer here! (We've had a heat wave the past few days in Colorado Springs, and yesterday I went out to run at 2ish, and I thought 'It is way too hot to run!' and then I thought, 'You better toughen up real quick here, Kelly!')