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.