Long time coming

I see it has been a couple months since the last time I posted on this blog. In fact, I was chatting with Ryan the other day, and he very pointedly said, I see you haven't posted anything new on your blog... Well, I've been meaning to sit down and write a really nice entry, but it's been a busy time, and now it's been so long since I've written anything that I lose my momentum after just a little while. So instead of writing you a really nice entry, I'm just going to give you a really quick overview. But there is good, good news. My mother tried to teach me how to resize photos a little while ago, and I didn't really learn, but then necessity forced me to really learn it afterall. So now I know how to resize photos, and that will make it much easier to upload them. So I will do that sometime.

I did, indeed, go to America, and it was fantastic. America really is a great country. And I'm not only talking about the concrete and the steel, though that is a good thing, too. It was really crazy while I was home - had to graduate people, marry other people off, and drive all around the country and then the state. And I had to go to Kennywood. Which was fantastic. I went on almost every single rollercoaster and didn't even cry once!

But now I've been back in Mali for over a month. Wow, I didn't even realize that. Good for me. And I've been busy here, too, even though some of you think, yeah right, all you do these days is be online. Well, yeah, there's been a lot of being online, but that is because I have set up shop at Tubaniso. You see, our new trainees are coming in tonight. Alyssa said this morning "I couldn't sleep last night. It was like the night before Christmas and all I could think was 'Santa is bringing me friends!'" So we are excited about them getting here, but it turns out that organizing and preparing for a training like this is a HUGE ordeal, and we have been working our little fingers and other things off since I got back from America. Hopefully we are ready for them. And if we aren't, hopefully they are forgiving.

I did get to go back to my site for about a week during all this, and it was nice to be back. It actually wasn't great, because our well ran dry. A manye dat! There was still water in town, just not in our concession. I went with Adissi and Abi to go get water, because we had to go to the neighbors and pull it out of their well and put it on our heads and bring it back and put it in a big barrel in our concession. So they carried these giant twenty gallon jugs on their heads. I, on the otherhand, carried a salad bowl half full of water on my head. I tried to convince Addisi that I could carry a salad bowl entirely full of water on my head, but the one time she let me try I spilled three-quarters of it and ended up with less water on my head than when I started. So she went back to only letting me carry half a bowl full. Despite the fact that I was useless more than helpful, everybody seems to have been quite impressed and very appreciative. Hmm.

And then, as you know, we had the dual occurance of the death of Michael Jackson and the Fourth of July, so I got another weekend off for that. Michael Jackson dying was pretty funny in Mali, (sorry, that sounds harsh now that its out there), because while it didn't really affect us volunteers all that much, it seems to have devastated a lot of Malians that it didn't devastate us. They are curious folk. So we went to a place in Mali that isn't really very much like Mali for the Fourth of July. It is called Manantali, and the thing that sets it apart is that it has a nice, large, German-built hydroelectric dam. The electricity, of course, is sold out of country. But it was beautiful. And downstream of the river is the frequent haunt of hippos! So I saw some hippos. Hippos, if you don't know, are extremely dangerous and could kill you if they cross you and are very, very fast runners, but actually prefer cabbage to people. I know all this because I read Congo. We played cards, dressed in red white and blue, looked at the hippos, and roasted and then ate a pig. It was a lovely celebration of independence.

Independence Day was interesting here, because the Malians were shocked that we had to have one, too. They were shocked, but I think they were impressed. I think it made them feel like I had a little more legitimacy. So those were some interesting conversations.

Oh, and we got lucky enough to go to Manantali from Bamako in a Peace Corps vehicle, so it took us about five hours or so. We had to take public transport back, though, and it was a more than ten hour journey. Aahh, Mali!