My Site...and more

Sorry it's been almost a month since I last posted, but things are crazy hectic over here...and access to internet has been rather limited.

Training is going well, and believe it or not...it will be over in 2 weeks and 2 days!! "Swear in" is on September 10th, which means I will finally become an official Peace Corps Volunteer (this whole time I've only been a PCT - Peace Corps Trainee). I'll have my big tests just before that to see if I'm well prepared to be dumped off to my site all by myself :).

Ok, to step back a little, I got my Peace Corps bicycle last time I was at homestay, which was a VERY exciting moment in time! I finally felt like I could have some freedom and get some exercise all at the same time. Myself and some of the other guys hopped on the bikes right away and went for a ride for about four hours...it was great! We rode to a neighboring town where we could buy cold sodas and cookies, and then visited some other PCT's in that same town.

The following day, myself and those same guys all went riding to the Niger river to visit my host brother at work, where they go out in canoes and excavate sand from the bottom of the river. Two of us went out in the canoes with him, and tried our hands at it :). I have some video footage of me in action, but it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to share that with you right now because I can hardly get photos loaded up! To paint a picture for you, these canoes are handcarved out of wood, and are propelled by looong poles that are thrown to the river bed, and then used to push off the ground. Now, it sounds easy, but managing a 20 ft. stick while balancing barefoot on the tip of the canoe, it takes some getting used to :). I did it for a while and would rotate off with my host brother. I almost fell in once...but caught myself, ha ha.

So, to excavate the sand, there is a guy swimming in the river who dives down to the bottom with a bucket, sets the bucket in the sand, then the guys in the boat stand on the edge of the canoe barefoot and pull the bucket full of sand and water up from the river bed. Standing on the edge and hauling the bucket up is what I have a video clip of myself doing, so hopefully I'll be able to share it with you at some point :).

Ok, I need to jump around a bit because I don't have much time left here...and I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go back to homestay for 10 days.

All of us finally got our site assignments (where we're going to be for the next 2 years), and we also went on site visits to go see our houses, set up bank accounts, post boxes, and meet some people in the community. My region in Mali is known as Koulikoro, and my town is called Soucourani, which is about 45km from my banking town, Dioila. If you wanted to see where I'll be, you can search "Dioila, Mali" on google maps and get an idea...it's really cool! As you'll see in the pictures, I had an awesome welcome ceremony in my community, with dancing, singing, drumming, and other percussive instruments that I didn't know existed...but I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them :).

My house is mud/concrete with a tin roof, and has a straw hut out front for shade. No, there's no running water, toilet, electricity, cell phone service, or any of that jazz...so I think I just eliminated a list of people who MAY have come to visit me :). The house is two rooms...concrete boxes really (each a bit bigger than 10x10), with one window in each, and a tin roof. The area I'm in is beautiful, with lots of vegetation and some awesome huge trees! I'm so happy to be in a country where 2/3 of the land is the Sahara Desert, yet I'm in an area with plant life, woo hoo! (just get me a beach and I'll be all set)

My village only has 425 people...which is still the smallest village I've heard yet out of all the new volunteers! I have a feeling that by the end of two years it will be a place where "everyone knows your name" (to the tune of Cheers). Since I'm in such a remote area, there's only reliable transport to my banking town once a week (on Saturdays), which is also market day...so it will enable me to do all of my "grocery" shopping on that day. Since there wasn't any public transportation running the day that I left my site, I got to ride my bike 40 km, with a 40 lb. pack on my back...on my 40th day in Mali :).

Because of this 40, 40, 40 coincidence, I was going to title this blog post "In the 40's" but I didn't want people to read that and think it was cold here and that everything was fine and not even read my post, ha ha. I made the trek with two other people, and one of them got a flat tire during the ride, so it definitely slowed us down a bit. We pulled over and patched it up, but the patch that he had on him was old and not so good, so the tire wouldn't hold any air. We eventually found a place that could fix the tire for us (very luckily), and we were on our way. The total trip took just about 5 hours and 15 minutes, but we also stopped in there for a bit of a food break to eat some bread, peanut butter, and oranges (little yellow/green ones, not the nice big orange ones Florida produces, ha ha).

Long story short, we made it alive...and without hemorrhoids, ha ha (the extra 40 pounds pushing my butt on the bike seat wasn't so comfy...to say the least).

Ok, I have to go. Thank you again to everyone who reads this mess of ramblings, and for those who leave comments. It is most encouraging to hear from you all, and I really appreciate it. I'll write again when I can...enjoy the few pictures I was able to upload :).

Peace Corps Training Center - aka Tubaniso or "Camp Peace Corps"

Me climbing rocks in my homestay town, Soundougouba. Yes, that's a mosque in the bottom right. Mali is a Muslim country if you didn't already know!

My classroom where I learn how to speak Bambara.

What I see when I look out my classroom window :).

This is in my room at homestay...I get to see stars during the day! (Translation...there are holes in my roof, so the light shines through making dots on my walls that I pretend are stars, ha ha).

Me and another PCT climbing rocks in Soundougouba.

Me at Tubaniso at mealtime when I had amoebas...I'm happily holding my first dose of medication :).

The group of PCT's who will be spending the next two years in the Koulikoro Region of Mali, woo hoo!

Summing up the first stint at homestay

Well, the past two weeks have been both educational and challenging, with lots of language learning (about 9 hours/day combining Bambara classes and practicing with my host family) and lots of getting sick, woo hoo :).

My day starts each morning with one of my “family” members tapping on the door to my room at 6:30AM to wake me. They’re awake way before that, but it takes me so long to fall asleep at night that I usually will sleep until I get the wake-up call.

Sleeping has definitely been one of the more challenging things of the past two weeks. I’ve been finding it extremely difficult to fall asleep being that my room is a hot box to the point that sweat is pouring out from my skin, even though I’m laying perfectly still. I have a small, one square foot, window and I leave my door open at night with the screen door shut, but I can’t feel any of the breeze that passes through the window unless I stand up right in front of it (and sometimes there’s no breeze at all…and I’m using the term “breeze” very loosely, it’s not the cool refreshing kind you’re thinking of :). Ok, I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here, but I’ll just say that my initial plan was to fan myself to sleep with this little weaved, bamboo-like, fan I was given. It feels good, but I have to move my arm to fan myself, so I sweat from all the movement (yes, I can sense all of your jealousy now).

So, after not sleeping very much for several nights, I decide to set my mosquito net up outside and lay my mat down on the dirt where I can feel that cross breeze in all its greatness. My “brothers” stayed up late listening to a radio, playing with their cell phone ring tones, talking, and playing checkers (well, their version involves many moves that I never thought could be done on a checker board). As a result, it still took me a long time to fall asleep…but it was much cooler outside. Then, a nice big fat rainstorm rolled in and hit hard, waking me up to frantically take down my mosquito net, grab my bedding, and sprint back into the hotbox. Back to square one, woo hoo :).

Ok, enough on the sleeping subject, but I needed to preface everything with that because doing everything during the day on minimal amounts of sleep just adds to the excitement :).

Back to the beginning…my day starts each morning with the tap on my door. I then put my bathing bucket outside my door, someone takes it, fills it up and puts it in the bathroom/shower area (an 8’ x 8’ concrete slab with block walls all around and no roof). Once the bucket is planted, I go take a bucket bath. By the time I’m back in my room and just about fully dressed, there’s another knock at my door with my mom holding a bowl of boiling water and a piece of bread. I have a little tin of instant coffee that I mix the boiling water with…and voila, coffee and bread for breakfast.

I leave my room, greet my host dad, say good morning to everyone else in my family (about 15 people), and then say good bye and head to school. I’m the furthest volunteer out on the main street, so I have the longest walk to school…about 10-15 minutes. What often lengthens my trip is the fact that in Malian culture, you have to greet EVERYONE that you pass in your travels. And since everyone sits outside all the time, the numbers add up quickly. Oh, and when I say “greet”, it’s not just a ‘good morning’ but: “Good morning” – “Good morning” – “Was the night peaceful?” – “Yes, the night was peaceful” – “How is your family” – “My family is fine” – “How are you?” – “I’m fine” – “How is your mother, how is your father?” – “They’re both fine” – “See you” – “See you”. It’s funny because this is also the same greeting I have with my host dad when I greet him in the morning, and it doesn’t make sense for him to ask about my family and my Mom and Dad when I just woke up and he knows I haven’t spoken to them since I said good night to him, ha ha. But, that’s the way it goes :).

So, school consists of a concrete structure for a classroom with some oldschool desks, a chalkboard, and windows which are essential because there’s no electricity and the only lighting is the natural lighting coming through the windows. There’s 3 kids in my class (including myself) and 4 kids in the other class. The language training is all about constant conversation, either student to teacher or student to student, applying whatever was just taught to us. It’s very tiring, but very effective…and I can feel my language improving.

Now, just when I thought I was getting acclimated to this new routine, I started feeling sick. I couldn’t eat anything for breakfast and then I laid on the floor of the classroom for the entire morning session (4 hours) trying to participate but was just too nauseous to be involved. After the morning session my teacher had me call the Peace Corps doctor, who told me to get some bananas and oranges, and to just take it easy for the rest of the day. I had absolutely no energy to even walk back home, so my teacher hailed me a donkey and a cart that were rolling by with two Malian women who were coming back from the market. I rode back and then slept at my house for the remainder of the day, waking up whenever someone would come home and ask me how I was feeling and what was the matter (well, I’m assuming this is what they were asking…remember I can hardly communicate with these people!).

For the next couple of days, all I did was lay down and sleep all day, then sleep all night. I didn’t think it was possible to sleep all day and all night, but my body was definitely trying to conquer something. The only thing I ate over this period was a couple of bananas and an orange here and there, and later on my teacher got me some little, plain, biscuit-like crackers that kind of taste like animal crackers. Oh, I guess I shouldn’t say that I’d lay down all day and night, because I also landed up having diarrhea, which had me sprinting to the bathroom about 10 times per day, but I’d get nauseous from standing up, so I’d have to make it quick and then lay back down immediately, fun, fun :). I'm not leaving out the little details...have you noticed?

After being rather miserable for a few days (the doctor and I both thought I had giardia from the symptoms), I finally woke up one morning and was starting to feel better. With that, one of the other volunteer’s dad walks to my room with a cell phone and hands it to me. On the other end is the Peace Corps doctor telling me that she heard I was feeling horrible, that I had tremors, and that she had a transport on its way to pick me up. I was very confused, and told her that that wasn’t true and that I was actually starting to feel better, not 100%, but definitely feeling better. I told her to cancel the transport and that I would see her on Sunday when all the volunteers head back to Tubaniso.

With that, I hung up the phone and my teacher pulls up to my room on his moto (moped). I told him about the phone call and that I cancelled the transport, and he seemed to be frustrated. I thought he’d be happy I was feeling better, but what I found out was that one of the other volunteers' dad went to him early in the morning to tell him how horrible I was feeling and that I was getting worse. He immediately called the doctor, who then called the transport to come and rescue me, ha ha. I don’t know where that guy got the idea that I was getting worse, but it definitely caused a bit of a ruckus. So, right after my teacher finds out that I’m ok, he rides away and very shortly after I hear a truck running outside…the transport. I guess he never got the message because he’s trying to get me to go with him, and I’m trying to explain to him that I’ll be ok, but we can’t communicate with each other. Somehow I get across the fact that I’ll go with him to the school so that my teacher can explain everything to him, so I hop in the truck and...sweet deal, Air-conditioning! Anyway, I have my teacher explain everything to the driver who understands and then leaves.

I'm going to jump ahead really quick because I need to go get some sleep. Getting back to Tubaniso (camp Peace Corps), my results came in from a stool sample I had sent in two days prior and I don't have giardia afterall, it's ameobas! Now, I think ameobas are the worst that you can get (stomach-wise), but there is medication you can take to flush out your system, so I was just happy to know what it was that I had, and that it could be treated and be done with.

So, as I type right now, I am two doses into my medication, and feeling significantly better, so no need to worry :). I'm leaving to go back to my homestay tomorrow morning and will be there for 12 days again, so I won't have internet until then.

Really quickly, I just want to mention that there are some awesome rock formations at my homestay where I would often go to climb with other volunteers just to get away, climb, and relax in some shade. It's like our safe-haven where we don't need to talk to people, so it's really great. I wanted to mention this part because looking back, most of what I wrote about wasn't necessarily good stuff. So, the rocks are good!

Thanks for reading and I'll update in 2 weeks!