Christmas Wishes and Site Visits

Merry Christmas everybody!  We are all here at our training facility celebrating together and it has me thinking of all of you, missing you, and hoping you're enjoying all the holiday cheer.  It doesn't really seem like Christmas here, but some of the other trainees have spruced up the place with garland, a tiny Christmas tree and an ipod playing Christmas music in the background.  It's quite a nice setting for telling you about our recent adventure across Mali.

Last week, we returned from our site visits.  After we swear in as volunteers, each of us will be placed in our own communities, and this was our first chance to go visit and see what's in store for us during our service as Peace Corps volunteers.

I am completely in awe of the beautiful little community where I will live for the next two years.
It is located in western Mali near the border of Senegal.  It took
about 7 to 8 hours to get there from the capital and oh what an
adventure it was.  First of all, we showed up at the bus station
before sunrise and we waited and watched while the transportation
staff prepared the bus for our departure.  With my background being in
safety and health, watching the bus preparation greatly contributed to
the hours of anxiety that followed.  Now this bus was just your
regular, run of the mill, greyhound type passenger bus.  I found it
strange the amount of crap they loaded onto the top of this bus;
baggage, trunks, furniture, bicycles, bags of produce, and even a
refrigerator.  The part that really had me trippin’ was when they
topped it all off by loading two full sized motorcycles onto the roof.
This involved three guys manually lifting these roadsters up while
standing on a rickety metal table that was just asking to buckle
inward and crush them in an instant.  I couldn’t stop watching.
Surprisingly, nothing happened, no one was crushed, and we eventually
boarded the bus.  The bus was scheduled to leave at 6:00am.  At
7:45am, after a last minute, traumatizing trip to the public toilette, we were on our way.

With every bump in the road, we could
hear the roof above our heads giving a little bit, and we discussed
our different options for diving under the seats if the roof caved in
on us.  All the while, we wondered if our reflexes would get us to
safe ground given the fact that the load rating for the bus
rooftop was surely surpassed with the refrigerator and all the trunks and baggage full of only Allah knows what, let alone calculating the weight of the motorcycles into
the mix.

At each of our stops, vendors would rush the bus to sell their goods;
vegetables, fruit, cookies, baked goods, bowls of meat, fish, sodas,
bags of water, etc.  During one of our longer stops, I found it
interesting that some people rolled out their mats and prayed on the
side of the road as we waited to get going again.  I was
impressed with their faith and dedication.  And I also hoped, like me,
they were saying an extra prayer that the roof maintained until we
made it to our destination.  Needless to say, we made it safely, and
when I got off the bus, I quickly realized what a magical place I was
walking into.  The landscape had dramatically changed from the capital
region.  There were mountains, rivers, grasslands, and the most
amazing trees I’ve ever seen in my life.  I’ve always been fascinated
with baobab trees, and as we descended into the region where my
village is located, there they were, baobab trees, the trees of life, towering over all
the other trees on the hillsides.

As I arrived and exited the bus, my Peace Corps work partner, Djaba Madi, immediately started introducing me to people.  It was such a whirlwind.  About 30 kids met us at the road and ushered us
into the village where we went directly to meet with the village
elders and the village chief, the Dugutiki.  The whole experience felt
very surreal.  One particular gentleman came shuffling over and
immediately broke into dance and expressed his excitement for having a
new guest in their village.  They then told me about a Malian proverb
that says when a person leaves their own country to come to theirs, they
take it upon themselves to keep that visitor safe and make them feel
as if they are in their new home.  I definitely felt this way.  I felt
very welcome, very safe, and very fortunate to be experiencing this
moment with them.  Luckily, my regional Peace Corps coordinator was
there to help translate because eh Allah!  My language skills, at this
point, are flat out terrifying.

After the welcome ceremony, I made my way back to my home base which consists of two huts, a concession (dusty courtyard), my own private bathroom with a sun/moon roof, and the most spectacular view of the most beautiful baobab tree I’ve ever seen...which had only been 4 total up to this point.

I was so overwhelmed with my new huts and my new village I didn’t even realize
there were still 30 kids surrounding me.  At this point, I looked
around and there they were, just staring at me.  I have to admit.  It was a
bit awkward.  With what little language skills I could muster up, I
managed to ask them, “What are you all doing?”  To which they all just
sort of shrugged their shoulders.  Then I was at a loss…the only other
word that bubbled up was, “Balon?” which means soccer.  Lesson #1 –
this is a magical word.  As soon as it left my lips, all 30 of them
erupted into cheers and they grabbed my hand and we took off running.  They lead me to the
soccer field which is right next door to my house.  I immediately became the
goalkeeper for the most disorganized game of soccer I’ve ever participated in, in
my entire life.  It was a free for all.  No one was on defense except for me,
and they all wanted a chance to take a shot at the female toubab
goalkeeper.  I made some good saves, and they made even better goals.
We played until the sunset, and then I headed back home.  I bucket showered
and then a number of different families brought me dinner to welcome
me to the community.  After that, a few of the older women came over
with giant gourds full of peanuts, and we sat and chatted and shelled
peanuts under the stars.  It reminded me of shelling peanuts with my grandma and
grandpa in West Tennessee.  I thought of that old saying, “you can
take the girl outta the country, but you can’t take the country outta
the girl.”  At this moment, I felt strangely at home in a place
farther from my home than I’ve ever been.

The next couple days were spent meeting people in my community,
taking tours of our beautiful gardens, mango plantations, and the
surrounding villages.  The week flew by and I cannot wait to go back
and get started working.  My community is known in the region for having very talented gardeners and farmers; however, they need some assistance with organizing themselves.  This is where I come into the picture.  The volunteering begins with spending the first three months
working on language within my community, observing, participating in
daily activities, and building relationships.  What a whirlwind.  What
an amazing experience.  Now, I just gotta get through the last two
weeks of training.  Wish me luck.

I'll post some photos on facebook and email.  Again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!  I miss you all terribly.  Please drink some egg nog for me, I haven't been able to score any of that here.  :)

Free time, what's that?

Finally!  I have some free time and decent internet to post to my blog.  Oh mali – what an experience it’s been so far.  We’re in the midst of training and living in our homestay communities.  there are so many donkeys, and chickens, and sheep, and goats, and ducks, and guinea fowl, and bats and bugs, and lizards, and toads, and birds, and kids, and farmers, and dancers and singers, and soccer players, and gorgeous sunrises over the niger river, and sunsets as i'm standing outside bucket bathing listening to the call to prayer for the mosque nearby my house. 

this experience is everything i wanted it to be and more and it has only just begun.

we found out our permanent site placements today and on monday i get to go visit.  tomorrow i'll meet my counterpart from the community where i will be living and we're traveling there together for a week then returning to the capital region.  i'm so excited because i will be within bike riding distance to the senegal border.  my community only has 500 people, and they've requested help with vegetable gardening, tree nurseries, mango processing, rice farming, and fish farming.  all of these things make me so happy.  i'll have more to report once i actually have been there and seen what's really going on.  apparently there's a lot of gold mining nearby my village, so maybe there will be some worker safety in my future still :)

i spend evenings after long days of language class hanging out with the family, i have two moms and there are 5 kids in our family.  we dance, sing, laugh, they mainly laugh at me and point alot, and they teach me all their languages.  there are four spoken in my house - french, bambara, and malinke (two dialects).  in the mornings another trainee and i go running before the sun rises and there are always burning piles of trash as i jog through town to get to the surrounding agricultural fields along the canal.  there are dark images moving slowly through the streets as i'm jogging and it's hard to make out if it's a woman hunched over sweeping, a man in his robe heading to the mosque, or if it's a donkey laying in the middle of the road.  it's always so surreal with the low light quality and smoke and dust.  i think  sometimes and wonder, oh, is that a woman sweeping? oh wait, no, it's a donkey, hey donkey. 

i ran over a rooster the other day on my way to class.  it made me think about that damn skunk I ran over in Fort Collins a couple years back. ha.  the rooster was pissed too.  turns out animals don't like it when you run over them with your bike.  it really just pisses them off.  that rooster had it coming though, crowing at 3am everyday. 

i can't believe it's already time for christmas.  it doesn't feel like christmas here at all. imagine that.  no sweet baby jesus anywhere.  it was mohammed's birthday on monday though and they sang happy birthday to him all night over the loud speaker.  well i'm not really sure if it was the happy birthday song, but i'm gonna go ahead and pretend like it was.  some of the guys in our group were saying it sounded like amateur night over the loudspeaker from the mosque near their house and that the imam was hacking up a lung.  they had me crying laughing talking about it.  hilarious.  we make light of situations to keep ourselves entertained.  no disrespect, just being silly.  we have quite the group.  40 of us total split between 6 villages.  we ride bikes and run to see eachother all the time to share stories. There are lots stories of poop talk and vomiting in awkward places.  my classmate vomited out the window of the bus last week.  he had a wall of malian children standing and watching the entire time...poor guy.  oh and yes, we poop in holes in the ground, also known as the nyegen.  my aim is getting better thank god.  and i steer clear of the nyegen at night as the roaches come out and they are ENORMOUS.  reminds me of memphis. 

overall, i'm having a wonderful time and find the malian people to be so full of life and full of joy and absolutely beautiful!  i'm so impressed with their linguistic abilities and realize i have a lot to learn.  i'm trying to take it day by day, dondi, dondi.  i want to know it all now, but i can't. 

big hugs to you my friends and family.  i love you so much.  hopefully we can chat soon.  i send you messages nightly via the moon.

oh and i have a new name.  my malian name, goundo keita.

k'an ben kofe