Well hello there technological world… it’s been a while. We got back to Tubaniso yesterday after being at homestay (with a few short fieldtrips) for 19 days. The most exciting news: I will be living in the Sikasso region of Mali for the next two years. Due to security this-and-thats, I can’t put exactly where on here. I visit my site in a few days, so I’ll post more about that after I get back from that visit.

Homestay has been going well. My stomach and I weren’t getting along very well the first time around, but I didn’t have any big problems this time around. A few people have gotten different sorts of fun digestive infections from food and/or water. After hearing about them, I’m really glad that hasn’t happened to me (yet…). Most days during homestay, I get up around 6:45, take a bucket bath, say greetings to my family, eat some white bread (with or without a boiled egg) and instant coffee for breakfast, and then head to school at 8:00. The school is about a 10 minute walk away, and along the way I’m usually met by a ton of children screaming “Tubaboo!” (white person/foreigner) and some goats. I go back home around 12:30 for lunch, hang out with whatever family members are around that day, nap, clean my room, etc. until going back to school at 2:30/3:00. Class is over at 5:00, but I usually hang out with the other PCTs until 6:00 or so. Then I head home to journal, read, take a bucket bath, chat with the family, etc. until bedtime. which is 9:00 (yes, I am 21 years old and going to bed at 9:00 pm). Nothing very interesting, just… life.

There were a few days where we got away from Banankoro for one reason or the other. One day we went to another village to learn about mural painting and ameliorated porridge (there should be a tagged picture of me with my first mural on facebook). The Sunday before last, we took a trip into the city to eat lunch at the American Club and visit the Malian museum. It was nice to get away from the village for a day, but the day was a little too packed. We couldn’t all go to the American Club at once b/c there are too many of us, but even at half and half the food took a long time and they ran out of stuff (like ice cream ☹). Another day, we went to talk to the environment volunteers about community gardening and how we (health volunteers) can push different gardening practices. Afterwards, we convinced the driver to let us go out to eat in Bamako. The last Tubab restaurant that we went to had been a little of a let down for me, so I was trying to not get too excited. But then I got to eat soft serve ice cream and real pizza. With sauce, veggies, and cheese. It was an amazing moment. I’m just going to leave it at that.

Every day tends to go slowly here, because the pace of life is just a lot slower (especially when it’s raining. Mornings when it’s raining, I expect my bath water and breakfast to be late enough to make me late for school. Malians hate the rain), but it’s hard to believe that I’ve already been here over a month and that I’m done with training in less than a month. I feel excited to start being a volunteer and move to my site, but I do not feel close to ready in my language abilities or my health education volunteer abilities. The first three months at site are for getting to know my community, integrating myself, working on language skills, and assessing the community’s needs, but no actual projects. Apparently I’ll be spending a lot of time reading. Its got its pros and cons, this time thing. It's really nice to not be stressed about getting everything you can done in a day, but it's also very frustrating to expect something to happen at one time, and then a couple hours later people start moving around to maybe think about starting. lessons in patience.

Malians have this cultural... thing called joking cousins. There are only so many last names, and every person with X last name is a joking cousin with people with Y & Z last names. So, when you meet someone with the last name of one of your joking cousins, you call each other bean eaters or donkeys or dog eaters. seriously. Apparently it was established to diffuse conflict or something... make everyone call each other names and laugh about it, so they have to get along. It's kinda fun, and when a vendor is giving you a really bad price because you're a Tubab, you can joke with them about their last name to get a better price out of them. So that's a fun tidbit.

I'll try to structure my journal entries better in the future. That may or may not work out.

Peace & Love