this week, i saw into the future

Peace Corps Trainees (like myself) fanned out across Mali this week, as we all went to our respective sites for a peek into the future. We still have a month of training (it's hard to believe I've only been here a month!) before we officially swear in as Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV's), but I think PC wanted to give us a chance to test the waters before we're in for the real deal.

My site is beautiful! I'm in the southern, extremely verdant region of Mali, which is probably almost exactly the opposite of the Mali you picture in your head. No sand, no camels and no desert. Only green trees, rice paddies, and fruit, fruit, fruit! I think I got really lucky, although I'd bet that every single other volunteer (minus a few, maybe) is thanking their lucky stars at this point, too. I have my own concession/compound, which in Mali means that I have my own two-room house, a cooking house, as well as an outdoor toilet and wash area. I'm also lucky enough to have tall trees in my yard for shade, as well as a chicken coop. I'm not sure I'll be running out to get chickens any time soon, but I do know that I'm getting a cat in hopes that it will eat whatever runs around on my tin roof each night between the hours of 1-6am.

For those of you who've never had the pleasure of sleeping under a tin roof, let me explain. Most roofing material in my region of Mali is a very traditional thatched roof. Supposedly, tin roofing is expensive, and thus only wealthier people can afford it. So I'm lucky to have it. Or am I? Sleeping under a tin roof is usually great. The rain falls on it and (assuming it's not raining TOO hard, because then it sounds like you're in a jet engine), creates a rather melodic drum to lull you to sleep. The tin roof amplifies the sound of the --rain and makes it rather pleasant. It's like natures wave machine --you know the nature CD's you can buy with tracks like "mountain rain", or "rising tide" -- it's like a surround sound one of those for as long as the rain lasts. Well, i thought this was great until I realized that tin also amplifies other less desirable noises as well.

I have an UBO (unidentified banging organism) on my roof and I need to get rid of it presto-pronto. First I thought the banging, sqeaking, grinding, boring, pitter-pattering noises were mice crawling on the rafters. I wasn't too thrilled about this because I didn't want the mice running all over me! Truth be told, this is highly unrealistic, but when you're all alone at night in a new place, your mind starts to exaggerate. And then you get very little sleep. And that was only night one. So on the second night, I laid in bed with the 15 LED flashlight my host father had lent me (presumably to use while I was actually looking at things in the dark, not as an investigative tool) shining up at the ceiling and nothing moved while the banging continued. So then I breathed a sigh of relief, put in my ear plugs and went to sleep. But the third night was by far the worst. At around 4am, something THUNKED onto my roof and it proceeded to run around, squeak and attack something else on my roof. I even had ear plugs in and I woke up from the racket up above!! Since I had to get up at 5 to leave town anyway, I decided just to get up and make lots of noise until the sun came up in hopes that it would go away. And eventually it did, but I had to make quite a lot of noise before whatever-it-is left. And that morning, I left town, and am thanking my lucky stars every night now that I don't have a mouse/bat/lizard convention happening around above my head as I try to sleep.


And now for the nitty-gritty of my week: Peace Corps gives each volunteer a homologue and a host family at their in-country site. These two basically serve as a support system and resource network, especially in the beginning when everything is brand new. I have both, of course, and I cannot understand a word they say to me. It turns out that Bamako (the capital city) Bambara (the majority language) is very different from the Bambara in Sikasso (my region), and I don't understand a word they say! I spent a lot of time this past week watching people, and staring at people, and asking people to repeat what they'd just said. Most folks were really good natured about it, though. I'm excited about my time there, although it's unclear at this point what exactly I'll be doing. I'm slated to be a health volunteer, working with the local midwives at their office (a maternite, in French). But I got to site to find out that the maternite is being used as a grain storage area right now, which means that no babies are being born there. Whoops! But at least I know that there's work to be done, so I'm more motivated to learn the language so I can communicate and figure out what's going on in town.


That's about all for now. We head back to our homestay villages for 20 days on Tuesday, so I'll be MIA for a while. Hope all is well in the US -- drop me a line, I'm reading all my e-mails!!

B