In Service Training

Howdy!
We’ve been back at our training center outside of Bamako for the past two and a half weeks doing an In Service Training. In the past, PC conducted a two-week training in January and a one week refresh/remotivate course in April, but this year they decided that it’d be easiest to combine them into one. So here we are, attending sessions every day from 8am-5/6pm for three weeks. It’s been a long three weeks, but we’re chock full of ideas to take back to our villages to work on. Our homologues (the people we’re supposed to work with in village) have been here studying and attending sessions with us since Sunday morning. It’s nice because it gives the Malians a chance to learn about Peace Corps, our methodology, and I think (at least I hope) they’re actually learning things that’ll be helpful when we go back to our villages together. My first project will be to create a health committee to run the maternity in my village. Someone needs to be responsible for making the important decisions there, and it can’t and won’t be me, although sometimes I think that’s the impression my village has of my job here.

Additionally, training gives our homologues a chance to see us in our “element” (or as close as our “element” as we get in Mali). That means that we’re with our American friends, wearing normal clothes (I don’t usually wear pants in village, but have worn almost exclusively pants in the past few weeks), and eating American-style foods. We get Malian rice and sauce dishes for lunch everyday, which is fine because we typically get more American dinners. We had pizza last night (my homologue had no idea what it was, but thought it was good), and we have salad and dressing at every meal (Malians don’t usually eat American style salads). It’s funny watching the Malians fill their plates at meals because a lot of them don’t have any idea of portion control. Our theory is that since they’ve always eaten out of communal bowls with their hands, they’ve never had to visualize how much they’re actually eating. We’ve seen lots of Malians with plates piled high with food that they’ll never be able to finish.

In other news, it’s been cold here! They told us that January got cold, but we didn’t realize that it actually got cold! It’s been getting down into the low 50’s at night, and it wasn’t higher than 80* during the day for the past few weeks. It was definitely a welcome relief!

In between sessions (and sometimes during – ssshhh!), we’ve been planning trips and thinking about ways to avoid the awful hot season that is fast approaching. My friends and I have settled on a trip to Ghana in May, and I also decided recently (and I’m about 90% sure about this) that I’ll be coming home in July. They’re both a long way away, but they’ll give me something to look forward to during the long days in village, and will hopefully give me a chance to soak in some un-Malian food and culture. Although I should note here that Mali is slowly becoming more and more normal. It might have something to do with the fact that I haven’t been in my village since before Christmas, but it seems like the things that were weird before aren’t so weird anymore. We’re coming to appreciate a new kind of normal, which is both comforting and terrifying at the same time.

I keep trying to upload pictures (really, I do!) but the internet here is way too slow to make that possible. I’ll keep trying.