Site Visit

Last Sunday we got up at 4:30 in the morning to catch a 10 hour bus ride up to Mopti from Bamako. All in all the bus was pretty good, just really, REALLY hot. We took a nice bus up to Mopti, one that passed out juice boxes and a sweet bread/ cake thing in the morning. It was also equipped with a thermometer to remind us of the heat and fact we did not have air conditioning, nor windows… I think we maxed out at 54 degrees Celsius… I haven’t done the conversion but it was hot. Lots of stops with snacks along the route broke up the journey. The only unplanned stop was for a flat in the morning but the driver was quick to change the tire and we kept on our way. We got into Sevare (the transit house for Mopti region) around 6pm so I stayed the night in the breeze on the roof of the house. The next morning I got a ride from Peace Corps to my site and got the keys to my house! It's a two room mud house with a private yard....

Kouna (Koo-nah) is 12km from the road to Bamako. There’s a somewhat decent gravel road leading out to the village which I assume will become shorter and shorter as I get better at the ride. I met my homologue at my house and spent the rest of the day hanging around with some other men in front of the bikiti (little convenience store) behind my house. From wanderings on foot and by bike both alone and with my homologue, I got a little idea of the surrounding area. There’s a river 1-2km away right now but I understand that come rainy season (June- Septemberish) the river floods and will be almost right behind my village.

There is no market in my town except a small Saturday market which I didn’t see because I was there only from Monday to Friday, and a large market on Sundays at Soumandougou, the village 12km away from me on the road to Bamako. There are a few gardens in the village, as well as a school, new maternity (finished in November 2010 and powered with solar and batteries) and a mango tree orchard. Mangoes are becoming more and more accessible but I have yet to see anything but small, green unripe mangoes on the trees nearby.

Friday I rode with my homologue to Soumandougou where I caught public transport (crowded white van) to Sevare to meet up with the other PCTrainees and Volunteers in the area. From the transit house we walked to a hotel maybe 2 km away and paid 2000 (4 dollars or so) to swim in the pool all afternoon. There was no one in the hotel so it definitely felt like a private party. Pools are amazing. As is sunscreen.

The next morning we got onto another bus for the 10 hour trip back to Bamako and Tubaniso. Yesterday, Sunday, we had a completely free day here so I went into Bamako in the afternoon with three friends. The visit consisted mainly of wandering around, eating ice cream and pizza and finally ending up at a Toubab store. Our taxi driver on the way back tried to rip us off royally but with the help of two security guards at Tubaniso and a PC Volunteer Trainer we were able to avoid most of it. In short, we agreed on 5,000 CFA for the driver to take us to Tubaniso. It’s pretty expensive but Tubaniso is pretty far from downtown Bamako, where we were, and this was the second cab to give us that price and would not negotiate any lower (although we definitely  tried…). We stopped on the way to get gas and the driver asked for us to give him the money then. We did. When we arrived at Tubaniso he got out of the car with us and said we still owed him 10,000 CFA! Just to put this into perspective, I bought a ticket for the 10 hour bus ride to Mopti for 7,000 CFA. Basically, I could have gone to Mopti and back for the price he was asking! It was ridiculous. The guards tried to help us out but they wouldn’t give us any advice, they merely translated. We called a PCV who came out and finally negotiated it so we gave him an extra 1,000 CFA to appease him. The whole negotiation took about half an hour but in the end it turned out fine. After he left I asked the guard what he thought and he said the driver was just trying to rip us off because we were white… Ah, what a trip. (Just a quick note though… this was my first instance of a Malian triy9ing to royally rip me off and the other cab driver we had was really nice and Fulani so I left the car with a new friend! Mali, as is in the US and everywhere, is comprised of soooo very many personalities and I don’t mean to give a bad impression!)

Tomorrow we head back to our homestay families and villages for 2 more weeks of language classes before swearing in and actual Peace Corps service begins and I begin the quest to balance cultural integration and maintaining myself as an individual. 

Homestay part 2, and SITE announcements!

WOOT WHOOOO! Passed the one month date! I’m feeling pretty accomplished now… and significantly less of a silent mute. Not a lot but I have gotten really awesome at the smile, head shake and “mi famay” (I don’t understand). So, an update since the last post… I went back to my home stay site (Niamana, a village of about 3,000, just outside of Bamako) and went back to the daily grind of 6-8 hours of language classes and field trips for various health-related activities and back to my host family at night to sit, watch and occasionally mumble a few somewhat comprehensible words. My family has stopped feeding me toh every  night, which I can’t say I am sorry about, but they still prepare it for themselves so I have become the sifter. To make toh, you have to grind up the millet into a powder and sift the whole thing so you don’t have any big particles. Apparently I have gotten the sifting down so even though I now eat beans (black eyed ) every night for dinner (bought from a man not too far away), I do a lot of millet sifting.

Health Training: Some of the health field trips have been super interesting. We painted a mural on the wall of the nygere (toilet/ hole in the ground/ bathroom)of a school. I think it turned out pretty well; it was a community health message that people should wash their hands with soap, before cooking, before eating and after using the nygere (because somehow people haven’t quite put it together that using your left hand in the nygere and eating with your right might not be a fool proof way to avoid certain illnesses... That and the fly issue… When your hole is left uncovered, or the bathroom is just in the field… flies swarm, right? Well they swarm there and then they also swarm around food… without washing their feet in between… if you catch my drift.

We also had a baby weighing session at the maternity in my village where we weighed 35 babies in a morning (pretty successful with only three babies in the red zone – malnourished). The following day we invited the women back to the maternity where we cooked a gigantic pot of ameliorated porridge comprised of ground millet, ground rice, ground corn, ground peanuts, sugar, salt and limes for the women and their babies to eat.

Okay… the big one…: SITE ANNOUNCEMENTS! We got picked up from homestay sites on Wednesday and found out our sites! I will be going to Kouna, south east of the city of Mopti. Apparently its population is about 3,000 and I will be working at a CSCOM (Community clinic) promoting maternal and child health and nutrition education and I guess there is a woman’s association that wants to garden! I’m really really excited about this prospect.

In addition, our homologues (Malian counterparts at our site) came into Tubaniso yesterday and this morning I met mine! I seem to have the good fortune to be matched up with another extremely old man (probably the same age as my host father… which is pretty old.) He is a relay in Kouna, acting like a health education contact in the village… I’m still a  bit unclear about the job of relays because I know they are unpaid volunteers. His name is Mama Nerakoumana and has one wife and five kids. In terms of appearance, he is about as Fulani as they get (or so I imagine) and while I think he has a few inches on me and more than a few years on me, he is almost certainly lighter than I am.

My village is 38km from my banking town, Severay, and a 12 km bike ride to the main road where there is a daily market. I guess Kouna has a market only on Saturdays. Which should be interesting.

Plan: I’ll stay at Tubaniso until Sunday morning then take public transportation the 675km northeast to Mopti with my homologu, the other volunteers in the region and their homologues, oh, and my BIKE. I expect to come home super buff from tossing my trek mountain bike up on the tops of buses for long and hot and probably unpleasant bus trips. Pretty nervous and also really excited to go to site! I’ll stay there a couple days, meet the dugutiki (village chief, also my new host family) and meet people in the community then I have to be back at Tubaniso by Saturday for another couple days and then back to homestay (Niamana this time) for two more weeks of language training until swear in (when we become actual volunteers instead of mere trainees)… Hopefully I’ll be able to post on my site in about a week! Fingers crossed!

Weather… So I thought I was done… but I can’t end without making a note of how hot it’s getting. I now bathe 2 times a day if you don’t count the bath in my own sweat every night.

Skype name: susiev9