Travelling!
So I realize it is now November and the holiday time in the US but I have some catching up to do. September and October was a lot of travelling and thus a lot of fun. Early September I went to a shea business bootcamp just outside of Bamako where we learned about shea, cooperatives and how and if they work here in Mali. I guess Burkina shea is superior to Mali shea so Mali doesn’t export much. Little by little maybe they will. The training was super interesting; we wrote business plans for shea groups in a week. So much more work than I anticipated but it felt good. Like school. EXCELLENT.
Then I went down to my friend’s site in Sikasso where we built a mud oven, then hopped on a 36 hour bus to GHANA! Coming from Mali, Ghana’s paradise. They have food, the beach, they are pretty nice and more used to white people (and thus less harassing). I was there for about 3 weeks and did a huge tour of Ghana which actually means a lot of time in buses but we were a good group and it was a blast. I went with 11 other girls to Kumasi, Dixcove (the green Turtle lodge – really nice), Cape Coast where we saw the castle… the holding place for the captured slaves before they got shipped off to the west, assuming they didn’t die in the crowded dungeons or on the ships. The casle was really pretty but disturbing too. The church was built on top of the male dungeons and the governors quarters were above that. So essentially, the governor lived in rooms that held 200+ men two stories down (separated by the church). Hmmmm not cool yo.
From Cape Coast we went to Accra to run the marathon! Well, ok so only one guy from PCMali ran the whole thing, most of us just did the half. Survived for sure. It was fun but there was no shortage of pedestrians and traffic throughout the entire run. Accra is a great city as well. Beautiful supermarket. And restaurants… We all ate a lot in Ghana. Oops. Most people went back to Mali after Accra but three friends and I, reluctant to leave Ghana, kept going. We went east to Hoe where we went to a monkey sanctuary (a monkey jumped on me for its banana! First time for everything!), and the tallest waterfalls in West Africa. It was incredible! The water was coming down so hard the splash was like a million needles in the back. But really an incredible experience. From Hoe we hopped on a little wooden boat across Lake Volta where we spent about 15minutes under tarps as the rain pummeled us and got a series of tro-tros (the white vans for public transportation) and another boat and more tro-tros to Kumasi. The next day we went up to Tamale and Mole national park. Unfortunately we didn’t see any elephants, only warthogs, antelopes, monkeys and the baboon that stole our bread as we swam in the hotel pool.
After Mole we spent another night in Tamale and went up to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. We rolled in and were immediately struck by how much it felt like Mali. Francophone for starters, in addition to really, over helpful people, much fewer paved roads and more dirt roads and the disappearance of Ghanaian quality street food. We did however, find an amazing restaurant run by an Italian man and his Ukrainian wife, called Cappuccino. I think we spent the majority of our day in Ouaga in the air conditioning, trying various pastries and salads… I completely understand how Peace Corps volunteers gain a lot of weight when they go home. Things just taste good. Our last night in Ouaga we were hanging out on the roof when we heard some music playing. It sounded live so we decided to follow it and ended up at a nearly empty bar, save for a few customers and an amazing band. We only made it for two songs but they were a great group and had an African/ Latin sound.
Unfortunately all things must end so we parted ways the following day and I made it, 27 hours later, to Sevare and two weeks at site. Site was alright although this has been a bad year for rains and my villagers (and me too) are worried about their crops. The river didn’t rise much and therefore the rice fields are not as wet as they usually are and the millet is dry dry dry. We will have to see. After 2 weeks at site I left again for Bamako and spent 5 days in Siby (60km from Bamako on the road to Guinee) rock climbing. It was an amazing trip, lots of climbing and camping, and finished off the trip with a giant hanging repel down the middle of the arch. Then it was back to Bamako, up to Sevare and back to site for me! I am working on a garden now… Hopefully it will work out! I have to keep expectations down though because what would take about 15 minutes in the US takes about 15 days over here. Sometimes, all you CAN do is wait, read, chat and drink ridiculously sweet green tea.
Also, a new stage just arrived on Monday making us like, juniors (one stage ahead us, two behind)! Not bad for 9months in country ;)
