"Don't Panic"

I'm back from site visit! I had a fantastic trip down south and can't wait to go back. I don't have a whole lot of time to post right now, but here are some highlights:

1) Public transport. This can get ugly. I had a 6-7 hour bus ride (the buses are really old and are equipped with air conditioning which is naturally too expensive to run - also the windows don't open) to San.

2) San. My banking town. This is where I will go to run errands like visiting the post office, bank, and market. Peace Corps has what is called a "stage" house there (that's the French stage, not the English stage). Forget Disneyland, people. This is the happiest place on Earth. It's got 2 bathrooms, and the house got a water heater the day we arrived. San has treated water, so you can drink it right out of the faucet! Heaven. The PCVs there gave us a very warm welcome which involved Mexican food and Jello cheesecake from a box. San is one of only 3 towns in all of Mali where Peace Corps has a stage house, so I LUCKED OUT. I must be livin' right.

3) Kimparana. This is where I'll be spending the next 2 years of my life. I have a great little apartment-type thing in a compound with two other Malian families. We share a little courtyard, but I have my own living room, bedroom, and storage room. No electricty yet, but it's coming soon! Same on the cell phone (luckily my network has coverage in San). Kimparana is a 45 minute drive from my banking town, which is not bad at all. My host family is great, and I got a great chance to meet the people with whom I'll be working and catch up on some needed rest. I'll have to include details of my future work life in another post.

So, in conclusion, site visit was a complete success for TAS. My friends up north didn't have such an easy time. Some got sick, some stranded on the side of the road with police (gotta watch out for those bandits), some forced into boats due to flooding. Those kids are real troopers. I would be remiss in my reporting duties if I did not mention my colleague Big Fat Tony. Big Fat Tony is a member of the Posh Corps. He gets a 2 bedroom, 2 full bathroom, electric ceiling fan-equipped apartment all to himself. Above a restaurant. Down the street from an Internet cafe. I have to ride 3 hours on an awful bus to get to Internet. Then again, I don't have to deal with roaming bandits. The grass is greener...

We live in a beautiful world. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do.

"Another One Bites the Dust"

More sad news: While on site visit, a very near and dear PCT slipped and broke his ankle. Fortunately, he didn't cry! Unfortunately, he requires surgery and has (wisely) opted to fly back home to the States for his operation and 2 months of rehab. We have had to say goodbye to 5 other colleagues so far (for various reasons), but we were not expecting a medevac so early in our service. Heck, we haven't even gotten out of training yet. Way to go, Slugger. I hope you read this.

RIP Seydou Diarra

You will be sorely missed. Please come back to us in Segou soon. The chat on your toit wants you to retourner.

"Both Sides Now"

I promised I would post something more positive, so here are 5 happy things:



1) It's not bed bugs that are eating my feet, it's sand fleas! Sand fleas I can handle. Bed bugs are gross. Glad I got that cleared up.



2) A fellow PCT has a new baby brother in village. Especially in light of my previous post, this is happy news indeed for the Moribabougou crew. Unfortunately, we will have to miss his naming ceremony - which always takes place one week after the birth. Maybe we can pick him up a present during our site visits (see number 4).



3) I went to Bamako yesterday, and it turns out that there is stuff there! We took a bus full of tubabs to visit the main Peace Corps office (bureau) in the city and stopped at a nearby popular hotel. It had a restaurant and a bar and a BATHROOM and everything. It was the first toilet we'd seen in a month, so you can imagine our excitement. (Sorry, Mom, had to say it. I was not about to use the word "commode" or "thing you'd expect".) Needless to say... we're going back... VERY soon.



4) Site visit! Tomorrow morning (for me, 5:30 AM) we embark upon our respective journeys to our permanent sites for a little visit. I will be heading south and east toward Burkina Faso into the Segou region of Mali. I'll get a chance to scope out my new house (which I hear has running water! but no electricity...), open a bank account, get a permanent address, and see what's up with the cell phone situation. My banking town (PCVs who live in villages too small to have things like banks and post offices bike or take public transport to their "banking towns" to run errands and buy things) is called San and has hotels and restaurants. Based on my Bamako hotel experience, I have high hopes for many fun trips into San for some Westernization. I have a relatively short trip (about 6 hours). Some PCTs heading up North to the Gao region have two days of travel ahead of them. And THAT'S if the road didn't wash out during the storm last night...

5) I share a birthday with the United States Peace Corps. October 14th. I think that's pretty cool.


Catch you crazy kids when I make my triumphant return to Tubaniso on the 27th. TAS out.

"Rocket Man"

Well, I knew it would have to come eventually, so here it is: the depressing entry.

We've had a bit of sad news in my village. A fellow PCT's baby host sister died the morning of the day we returned to Tubaniso. We're not sure why (no one speaks enough Bambara), but it was clear to anyone who saw her before she died that she was very sick with something. When we got back to Tubaniso we learned that the exact same thing had happened to a PCT in the south. I'm not sure how old that host sibling was. It's all very sad and all very common. Mars ain't the kinda place to raise your kids, indeed...

Here, just about everyone has malaria in some stage. That sounds worse than it is. The malaria parasite incubates in the liver until it can make its way into your blood stream. People show the classic symptoms (flu-like stuff, fever, chills, cold sweats, delirium) only when the parasite causes red blood cells to burst. Apparently, you can get along just fine as long as the thing doesn't make it out of your liver. Be that as it may, I can tell you this much: I will not look at a mosquito the same way again. I was recently a little ill, which my host mother naturally attributed to le palu. I guess she figured if everyone here had it, I must too! I assured her that it was not, in fact, malaria that I had but just a little too much dibi sogo - smoked goat meat. Maybe I won't have to eat dibi sogo again for a while. Here's hoping!

Don't worry, I'll post something more pleasant tomorrow.

"Where the Streets Have No Name"

N togo Haby. N jamu Diawara. I ni wula. After 4 days at the Peace Corps training site outside Bamako (Tubaniso), all the PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees (we're not Volunteers until official swear-in on September 21st)) have been dispersed through various villages and towns to live with Malian host families, take language and culture classes, and actually see Mali. As many of you have seen in the pictures from the previous post, Tubaniso is a lot like summer camp and not anything at all like the surrounding area. It has its pros and cons. Pro: Everyone speaks English and you can take a shower! Con: The wireless Internet and ample supply of silverware spoil us really quick! Tubaniso has become a PCT haven and has taken a spot in our dreams right next to cheeseburgers, air conditioning, and various friends and family members.

I live in a village of about 6,000 people north of Bamako. My host family could NOT be better. Whereas most Malian families are quite large (for example, another PCT has 9 brothers and 3 sisters), I live with just my host mother and sister. The other children are either married or have moved out of the house. They read, write, and speak French (a MAJOR plus since I am not currently taking Bambara classes). My host mother (whose father was a fonctionnaire for the Malian government) has done a lot of travelling, most notably to France, so she has been quite understanding and sympathetic during my various sicknesses and periods of exhaustion. My host family named me after my host grandmother - Haby (pronounced ah-bee).

We have class every day (EVERY day) at 8 AM down by the Niger river (see picture at the top of this page). My mother or sister always manages to wake me up before my alarm goes off at 7. In Mali, greetings are of the utmost importance and follow fairly strict rules and patterns. For example, you do not say "good morning" to anyone until washing your face. So, at 7 AM I get up and go to the well to pull water for my twice-daily bucket bath. The nice thing about the well is that the water is cool when it's hot outside, but warm when it's cold. Very niiiice. I usually have a little piece of plain bread with tea or instant coffee (prepared over a propane burner) in the morning before heading off to class. Walking anywhere in Mali takes twice as long as it would anywhere else (at least if you're a tubab - a white person) because EVERYONE stops to greet you. Everyone's always up for a chat. There are also various sheep, goats, chickens, horses, and donkeys along the way. Which is fun.

I'm currently working on improving my French instead of learning Bambara because I will be working in business. The only problem with that is, no one likes to speak French. The Peace Corps mantra is integration, integration, integration; however, (poorly) speaking the red-headed stepchild of local languages puts a damper on things. At my permanent site I may receive private Bambara tutoring sessions. We'll see.

Most everyone is over various illnesses and slowly growing accustomed to eating bread ALL day and bleaching their drinking water. I am very fortunate to be with a fantastic group of PCTs in my village. We're having fun and keeping each other sane.

My Internet cafe time is up, so further details will have to wait. For a better look at village life, here are some pics: http://georgetown.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2075979&l=23a76&id=1404038. Enjoy! TAS out.

"Life on Mars?"

It’s hard to believe, but I’m finally here: on Mars. That’s what some friends from Georgetown call Africa – so far away, so foreign, so out there. I left McMinnville for Mali via Philadelphia and Paris on July 17th, 2007, for 27 months of Peace Corps training and service in West Africa. For the next two years, I will be a small enterprise development management advisor in a town or city somewhere in southern Mali (exact location TBA). It is my hope that this blog will a) keep you updated on my whereabouts, activities, and general well-being, b) answer specific questions posted by you, and c) give me a place to tell the many stories I have already started to accumulate.
First, I would like to say a few words of explanation about Peace Corps in general and Mali specifically. The U.S. Peace Corps is a federal government agency started in 1961, and has served 138 countries. The three main goals of Peace Corps are:

• To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.


• To promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of peoples served.


• To promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.
  

That’s where you come in! I know there’s a lot of work to be done on the third goal just by the questions I’ve already gotten about “Africa” (which, by the way, is quite a large continent with over 50 different countries), “Muslims” (who number over a billion globally), etc. Just as a general reminder and disclaimer: I can speak only about my personal experiences within Mali and cannot answer questions about stupid and/or fictional things like Blood Diamond, the conflict in Sudan, or zebras. There are no zebras in Mali.

Mali is a French-speaking country in West Africa and is, depending on when/where you look, the 3rd or 4th poorest state in the world. Statistics vary from source to source and year to year. Let’s just say there’s general room for improvement. Economically, most Malians (around 80%) are involved in agriculture with many simply farming at the subsistence level. Most people are illiterate and speak a local language called Bambara. There are over 10 major ethnic groups represented in Mali, many with their own languages and/or dialects of Bambara (also known in some places as Bamana or Bamanakan). On the bright side, Mali is a major center for West African music and dance and is home to the oft-mentioned ancient city of Timbuktu (which, as a sidenote, I am not allowed to visit due to State Department restrictions – fantastic). I refuse to refer people to Wikipedia, but you can read up on Peace Corps in Mali here: http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.wherepc.africa.mali.

Now the fun stuff! As it takes a VERY long time to upload photos here, I will periodically post links to my Facebook photo albums. You can check out the first one here: http://georgetown.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2073716&l=8dccc&id=1404038. This album details our arrival in Bamako and a tour of the Peace Corps training center, Tubaniso. It also contains photos of the now-famous Tubaniso tortoise seen above. More posts to follow about life in Mali and all the food, bathroom, disease, and wild insect and animal questions I’ve already heard from many of you. TAS out.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

I'm new to this. Bear with me for a sec.