My site is beautiful! I just returned from my village of Drametou, and it is your quintessential West African village, complete with round thatch huts, lots of little children running around, and gorgeous views in every direction. (I did not, however, take any pictures of this. Every time you bust out a camera here you are swarmed by small children, so I’d like to put that off for a least the first few months at site so that I’m not viewed as the foreigner with all kinds of fun expensive gadgets. Sorry…) Another aspect of Drametou that is quintessential West Africa is how brousse (remote) it is. In order to arrive in village I took a train for 14 hours (they stop for a few hours during the night to let everyone rest), followed by a 6 km trip in a bachee (old van gutted out and filled with benches, people, and rice that is used not unlike a taxi) to the town of Bafoulabe, then a trip across river in a pirogue (large canoe-like boat steered with one paddle and a pole), followed by a 9 km bike ride into village. It was an adventure to say the least. This was our first real time in the metaphorical “deep end” of the Peace Corps pool, but I was taken out to site by my future language teacher and then I remained in village for 4.5 days with one trip into Bafoulabe to set up a bank account for the next 2 years. I will also be going into Bafoulabe for market every week or so, picking up cooking supplies, mail, etc.
The three people I will be working with most closely in Drametou are the local teacher (the one who brought me out to village and will be teaching me Khassonke, the local language), the local mid-wife (my first homologue, otherwise know as the local person who will help me integrate into the community and help to spearhead projects), and my second homologue (who is also a baker and farmer). I live in a relatively large luo (grouping of huts that are usually surrounded by some semblance of fencing and lived in by large, sometimes extended, family) with a remarkably small family. The family is only a man and his wife and their two small children, but I was routinely visited by many more people from the village during the day. My meals were brought to me by one of my neighbor girls, who also ate with me three meals a day. For breakfast I had porridge, typically rice, but sometimes mono, which is mildly sweet with balls similar to tapioca and made from some variety of grains. Lunch was always rice with either peanut sauce (runnier that Thai-style, but very tasty) or a green sauce that I can best describe as spinach-like. Dinner is prepared all day by the women because it is millet couscous, so it must be pounded with an oversized mortar and pestle, sifted, then cooked. The couscous is accompanied by a slightly spicy sauce, and both it and the rice are eaten with your hands, the porridge with a gourd spoon.
About 2 days into my site visit I was checked on by PC staff and taken into Bafoulabe for banking and to meet the current PC volunteers closest to me. We also figured out at that time that I would try and catch the train back to Bamako on Thursday, so I returned to village for one more full day and then headed out.
On Thursday homologue #2, Modibo Dembele, and I biked and boated into Bafoulabe where I learned from the PCV there that the train had derailed earlier that week and wouldn’t be running, instead a Peace Corps vehicle came to pick me up and then I proceeded to the stage house in Manantali (if you look at a map of Mali it’s right next to the big reservoir in the southwest). The house is actually 2 large huts, one of which houses a current volunteer and the other which serves as a place to crash for other PCVs while in town. Great things about Manatali: there’s a butigi (store) with a lot of American-like food (meaning junk food) that includes a soft-serve ice cream machine (unheard of in Mali and brand new), and the house is also on the river complete with hippos (yea! My first sighting!). I stayed in Manantali for one night and hung out with the other trainees and volunteers there and the next morning headed for Kita, which is on the way to Bamako.
In Kita we met up with several other trainees and volunteers that were coming out of site visit and spent a couple of days just decompressing, sharing stories, watching movies (they actually have a lot of amenities at the house), and eating more familiar foods (which the volunteers there were generous enough to fix and then share). It was kind of surreal and like being in mini-America for a few days.
Yesterday I left Kita and came to Bamako on a bus laden with PC people, so much so that Malians would stare at the bus in wonder because of all the white faces. We arrived in Bamako, unloaded our gear at the bureau and then headed out to a tubob (foreigner) restaurant for a burger and ice cream. After that we took Peace Corps transport back to Tubaniso for a day of training, and tomorrow I go back to my little village of Sinsina for 3 final weeks of pre-service training and then….(drumroll please)….I will swear in as an official Peace Corps volunteer!