My homestay is now officially over and training is coming to a close. There are a lot of emotions running through me right now as I move into the time for actual service, but excitement and apprehension for the future and sadness for what I'm leaving behind are those at the forefront.
Despite the improbability of the people that the following message addresses ever having access and the ability to read it, I'd like to include a piece that I wrote about Sinsina first, and then a thank you to my host mother, because I found it so hard to express myself in person:
To Sinsina kaw:
N ye degeke caman nin kalo fila temenen. Awn ye Bamanakan kalan, awn ye ji ni saniya kalan, awn ye Mali dumuni tobi, ni awn ye baroke caman. N ye ji taa ni n kungolo, n ye dumunike ni n bolo, ni n ye n ko ni shiyo kelen. Kungolo dimi, kono dimi, kono boli, ni mura tun be n na, nga minogo ni kongo te i la. Aw ni ce kosebe, aw bee nyanafin be na n na.
I have learned so much in the last two months. We have studied Bambara, we have studied water and sanitation, we have cooked Malian food, and we have talked a lot. I have carried water on my head, I have eaten with my hands, and I have showered with a bucket. I have had headaches, stomach aches, diarrhea, and a cold, but I haven't been hungry or thirsty. Thank you all so much, I will miss you!
To Kaja:
In the last few weeks I have come to the realize how much you mean to me. I couldn't have asked for a better host mother. In the beginning of my stay you gave me the space I needed to learn about culture and language, but also helped me to learn the little things that are so inherent to life as a Malian woman. You were the person who allowed me to work on my grammar in the concession, sitting with me in the evenings, and, amidst the “sho dunna!”s and the “di a”s, you asked me relevant questions that I could understand and respond to. You fed me wonderfully without question, which I didn't even recognize as a rarity at first, and provided me with my shower bucket every night without fail, even knowing which mornings I would want another. I was amazed and grateful that last day that you did my laundry, remembering exactly which clothes I had already worn and taking care of it, despite my repeated forgetfulness. Despite everything that you did for me, you are also the only woman in your concession who never asked me for anything. You are an amazing woman and mother, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to live with and learn from you. On Sunday as we were leaving, it was the tears in your eyes that brought mine, and you are the person in our family that I am most exited to see when I do make it back to Sinsina. Thank you so much!
I will miss Sinsina immensely in the next few months as I adjust once again to a Malian village, but I also remember that a lot of the things that I'm worried about now are the same things I was worried about before going out to homestay. I only hope that Drametou can accept me and forgive my cultural and language faux pas as readily...
And so:
Friday I will officially swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali. In the morning I will put on my new complet (traditional Malian skirt and shirt that I had made by a tailor in Sinsina from fabric I bought at the market of a nearby town), and we will all head off to the embassy in Bamako. After swear-in we get to go to a bbq at the American Club in our honor, complete with a huge swimming pool (by Mali standards) and volleyball, tennis, and basketball courts. Afterwards there will be a big party at a couple different bars in Bamako before we finally crash at a nearby hotel. It should be a lot of fun, and, perhaps more importantly, it is a last chance to spend time with all of the people that I won't be seeing again until January's In-service-training (if at all).
On Sunday (I think) I will head out to Manantali, where I will stay at the stage house while buy all of the household items I need to outfit my two huts in Drametou that are currently sitting empty awaiting my arrival. Then on Tuesday I will head out to site. Due to the fact that the closest internet connection is a 4 hour train ride or a 6 hour bus ride away, and the fact that I have to bike, boat, and then hire a taxi to get to either of these forms of public transport, I probably wont be online again until January. So, I'm now going to give you a break-down of what I expect for the next few months.
Once I'm installed at site, I will get to work integrating into my community. Because I have been learning Bambara for the last 2 months, I intend to continue with it during my sessions with a local tutor, but because people in my village actually speak Khassonke instead (the two languages are closely related, and everyone can understand me when I speak Bambara properly), I will be picking up on that language as well. I will also be trying to get to know everyone in my village and make myself familiar with their daily patterns and sanitation practices, esoecially water usage. Later on, when I have the language skills, I will be able to utilize all the information I have gained through observation to teach and implement sustainable development projects. I will probably be going in to Bafoulabe every few weeks to go to market and/or the bank, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to cook for myself a couple times a week with the supplies that I get there. The closest volunteer to me lives in Bafoulabe, so it will also give me the opportunity to speak some English. Erin, a female volunteer that I have gone through training with, will be using Bafoulabe for market and banking, so we will likely meet up there. As of now, we are also planning a ~50km bike ride back to Manantali in late October to celebrate my birthday with another volunteer from my training class whose birthday is the week before mine.

Obviously, many things will happen in my next 3 months in Drametou that I could never anticipate, but it will be an incredibly challenging, exciting, sometimes lonely, often overwhelming time. As new volunteers, we aren't supposed to leave our region for the first 3 months of service, but I'm guessing that I will have enough to do(or at least enough fears about traveling alone on Malian public transport) so that it won't really be an issue. I'm very sad that I won't see any of my friends from homestay for that period of time, as none of them are in the Kayes region with me, but we should be able to keep in touch by phone or messages sent via Peace Corps.
Oh, and sadly, my camera is officially broken, so any hopes I had of posting pictures of my times here, and any hopes you had of seeing pictures have now been dashed.....sad!
Until next time, k'an ben!