This is probably the last chance I’ll get to write before Christmas so I wanted to was you to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and I’m so sad that I won’t be there celebrating with you, but I’ll be thinking about you all day. Apparently Malian Christians celebrate Christmas by eating all day and dancing all night which will be very interesting considering that I have no ability to dance…at least I should be a source of entertainment, not that this is anything new here. I’ve bought some Christmas fabric that hopefully can be made into an outfit before Christmas because the whole village buys the same print for the holiday.
I’m not really sure on your plans for the holidays, the last I heard, Becky and Phil are going to Philadelphia and Molly and Chad will be spending much of their day at the Evely’s but I hope that papa can make it out or you and dad can make it out to Frankfort. I’m not going totally without Christmas either, we had a white elephant gift exchange and yummy dinner a few nights ago at Tubaniso which will have to suffice for my American fix. We decorated the “mess hall” with paper snowflakes and drawings of reindeer and Christmas trees. It was nice to be able to just immerse ourselves not matter how brief in some American culture.
IST has been totally draining, but at the same time has flown by and I can’t believe that I’m heading back to site for what feels like an indeterminate amount of time. I know that I’ll be leaving in February for Senegal and the West African International Softball Tournament (WAIST). Most all of my stage is going so that will be a nice reunion of sorts especially because some of the people who have left I might not see again until my close of service in 2011, so surreal. I’ve definitely been able to reconnect with my two best friends Rose and Emily so I have no doubts that I’ll be keeping in touch with them especially because Emily is only in Mopti thus not too far away and Rose is just outside of Bamako and I have to come into Bamako several times a year.
Another highlight of IST was going to my first Malian concert. The singer was a guitarist named Habib Kote and he was fabulous. We had a pretty big crowd of volunteer who went and the venue was exclusively American and European so we got to really be ourselves. Living with Malians all the time can be exhausting; constantly having to be on guard and making sure you’re always abiding by their culture. It was the first time I really got to meet some of the Malian ex-pats and NGO workers…many of which were old Peace Corps volunteers. It was cool, but I’m so happy to be able to return to my village. I wouldn’t want to be with them too much because it’s pretty much like a mini America. A few friends and I stayed at one of the ex-pats houses and it felt utterly bizarre. AC, frig, stove, coffee machine, flowers, beds, couches, counters, good food…it felt like I was cheating. It was definitely nice to be reminded that I will one day be able to return to my so called life of luxury but for the time being I’m perfectly content in my mud hut.
I had a pretty awesome day the other day with my homologue where we set up a temporary plan for work projects and he is so excited to get started. He has a pretty awesome garden and is respected in the community so I had wanted to introduce the urine fertilization technique we learned about but most Malians are pretty averse to it. He brought it up to me and asked me to help him organize a training/demonstration for the village. It’s a great technique to increase dramatically production of all garden products so he is really excited to try it out. If he has any success I have no doubt that the other villagers will jump on the band wagon.
Love,
Cait
