I hope you all are getting ready for yummy thanksgiving food…I will miss you all tremendously, but at least I will be with a big group of friends coming into san. Additionally, in order to work up an appetitive (not too hard in Africa) I’m biking 90 kilometers on Tuesday from a friends site. I think I’m nearing insanity for even contemplating this, but it should be a good experience none the less and I’ll quite literally get my butt in shape. It takes me about 2 hours to bike 30 k, so this will be quite a demanding day, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. I’m actually quite proficient at biking now. While sand has proven to be tricky to navigate, I’ve nearly mastered how to approach it. This one sand trap I have to cross to get to the road though, has been the vain of my existence. Right now the current score stands, sand tap :11, Caitlin: 0… I’m working on a new plan of attack, but now it’s war.
I’ve had a fairly demanding few days at site. On Thursday night, my homologues wife’s brother came over and we chatted for a bit then the next morning, one of his kids died. I’ve only seen the kid in passing and he never stood out amongst the dozens of kids constantly running around, but it was a shock, and jolt back to reality. Then, yesterday morning, I was counting literally hundreds of goats and sheep as they were loaded into huge vans heading for Bamako when one villager came up one goat short. He was supposed to have 27 goats but I only counted 26 loaded (they’re all spray painted in a certain color or design to denote ownership). The 30 or so men all started to search frantically through their goats but no one could find the missing goat. My homologue told me later that when they were herding the goats to the trucks in the morning the missing goat apparently fell down a well… thus, well covers will probably be an up and coming project for me to work on getting funding for.
Peace Corps volunteers have now been evacuated from Mauritania, Guinea and volunteers in Niger are being consolidated and I’ll keep you updated on their security status as we hear about it. Right now, Mali is still perfectly safe and stable (with the exception of the north-Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal) but with all of our neighbors being evacuated I wanted you all to rest assured that every precaution is being made regarding our safety and if there Is the slightest threat we’ll be removed with efficiency. On the other hand, Mali now ranks first in the most demanding country of service among all countries volunteers are present in. Kind of vain, but volunteers pride themselves on their rank… some kind of twisted logic that makes us feel better when we get overwhelmed by our day to day life.
My best friend here is Holly (Holly and Brad are the two from my stage in San joining 7 others from the Stage before us). Holly and I have gotten very close and our villages are only about 10 kilometers away. Unfortunately she has been complaining about numbness in her right foot and despite a week of tests in Bamako she was just sent to Washington DC for further treatment. Her return flight is scheduled for the 6th of December, but she’s pretty bummed to be alone on Thanksgiving… she’s from Seattle and her parents are coming to Mali in January so who knows if they’ll make a trip to the east coast. Needless to say, this has been a pretty crazy past few days.
Despite all the craziness surrounding me, I’m doing really well and have absolutely thrown our doctor here for a loop. She actually called me to make sure I was doing all right because I was one of three volunteers who hasn’t sent in medical complaints…I’m kind of an anomaly and the source of outrageous jealousy from my friends who don’t understand how I haven’t been sick (with the exception of car sick and a migraine). I just try to enjoy being healthy and fear the day that it all catches up to me. My homologue is also very protective of me, he won’t let anyone give me water, I have to always have two of my own water bottles with me and he’ll only let people eat with me if they’ve washed their hands with soap. At first I think he was really intimidated by me, but now he’s learned how to talk to me and gives me things to do that most of the men can’t do well, like reading and writing in Bambara. Now if someone tries to speak to me and I don’t understand, Bah will come over and rephrase the question in a way that I understand. I’ve also taken up studying with the kids. Two of his kids are old enough to study English so we study together and I’ve also started giving some math lessons to random village children who come knocking at my door. It’s been fun working with the kids and so refreshing to see them get excited to study. Natalie, Bah’s second oldest, is in 9th grade and has already told me that she wants desperately to go to Bamako to study like her sister, but she wants to study English so she is always asking me to edit her dialogues and homework.
Love,
Cait
