I’m so sorry that I haven’t written in so long, it’s a rare day when I get to have internet access.
Now that I’m officially a volunteer my life has slowed down drastically. I’ve moved into my house in San and bought furniture and dishes which has helped make it more homey. One day I devoted to just making my house a home buy “sewing” curtains and hanging pictures up. I was just starting to feel comfortable when I woke up a few night ago with this huge lizard staring at me through my mosquito net… there was screaming involved. My days are pretty simple, I wake up around 6 and clean my house and make breakfast and sit outside for a couple of hours reading and studying Bambara then I make lunch then sit for a few more hours chatting with my host family or counterpart sometimes playing cards and always making tea. Several days I’ve biked to neighboring villages to meet the mayor and doctor and teachers and pastor and village chiefs, etc. I’ll be working a bit with a shea butter association in addition to my village association and I’m getting started on painting a mural of the world map at t he school (my friend had to explain to the teacher that there were more than four continents…). Every day is certainly an adventure. On Thursdays I bike to dJely where my market is at (about 9kilometers away). To say dirt road is being generous it’s more sand/gravel/dirt currently mixed with water as it’s the rainy season. Needless to say, by the time I make it market I’m covered in mud and dust which is made all the more entertaining because I was in a skirt the first time. I’m almost exclusively in skirts but I quickly learned that while I can bike in a skirt and stick to social norms, I can’t wear a skirt and maintain my dignity while riding a bike.
On Sundays I go to church with my family which is surprisingly similar to church back home. The choir is unbelievable and while I understood very little of the service I had a good time. The men and women sit on separate sides of the church with the kids in the front and in the middle. In the afternoon of that first Sunday my sister took me to the church and there was a ton of singing and dancing then we started walking and kept walking out into the middle of the African wilderness to a huge lake. It was a baptism. The minister waded out into the water and then one by one about 20 people were baptized by being dunked in the water after saying a prayer, it was fascinating.
This past Sunday, pretty much changed my life. I got up and got ready for church when my counterparts wife came up to my house and told me to get my bike, her son had to be taken to the hospital because he had malaria. My counterpart was already there so the two of us biked to the doctor’s office. When we got to the hospital the little boy, Izac, was lying on the table screaming as the doctor tried for about an hour to get in IV in. Apparently he was severely dehydrated and impossible to find a vein. More than once I almost puked…it was hot and there was a lot of blood and needles, but I held his hand until they finally got the iv in. Later I was sitting on another bed and watching the family and overwhelmingly powerful to see that human nature is universal and the love parents have for their children transcends national boundaries. It was incredibly moving to see them bent over their son praying and holding on to each other. These families have so little that perhaps their bond is even stronger as they rely on each other exclusively and izac is their only son, he’s six.
Right now I’m in San, about a 30 kilometer bike ride from home to do some shopping and get the internet but I’ll probably be heading home tomorrow or Wednesday. I hope you all are doing well.
Love,
Cait
