Having spent almost three weeks in Bamako, I'm feeling eager to get back to site. Not that these three weeks haven't been useful or exciting, I just miss the comforts of home and living in a small village. Training went well here at Tubani so. Our master water san trainer, Adama, let us get some hands-on experience on building cisterns, latrines, wells, and a clothes washing area. Now I don't know if I'll ever be able to use these skills but at least now I can say I've laid cement, been down a well, and had a lot of fun in the process. Tubani so was full of is usual excitements that happens when you get 62, 20-somethings together in Africa. Some highlights: a trip to Bamako to see a film, to which only 4 of the 20 or so who went actually ended up seeing. I was a part of the contingency who skipped the film and found my way to a bar instead. A mud-wrestling pit was set-up and sports hour took a new turn as PCVs battled in a test of strength. Yours truly competed twice and lost just as many. If your interested check out the pictures on Michele and Tim's site. My homologue came for the last two days of training to do a workshop with us. It went well, and I am encouraged by his motivation. He also quelled my fears by letting me know that my cat is still alive and well.
So there's this cooking show on Malian television that is shown once a week called, 'Bien Mangé.' Training staff decided to bring the ladies from the show out to Tubani so for a few nights to give us cooking lessons. I being the gourmand that I am attended there three lessons, took notes, and made friends with the cooks. A couple of the girls were my age and we got to talking and we ended up exchanging phone numbers. I called her up to let her know I had a free day in Bamako and she was eager to have me over for some zamé. So I went over to her house in the morning and it was a non-stop eating fest. I ate a big lunch of the best zamé (red rice with veggies and fish) I've ever had, followed by hibiscus juice and oranges. Later on they give me a salad with presented beautifully. And before I left they gave me two big bags of degue (it's yummy yogurt with balls of millet). The sweet thing about that was that I told her, Kadie, that my favorite Malian dish was degue when she was at Tubani so and she remembered. In between all of this, they braided my hair and did henna on all four of my limbs (I drew the line at the girls trying to give me a pagne to wear). It was a lot of fun and they were really hospitable. It was nice hanging out with a family in Bamako and seeing the difference in standards of living as compared to en brousse. They also insisted on speaking only Bambara with me even though we all spoke French. Equally nice to actually have girlfriends because all of my Malian friends are male. In village the women my age are all married, thus working to take care of house, husband, and children. And plus with my homologue being male it seems I only meet his other male friends. Anyway that was my experience hanging out with Malians in Bamako.
PCVs from Guinea are being 'evacuated' to Mali after some serious violent strikes. About 25 should be coming in today so I'll be here to welcome them. I stayed in Bamako after training to help with language certification for our language facilitators. I'm leaving tomorrow for Sikasso, hopefully I'll be able to put up some pictures then.
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those are some mighty incriminating mud wrestling photos, mon amie... tyson and i are speculating whether you are, in fact, working for the betterment of mali or working to fatten your own pocketbook in tijuana. hmm. hopefully, it's the former, because there's a big fat package headed to mali with your name on it!
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