three weeks and going strong

I’ve just finished three weeks at site. All is well and I am in very good spirits. I’m in my regional capital for a few days doing banking and using the internet. I also got to talk to some family members yesterday on my cell phone so that was nice. I will have cell phone service whenever I’m in city of Sikasso, but service at site is still finicky. It’s supposed to be better once the line work is done but who knows when that will be. My phone sometimes works better in my market town so for now I will have my cell phone on every Wednesday if anyone needs to reach me.

Ramadan is over and this means villagers are able to eat and drink during the day and that festivities can take place once again in village. Two days after Ramadan ended all the women of the village came in front of my house where we spent three hours singing and dancing in a circle with traditional calabash instruments. It was a lot of fun and I was very honored that the women of the village would welcome me with something like that.

These first three months at site I’m still working on language acquisition and learning about my community. It’s harvest time and in my village where everyone is a farmer- everybody goes to the fields everyday so not much can be done in village anyway. I’ve been to the fields a few times with my counterpart- once to pick cotton and a couple of times harvesting peanuts. Not exactly water sanitation work- but nonetheless interesting. It seems like time has gone by really fast and I can’t believe it’s been a month since we swore-in as volunteers in Bamako.

Tammy you asked about a normal day and I can’t say that I really have normal days but I’ll try to describe one. First, I get up anywhere from 5:30-7:30AM (which most know is much different from mon habitude in America). I usually get up because there are an assortment of loud animals outside my house- goats, sheep, chickens, etc or it’s too hot to sleep or I just feel lazy because I can hear the rest of the village already up; women pounding corn in their large mortars or donkey carts riding past my house to the fields. Then I’ll get up and slowly start my day, making oatmeal and tea for breakfast or bread if it’s a day or two after market day. Then I’ll get dressed, maybe go to the pump to fill up my 20-liter bottle for water and then I’ll head out to greet people. I spend the morning greeting various people in village, my jatigi family that feeds me and then I’m over to the dugutigi’s or village chief then I’ll visit my counterpart’s family although he’s usually gone to the fields. Sometimes I’ll visit neighbors or other important villagers. Then I usually come back to my house when it gets hot around midday so I can rest, study, or read and then I make lunch and then rest or read. Once it cools down I do the day’s dishes before I head back out for some greeting, I might go to one of my regular families or maybe stop by a new concession to visit a new family (although it’s guaranteed they’ll know my name once I show-up). In the late after noon I’ll pour some water into a bucket to take a bucket bath. I’ll go to my jatigi’s house in the evening to eat dinner, which is almost always toh (unless I bought something different from market). But we eat corn toh here instead of millet toh and it’s not that bad- it’s the sauce that makes or breaks the meal. Toh is hard to describe but it’s pretty bland and tasteless and it molds to the shape of the dish it is put in some said it’s kind of like polenta (but I’ve never had I). Then I’ll go to my counterpart’s to visit or he’ll come over and visit me and I’m usually in bed before 10 every night. I’m lucky to have another volunteer only 8 km away from me so she’ll visit me some days or I might visit her on others, but her service is ending in a few months so I‘ll be alone until next year when they get another volunteer. So not too exciting but that’s what normal days are looking like. I’m trying to get used to living here and everything seems to be going well, I’m just taking it day by day. I’m getting a cat once I get back to site, so I’m really excited about having a new friend!
Thanks for all the letters and emails I miss you all and I wish everyone well. I’ll be back in Sikasso for Thanksgiving and tomorrow I’ll be back online to put some pictures up on my yahoo account since I can't figure it out on blogger. Take care!