the day to day. in brief

hi everyone, blog blackout for a bit because of Homestay. homestay for the uninformed is sort of like an incubation period. we volunteers are grouped off 6, 7, 8 or so to a group and scattered around greater (much greater) Bamako at a series of villages, living with individual host families and taking language and cross cultural classes all day. I am studying a language called Bambara and after only 8 days i would say i feel good about my chances. So a typical day at home stay will certainly vary from a typical day at my permenant site, my real 2 year home, but its a good training ground so heres a typical day.

5:45/6:00: wake up. mali is a musilm country and the call to pray from the vilage mosque assure that i start y day
6:00...:wash, we dont have running water or electricity, so i bath out of a bucket in the confines of my pit toilet walls
7:00: i eat with my family, ussually a rice porridge, out of a commual bowl with big ladel spoons

8:00 go to class, 3 and a half hours of language classes, bambara, and after that my brain hurts. my day is carried out in three languages, french, bambara and english and my brain is working hrad to keep up

11:45 go home for lunch, communal bowl again, but this time i eat with my hands, usually rice with a sauce, and maybe some gristely meat.
AFTERLUNCH: TEA. the malians lover there tea, ussually green, and usually with an unholy amount of sugar...unholy! in fact that put a bit too much sugar in almost everything the eat, and dental hygine isnt at a premium here, they still smile alot though

2:30, tea/siesta is over and back to class til 5ish, then back home. dinner in the dark with the family, its dark here by 7:30, what with the equater so near, and that makes dinner my favorite meal, i eat with my hands and as a novice to this art i prefer the relative aninimity of night to worknig on the learning curve.

after dinner i usully hide out from the malarial mosquitos and study a bit in my room. often i am asleep by 9 and back at it the next day.


my days are peppered with lengthy greetins in bambara, the wailing steel echo of the call to prayer, wich i have grown to sort of like, lots of sun, really a feat for the senses. i go to sleep prossesing alot of sensory information and i dream very vividly . life is good at home stay and although it may sound somewhat dull, everything is sort of new again and sometimes it feels like i am relearning to walk.

YUP, LOOKS LIKE AFRICA

yeah, we inally landed on african soil after a time bending 21 hours of travel although in fairness to time bending travelers everywhere, 8 of those hours were spent staving off sleep in the ''E'' terminal of Charles DeGaulle airport. We left philadelphia at 6 pm on the 9th of july and after 7 hours of psuedo sagacious french stewards, crap fish pudingesque dinner entrees and alot to much turbulance, we landed and the aformentioned sleep staving began. i thought that holding of sleep until at least our flight to bamako would give me a shot at a better nights sleep once in our training site. the flight to bamako was much smoother and 2 hour quicker thus better. If you havnt had the chance to fly over the entire north -south expanse of the sahara desert, you have probely done more interesting things with your time. At least two hours of ceaseless, un erring desert. It may role, it may undulate and inspire awe in generations of touraegs, but from an Air France 747 airbus, it lulls, and boggles the mind. tiny Lego block house will eventually pop up on what you assume is the cusp of civilization, but no, and better still but why!! how did these people end up so far out, in so inhospitable a place. but as the sun goes down and throws a foggy orange film over the preceedings, darkness muscles in and the limited Bamako lights start to pop up. a quiet, easy decent into so much unknown....THENYOUREINTHEBAMAKOAIRPORTANDITSAMADRUSHTENDEEPTHREEWIDESCRAMBELING FORBAGSPUSHTHROUCUSTOMSPASSINGONOFFERSFORHELPFORAHANDANDOUTTOTHEBUSLOADUP....quiet again, and a drive through the city reveals people, lots of people and a pulse of activity. Roadside stands and tiny fires from the hawker selling wears on the road out. shacks with SIM cards and plastic jugs, the brand new peugot dealer, seedy nightclubs, and the Niger river, wide, black ebbing, dirty and high because its the rainy season. But Bamako passes and the lights go out and the rickety green people haulers roll by in the other direction, and down redder dirt roads the training facility creeps up. Non descript, dark and holding its scope until the first light of a new day in Africa, we straggled off the bus and in our silent, clamy, uncertainty made our way to hour lodging. mosquito nets and three beds to a room, we lay our bags down and head to the refectoire for snacks and blank stares, then most likley bed. the next day brought sun, humidity, forms to fill out termite hills large as sub-zero's and a new landscape to reckon, all whiloe shakng off the greatest ''where the hell am i when you wake up'' feeling ever. each day a new one and each day a new challenge. we leave the comound tuesday for our home stay, blinders off and africa in stereo. more later

ALMOST THERE

to those whoe care, i am almost in africa. the good stuff hasnt started yet, but after an over night turbulant sleepless flight to pairs, im half way to Bamako. just one more five hour flight to go, after this 7 hour lay over. since the french insist on doing strange and disorienting things with there keyboards, I must be brief. Love to all and more to come

Well, here goes nothing!!

So as I sit here today, July 6th 2009, I am roughly 37 hours 57 minutes and 23 seconds, give or take, from the labor pains and ultimate birthing of a new life, or at least a drive to the airport during the first sun rise i'll have seen in some time. I am leaving Greenville, SC en route to MALI via Philadelphia, PA and Paris, France. Think of me this saturday morning as you wake up and begin the day....I'll be in africa!! but before I go I have a few thoughts on the matter I would like to share. First, AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!. Second, wow that really snuck up on me!! third, WOW that REALLY snuck up on me!! We ( my pressumed fellow volunteers) will share many things in common and I would imagine the interminable wait for this day to arrive is one of those things, yet now that its here may I be the first to ask: REALLY? something so ominous and looming, so grand and so infinite often only stays that way though a constant suppression of its arrival, and now that the day hath come what does this turn into? The more intrepid among us may say that its something to be grabbed by a horn like protrudance and wrestled into submission, others may look away, squinting through sunburnt lids until it resembles somthing still shadowy yet accesible. Still others, and may I count my self among this group, will face openly and honestly this thing that only throuh experience, will define it self. I must be glib here because i know know other way to describe what I am or am not getting myself into. I realized the other day that I COULD do this alone, I am strong and futher, I didnt NEED anyones approval, yet its BECAUSE of my wonderful family that I WANT to do this, and its in part because of them that I WILL do this. Enough thanks cant be given to my parents, granparents, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, et al, for being so engaged, so caring, and so accesible!! I love you all and I cant wait to repay your kindness with fantastic stories!!!!!