Transportation

As if I didn't need more reminding... that I am in a whole new world here! Let me tell you a little story about the public transport in West Africa.

We left Banjul, The Gambia at 1pm saturday. We found a nice cabbie the night before who was very nice and said he would pick us up at our front door, take us across the ferry in the taxi and drive us the 3 hrs to Kaolack where we take our "direct" bus to Bamako, which should be about 16 hrs. Simple right?! haha...

When we arrive at the Ferry the queue was WAY to long and we would have had to wait for probably 4 or 5 ferries to go before we could get on. So we decided to ditch our nice cabbie and walk onto the ferry that was leaving in 10 minutes. So, far so good, we got off the ferry, found a bush taxi to take us to the border. From the border we road a donkey cart... literally a donkey cart with our luggage the 2k to the bus station. From the bus station we took a stationwagon, called a sept bus. Which all 7 of us fit comfortably in that took us the 2 hrs. We got to Kaolack in record time and had 2 hrs to spare until our 10:30 "express bus" left for Bamako. We went to find dinner, brush our teeth, and walk around and stretch our legs before the long bus ride... We chose to take Ghana transport, which left at around 10, there are a few other transport companies, like Sonef and Bani who all left between 10 and 10:30. At about 10:27 they came up and told us that we wouldn't be leaving tonight because the they hadn't sold enough tickets. Our only option was to spend the night on the bus and hope that we left early the next morning.

The night wasn't to bad, yet another time im super glad that I am short, I fit quite well on the bus seats. The bus owners swore up and down that we would leave at 7 or 8 am the next morning even if more people didn't show up. So, we went to sleep and woke up at about 11:30 the next morning. At around 10, we had had it! We had patiently waited for 17 hours and now we were done waiting. If we left last night we would be about 4 hrs away from bamako at that time!! So, we gave them and ultimatum... If the bus isn't pulling out of Kaolack at 11:00 then they WILL give us our money back and we will go to another bus company. Of courses they didn't want this to happen. All 7 of us had already bought our tickets at 24,000 mil each which is about $50 each.

We then argued amongst ourselves as to what we should do, because at his point is is just the principle of it, what Malians and aparently Senegalese people don't seem to understand. We just wanted to work on our cross culture! haha In America that would never happen, because people are acctually held accountable for things! Im sure if we didn't have a 23 hr bus ride ahead of us we would have held our ground and wondered off to find another company... but we didn't! Damnit! Next time!

One day at a time

Well I have succeeded at surviving 6 months in Mali! I know I have said it before and I will say it again! It seems like it takes 3 days for just one day to pass in the moment, but before I know it 3 weeks have passed. That is a good thing!

This past month is by far the longest stint I have been at site! It was 3 weeks, then I went to my banking town for 2 days and went back to site for a week before I left this time. I am currently in Segou for the yearly music festival! There are a lot of volunteers in town and I am looking forward to the concerts! I hear they are amazing. I am going to Bamako after this to do my first Volunteer report form before I leave for Senegal on February 11^th.

I had my site visit last week, my APCD came out to my site and talked to my village. This is always sort of nerve racking because you never know what they are going to say to each other. I mean up until now, I have been the liaison between Peace Corps and Malians. It all went very well to my surprise! My village basically said that they love me. They said I am very well integrated and I am nice, and I love Malians… I feel like this isn’t all entirely true, BUT it was nice to hear. It would have been horrible to have them say that they didn’t like me or that they had been having problems with me. It all turned out ok and we even started to work on my project outlines. So the main projects we decided were going to be:

1) Food security: Like most villages in poor African countries my village deals with a major lack of nutrition. During certain seasons there is a lot of one type of food, then the season ends and its back to millet every day with rice every now and then. The women’s association on my village is going to start a community garden. As of right now we can only get a few types of fruits and vegetables on Saturdays, which is our market day. If we had a womens community garden the women would be able to eat vegetables year around a few times a week, and also allow them to generate income by selling some of the product to raise more money for the garden. On a side note, it is very important for the women to gain in come so they can have more of a say in their health and especially family planning practices, which right now is all in the hands of the bread winner (the man of the family). But first in order for the women to have a garden they need better access to water, so I have to do a project proposal and build a well where they would like to put the garden…

2) Helen Keller international is coming to my Village for an 18 month study! They are going to be doing basically what I was working on! I am going to be working with them on nutrition and healthy eating habits. The project is going to track some families in my community who are all healthy and doing well, and track a few families who are not a healthy and/or have malnourished children, then compare and contrast the two. To see what common things most families are doing, and what the difference is between the ones that succeed and the ones who don’t . They should be coming within the next few weeks so I am very excited for this project to being.

3) Finally, I will be working on starting a boys youth group and a girls youth group. The boys group will give the guys something to do so they learn life skills while having fun, I think this is going to focus around soccer and learning English. We are going to have fun, while learning important things like hygiene, safe sex practices, HIV. Its amazing how much these teenagers don’t know! The adults don’t tell them anything, so they just figure it out themselves so its usually the wrong information! I am doing a separate girls group that is basically to serve the same purpose. The girls will also learn that they have a choice in these matters! They can go to school, and they don’t have to have 7 children. They mainly need to be empowered. It is so hard for a girl like me to come here and see that women here still feel like they have no say in anything! That is a major goal for me!

Funny all these things seem pretty simple, yet they will pretty much take my whole service to get up and running…. If they get off the ground at all! Thus is Africa, thus is Mali and I am slowly beginning to realize this. Its so frustrating!

Daily life is going! Patience has never been my strong point and I definitely get tested multiple times a day. I have figured out how to be sarcastic in Bambara, which is fun, Most Malians take everything very literal and are always stating the obvious… I need some way to entertain myself!

I have also started painting my newly creped mud hut! Now it is partially cement and in the process of being painted! I’m excited! My bedroom is green and my front room is going to be yellow, with one white and yellow striped wall. I bought material and made table cloths and matching curtains and got floor mats to match. Haha… All my villagers think I am crazy. (Malians hate to be in their houses… I mean I did to, Mud huts suck!) so they cant understand why I am going through all this trouble., but shoot I gotta do something to keep my busy! I’ll post some pictures when its all done!

Well that about sums up what has been going on thus far. Im sure there are many things I am forgetting but I’ll get to them one day. Until next time!

Rokia