Training!

Written July 5, 2010
So today was my first full day of training classes. I am most definitely loving it here! Everything is so interesting! I think so far my favorite thing is anything that we learn in our Malian cultural classes. Today we went over a lot of Dos and Don’ts of Malian culture. Some of my favorites are: 1. It is not necessary to talk during a meal 2. Don’t wait to be invited to go visit someone, you are always welcome 3. Eye contact can be seen as aggressive, so you do not look your elders in the eyes 4. Do not speak while in the bathroom, and if someone is coming you have to make a noise to let them know the bathroom is occupied 5. Females should not smoke in public, if they do they could be mistaken for a prostitute 6. In the morning do not greet someone until after you and they have washed their face 7. It is acceptable for people of the same sex to hold hands, and 8. It is not appropriate for women to whistle.
We also had a very extensive safety and security lesson. We were taught how to avoid crime and how to recognize the signs of a crime possibly happening. We were also taught a personal safety strategies under the pneumonic AVMDED (to remember it we say All Volunteers Must Do it Every Day), and this stands for Awareness, Vigilance, Mitigation, Diffusion, Escape and Defense. Our Safety and Security officer is this really cool dude who was a member of the Malian military and a former UN Peacekeeper in Sierra Leone.
The other classes we had today we one Diarrhea and Bicycles. We learned all of the ways to get Diarrhea (or Mr. D to Peace Corps Volunteers) and all the ways to treat and prevent Diarrhea. It was a very interesting conversation… I think that I am most afraid of getting some amoeba and giardia. As for the bicycles, since all volunteers here in Mali are issued a bike, we were taught basic repair stuff and given a manual for anything more than the basic.
Today was also my French interview as well as my sector interview. My sector interview went well, I think. I met the guy who will basically be my boss, he seems super cool! I was asked if I would like to be in a large or small village (I said small or medium, but definitely not a city) or whether I wanted to have a more formal or informal job (I said either is fine, but if I had to absolutely choose I’d like informal because I think that would be better for integration into the village). As for my French interview, I have no idea how that went. I understood every single question that she asked me, I just didn’t always give the most complicated responses. I only asked how to say something once (“comment dit-on learning”) and then my other big-ish mistake was that I couldn’t think of the word for children (it actually came to me later on in the interview, les enfants, and I used it a couple times) so I said les children. Oh well. Tomorrow I think I will find out how I did, I just hope that I get placed in at least the intermediate level because I just think that anything lower than that would be embarrassing considering I took French from 5th grade through sophomore year of college.
Today I also tried uploading some pictures to this blog, but the internet wouldn’t hold up long enough for me to do it. I will try again tomorrow and hopefully it works this time because I want you all to see what the food looks like and also how crazy the red dirt ground looks.
Tomorrow is our first Bambara lesson, I can’t wait!