Been a while...

written January 11, 2011
It has been an incredibley long time since I last blog, and for that I apologize. I was never in the mood to sit down and type. This past month was pretty crazy. The first two weeks of December were IST (In-service training) at Tubaniso. It was so awesome seeing everyone again after our 3-month in-village lock-down. I spent basically all of my time with Melissa and Meredith. We went out in Bamako so many times that I feel like I've got that city down-pack. After IST we spent a few nights at the Bamako Stage House which is basically this big, super nice house with a bunch of bunk beds for PCVs to use whenever we're in Bamako; a transit house. A few days before Christmas we made our way to Manantali. Manantali is the most beautiful place I have seen thus far in Mali. It is right on the Bafing River, and there are hippos and monkeys (although I saw neither, but have been told that they are usually there). Christmas was very chill. I basically forgot it was Christmas since we didn't really do anything special except for relax and hang with friends. For New Years we headed back to Bamako where we attended a house party hosted by some Lebanese dude. It was a lot of fun except for that fact that I managed to get hit by roman candles and I now have a disgusting burn on my left leg and a HUGE bruise on my right. After New Years we spent a few more days in Bamako, and then it was back to Sikasso.
I've now been in village for about 5 days and it hasn't been bad at all, well for the most part. Several people in village have really gotten on my nerves, but overall I'm glad to be back. Life was pretty hectic and very expensive in Bamako, so it's nice to be back in my slow-paced village life. The main thing that has occupied my time since being back is trying to get the ball rolling on the fixing up of my new house. Absolutely nothing has been done since the day I stepped foot in this village, and that is very disheartening. All that they have to do is build me a wall, dig a latrine, slab some cement on the ground, build me a hangar (shaded place), and place screens on the windows. It sounds like a lot, but it's really not. All of that could be done in less than a week, but for some reason my homologue is dragging his feet. I'm starting to get the feeling that he doesn't want me to move at all, and because of this he is one of the people that I mentioned earlier who are getting on my nerves. The other person who is really annoying me is my host dad. Yesterday I heard him mention my name in a conversation he was having in Senufo, so I looked over at him hoping he would clue me in on what he was talking about. He then told me in Bambara that I don't talk, and from there he switched to French and said the 2nd year volunteer who lives a few villages away from me talks a lot. He also said that not talking isn't a good way of intergrating. This really made me mad because 1. I feel pretty well integrated in my village, 2. I can't talk with them if they are speaking Senufo, which he was, so if he really wants me to join the conversation then maybe he should pick Bambara or French, 3. We had just had a long conversation about our vacations, so how much more does he want me to talk, and 4. The volunteer he mentioned has been here a lot longer than me so her language skills are better and I highly doubt he's ever had more than a 10 minute conversation with her which we actually have had on several occassions. My host-dad is the only person in village I don't like, and it sucks because he is my host-dad, but it's alright because he is almost always out so I rarely see him.
My days in village are usually very uneventful, but today was kind of crazy, or rather late afternoon was kind of crazy. Around 4 or so I got a surprise visit from Helen (she's 8k from me and I have to go through her village to get to mine). It was really great to see her because she is one of my favorite people in Peace Corps. Helen and I chatted it up a bit and then she left about an hour later. About 15 minutes after saying goodbye to Helen, a Peace Corps vehicle pulled up and PCMO (PC Med Officer) Michelle got out. She came to do my medical site visit where she looked around to see if my house was in good repair, to see what my water source was, and so on. She stayed for about 20 minutes and then left. About 30 minutes after her leaving another Peace Corps vehicle pulled up! I thought it was Michelle coming back because she forgot something, but turns out it was Mama, our regional coordinator. Turns out today Peace Corps was testing their Emergency Action Plan, and they had been trying to reach me all day, but because I only have phone service if I got out to this one spot, they were unable to reach me. So because of this Mama drove all the way out to my village to see if I was alright! That's pretty awesome, huh? The fact that he came all the way out here makes me feel very safe, and if there ever is an emergency I know I won;t be forgotten.