Happy Turkey (or Guinea Hen?) Day!

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody! After a couple days of travel and (not) sleeping outside the train station, I just made the trip out to Kayes City, the hottest city in Africa, since it was built on top of a giant underground iron reserve. More optimistically, we also have internet here! Which means that in between spending the holiday with about a dozen other Peace Corps ex-pats like myself and having a full-fledged homemade Thanksgiving dinner with everything from pumpkin pie to chicken and stuffing to cranberry sauce and more, I also get to spend a little while updating my life and getting back to all you folks at home and thanking you for birthday well-wishes and other positivity.
As of now, I am in the beginning of my third month as an African villager and my life continues to get more interesting. I am developing more of a feel of how things work out here and almost as amazing as how different things are here is how similar they are as well. Every person is different and cultures around the world nurture certain qualities in those who are members. But when it comes down to it, I am seeing that even people in a place as remote from Philadelphia as Niantanso have the same qualities as anyone else: friendship and enmity, joking and sadness, pride and ego, selflessness and community, laziness and responsibility. As many times as I cannot relate to what people believe or how they act, I am equally amazed at other things that seem so familiar. For every time I am frustrated at Malians for acting with me in ways I find unacceptable or impolite, I realize they have as little idea how to relate to me as I do them in many circumstances. While at first I would get frustrated with how quickly many people grew tired of trying to converse with me and my inadequate language skill, I now begin to realize just how they feel as I speak English with the high school students who don’t understand simple phrases I say because of my accent, and I find it almost funny when they mumble something incomprehensible and get upset that I don’t understand their English.
A major part of my growth here is seeing things from angles I never previously had access to. Back in America, I never really experienced racism or discrimination in any meaningful way. Here, it’s almost constant. People go sometimes well out of their way to treat the local white boy differently. Of course as a white American, I don’t know the first thing about farming, so when I go into the peanut or millet fields with them to help harvest, they are so amazed that I would even attempt this hard work, they almost don’t even accept that I can do it. Every few minutes, someone new will come up to me to show me the proper way to work, identical to the way I had been working, or else tell me I’m tired and I should rest, seemingly as much to help me as to make themselves feel superior. It may be paranoia, but I get the sense that they patronize me and treat me overly hospitably as if to rub in my face the fact that all my American wealth and prestige aren’t worth a bag of rice in Mali if I can’t do the same backbreaking labor that they have mastered already. The first day I spent harvesting rice was one of the most exciting days I’ve had in village so far because despite the villagers’ skepticism, I grew reasonably good at it and proved without a doubt, in front of a field full of dozens of farmers, that I am not altogether as worthless as they many times make me out to be, despite being slow and cutting my fingers up pretty badly with the sickle. In my head, as I farmed, I drew parallels to the Civil Rights victories that took place in almost the exact opposite context in America — I was a white man in Africa proving he was as good, or as determined, a farmer as the skeptical workers around him and not a weak and pampered Westerner who got money for free. Not only that, but I am now probably the best millet/peanut/rice farmer ever to hail from Lower Merion, PA.
Equally valuable in my integration as a useful member of my community is the fact that I have actually begun to do my own PC work in the community. I have been doing baseline surveys with families all over the community to find information on water and sanitation-based behavior, like who uses treated drinking water, where they store food, which diseases are most common, etc. This has been an advantageous project for a number of reasons. First, it gives me an idea of what practices are common here so I can get an idea of what projects are most important to undertake in the future. Second, it gets me out of the house and into the village, talking to people and meeting families in concessions I otherwise would have little meaningful contact with. Third, it is a way of showing the community that I am in fact working and giving them a chance to tell me what areas of work they want me to help in, be it improving the wells by their concessions, teaching how to treat water, or just listening to them complain about life and hearing me promise I will do everything I can to help. I have also started trying to get a soak pit project started, but nobody has bothered getting supplies yet, so more on that later when I have something interesting to say about it.
Other than that, village life is slow, relaxing, and generally enjoyable. I am making friends, getting better at chatting (as long as people are speaking slowly, simply, and directly to me), and finding it easier to believe that I will be spending the next two years of my life going to sleep under a thatched roof and only eating foods that can be farmed in village or bought at the local market (Wal*Mart? We don’t need no stinkin’ Wal*Mart!) I also have plenty of time to sit around and think at length about important matters like the meaning of our life on Earth (hint: read chapter 2 of part 2 of book 2 of “War and Peace”) or the meaning of the boulder falling into the swimming pool at the beginning of the film “Sexy Beast.” And of course, as it is that time of year, I’ve been thinking that the standards of what I am thankful for this year have been lowered immensely. Thanks for my house not collapsing yet. Thanks for two months of a healthy gastrointestinal system. Thanks for being able to bike only 3 hours to the nearest electrical outlet to recharge my batteries (literally and figuratively) and for being able to buy (terrible) beer and Mars bars and take showers once I get there. And of course, thanks for what potentially could easily have been a terrible living situation (and what has been for some many) turning out relatively splendidly for me. That said, think about all the things you have in your life that you can take for granted, the things that other people don’t have, and the fact that with all the wealth and luxury America gives us, what are the things in the world that really make us happy? Is it a new Television or a newly engaged couple? Is it the Phillies’ first World Series victory in 25 years or the first Democratic president in 8 years? Is it the sense of pride you get when you accomplish what you wondered whether or not you could accomplish, or simply being able to win little victories here and there? Depends on where you are, I guess. Happy Turkey Day.

One Month In the Bush

I thought I would be able to get internet access a month ago when I came into town. It turns out I was overly optimistic about the internet situation in Manantali. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say, this entry is a month old and is getting posted now because I already wrote it and it’s easier to do a short update for the past month in addition.

I have been installed in my site for a month now, and I can honestly say that, not surprisingly, this is one of the most surreal experiences I have ever put myself through. So many different elements of my life at site are completely different than anything I’ve lived through, including my first few months in-country. I am constantly reminded of one remark I found when preparing for service and reading some Peace Corps-provided literature that when you move to a place like a poor Malian farming village from a place like suburban America, everything that you once took for granted as a routine becomes a chore. If I want water, I fill up my gasoline jugs at the pump down the street. If I want to drink it, I have to wait until it goes through the filter and, for precaution’s sake, wait until the chlorine kills anything dangerous, all of which means a glass of safe drinking water might be a half hour in the making if I haven’t planned ahead.
More examples of routines becoming anything but are the greetings, which I mentioned in an earlier entry. Being accustomed to Americans’ general anonymity and not feeling the need to greet people on the street unless you know and like them, it’s tiring walking around a village where the expectation is to exchange greetings with everyone you walk past, even from a distance. All the more difficult if you know the people you are greeting, where the simple “Hi-how-are-you?” gets upgraded to an exhaustive run-down of every possible way of asking how the person and everyone they know are doing, plus a handshake. (This last part might be my least favorite as Malian hygienic practices in the bush leave much to be desired. Every time I shake someone’s’ hand, my mind automatically rolls through the list of all the germs and illnesses I am allowing to take up residence in my body simply for politeness’ sake.)
Chores and manners aside, there are a number of more significant things I have had to adapt to as part of my normal life. One of the most notable is the amount of time that I now go without having a decent conversation. Of course, there are no English speakers, and Bambara, the language I have been learning to this point, is spoken and understood sort of the way Spanish is in America. Niantanso is in traditionally a Malinke area, which means they speak a dialect that is similar enough to Bambara that I could communicate if I spoke Bamabara fluently, which of course I am not even close to being able to do. In the meantime, until I got into town here in the “electricity-ville” of Manantali, I have gone as much as 3 weeks where, aside from a few “normal” dialogues with the new English teacher who just moved into town, the only conversations I was having were in a language I scored “intermediate-mid” in when tested. What makes this harder is that when I do converse, even if I think I’m doing a decent job, Malians don’t have the same multi-cultural exposure we Americans do and aren’t used to understanding accents or improper sentence phrasing. It never occurred to me before how strange it would be to not be able to talk to people about what I was thinking, or recount something that happened, or even just tell a joke based on the situation, without having to resort to “Spot Goes to School” level dialogue.
When I am able to have something resembling a normal conversation, I find further difficulty adjusting to the way Malians converse. I keep thinking of one scholar who wrote that people tend to speak in “scripts” for every situation. There are established idioms, responses, and phrases used in all situations, so that even if what we are saying is an original thought, often it is the standard scripted response for that occasion. For example, if one man tells a friend he is sick, the friend will respond either with “Feel better” or continue in a standard line of questioning to learn more about the situation: “What’s wrong? Are you taking anything?” One would have to be very clever or original, or insane, to deviate much from the established scripts of communication. In Mali, all of these scripts are different. People are simply used to saying things differently, with their own idioms and expressions. They state the obvious often: “Hello Ablaye, noon has arrived,” or “You are looking fatter than usual today.” I find myself not knowing how to talk to people, not only because I don’t understand what they are saying, but because I have no idea why they are saying it or how to respond. I regularly get asked questions like “Does America have the same sun as Africa? Does it shine like it does here?” Another favorite is when at least once a day, someone who had not met me yet would point to a chicken or a sheep and ask “Ablaye, what’s this thing’s name?” Eventually I stopped answering “it’s called a saga,” and started sarcastically responding “It’s name is Mustafa, like you.”
Learning curves aside, I have been having plenty of fun little adventures as I get acclimated to my new home. I still regularly have very young children start crying or screaming as soon as they see me, which is hilarious and only encourages their mothers to shove them right in my terrifying white-boy face. My greatest accomplishment in this area was one time when a mother put down her two toddlers in front of me. The kids stared at me until I said good morning, at which point they started bawling with terror in their eyes, spun around, and ran as fast as their little legs could carry them down the street and around the corner out of sight.
Another exciting moment was my first experience with a goat slaughtering. The day before, my homologue and I had hiked up a hill outside the town and found a family of goats stranded on the top. We brought them down and gave them to the head goat-herder, and the next day, our town’s market day when everyone comes to sell food and wares, one of the goats was taken out to be slaughtered and portioned out for sale, with a portion going to my homologue and I as thanks. All I can say about witnessing the slaughter is that I now have a newfound appreciation for Kosher meat. Rather than a razor-sharp blade painlessly stuck through the neck as Judaism requires, the throat was sawed open with an old dull knife. With blood spurting all over the little kids holding the goat down, and the goat still jerking from nervous reflex, they skinned and gutted it, emptied the full intestines into the bushes nearby, chopped it up – meat, bones and organs – and divided them into neat little piles for sale. I know already that I have a weak stomach for gore and these kinds of “anatomy lessons,” so the knowledge that this anatomy was going to be prepared as peoples’ dinner, and with the prayer that the cooks have at least some sense of suitable meat preparation practice, definitely gave my nerves a workout that day.
Other adventures I’ve had involved clearing the weeds out of my field only to be told I was doing it wrong by everyone who walked by and eventually giving up and letting them do it for me rather than listen to them make fun of me all day, trying to build a table with exactly the same results, or my bike ride to the nearest cell phone service which I thought would be an easy 15 km bike ride on a road, and which turned out to be a grueling ride through the rarely-trodden bush-path just to get a cellular signal that barely worked. However, most of my time has been spent sitting around, reading, eating, listening to other people chatting and understanding very little, studying language, hiking or biking around, and trying my best to socialize with the locals and the kids who have taken a liking to the weird new “Toubabu” (ie. whitey). I have been doing a little bit in the way of trying to assess the community’s needs in terms of my eventual work, but for the most part, I’m just waiting for when I can finally make myself useful.
As of now, I’m taking a break from the bush in the lovely seaside resort just outside bustling downtown Manantali (no, of course not!! It’s a PC-owned house but it is right on the river and near the market area, and run-amok with hippos and monkeys galore). This is where I come when I feel like getting computer access and watching movies, playing the resident PCV Dave’s “Zombies” board game, getting good grub at the restaurants or street-food vendors and tossing back a few beverages I can’t publicly get away with in my Muslim village. And of course speaking English regularly. In other words, this is Club Med – Kayes region. It’s a 40 km bike ride from village, recently made a lot easier by the acquisition of my new PC-issued mountain bike, colored candy-cane red and white like “Speed Racer” and making me stick out more than ever as the rich American.


And now for some random entries taken from my daily journal I keep at site:
- After watching a Kung Fu movie off a generator at the village, I had to defend myself by saying in earnest “No, no, no, in real life, Americans aren’t mean and they don’t go around killing each other with karate.”
- Today, I ate an entire cucumber that measured 9.5 inches long by 5.5 inches wide. And that’s smallish.
- People here are always complaining about how miserable they are because of work, poverty, illness, etc. I try to tell them that “Money can’t buy happiness” but I wonder now if that is an expression one can only say when they have a cushion of luxury around them already. Here, money really is the only thing that can cure many of their problems.
- Clever idea for a Mother’s Day lunch special at restaurants: Eggs Over-Easy. Get it?

And now, stay tuned for the Thanksgiving Day Jake In Mali Special, coming up next!

No more PST - This PCT is now a PCV, until COS (or hopefully not ET or AS)

I passed my language test.  I completed all of the cultural, medical, security and technical learning requirements.  I bought my ridiculous Malian “formal wear,” which in many cases is a terrific misnomer, for reasons to be described later.  And then, I swore in.

Finally, almost exactly one year since I first submitted my initial application to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, I have taken the final step in the realization of that goal.  Not that there was ever really any question to me as to whether I would accomplish this feat, but the knowledge that I have still fills me with a warm glow inside.  Of course, that could just be a side-effect of my giardia.

Since my last entry, Tubani So had mostly continued in the same way as it normally does: hanging around, playing cards, reading, attending technical skill classes and administrative seminars, and of course, counting the days until we could attain the closest thing to “job security” we can expect from this gig.  We also began planning what was for a number of us, one of the most important elements of swearing in as a volunteer, our outfits.  This was like preparing for senior prom, with a bizarre twist.  As I forget whether or not I mentioned previously, Malians have a unique sense of fashion.  The expression “anything goes” is taken to weird new levels as the common practice among Malians is to buy a fabric adorned with designs ranging from abstract or floral to more blatant pictures of chickens, batteries, cellular phones and factories with smokestacks, and then have a tailor sew them an outfit, either pants, shirts, or a matching combination of both.  So far, I have been embracing the tackiest parts of this culture and have purchased fabrics with pictures of loaves of bread in plastic bags, spats (you know, those fun Las Vegas shoes from way back when), fancy cocktail drinks, and one with an entire living room scene straight out of the tackiest part of 1978.  The latter two were made into a shirt and pants combo, which combined with a mustache/soul-patch facial hair design made up the outfit I wore for the formal swearing-in ceremony (photo available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/29040473@N02/ ).  It doesn’t sound like it should be true, but this really does make up Malian formal-wear, and I know this because I checked multiple times with multiple people, asking “Are you suuurrre this is actually appropriate??”

Once I had established that what would barely pass for pajamas in the U.S. were in fact dressy enough for a televised event at the American Embassy, I went on with daily life at Tubani So, counting down the days until the big event.  On the night before, we invited our host parents from homestay over for dinner so they could get a chance to see the legendary school that we would periodically disappear to for days at a time.  They seemed impressed enough, though I doubt that the visit quite lived up to my host father’s high expectations of what this mythical place of learning and American comeraderie seemed from the way he asked me about it during homestay.

The next morning, everyone showered, shaved, put on their dressy (and again, I use the term loosely) clothing, and took off to the U.S. embassy in Bamako.  The ceremony was more or less as unexciting as we expected.  Speeches were given by important heads of things, mostly in languages I don’t know well enough to make out any content.  Finally, we gave our oath, remembering not to actually say “I, state your name, do solemnly swear, or affirm...” and we were in.  The rest of the day was spent at various clubs and bars, dancing to that Romanian “Numa Numa” dance song 4 different times at 3 locations, and reveling in ways that only incredibly excited newly appointed Peace Corps volunteers can.

So where does that leave me?  Well, I leave tomorrow bright and early for the lovely town of Niantanso for a few days, and then I get installed at my site, where I will be living on and off for the next two years.  I’m trying very hard to come up with something significant to say to mark the occasion, but the truth is I’ve been in and out of the bathroom all night, sick with a very bothersome giardia parasite who I’m hoping will be a little bit less aggressive tomorrow during my 6 hour trip.  But. . . this is it.  I’m starting.  I’m wondering what I’m going to be doing for the next few months with limited language ability and little idea of what projects to begin or how to initiate them.  I feel a bit like I’m being tossed into the deep end of the pool, and not for the first time either.  I’m not sure the next time I’ll get online, so send my some love to come back to and wish me luck.  Training wheels are off and I’m picking up speed.  This should be interesting...

Out of the frying pan

Not only have I just completed the end of homestay training, but I think this is the longest I can remember going without internet access in years.  I really must be getting used to this place.

The last 3 weeks have gone by a lot faster than I thought they would.  Language training has been put on the back burner, and instead we've finally begun to concentrate on the technical details of water sanitation work.  On one day, the entire Water San sector came to my homestay village and built a soak pit and washing area.  For those of you W.S.-ignorant as I once was, a soak pit is a pit dug near latrines, pumps, and washing areas, where the water can sink into the ground and be reabsorbed instead of sitting on the surface accumulating fungus and letting mosquitos breed.  Yes, it's valuable, important, and it was the first time that I felt truly useful in this country so far.  That grand feeling was fleeting though, as the next time we met as a sector, most of what we did consisted of unnecessary field trips to tour offices and hear dull speakers give lectures which could have been sufficiently consolidated onto a piece of paper and an explanatory sentence.  In some ways, it has been frustrating to be spending so much time doing so little other than preparation, but knowing that I will be officially installed at my site and back to feeling as if I'm in way over my head within a week makes me feel oddly better.

Homestay wasn't altogether without incident.  I had perhaps my most culturally  frightening experience as I cut my hair on afternoon outside my house and watched the children living in my housing concession swarm me like moths to a bulb trying to get at my shorn locks.  At first, they were just gathering them from off the ground, but soon started shoving hands in my face to be the first to get the fallen locks.  After gathering a sufficient handful, they would run off somewhere and come back empty-handed for more.  I was honestly more creeped out that I had been since the first time I tried eating "to" (see earlier entries).  I was half expecting a voodoo doll or some West African equivalent to show up on my pillow the next day.  It was only later that I learned that the hair was buried and this practice was just a measure to make sure none of it would accidentally get into food.  However, there are a number of traditional medicinal and other ritual crafts still practiced that use white-people hair as the main ingredient, and apparently there might be a small profit to be made the next time I give myself a trim.

As the end of homestay began to approach, so did the beginning of Ramadan, which was an exciting excuse for me to tell everyone in the village that as a Jew, I did not in fact fast on Ramadan but I had at least another half dozen excuses throughout the year to feel their pain.  The village spent a week planning a going away party for the 4 of us PCTs who were leaving, and only on the day of the party did someone realize that it was already the 4th day of the holiday and there were no parties allowed, so instead, a goat was sacrificed in our honor and served over dinner.  

Coming back to Tubani So, it was good to see all the PCTs again in once place.  We've been retelling our wild stories, the most interesting involving 4-goat orgies, adult cats feeding from the breasts of dogs, and of course sharing news of all of our latest illnesses (so far, I've mainly just had to deal with a couple weeks of dysentery which has served to teach me only that dysentery isn't nearly as scary as its made out to be in "The Oregon Trail").  The rest of our time has been spent attending last-minute seminars about last-minute details involving such crucial issues such as how much we're getting paid and when, watching bootlegs of The Dark Knight that at least 3 people have had sent to them, and packing up and preparing for the next 2 years of our lives.  I've been thinking about a good number of things, some of them important like exactly which projects I will be trying to start up once I get to site, some of them more philosophical like what it would be life if I came back to America and "The Simpsons" has gone off the air (I can't remember a time before Homer and Bart only took vacations from their Sunday night schedule during baseball playoffs season).

In anticipation of my impending beginning of service following Friday's Swearing-In Ceremony, I should warn you all that I have no real idea of when I will be able to have any internet access once I move to my site.  I will be living 40 km from the nearest electrical sockets, so finding a time and place to go online to update blogs and email is still up in the air.  In the meantime, you can now check out some photos I've managed to upload on our painfully slow server here at Tubani So.  This is only a small fraction of everything I've shot, but it's the best I can do for now, so check them out at www.flickr.com/photos/29040473@N02 and enjoy.  Also, drop me a line at yacob118@hotmail.com if you feel like you ever need to send some care packages or letters my way and I'll give you my mailing address.  Otherwise, perhaps one more update to come before I ship out to site, so until next time, keep on enjoying your happy rich country and know that at least one of your friends is equally enjoying his happy life in the developing world.

Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads...

...But it certainly would have made for a nicer journey out into the bush where I have just been visiting my future site of work.  Before then, I had been at my homestay village, doing the usual studying of language, hanging out with the locals, and drinking lots of tea.  Since the last post, I spent a week in Marako ("We're off on the road to Marako/These bush taxis are killing my spine.").  On one occasion, we were able to attend the wedding of a sibling of the host of one of the PCTs.  Malians really know how to throw a party, and starting at around 10 pm, the xylophones, drums and terrible sound system were broken out and the dancing commenced.  The two other PCTs in attendance and I danced and wathced other people dance, marvelling at how much better at it they appeared to be than ourselves.  Partway through the party, the festivities were violently disrupted by a frog attack — attack being a term used liberally.  Among their many cultural quirks, Malians as a whole are terrified of frogs, and I mean terrified.  There are a whole number of superstitions that exist, such as if a woman touches one, it will literally and actually jump into her *ahem* reproductive cavity.  Suffice it to say, when the frog started hopping around the dance floor, nobody was particularly interested in stopping it, preferring to shriek and run out of the way.  Well, one elderly gentleman had decided that this was enough and when the frog landed in front of him, he starred right at it.  The frog stared back at him, and he at it, and it at him, and finally he stuck his foot out and triumphantly stomped on its head.  He n proceeded to pick it up by the leg and fling it over the roof.  Immediately, everyone cheered, the music picked right back up again, and normalcy was restored.

Another fun adventure and "faux pas" learning experience was when my PCT friend and I decided to go for a run.  The first time we had done this, she had been wearing capri pants, but she decided that this time, it was too hot and shorts were the way to go.  Now, despite the fact that women often go completely topless around here without a second thought around their home concessions, showing legs is a big no-no.  So when my co-runner and I walked around to the front of the house where the family was waiting, everyone took one look at her exposed knees and started muttering and looking away... all except one boy who dropped his mouth open in complete shock, let out a high pitched yelp, and almost fell off the bench he was sitting upon.  To this day, anytime this boy sees her, or even doesn't see her but knows her door is open, he stares at my friend or into her room, probably hoping he'll somehow catch another glimpse of those oh-so-alluring kneecaps.

Sadly, at the end of the week, I had to say goodbye to my homestay family for a while, as last week, we left to spend a few days at our future sites where we will be living and working for 2 years.  The travel out there was difficult, to say the least.  We were escorted by our homologues, the people who live in our villages whose job it is to show us around, introduce us to people, and be our basic support system in the village.  We took a bus from Bamako, the capital, to the city of Kita, where we were supposed to get a bush taxi out to the village 2 hours away.  We missed the first transport, so we had to catch the second one, 7 hours later.  In the meantime, we killed the day by waiting at the station, since the taxi could leave at a moment's notice and we didn't want to miss it.  So yeah, 7 hours sitting around doing nothing.  Finally, when the taxi did come, the trip took an hour longer than it should have since we changed the tire 3 times, despite only having one spare.  But it was okay, because I was perfectly comfortable on my seat which was a giant bag of rice, since the bench was broken and even more uncomfortable than the rice bag, which gave pretty good support as we drove in and out of potholes and ditches along the 100km unpaved road into the bush.  I kept imagining the line from the end of "Back to the Future," which is where I get the title for this entry.

But I'm being too negative.  Once we got to village that night, I was allowed to sleep in my homologue's house while my own house was still being prepared.  The next day, I got a tour of the village, which is a 2000 person farming commune which makes it large enough to have both a dugutigi, or village chief, and a mayor who is appointed by the local government.  I was introduced to both these men, who had extensive talks concerning what exactly I would be doing in the town and how glad they were to have me.  Of course, my Bambara being still very elementary and the fact that they were speaking another dialect called Malinke meant I understood nothing, but I would soon get used to this. The next several days were spent eating, walking around, and hanging out with people who tried their best to include me in their conversations but gave up quickly after deciding that all I knew how to say was "America is very nice" since their accents were nearly impenetrable to my unaccustomed ear.  I did manage to get in a few good conversations with my homologue, and even more with his brother who knows a bit of English and seems much more friendly.  We talked about America and even touched on some political issues such as displacement of wealth and separation of Church and State.  However, I mostly sat quietly for most of the visit and watched the world go by.  Niantanso is basically a typical poor Malian farming commune.  They have pumps and wells for water, but some of the pumps are broken and the wells are made of mud bricks since they can't afford concrete, and mud is not exactly something you want to use to support your water supply unless you want to be drinking it too.  They are also building a CSCOM center, the NGO which builds medical centers for areas like mine which are large enough to support them and remote enough to need them over simple locally trained doctors.  With the sanitation expertise I will hopefully be accumulating in the coming weeks, it seems that I will have quite a bit of good work to be doing once I get to my site in September.

After a long, slow 4 days, I was picked up to go to Manantali, my local city for banking and mail pickup.  There is a "stage house" there for PCVs and it is about as nice a place as one can find in Mali.  There is a river with hippos and monkeys cavorting about, running water and electricity, and plenty of supermarkets with Western amenities for all the Europeans and South Africans working on the hydroelectric dam there.  In short, America is just a 35 km bike ride away.  I spent the night there hanging out with PCVs and other trainees before spending 2 days at the stage house in Kita, which seems like just as fun a place.  We spent 2 days hitting the town, watching disney movies, eating homemade fudge, and getting devoured by bedbugs.  We also got the chance to really see a Malian city for the first time, and it is definitely one of the stranger experiences so far.  Even the major cities here are like nothing I've ever seen.  They are really truly poor, and the only buildings made of solid concrete and look stable are owned by the wealthiest businesses and entrepreneurs.  The local market is usually run by old women selling produce and minor household items in wooden lean-to shacks lined up in rows.  Children amazed by the presence of "tubobs," or foreign white people, follow us around and keep trying to get us to shake our hands saying "Bonjour! Bon soir!" regardless of the time of day or where you are going.

Essentially what I learned this week, while I wasn't cheating and living in the little pockets of American life transplanted here by ex-pats and PCVs, was that Mali can continually amaze me by how different it is than anything I expected.  Everything looks and smells different.  Donkeys stroll through downtown with their owners and everyone greets you on the street.  I am going to take a long time getting used to this place, but I fully anticipate it being worthwhile.  Coming up, I have a solid 3 weeks in Marako with the Samake family, and then I swear in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer.  I'm not even thinking that far ahead.  As far as I'm concerned, I'm living life here a little bit at a time; it's not 2 years in Mali, it's tomorrow in Mali.

This will probably be my last post for a few weeks, so send me lots of love to come back to.  Also, if you want my new address, which is different from my old one, let me know and I'll send it to you.  Thanks for reading, and see you next time.

The Homestay

When you turn on the television and see those commercials advertising that "for the price of a cup of coffee each day, you can save a poor starving African child's life," you tend to get the impression that all Africans living in rural areas have squalid living conditions, are malnourished, and miserable all the time.  I've spent the last 2 weeks living in some similar conditions in the 3rd poorest country in the world, and while there is obviously a poor food and sanitation situation,  I have seen very little misery, and nothing that resembles the constant pain that Bono and Sally Struthers have been advertising to the West as what dominates Africa.  What I have seen is playing children, hard-working farming families, some of the friendliest hospitality imaginable, and overall one of the most illuminating 2 weeks of my life.

Tuesday morning 2 weeks ago, I awoke with a painful speech-impediment inducing canker sore on my tounge only to find that the previous night's monsoon had swept all my newly washed clothing off the clothesline and into the wet, muddy ground.  All this meant that as we left that day to our Homestay sites where we were going be learning Bambara, the Malian language, and culture while living with a local family, I had no clean clothes and couldn't talk without feeling pain.  Once we hit the road to our villages, I was feeling better.  The driver told us that the five of us going to our site, a town called Marako, were being spoiled since the community had slaughtered 2 goats in our honor.  It only got more exciting as we arrived at the village to see most of the community of 900 people having a whole elaborate welcome party with traditional music, dancing, and welcome speeches.  It was the best possible welcoming.  Afterwards, we were introduced to the families we would be staying with and went off with them to our homes.

In my compound, where the whole extended family lives, I was taken to my home, which is a room with a bed and some pre-supplied Peace Corps-issued goodies like mosquito nets, lanterns, sheets, and 2 buckets, one to hold our pump-water for drinking, and one for us to use as we have our bucket-baths.  The rest of the family, grandparents, parents, children, aunts, siblings, and wives, all live in different houses in the compound.  The buildings are made of cement with corrogated metal roofs, and there are seperate mud-brick and thatched-roof kitchens and storage sheds.  We also have donkeys, goats, chickens, dogs, and a rooster who I think is sick, because rather than a triumphant Cock-a-doodle-dooo! to wake up to, the sound he makes is more like a car engine failing to start.

Within the first day, I had been given a new Malian name: Able Samake, the same name as the family patriarch and the youngest son, who I, in the interest of cross-cultural exchange, have taken to calling Michael Jackson because of his enthusiastic dance moves.  Explaining the significance of his name was difficult, as was getting the family to learn the immense impact Mr. Jackson has had on American pop culture ("Michael Jackson bE donke.  Donke togo Moonwalk.").  Once that had been established, the following days only saw an increase in cultural sharing.  Most of our days have been occupied by learning Bambara and little snippets of Malian culture.  

Some interesting rules of Mali: Never use your left hand for anything involving food or greetings - that hand is saved for post-bathroom cleanup using the teapot-bidet called a "salidaga."  Women never whistle, and men don't at night.  If you dig holes in the ground, you will be thought a sorcerer and regarded with suspicion.  The Earth does not spin - if it did, how come I never wake up on the other side of the room? (Think about it.)  Chairs, first dibs on food, and anything else that requires priority go to guests, and then elders.  Children are very much at the bottom of the pecking order, but that doesn't mean we don't love 'em.  Dogs and any other animals, though, are regularly beaten, or chased into the bathroom while someone is using it.  Tea is drank regularly, and often, and is a very long process that yields about 3 sips per person.  One of these days, I'll post the process here and you can introduce it to your friends and then they will feel so cool to be friends with you and your ethnic worldliness.

Life in the village is fun.  Marako mostly consists of farmers, and that is what most people do all day during the current rainy season.  Nights, I hang out with other PCVs in Marako, or out front of my host father Seydou's butiki, or general store, and socialize with whichever random townsfolk stop by.  Slowly but surely, I am more and more able to carry on small conversations, and the last night there, I was talking about religion in Mali and motorcycles.  Food is another adventure here.  Breakfast is always a loaf of bread slathered in mayonnaise, lunch is rice with a peanut or fish or something else sauce which is occasionally good and usually at least edible.  Dinner has mostly been fantastic and consisting of eggs, french fries, potatoes, or vegetable stew.  It's not well-rounded nourishment, but it's edible and that's good.  I have tried "to," a dish of millet porridge and okra paste which is the national dish of Mali, and it is easily the worst possible food ever.  I didn't even know people could eat things that bad, but I suppose Malians are raised on it, and I give them credit for having stomachs of steel.

On a more serious note, I mentioned earlier that life isn't as bad as people usually imagine.  It's true, though there are problems.  Diseases are plentiful and easily acquired, malnourishment is rampant and babies with bloated bellies are probably the ones who don't live until the life expectancy of 50.  But, the kids play with me and laugh a lot, and while by Western standards they live terribly, you wouldn't get quite that response from them.  One thing I've learned is that those sad looking pictures of unsmiling Malian children are very misleading.  Africans simply don't smile in pictures.  They'll be screaming for me to get out my camera and get all excited, and then as soon as I aim, the adopt the "poor sad African child look" that we all see on TV.  It's actually a little bit offensive how much the West exploits the image of an impovershed Africa to pay for its charities, while ignoring the culturally rich and happy parts of the continent that is full of great people.  How miserable could a people be when they go back and forth for a full minute greeting each other every time they see a friend, and even strangers are waved to with:

-Hi, good morning!

-Good morning!

-How's your day!

-Only peace!

-How's your family?

-They're all fine!

-Yeah!

-Yeah!

Mali is not perfect, and I'm still nervous about the prospect of 2 years here, but I'm sure I will get to the point where I am happier staying than quitting and it will be worthwhile.  I called Dad one night and while he was talking about how I only get one body and nothing is guaranteed, my bed broke, I fell on the floor and lost phone reception.  That kind of irony is the reason I am happy here.  It may not be easy or fun all the time, but it won't be like anything else I ever do.  See you next time, and keep in touch.

Two for one!

I've had more computer time than internet access lately, so here are two blogs in one posting for you:

Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport is really nice.  It looks like what my parents in their somewhat dated stylistic sensibilities would refer to as “space-age.”  Red carpeted floors and a wood paneled cieling make up the interior, which in its airplane hangar-like shape and rows of lights above me that form flourescent trails like cars lit up on a highway at night seem like a stark contrast from what I’m anticipating in approaching days.  This is just one of the many things on my mind as I take a little bit of time to myself to update this blog and tell you about my last few days.

There has been hardly any time to think between meetings, seminars, travling, meeting people and sleeping, the latter being sadly the least frequent.  Monday, I arrived at the hotel downtown, which was lucky for me since it was the national orientation and just about everyone else had to fly here and was already out of their home city.  The first day went surprisingly well, and despite my normal aversion to having to make fridns with massive groups of strangers at the same time, once I realized that everyone was just as new there as I was and just as eager to make friends with the whole group, it was easy to loosen up and “work the room.”

Monday and Tuesday mostly consisted of icebreakers and educational general orientation seminars.  The staff members gave us a general idea of what to expect from life in Mali and how the Peace Corps runs, including little tidbits such as “The Maliaria prophylaxis doesn’t neccessarily give you nightmares, though I had some weird dreams about the local mosque blaring Pink Floyd” and that we should be expecting to eat our delicious millet meals three times a day, but some of the richer familiies we will be living with might splurge on chicken, eggs and spices.  There was a lot more information obviously, mostly running the gamut from inspirational speeches to remiders of protocal and all the ways we can potentially get kicked off the program, but a lot of emphasis was also placed on meeting people.  With 78 of us, the decided to split us in half, which allowed for much more efficient and friendly bonding, and so far, everyone I’ve met here seems to be intelligent, cool and very friendly.  I suppose it makes sense that Peace Corps would mostly be attracting the kinds of people who were outgoing, confident and smart, unlike say, at a college orientation where you could meet some of the best people ever or a room full of kids dumber then a shovel.

Outside of the seminars, we spent a lot of time walking around town, socializing and eating as much expensive and unhealthy food as possible (I think the girl who downed 4 Philly Cheesesteaks in 2 days took the record), all on the free cash given to us by the program directors to spend away our last few days here.  Wednesday, we recieved our yellow fever shots and our first doses of malaria pills (not something I ever really imagined myself having to go through - me taking malaria medicine??)  However, a few hours later, and anxiety begining to set in deeper than ever, we loaded our luggage, got on the bus, and pulled out of the hotel - and hit a parking sign.  So after making sure we hadn’t caused too much damage to civic property right before fleeing the country, we took off to JFK, and then to Paris.

The flight was fairly uneventful, except for seeing Bill Murray boarding our plane to Paris on first class and everyone having a mild freakout, and the plane serving us free wine, though I decided I’d rather let my body max out on the last dependably clean water supply I might have for a while.  And that brings me to here, about an hour from boarding a plane to Bamako, Mali.  I will probably post this once I get there since I don’t feel like paying for the wireless internet, so this entry will already be obsolete, but I’m also not certain what my web-usage schedule will be over there, so I  figure I’ll take advantage of the downtime here.  

On another note, if you want to sent me a package or mail, email me and I’ll give you my address in Mali.  That’s all I’ve got for now so I will abruptly and uncreatively say goodbye for now.

I’ve been here for about 2 days and already, I’m wondering if this whole blog idea is futile or not.  There are so many things to tell and nothing has even happened yet.  As a general overview, we got into Bamako airport on Thursday night without a hitch - and without hardly a wink of sleep in a day and a half - and were immediately bussed to the Peace Corps Mali training village called Tubani So, in Zamabunu (I think that’s what it’s called).  After an amazingly delicious dinner featuring some kind of Malian potato that is some of the best potato dishin’ I’ve had, we mostly grabbed our bags and headed off to our mud huts where I, with my two “hut-mates” went to sleep.

*Sidenote about our training center: Tubani So is in a small town outside Bamako, the capital city.  We all live in mud-brick huts with well-thatched roofs right off of the dusty road to everywhere else.  Everywhere else includes assorted other mudhuts, the dining hangar, various other hangars for meetings, seminars and orientations, and a few sports courts and fields.  

As for lavatories, because I know you all want to know, we use a “nyegen.”  It’s an outhouse...with a hole in the ground...that functions as a urinal, toilet, and shower drain.  That’s right, we have a shower here so that we don’t have to adjust to everything all at once.  But we also have a hole that we squat over and defecate into.  It smells as bad as you think, there are as many flies as you think, it’s just as uncomfortable and paniful on morale as you think, and the only saving grace is that they give us toilet paper here so we don’t have to immediately switch over to using a teapot as a bidet.  But we’re still never supposed to eat or shake hands with our left hand.  Yes, it is that bad.

But all the time I’ve spent outside the nyegen has been wonderfully interesting.  Right now, I’m listening to the noises of the night, which has the standard crickets complimented by clicks, chirps, and squacks of all varieties.  Earlier today, I heard one of the most entertaining bird calls I’ve ever heard, which can best be described as a wood saw cutting a log to the tune of “weeee-awwww, weeee-awwww, weeee-awwww, weeawweeawweeaw!”  I’ve also see some huge millipedes, and one guy said he saw a nice big scorpion on the road, and right now, the dining room I’m in is getting swarmed by giant flying kamikaze termites.  Oddly though, when I’m outside looking around, I’ve seen a lot of trees and bushes not altogether different from those at home, and almost forgot I was in Africa for a little while.  It’s still strange for me to say aloud “I am living in Africa right now.”

As for what we’ve actually been doing, a lot of it has been orientation, telling us what to do here, what to expect from training, etc.  Initially, it was a little bit of general information on medical rules, social customs, the typical orientation stuff.  Our trainers, some of whom are Malians, others actually being current volunteers, have been regalling us with tales of Malian glory, like when one girl who had been stabbed by a rose thorn and did not have the Bambara language skills to communicate the problem accidentally told her host mother that she had “been vaccinated by a tree.”  

More recently, we have been starting to learn Bambara, Mali’s indigenous language which is actually a lot of fun to speak.  It’s kind of the stereotypical African-sounding language, minus the clicks.  We have also been learning the ins and outs offf dealing with “Mr. D.” a.k.a. diarrhea, and his wife, “Ms. C.” whose identity I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on.  We’ve been warned about all the gorey details and potentially alien contents of our stools as a result of various exciting parasites, and now we are all scared to eat or drink anything outside of our safe and protected compound.  The major rule so far is just to clean the hell out of our water and not to eat anything made on the street.  On Tuesday, we leave for “Homestay” where we have more intense language, cultural and skill training while living with a family in a village near Tubani So.  For now, I’m running out of things to think of saying, so I leave you saying a ni walu and see you next time.

One week and counting...

While my official term of service doesn't begin until July 10, I begin my orientation one week from today, where the Peace Corps office will administer our last round of shots, tell us a bit more about where we're going and what to expect, and do a final check to make sure they haven't accidentally recruited any bona fide crazies. In the meantime, I've been doing a lot in the way of preparing for my journey, carrying out such arduous tasks as visiting friends, lounging around the house, and buying all the fun new toys I get to take with me, like mosquito tents, headlamps, luggage with pockets in places that scream "part-time smuggler," and most excitingly, a digital camera. I've always been apprehensive about digital cameras, because it always seemed a bit like cheating for me, along the same lines as web-based dictionaries and Yellow Pages, online shopping, or anti-lock brakes. Don't we as civilized humans lose something when we allow our machines to do every simple thing for us? The answer is "yes, of course," but that doesn't mean my digital camera isn't cool enough to sell my soul for. This is probably old-hat to most of you digital camera vets, but for me, it's thrilling that my camera has settings that manually or automatically control light, focus, aperture, and every other option for every conceivable photo-taking situation: "kids&pets," fireworks, indoors, outdoors, mountains, parties, beaches, aquariums, and on and on. Not only that, but it has features like redeye elimination, image stabilization, and my favorite, a little targeting reticle that can find all the faces in the picture and focus on them. That last feature even worked on a C3P0 mask I was taking a picture of, which means the function either works very well or just gets easily confused.
Fun new toys aside, my other task, traveling and vacationing, has also been a blast so far. I kicked off my grand tour with a trip to Indianapolis, partly to see an old Binghamton friend, but more importantly, to see the Indy 500 Hall of Fame! (Just kidding Mal, haha! Please don't hurt me.) There, we had all sorts of adventures like doing embarrassingly poorly at bowling, seeing the Indy 500 HoF and track, and hanging out at the zoo (the best part of which was watching a walrus playing peekaboo with a little girl from the other side of his glass tank while evidentally either having much too much fun looking at her, or simply missing the presence of a female of his own species...and all of the adults in the audience were snickering when they realized the walrus could use his hands and feet at the same time to physically relieve his "loneliness," while the little girl playing with him remained blissfully unaware).
The next week was a trip with some other Bing buddies to Margate, New Jersey, where a grand time was had by all with the beach, boardwalk, and barbecue. Losing $45 at blackjack was less exciting, but one Atlantic City-priced martini later, I didn't mind quite as much. A day after returning home, I went for a vacation of boating, biking and hiking with my dad, where not even the constant threat of cataclysmic monsoons could stifle our fun. Heavy rain for nearly half of a 25 mile bike ride on a muddy trail? Feh! Nothing can stop us from having a good father-son bonding time!...especially when we already paid the deposit on the bicycle rentals.
The final leg of my travels began last Sunday when I drove up to Boston to cram 6 of some of my favorite people into 6 days of visiting. Part one of the trip included staying with my sister Aviva and munching on fresh strawberries from the urban gardens she runs, then going out to a bar with her and her housemates and trying to remember all the rules of playing rummy, and eventually just making a few up. Next visit was some newly engaged friends of mine, one of whom was a Boston native who lives in Israel but came home for a visit so that he could propose to his girlfriend in person, presumably because doing so over Facebook with a photo of the ring would have been in poor taste. Together, we took a Duck Tour of Boston, visited Mother Goose's grave and argued over whether Ben Franklin was a Bostonian or a Philly Boy at heart. Next on the visit-list and joining me on my pilgrimage to the Samuel Adams brewery was a close friend and radio co-host who patiently waited as my underage sidekick while I sampled the beer, some of which is still unavailable to the general public outside the brewery.  The day grew even more exciting as we shared a happy romp around downtown Boston, accompanied by a 3 1/2 foot tall inflated Sam Adams bottle bought at the brewery.  This being Boston, people were thrilled to see our blatant display of civic pride in the form of novelty beer bottles, and cheered, joked or just stared at us everywhere we went, including one 5-year-old boy who told me he liked my "balloon."

The last leg of my journey took me south to see more friends, one of whom was babysitting the cutest baby imaginable who, when we would ring a doorbell near him, would look at me with a giant smile as if to say "See?? Isn't that the greatest thing ever?!"  I ended the trip seeing another Bingham-friend and fencing partner, who took me mini golfing and gave me a toy vibrating lion to take to Africa, where I can stand on tall rocks and sing "The Lion King" theme song.  To end my travels, I drove yesterday to a fantastic wedding of more Binghamton people, which was also a good chance to see everyone who I hadn't had a chance to say goodbye to.

This brings me to the present, and the end of another blog entry which is a lot longer than I thought it would be.  I guess for the future, I'll work on being more concise, but frankly, you can read as much or little of this as you want, or space it out over time, and things like this always tend to be a bit self-indulgent anyway, so why shouldn't I write this however I want?  In any event, I'll try to update once more before I start orientation, but this week is mostly just packing and cleaning, so we'll see what happens.  See you next time,

~Jake

P.S. Here are some links to the photos of what I've been doing these last few weeks, and they're visible even if you're not on facebook:

www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2131849&l=685d6&id=8107797

www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2131907&l=53cc8&id=8107797

First Post!!

So here it is.  What you’ve all been waiting for, wrapped up into one neatly packaged website - the entire story, from beginning to now.  This is my new weblog on how I joined the Peace Corps and everything that has happened since.  This first entry is just a backlog of events that have gotten me up to the present, covering about a year of history, so it is a good deal longer than most of my future entries will be.  This is just for those of you who have no idea what I’ve been up to for the last year.  Also, keep in mind that once I get abroad, updates will be fewer and further between.  For now though, this little blog site should answer all your pressing questions, including “What are you doing?” and “Really? Are you insane?”  Hopefully, I can answer the first question fairly well, and the answer to the second will be determined with time.  For now though, just sit back, get yourself a nice little cocktail, plug in your favorite West African pop record and enjoy the beginning of the serialization of the Mali-bound life of Jacob “The Jakeman” Morris Asher

It was coming, as it did every year, like a tremendous tidal wave, starting small in the distance, but growing ever closer and ever larger, until it would inevitably reach the shore and swallow me up, pulling me into its maw and dragging me down into the bowels of the beast called “Responsibility.”  Yes, summer was approaching, and with it, the need to find myself a job.  I told myself, “Jake, this summer, you’re not gunna screw around.  You’re gunna find yourself a nice respectable position that you would be proud to show any future employer so that you can show off just what a jaw-droppingly fine candidate you intend to be for whatever it is you’re trying to con them into thinking you can do.”  Of course, I didn’t even know where to start looking.  My previous summer occupations had included among them such illustrious positions as summer camp counselor, door-to-door canvasser, and even a janitor on a couple of occasions.  This summer, however, was going to matter.

As I delved deep into the information portal of the Internet, I began to find a few intriguing options.  I was looking for something that was meaningful, and related to the type of human-service and aid careers I would later want to pursue following graduation.  There were a lot of non-profit jobs and internships that I could apply for, and this summer was the first time I was getting a nice, early start on the job hunting, so I would be well-positioned to tear the competitive job market a new one.

As I began to look into it, there was one prospect that seemed a step more appealing than all the rest.  I knew the Peace Corps was going to be coming to Binghamton’s campus for the job fair and to hold information sessions, and from a cursory look at the website, I was beginning to grow excited.  Here was a job, paid for and organized by the U.S. government, that would allow me to travel outside of the country, doing some important work, and it would lead to one hell of a summer for me.  That all sounded fantastic until I actually looked a bit harder at the website.  The Peace Corps does not do summer.  They don’t do school vacations at all.  It’s also virtually useless to apply without having a college degree already.  And the real kicker?  It was a two-year commitment.  Well, so much for an exciting summer plan.

But wait!  I’ll have a degree by halfway through 2008.  And this whole crazy idea of going to work in another country, with everything I need provided by Uncle Sam, might just be worth looking into.  I did some investigating, looking into the logistics of the program and over the next few months, found out everything else I needed to know.

Finally, the phone call: “Hey Mom…I’m good…So guess what?  I’ve decided I’m going to apply to the Peace Corps after I graduate…I don’t know why yet, it just seems like a good idea…I’ll justify it later…Why should I be careful when I tell Dad?…Well does his friend still have the parasite?…Oh, I see.  Well I’m pretty sure I want to do it anyway…”  I had barely begun to think about the idea and I was already getting dire warnings of “I had a friend who was a Peace Corps Volunteer.  He still hasn’t recovered.”  But in my typical fashion of not worrying about consequences of my stupid actions until they’re already upon me, I went online and applied.

 

Getting really fun and crazy ideas in your head is one thing.  Going through with them is another.  And justifying your willingness to go through with them to yourself, and to those who determine whether to accept you or not, is quite another thing altogether.  And spending a week filling out an endless online application form is, for lack of a better term, a royal bloody pain in the keester.  But there I was, at the start of the application, and I had to figure out how to explain in the most convincing way possible why I really wanted to dedicate two years of my life to a foreign country at the severe risk of life, limb and sanity.

After much thinking, brainstorming, and practicing on anyone who asked me about it, here is the formal list of reasons why I decided to apply to the Peace Corps:

*I need to get out of this place.  My whole life has been surrounded by rich, white, suburban Jews.  Granted, Binghamton gave me a healthy dose of diversity, but only just enough to realize that when it comes down to the basics, Americans tend to be essentially the same.  Especially New Yorkers.  Yeah yeah, take as much offense as you want and cry about how we’re all precious and unique, but aside from a few differences in wealth, personality, and interest, the people I’ve known in my life have mostly fit into the same cultural molds and niches, and everything starts to blend together after a while.  In short, I need to escape America and find something truly exotic.

*I need to do something useful.  Sure, I’ve made friends, given charity, volunteered, and brightened the lives of just about everyone I come in contact with through my lovable charm, wit and of course, humility.  But here I am, living in one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, in one of its more affluent societies, with a relatively good education, and what am I doing with my privilege? Nothing.  I’ve been squandering all the gifts I’ve been given, and while anyone with a free Sunday can do some community service, not everyone really does, and certainly not on as massive a scale as I’m interested in.  Going to one of the poorest countries in the world sounds like just what I’m interested in.

*Let’s be honest: it’s one hell of a cool vacation and a lot more interesting than some study abroad program in a school that’s full of Americans anyway.

*I don’t really know quite what I want to do with my life yet.  I know, I should be on some track by now, and I do have some sense of direction.  Hopefully, the Peace Corps will focus my sense of direction a little more - and give me an extra two years before I have to make any real decisions.

*I can help make sure that American tax dollars are going somewhere useful for a change.  Like buying me new socks!

            That is a general list of reasons I came up with for myself, my curious friends, and of course the lady who interviewed me after my application was submitted.  Apparently it was a good enough list for her to submit my nomination to the Washington headquarters and launch me into the next phase of the acceptance process.

 

What followed over the course of the next several months was a long series of medical visits, paperwork, having my wisdom teeth pulled (one of the more unpleasant days of my life, but thank the Good Lord for codeine), and what seemed like endless waiting.  Finally, on the first day of Passover, I got a package.  I already knew what it meant, based on the size and heft of it, and as I eagerly ripped it open, I could literally feel my heart speeding up, beating so tremulously, it made my hands quake.  I carefully pulled out the first piece of paper I saw, and read it aloud to my dog, who was kind enough to be the only one home to congratulate me.  I don’t recall the exact wording, but it was something to the effect of: Congratulations dude! You’re going to Mali! In three months!

After that, things began to move much more quickly, and a few more medical visits, a lot more paperwork, and much research into everything I could find out about Mali, its culture, languages (French and Bambara, both of which I need to learn from scratch), and lifestyle, the departure date began to close in on me more intensely than ever.

And that brings us up to today.  Since school ended, I have been working daily on learning French, creating packing lists, cleaning up my room (maybenot) and seeing as many friends as I can pack into my final weeks in the country.  I have until July 7^th to have everything that needs taking care of dealt with, and then I begin the official national Mali orientation in the distant city of Philadelphia (it’s okay, the Peace Corps pays for my transportation there).  That’s about all that has been going on up until now.  I will probably update this blog a few more times before I leave for Mali, and after that, who knows?  Feel free to shoot me emails ore respond to this blog.  In fact, please do!  That way, I’ll know that people are actually reading this, and home won’t seem quite as far away.  Meanwhile, I’ll see you next update,

~Jake