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.