The palm trees do nothing to shield the view or muffle the sound of the rhythmic flush of the waves, and the sand infiltrates every pore of my toes as I dig my feet into the tan beach under the diffused light of the cloudy early morning sky, and I have a hard time believing that I am here, and now is now, and the tidal wave of events of the last few weeks is, well, over.
Things were moving quickly for a few days, about two weeks into the coup, and nobody had any idea what direction the situation would take. First, Cpt. Sanogo said he would step down, but then never said when. Then ECOWAS agreed to hold off on putting sanctions on Mali, cutting off fuel, food, and money to the landlocked country, but then decided to call Sanogo's bluff and impose them after all. Depending on who you ask, some say that Mali became something just short of a disaster zone, with endless lines of people at gas stations stocking up on fuel, which was calculated to run out within a few weeks if the sanctions stayed. Power was cut off for 12 hours a day in Bamako, due to low hydroelectric pressure from the hot season and the desire to save fuel. Water access in my neighborhood was made difficult because the taps can't pressure the water up the hill to where I lived and it had to be trucked in with tankers, so in an effort to conserve fuel, people stopped getting water.
But on the other hand, if you asked the normal folks out on the street how they felt, they still hated ATT, they still thought Sanogo's putsch was a heroic move, and they really didn't see things as being that bad. After a time, though, Sanogo was making no earnest moves to step aside, the entire northern half of the country, the Azawad region, was taken over by various warring radical factions of various religious and political stripes, and Peace Corps had no choice but to cash in their chips and evacuate all non-essential staff from Mali, for the first time since our program's inception in 1971.
You can read all about our Exodus-themed Passover Seder on the front page of the April 11 Jewish Exponent, or online here. But as emotionally gratifying as that night was, two days later, 200 volunteers and staff got on busses to the airport (one of which, in true Malian fashion, broke down along the way before we had even left he city) and boarded our chartered flight to Ghana.
The next day, we began our combination Transition Conference/Close of Service/mad rush to figure out what we were going to do next, and which of our friends we were going to be competing for jobs with. Peace Corps staff showed all of us just how unbelievably on top of their game they are by managing to proofread and approve all of our Description of Service Reports, signing off on our medical evaluations, and helping us find places to either start anew in another country for two years, find jobs in connected sectors, or move on to Peace Corps Response, the post I had in Mali until everything went sour.
It was about as stressful and nerve-wracking a week as I've had in a long time, since everything was going in hyper-speed. We all wanted to make as much use of the connections to PC staff as we could while we still had them in shouting distance. With so many possible options and so little time, being careful or deliberate was a bit of a luxury. That said, I find it remarkable that within four days of stating a possible interest in another PCR post in another country, I was accepted to a six month position in Guyana, spearheading a children's literacy campaign, which is set to begin in just a few weeks. For now, I have accepted the post, which will give me a chance to do what I had planned to do during the latter half of my Mali PCR stint – continue working and developing my skills while applying for other jobs so that I can hope to have something solid by the time I finish my service at the end of 2012.
As I write, I am sitting under a gazebo by the beach at the bungalow lodge Hideout, in Ghana, still trying to accept that everything is different now, that my life plans have taken as unexpected and drastic a change as they've ever undergone, and that I now deal with one of the most obvious yet hardest challenges one can experience in life – the Universe is bigger than me, and when preparation fails, I can only adapt. I take this oceanside vacation with some friends, swimming, hiking, drinking, playing. I let the ocean waves drench me, washing out the stress and unhappiness of the last three weeks so I can wring myself dry and clean. I prepare to close the latest book of my story, to open another.
