Site Visit Etc

For the last five days I've been at the site I will be living in for the next two years.  It is pretty great.  I have a nice two room house to myself on the edge of the village.  The village is called Vamarabougou, and is just north of Sikasso a little ways.  And I am definetely in the bush.  I have no transportation in or out except my bike, or in the unlikely event someone has a car, I can hitch with them.  But I would be impressed if the roads are even rempotely passable during the rainy season.  The nearest market is an 8km ride, and the nearest place to catch a bus and the main market is a 20km ride.  I did this ride yesterday morning with my full pack, and it was a pretty good workout.  Many people have these metal push carts in the city, and I am thinking of getting one of these, and a bike hitch from America, and having a welder in town fashion me a nice trailer which will make bigger market trips a bit easier.  The chief of my village is a cool and very spunky old man.  I went hunting with him!!! He has this really ancient break action shotgun, which I thought was pretty neat.  We didn't get anything, but he said we could go again when I get back there in April.

During site visit I would wake up pretty early, and go do some activity.  One day I went to the fields with the chief and said hi to all the farmers, another I went exploring, another I went and met the teachers in the village.  Then I usually have nap number one.  Then I do some reading, sometimes followed by another nap.  Then I'll eat some lunch, and do some more reading or take another nap.  In the afternoon I get out and walk around the village and say hi to people, then I typically have tea with the chief.  He comes over to my house quite a bit with his radio, and sometimes he'll turn on the BBC which is very nice of him, as he can't understand it.  During his visits, usually I am reading, and he'll just nap in the chair next to me, usually with a child sleeping on his lap.  In the evenings, I'll either go exploring, play soccer with the kids, and the one day I went hunting.  The first bit at site will be pretty tough at times just do to boredom, and just speaking to people can be very tiring as it takes a lot of effort to even have simple conversations.

The other volunteers had a party for us new kids in Sikasso on Friday night.  Many of the current and new Sikasso region volunteers stayed at the Peace Corps stage house in Sikasso.  We went out to eat, and then managed to get free tickets to a concert sponsored by an alcohol-free malt beverage called Bavaria.  They gave us the front row seats, but we didn't stay long.  Then we went to a night club and danced to a bizarre collection of music.  Some American pop, some native Malian pop mix stuff, and the occasional acoustic guitar accompanied by a thumping base line with a singer who was clearly did not have English as his first language.  I had a blast.  We got to ride public transport between Bamako and Sikasso both directions which was not too crazy, but still a bit different.  On the way to Sikasso, a soldier rode with us accompanied by his automatic rifle, and one of the windows had spiderwebbed due to what was clearly a bullet hole.  One the way back our bus literally had some of the aluminum siding held on by ropes stretched into the aisle and attached to the luggage racks.  The road between Sikasso and Bamako is not bad by Malian standards.  It was paved almost the whole way, with maybe only a 30km detour around construction on some dirt roads through the bush.  Other people have it way worse.  The pavement is just barely, barely wide enought for two cars to pass, so needless to say there is a lot of horn honking, swerving, and the occasional hard break when the bus has to slow down quickly behind a donkey cart because there is an oncoming semi, so passing the donkey cart is not an option.  It takes abour 6 hours to get from Sikasso to Bamako, so that is not too bad, and the bus stops at regular intervals to people can get out and stretch.  When you do get out though, you are immediately mobbed by street vendors selling all sorts of stuff, some of which is very delicious, and other stuff which I do not try such as the warm milk convieniently packaged in used coke bottles.

I got back to Bamako yesterday, and there is a place that sells soft serve ice cream near the Bamako stage house!!! That was awesome, as we are getting into hot season, and though I haven't found it too unbearable, it is defintely toasty.  I am the training center today, and on Tuesday I will go back to my training village for my last two weeks or so of language training.  My new address will be:

Ethan Vimont
Corps de la Paix
BP 227
Sikasso, Mali
Packages can be shipped there now-ish as they take a month or so to get here.  Letters take about two weeks, and I will be in and around my old Bamako address until April 12ish.  So send wisely I guess.  It was very neat to see my site, and I am quite excited.  We have the day off today, so I'll try to get some pictures up, if the internet cooperates.  Which I don't think it will, so when I publish it may or may not have 20 pictures on it.  I can't see them on this page, so I can't put captions on if they are even attached. Silliness, maybe later I'll try again.