Well, one chapter of my life is over, and a new is just beginning. Because of the civil unrest and political turmoil of Guinea, the Peace Corps has officially suspended their program for the moment being, pending a civil change of government it fully intends to re-open in the near future. That leaves me along with some of my new closest friends stuck in the middle of it all. Our hearts rest in guinea while we are now scattered all over the world. I along with eleven other volunteers from Guinea have been adopted into the Peace Corps Mali program. Some of my other friends are going to Botswana, Liberia, Senegal, Madagascar, Zambia, Benin, The Gambia and back to America.
The twelve of us staying in Mali have already received our site information. I will be living in a large town on the Niger River working with a microfinance institution helping women’s groups to get and understand loans, I also just heard that a new university opened in my city so I really want to work along side their business program, and there is a huge African music festival in my city once a year so I am very interested in working with the planning of that. I fully intend to hit the ground running and it sounds like I should have no problem staying busy.
So funny story, today in one of our local language (Bombara) sessions, I reached into my purse to grab a pen. I’m fishing around and I find something squishy. I thought for a second, what is squishy in my bag, I couldn’t think of anything so I look down and in my hand, I am squishing a live frog. I scream and throw it across the room. My heart is pounding and everyone stares at me, I point to the stunned frog on the ground and everyone starts laughing. I give my bag to Dorian and make her find my pen because I’m in the middle of having a heart attach and she finds another frog inside my purse. I’m living a little bit closer to nature than I ever really wanted. But it makes for a good laugh. I have found that in moments of extreme stress, you either laugh or cry.
This week I will be continuing more language classes (hopefully with less frogs), Mali culture classes along with administration classes and then the plan is to start moving into sites starting Tuesday next week. It is an exciting yet nerve racking time. I am looking forward to getting to know another culture and make new friends however everything has happened so fast, I haven’t really had a moment to process that I have left guinea and will not be returning and then dropped off in a new town in less than a week not being able to speak the local language. Getting back into a schedule is something I am looking forward to but going threw and putting myself out there and making mistakes is going to be hard again.
I will be continuing my service here, that means I will move into site and stay until February 2011. There are a lot of things I need to re-learn here, for example using an ATM card. Haven’t done that in a few months. I will also pay rent, use a post office, have a job to go to everyday, and learn a bus system. They are so much more developed here in comparison to Guinea. So, all of you that want to come visit, now this is a good change for you. They have paved roads with only 4 people in a car unlike Guinea where the roads were unpaved and you put up to 8 people in a normal Peugeot.
I will also be able to set up my house again which is exciting in its own way. However, I only have one back pack full of all of my clothes to get me started. I will be getting a moving in allowance from the Corps to buy everything again, however there were a lot of things that I left back in Guinea that you can’t get in West Africa, i.e. food! So if you want to send me a new package full of goodies to help ease the pain of being a refugee please stay tuned for a new mailing address and talk to my mom if there is something you have questions about sending or needing ideas.
Soon I will have photos of Mali to post, once I get outside of Bamako (the capital). I now realize how few photos of Guinea I have, and I don’t want to make that mistake again so I want to take tons of photos here. So stay tuned for more updates and photos!
Thanks all for your good wishes, thoughts and prayers. They really do mean a lot.
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