Day 7 - Homestay

Tomorrow morning we leave Tubaniso to begin homestay... but before I get into that, I have a bunch of stuff to say about training thus far.

Training

We've covered a multitude of topics including: cross-cultural stereotypes, language, culture shock, gender roles, cultural values, etc. We got tutorials in bike maintenance, clothes washing, dress, greetings, and how to eat. I want to comment on each of these topics individually, but this entry would go forever, so I'll just plan on talking about them more in the future once I've been on my own for a while.

Our trainers have been fantastic. We're being trained by PC staff (all Malians) and current PCVs. There have been points when things have become very serious and discussions have gotten rather heated (especially regarding stereotypes) and other times when people can't stop laughing. Our Malian cultural instructor, Demba, actually dressed up in women's clothes for a skit today... needless to say he created quite a commotion from both Trainees and Malians alike. 

Up until today the weather has been very hot and humid. I think yesterday was the worst that it's been so far. I went running before breakfast and couldn't stop sweating. I went to the first session of the day after breakfast and people asked me if I had literally gotten out of the shower and put clothes on without drying off. I was completely wet. Hair soaked, shirt soggy, feet moist. The problem is that it's so humid here that once you get your body temperature up, it's really difficult to get it back down. I think I drank close to 5 liters of water. Beat that Sam... That's close to 20 glasses!

I also had my first water/sanitation sector meeting yesterday. We watched a video on the India-Mali pump and guinea worm, and then took a tour of all the water and sanitation facilities at Tubaniso. Interestingly enough, there is a small biogas digester here! A Volunteer put it together a few years ago, but it's not in use because no one knows how to use it. For some reason I think this might be an omen for the future as right now I'm interested in researching biogas digesters for my Master's report.

We also experienced our first real rain in Mali since arriving. It was something to behold. It went from being a nice day one minute to high winds and torrential rains the next. Most of the site was covered in several inches of water in less than 10 minutes. The rain showed up right during the middle of a session on malaria. A bunch of people, including myself, had done laundry the night before and had stuff out on lines, and right before the rain started there was a mad dash back to the sleeping area to rescue our things. We made it just in time. The rain also brought with it a nice drop in temperature. Everyone went from being uncomfortably hot to cold and started putting on extra layers. It's amazing how cold 75 can feel when you're used to 85 and high humidity.

Homestay

So, homestay is the the PC term for living with a host family. This is the part of training that is supposed to be full cultural immersion with language classes 6-8 hours per day and some cultural/technical training on the side. The 66 trainees in my "stage" (or class)(pronounced French-like) have been split up into 9 different groups, each in a different village. Some groups have people from only one sector while others have people from several sectors. Each village also specializes in different local languages. The languages include: French, Bambara, Fulfulde, and a few Dogon dialects. I will be in a village called Soundougouba (pronounced Soon-doo-goo-ba) with several other water/sanitation people. We will all be living with different host families and learning how to speak Bambara. While I wish that I'd be working more with French, I'm glad to be learning Bambara instead of some of the other languages, because Bambara is spoken in other West African countries as well.

I'm excited and nervous to be going to homestay. Excited to get out of the insulated life of Tubaniso and experience the "real" Mali... and nervous for the exact same reason. We will have language instructors living at our homestay villages that can act as translators should any problems arise. It's not like PC just drop us off somewhere and say, "good luck"... That comes in a few months. 

Finally - I got a cell phone! Huzzah! And it only cost me 20,000 CFA (about $40). All the cell phones here operate on a pay as you go system and you only pay for the calls and texts you send. That means if anyone calls me... from anywhere... I don't have to pay. (the US cell carriers should be taking notes) So basically, all the Volunteers just keep enough minutes on their phone to make a few quick calls in urgent situations and just have friends and family from the US call them. And it's cheap for people in the US if you get a pre-paid international phone card, so it's a win-win in my book. In case you're wondering why I haven't mentioned what my new cell # is yet... it's because I don't have it. We should get those tomorrow. When you have 60 people order cell phones at the same time is slows down the process a bit.

There are supposed to be pictures here, but the internet isn't fast enough to upload them, so I'll have to try again somewhere else.