N be Mali la

That means I'm in Mali in Bambara. I think. Anyway, I just tried to start writing when the computer I'm on decided to die, so I restarted it and I guess I can save as I go along. I'm at the Peace Corps training center outside Bamako; we arrived Friday night after quite a grueling journey. The training center is really nice. We are staying in huts with three people to a hut. They have ceiling fans, which I definitely wasn't expecting, and mosquito nets. Also, they provide toilet paper for the nyegen. A nyegen is a bathroom, but essentially a hole in a concrete floor. There is a shower with running water in the nyegen, which I was also surprised about. However, these luxuries are not for long.

We are here at the training center till Wednesday, when we will be "installed" in homestay villages where we spend most of training. I had been confused about the mechanics of this, but it turns out that recently they switched to a "community based training model," which means that we spend about two weeks at a time in rural villages, some right near Bamako, some up to 120 km away. There will be 5-7 of us per village, and an LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) will be living in our village training us in the indigenous language we're supposed to be learning. Every two weeks or so we come to the training center for 2-3 days.

I don't know yet what language I'll be learning. I'm exicted for tomorrow, because we have a French placement test and our first interview with the APCD (I think that's Associate Peace Corps Director), which will have to do with site placement, and thus also which language we need to learn.

Today we had our first Bambara classes, which were really fun. No matter what language we end up learning, we need to know a little Bambara because it's the lingua franca in Mali (in addition to French). I may be learning a minority language (i.e. not Bambara, and the ones being taught this training are Dogon, Fulani/Fulfulde/Pulaar, Tamasheq, and Sonrhai), because they'll only teach you one if you already speak French (because if you only speak a minority language you can't get around most of Mali).

The weather had been pleasantly surprising. It's the rainy season, so I was expecting it to be unbearably hot and humid (because Senegal was when I was there at the end of the rainy season), but it's actually pretty pleasant. It's in the 80s during the day but really cools down at night, and it's less humid than Philly! I even went running this evening and it was just fine. It rained this afternoon which really cooled it down.

Tonight I had my first experience with to, a pasty millet porridge that I will probably be eating a lot. A lot of people don't like it but I didn't mind it. The food here at the training center is very good. I was dismayed to discover that it's apparently the end of mango season, but they gave us mangoes last night and for lunch today, and I just have to say, African mangoes are sooooooo much better than any mango you could ever get in the U.S.! Mmmmm. Besides the to, the food has mostly been rice and sauce dishes very similar to those in Senegal, but I'll have a better idea of authentic food once I've been with a family for a little while.

There is supposed to be wireless at the training center, but it's not worknig right now and neither is the power adapter for my computer. They have four computers available for us, so my time is probably up on this one. Everyone email me!

Staging

So I arrived safe and sound at staging after a perilous journey from Narberth to Old City. It turns out that there are 82 trainees departing for Mali with me! So many that we have been divided into two groups for staging. I arrived right on time for registration today, which meant that once I was all registered we basically sat around a hotel conference room for 2 hours as more people trickled in, sort of getting to know each other. At 3:00, the activities started. We talked about the goals of the Peace Corps, some statistics, how it was founded, the meaning of "development," etc. Later we talked about some of our fears and what we hoped to accomplish, and some basic safety issues. Things wrapped up at 7 or so.

I went out for dinner with a couple people, then swimming in the rooftop pool! I guess they don't want us to start roughing it right away...

Tomorrow morning we get our vaccinations, then have more sessions in the afternoon.