Finally, A Post! (but no pictures)

At long last! I'm updating you all on my life! I'll start with what we've been doing work-wise, then talk about my personal life, including some things I've seen and done, and dream of what come next. I'll try not to be too verbose, nor too brief. Hold on tight...


My homologue and my supervisor have been working overtime on well repairs for the last few months. Every work day that I've been home, I've gone with them to help or just to watch. The amount of physical labor involved is truly daunting! The day before yesterday we finally laid the bricks for the last of the wells for this season! All 15 are done! Mostly. The top-slabs haven't been installed yet, so that people can clean out the bottoms first. Once the wells are pristine inside, they'll be lidded and sealed! Now we're back to work on latrines again. We've got something like 15 left to go. My counterpart is doubling up most days trying to get these last few latrines battened down.

My rockstar counterpart made me an insta-superstar in the Peace Corps panoply. It happened way back in December, before Ella visited (more on that in a moment). Honestly I had so little to do with this I don't even know important things like "where" and exactly "when." He came to me and asked permission, and then later on let me know they were done. That was it. But here's what happened. The church in my village decided as a whole, or maybe some executive committee, or maybe just the pastor, someone at any rate decided that they needed more sanitation infrastructure. Noticing that my counterpart had been making all those awesome latrines, they approached him (or maybe he was part of the potential committee, like I said, I wasn't there) to do the same for them. He knew that Peace Corps doesn't do projects for religious organizations, and our current project was all doled out already anyway, so he told the church they'd have to fund it themselves. This was no problem, they got the cement, got the rebar and pipe and sand and gravel, they supplied the workers, and they used my counterpart's skills. All without me there. An entire set of improved latrines completely locally initiated and completed. Actual skill transfer. Done. I can go home now! Well... soon, anyway.

Back to that tidbit about Ella. Yes! Ella came all the way to Mali to see me! You know how people talk about finding the sister of their soul, or being as close as sisters? Well the sister of my soul is the sister of my heart and the sister of my body. Her visit was a delight! It turns out that I don't really like traveling (I like being here, but not leaving here even to go across the country...), so we mostly hung out at my site. She learned to do basic greetings in Bambara, and wore Malian outfits, and discovered the joy of head-scarves. I was in paradise the whole time, although at the end I was completely drained. It was the best Christmas present ever!

One thing that could compete (but never win! nothing trumps Ella!), was the best birthday present ever. Doug came to visit me. Not just that, but he brought me a California Burrito all the way from Syracuse to Bamako. And yes, we're dating now. That evolved over the course of his visit. There's something about waking up to a waterfall at dawn and then biking 30km that reminded us we're in love with each other. We both knew it already, but now you all know it too! The Malian name I gave him is the name of Bebe's late father, so everyone had a blast commenting on how he's the spitting image of his namesake and calling him Bwa or Papa. He was there during site visits for a new stage of volunteers, including my new site mate!

Koutiala is pumping up the volume of volunteers. I'm very excited to have someone so close to my site so I don't have to be the one and only American in the market. We've gone from 5 to 11! We had to rent more space. We've got poor C running in circles and exhausted, trying to coordinate the expansion and help people get settled. Everyone's coming to her (myself included) because she's our central house mommy, and she hasn't got a minute to rest. I'm going to work on stepping up a little more in these last few months to ease her workload.

I've got less than 5 months before my Close of Service (COS), and it feels too short but far too long! I'm trying to do a photo project with one photo for each of my last 169 days here. We have our COS conference in late June, where we talk about how to find jobs and what's culturally appropriate in the USA in case we forgot. I think I'm going to need remedial American. I wasn't that good at our culture before I left, and now I am not even certain it IS my culture... But I'm going to do my best.

I want to be back in time to celebrate La's birthday with her in September. I plan on starting my job search before I even leave, but I'm not really expecting to find a job right away. I want to work in a water or waste water treatment plant, and I want it to be close enough to someone that I can live with him or her. Potential someones include my sister, my boyfriend, or any of my best friends, of which there are several. Even better would be a combination of those! I won't be taking a COS trip, unlike many of my coworkers. That aversion for traveling will save me a bit of money, at least, and I'm hoping I'll have enough readjustment allowance to get me settled in somewhere and allow me to visit my friends and family and catch up. I'm looking forward to a lot of glorious reunions, right after a lot of tearful partings. That's pretty much how life works, right?

As I quite nearly had an introduction, I'm skipping a conclusion altogether.

Peace!