March 21, 2011 - Another one bites the dust

One of the girls in my homestay village went home today…to America home. She used to come by my house after lunch to pick me up on her way back to school. During the first 2 weeks one day she would show up crying saying how she hated it here and wanted to go home. I would tell her just hang in there. We can’t look at this as “2 years” just one day, one week at a time. We just have to hang in there another 5 days and we’ll be back at Tubaniso. We’ll be OK. The next day she would show up to pick me up and I’d be crying. I hate these people, I hate it here, I want to go home…and she would give me the same one day at a time speech. I knew she wouldn’t make it very long but I didn’t think it would be this quickly. She said she was going to keep moving forward until we went this past week to our homesite visits. Maybe her site and the people in her village where going to be perfect and she would want to stay, but if not, she was out of here. Well I guess things didn’t go as well as she had hoped for. We got back to Tubaniso on Friday and she spoke to the director then and told them she wanted to go home. They brought her back out to Muntugula, our homestay village, to pick up her stuff and the next day…BAM…she’s on a plane. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass. That’s 3 so far in the first 7 weeks.

Talking about going home. 6 people from the group that got here 8 months ago are being sent home. With the state of affairs being what it is in the West Africa and Al Quadda in northern Mali the borders of Peace Corps Mali are becoming smaller and smaller with each passing month. Recently the borders that PC Volunteers are allowed to cross within the country had been changed and were brought in closer. They do this for our own safety and security and of course PC does not want to be held responsible if something happens to one of us. This group of 6 knew the borders had been changed, lied to PC about where they were going and got caught. They are all being administratively separated from Peace Corps and are being sent home. Some things are just not open for discussion.