Happy Birthday Joshua

June 12, 2011


Today is Joshua’s 21st birthday. I have never missed one of the boys birthdays in 21 years…until now. I am feeling very far away from home. Very alone. Very sad.

I haven’t written in a while. I guess there wasn’t much to say. I stay at my home site every day, trying to learn bambara but not feeling like I’m improving much. I go every Sunday to Bougouni, my banking town, where I have electricity, the internet and somewhat running water. I spend the day and night calling the boys and family and a few friends, spend the night, go in the morning to the market to buy whatever fresh produce they are selling and then head back home again. Luckily I usually get a bus in a timely manner and it’s only a 40-45 minute bus ride. A cinch compared to some PCVs commutes. Today I left my village for 2 weeks though. My stage (staje) is meeting back in Tubaniso (PC camp) for some intense sector training (health or small business or environment depending on what you were sent here to do). We will have a week just with PCVs and then our homologues (counterparts) will come in from village and meet us and we will all train together for another week. That is always more difficult than it sounds. Everything is done in English, then bambara, as well as some of the minority languages. It’s exhausting.

We are moving out of hot season and into rainy season. So although the temperature has gone down as much as 15 to 20 degrees the humidity is so high…all the time…that it doesn’t feel any cooler. You can take a shower, but you just keep right on sweating. When it actually rains it cools off a lot. I almost had to think about putting my sheet over me last night. It rained, thundered and lightninged most of the day…on and off. It had been threatening to rain for the past 2 days. The sky was dark, it looked like and felt like it would rain any day now, but nothing. Just hot, stifling air. But when it finally did rain, what a relief. It was great. It seems that after the sunsets the day after it rains termites come out in droves. So tonight, the termites are out, which in turn brings out the frogs and other ungodly creatures. Of course the termites are attracted to the lights, and there are lights on after dark at the showers and bathrooms. There must have been a million, no exaggeration, termites in the bathroom. I peed behind my hut in the dark where the termites were not. They do the very strange thing of shedding their wings. I don’t know why, what brings it on or what happens to them after their wings come off. But not only was the bathroom soaring with flying termites, the ones without wings were walking all over the place and the wings are all over in piles. Very interesting. I might have to read up on that.