Leaving Tubaniso

So I've been in Tubaniso the past 2 weeks doing technical training. The first week just volunteers. the second week our homologues joined us. We learned about family planning, pre and post natal consultations, malnutritioin and programs available to help malnourished children, we had some more malaria training and food security. One of Mali's goals is food security. How to make sure that food is available to all families, all year round and at an affordable price. After our homologues got here we had training on how to get projects started, funded and make sure they are sustainable after we're gone. it was a touch week. Of course there was more Bambara being spoken then English...except amongst ourselves...which leaves me with an aching brain. I have enough time following in my own language. But it was educational and the homologues learned a lot. They learned how to do everything we learned to do so when we are gone they can replicate anything we've done on their own. It's a good plan.


We are leaving camp today. Most people are not going back to their site yet. There is a big get together in Manateli, the last place in Mali you can see hippos in the wild. There are beautiful lakes and an amazing damn. they are staying until after the 4th. I'm not going. I heard it's pretty much a drunk, orgy fest. If this had been the early 80s I'd be all over it, but i'm way to old for that kind of partying. Me and the other volunteers I was at homestay, Muntugula, with are going back to see our host families. You may be saying, "I thought you hated them?!" I did for a while and I didn't for a while, but when all was said and done i was sad to leave. Also, everyone else from that site is going and my family would feel really bad if they were the only ones not to get a visit from their volunteer. I don't want to leave that bad feeling with them. So we are getting on a shuttle in a little while. They will drop us on the main road. We will need to figure out how to get ourselves and all our luggage 7k down the dirt road to the village on our own. Maybe a bush taxi. Maybe a donkey cart. I guess we'll figure it out when we get there. We're going to spend the night. Then tomorrow I will head to Bamako, then to Bougouni for a night or two. I'm not ready to go back to site yet. Then maybe Thursday I will head back. I'm not sure if i'm going to do anything for the fourth yet that doesn't involve sex and alcohol. A bunch of volunteers that don't want to be part of the big festivities may go to Sikasso. Several volunteers live there. There is shopping to be done and waterfalls to be seen. I haven't been yet. I hear the traveling to Sikasso is a bitch. It's only 150K but it can take 4-5 hours due to poor roads. At some point I have to stop being a baby about traveling (it makes me very anxious...especially since I have such poor language skills), put on my big girl panties, take a Dramamine and get out there and start traveling around Mali. There are a few places that are on my list of must sees and since I never plan on coming back to West Africa again I better see them while I can. We can't go swimming in the falls, shistos and all, but I hear there quite a hike to get to the top and they are pretty to look at.

Rainy season is here. If it's not raining it feels like it's going to. I love the rain and the thunder and the lightning. Unfortunately as I mentioned before the rain brings on a whole other array of bugs and creatures. First their is the flies. You know how you can see a commercial on TV about starving children around the world and they always have flies on them. That's me!! The flies are relentless. They are always on your body somewhere or another. i'm constantly moving my arms and legs, as is everyone else, to keep them off of me. They are also eating some volunteers. If you have any kind of scrape or scratched mosquito bite...any open skin...they find it and swarm to it. They have sticky tongues, so they will lick, lick, lick at the scratch until before you know it you have a huge, gaping, open sore. Not nice. The medical staff and some volunteers have told us horror stories about stuff like that and how dangerous it is to get a cut or wound during rainy season. As if it isn't hard enough to get cuts to heal regularly here, it's even worse in rainy season. And then with the mud and the sludge of fecal matter floating around it leaves you with a open door to infections of the worst kind. There was a volunteer that accidently cut her toe nail to short and made it bleed a little. Within a month the infection had gotten so bad she had to have her nail removed at the Bamako Hospital. I've seen how they clean their medical tools. I don't want to have an eyelash removed from my cheek no less have a toe nail removed. Ahhhh Africa.

Then there are the flying termites. Apparently the night after it rains swarms of termites take to the air. i think I've mentioned this before. One time I thought it was raining because I could here the pinging of what I thought was rain off of my tin roof...it was termites. What they do is swarm, get into everything...you hair, mouth, eyes, down your shirt, up your skirt, in your house...then they drop their wings and die. Quite the process.

This is pils of wings in the nyegen.  A few minutes ago these were flying termites.  Now...just wings.

Piles of wings.

In the meantime, my hair is beautiful. The humidity and the laundry soap that I use to wash with has done wonders for my locks. I will defnitely have to live some place humid when I come home!! NY here I come.