Well, I managed to carry all 70 lbs of my junk across the ocean to my new home in Mali, West Africa!
I'm currently occupying a little hut with two other ladies. There are several other huts around us and all of them are surrounded by a metal barricade. There is a cafeteria area with a big open space and computers where everyone seems to hang out, and that's where I am now.
I'll be here about the Peace Corps compound for a week then I'll be going to my homestay--a Malian family to call my own! I'm little nervous and very intrigued by this after driving through Bamako, the capital, today when leaving the airport. The roads were mostly dirt and a brownish red color. We passed donkeys leading carts, dark women in beautiful cloths carrying baskets with 4 and 5 oblong watermelons in them on their heads, shanty half-built houses with its occupants on the front patio drinking tea or trying to sell things, and sheep everywhere. Many "compounds" (I'm not sure what else to call them as they are not really houses but not really huts--many are cement or mud with metal roofs) also had tall skinny cement structures in front that I found out where barbecues--throw in the sheep in the morning and come get it later. Mmmm.
I also saw the Sahara Desert for the first time today and the Niger river from the plane. I couldn't believe how huge the desert looked or how wide the Niger was. I though about The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) the whole time over the Sahara, remembering the pilot's encounter in that story with the little Prince in the Sahara after his plane crashed. The city of Bamako looks as if it has washed up on the river's shore in a flood and continued to spread in half-made structures and rusty roads, it's own type of urban sprawl!
There are big toads everywhere that leap away from your feet and flashlight as you walk down the paths, and smaller sounding tree-frogs that chirp in the night. There are so many new types of little bugs. I haven't taken the malaria medication, but I'm a little worried about the strange dreams it may induce and the other potential side effects like hair loss I have heard about. But, it's better than malaria, right?
Everything else aside I think that I will love it here! The people seem really friendly, both the other Peace Corps volunteers and the Malians.
I'll keep you posted!
Good night--
