:Seasons of Love:

Right now I have a pit in my stomach. It’s caused by a couple different types of anxiety that are running through my body. This is mostly due to the fact that tonight I will board a plane and when I walk out of the airport on the other side I will be walking back into a different part of my life. I will be returning to the place where I lived my entire life up until a year ago. I changed my course drastically a year ago, and now everything which is normal to me is nearly the opposite it was and will be at home. In the past year I have completely uprooted my life and chosen a path others would not. I have changed everything; my clothes, hair, language, home, world view, living situation, continent, daily schedule- or lack there of- and have come to live in a very different reality that I did before. Most of my anxiety comes from trying to understand how these two worlds are going to merge. How I am going to handle my home life and PC as they intersect for the next month? It’s going to be overwhelming and difficult, wonderful and eye-opening.
I know that when I arrive in Chicago this week there are going to be smiling faces, friendly hugs and way too many questions for me to answer. And the thing is I know what the major question is going to be. “What have you been doing the past year?”
I started thinking about that this morning. How could I ever explain everything that I have done in the past year? Right now it almost seems sufficient to say that I have done nothing and everything all at the same time. In reality I changed my life, and now Africa is normal to me. Mali is normal; its home. I have done a great deal but its not tangible things that I have made. I have done very few things that are measurable and work related. I have seen things most people have not. I have seen desert sands and waterfalls; spoken three different languages in one sentence, and was understood. I have lived in a house with no electricity or running water and bathed in buckets; pulled wash water from the well and taken a push cart a mile to find drinking water. I have learned to pray on roof tops; watched cattle stampedes; and bartered in markets. I have seen camels and monkeys; fires and chaos; been lost in a city made of mud and stood atop a 1000 foot cliff. I have made friends and found love; found a new family and support network in an African village of 7000 people. I have seen thousand year old artifacts and watched carpenters carve wood into anything imaginable. I have given polio vaccines, packaged shea butter and learned how to pluck a chicken; seen babies die and accidents happen; I have experienced losses and achievements and tried to take them in stride; hit people and been ashamed of myself. I have seen slave ports and oceans, rivers, lakes and sand that seemed to go on forever. I have climbed mountains, drank millet beer, and stepped on rats and scorpions; seen spiders the size of my hand and taken transportation with goats. I have eaten the best mangos in the world, and tried to live off birdseed dinners. I have stepped outside my box and tried to take advantage of the opportunities before me. On the whole I feel as though I have accomplished more this year than ever before but I know that is not true. How can I even measure what is possible in a years time? Or in what way this past year relates to all the years before?
Looking back on this past year I see that my left time here will fly by. I will get lost in new adventures and challenges. I will cry and laugh until I hurt and I will hope to accomplish everything I set out to do. I have been in Mali almost a year and although it was not all great it has changed me; I am a different person and I like that. It has taught me more about myself than I ever wanted to know but also given me the opportunity to work from there and to make myself proud. I am excited to go home, to see family and enjoy the comforts of America. But I know now that I am ready to return and happy to have my life here to come back to. I no longer feel as though I have two lives, but rather my past which shaped me and my future. Part of it lies in Mali, part in the United States, and part who knows where else.

Vacation Update

As previously stated I will be arriving back in Chicagoland (other pcvs do not think this is a real word, though I assure them it is) for a visit on the 23rd of June. I will be in Cary or the surrounding area for the majority of a month. I will be traveling within the states and most likely unavailable for a visit the 5-10 of July but will not be returning to Mali until the 17th. Hope to see you then.

Finally getting it done- My current Project

This morning I just submitted my first formal project proposal to be approved by my Peace Corps supervisors and Peace Corps Washington. The reason I must formally submit a proposal is that I am looking for Small Project Assistance funding, which ultimately comes from the PC Washington budget. So if the good people at PC Washington decided that they like my project I will be receiving a little under $2,000 to complete a substantial amount of work. It may not seem like a large sum of money, but it will make all the difference in trying to accomplish the future goals of my service and help the people that I am working with to gain essential knowledge and skills.
This project will concentrate on giving women information on the issues listed below during a day long formation held by my counterpart: sanitation, proper hygiene, basic workplace organization, contamination of products, and safety practices and equipment.

We will review why these factors are important to their health, work, and the future of our service and explain to them what our goals and objectives are for this project. They will be able to apply the skills they are given not only in their work but in their daily lives. Hopefully through implementation and dedication of this project we will raise the production capacity and quality of products and thereby raise our sales. Additionally, by learning proper hygiene and sanitation practices they will be able to exercise them to help the health and daily living conditions in their personal homes. Although the changes will not be apparent immediately these small projects, many of which I hope to complete during my service, are the small stepping stones to sustainable development and behavioral change.

Where have I been?

I am surprised at how poor I have been at updating my blog over the past two months. I have been in and out of internet access regularly but just have not had with the time or patience to write about anything that has gone on. I think this absence is partially due to having been ill for the majority of the past month and partially due to the fact that I have actually had work to do at site. When I am in Bamako I generally do not want to spend my time in front of a computer screen. While I was in Dakar for 2 weeks on medical hold last month the last thing that I wanted to do was waste the beautiful weather sitting inside writing about my life rather than experiencing it in a new place; and of course enjoying the amenities of a more developed city.

I suppose that I should begin about a month ago when the good doctors of Peace Corps Mali medically evacuated me to Dakar, Senegal for blood and tissue testing…. At the time I thought that it was a horrible idea, yet in the end it turned out to be a rather splendid and much needed vacation. This trip was sandwiched by tow other medical holds in Bamako, for other medical reasons. This obviously amounted to over 3 weeks away from site (reminding me now that I need to get back!), and a set back in the work that I was looking to begin. Luckily we have found a solution to one of the health issues and my report came back with a clean bill of health from the tests in Senegal. So now, for the past week, I have been healthy enough to accomplish a good bit of work, meetings and even type up and submit my first Project Proposal. If this proposal is accepted I will be able to begin my first formation and implementation of project at the end of July and into August when I return from my visit home.

But back to Dakar for a moment. I spent two weeks in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal, located on the West African coast, at the most posh Peace Corps Bureau. I explored the city with two other Mali PCVs who were in the same position as me. We went to the historical Doree Island, the center of Dutch slave trades in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as swam in the Atlantic and stood on the western most tip of Africa. I haggled in the markets with vendors, realized that Senegalese men are even more crude and aggressive than Malian men, and spent far too much time and money in a western grocery store named CASINO (humorously it really was like hitting the jackpot). I wish that I had been able to take a photo of our faces when we first entered the store. It would have revealed 3 faces frozen in excitement and utter dumbfoundedness. You must understand that there are grocery stores in Mali, the only really nice ones are in Bamako, and none ever compare to CASINO; it was as if I was back in the states. Its amusing to me that the most excited I have been in a long time was walking into this store. I think it outlines the things I miss most about home- cleanliness and delicious food.

Now that I have been back in country for a few weeks and have begun feeling much better I am able to accomplish real work and become truly excited to be leaving for America in about 10 days. I cannot wait to visit home….words to not begin to explain how needed it is.