Fanta, Fanta, Fanta Soiree

    Wellllll I’ve made it successfully through my first 2 weeks with my home stay family – and its certainly been an experience!  There is an amazing amount of adjustment to be made from America to the villages – large or small – here in Mali.  Life here is incredibly different which brings with it a fair share of challenges and respites.  Lets start first with my new name – Fanta (yes, like the orange soda) Sacko!!  I quite love it.  My family is the Sacko family and they are great :)  I have 2 new brothers and 7 new sisters, a ma and a pa (ba and fa in Bambara).  The neighbors in my village are incredibly friendly – almost ad nauseum at times!!  My typical day goes a little something like this:

• 4:30am – first alarm in the form of the ‘call to prayer’ over the loud speaker in the town
• 5:30am – if not still awake from the first call due to donkey or rooster calls – 2nd call to prayer
• 6:50am - real alarm to get up to go to the nyegen (bathroom) for my cold water bucket bath
• 7:40am – Breakfast in the courtyard normally consisting of a baguette and eggs with the occasional addition of french fries or black eyed peas and sugar tea 
• 8:00am – Bambara class with my Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF), Faty, and 3 other Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) outside with a standup blackboard
• 12:00pm – walk back to the house for study/nap/lounging and lunch
• 2:00pm – back to school for a few more hours of language or cultural discussion
• 5:00-5:30pm – walk home – greeting each and every person I pass with ‘hello, how are you, how is your family, how is your mother, how is your father, how is your husband/wife, how are your children,’ and the same in return - whew
• 5:30pm- bed time - reading, studying, trying/failing to talk to my family and laughing at the chickens, donkeys, goats, sheep and children strolling seemingly endlessly through the courtyard – dinner is around 9ish most days.

To fill in some of the specific challenges – the food and the heat are the hardest to deal with.  Meals are eaten out of communal bowls with your right hand only – this is a skill, I’ve come to find, that most Americans don’t naturally have – and you mix the sauce with either the rice or millet or cous cous that is underneath it.  You have one specific section of the bowl that is technically yours, but the meat/veggies put in the middle are for everyone to share and you use each other to break apart the pieces (i.e. one person holds the bone while you pull the meat off of it) – as you can imagine I am still struggling with this aspect!  I have actually eaten meat mayyyybe twice since I’ve been here (although there are fish and fish eyes in all the sauces I eat).  One morning as I was eating breakfast I noticed a chicken tied to my father’s chair and he smiled at me and told me it would be killed in a few minutes for me to eat – oh joy! 

The first night in home stay I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it though the night because I thought I might sweat to death!  It’s gotten better since then because I just keep my door open all night –except for the rainy nights because then I wake up to puddles in my room that will inevitably breed mosquitoes – I currently have about 15 bites on my bum – likely from the outdoor toilets (which are a whole other issue)! 

The wonderful things have been the night skies here in Mali, the laughs I have had over and over again with my family with which I don’t share a common language, the informal ways we teach each other (they are learning how to shuffle a deck of cards and I am learning their crazy 8’s card game), the bike rides, the cultural exchange with my LCF Faty since she is amazing, the rock climbing, the genuine smiles, the reality of it all –which can sometimes be good and bad, and getting to share it with all these new people who are going through the exact same things I am.  The next few weeks will likely go by quickly, then swear in, and then real site – which will certainly come with a whole new host of challenges!  Until next time we return for our 3 day respite at Tubaniso (where I am currently with half our stage of volunteers) miss you all and let me know how you are doing and if there are questions you have that you would like to know more about :)