So, before my battery dies I supposed I'll just briefly recap what has occurred over the last half-week. On Thursday, I finished up at work. My office went to lunch together and then I bid my final good riddance. It was an easy 6-week stint definitely worth the $3,000. I took a red-eye flight from LAX to Philadelphia at 10:10 that same night. Peace Corps had called me several times that week and the week before informing me that red-eyes were against their policy but their travel agency, not mine, had arranged the booking and I kindly informed them that it was too late to call me, after I had made necessary family arrangements, and tell me that I would have to leave on an earlier flight. Their reasoning was that I should be alert and awake for orientation the following morning. Too bad, too sad. In the end, I got my way. The best part about leaving was not having to answer anymore redundant questions about why I want to join the Peace Corps and having to listen to ignorant comments like "It's not safe in Africa". Have you been to America lately? It got so annoying to the point where I stopped telling new people what I was going to soon be doing for the next two years. It also didn't help that my mom and I went to our last Saturday night mass together and the priest, who is Nigerian, was giving a sermon on how he was robbed on his last trip home and his brother, who works for an oil company, has recently been kidnapped and has yet to be returned. That led to a very uncomfortable Q&A session with my mom who had all the Qs and I, in return, had few As. How am I supposed to respond to what happens to me if I get kidnapped?
Anyway, I arrived in Philly around 6am and was picked up at the airport by my college friend who goes to Drexel Med. I stayed at his house until about 1pm and then went to orientation at a hotel which I won't get into the logistics of. As can be expected, it can be summarized as "boring." While most of the rest of my stage (group going to Mali with me) stayed in the city center for the night, I got to spend my last night in America with my sugar plum, Imanyah. The next day, we left Philly on two charter buses and drove 3.5 hours to New York through a pretty cool snow storm. It was the first snow of the season. From New York, we flew to Brussels and from Brussels to Bamako. From Philly to Bamako was something like 30 hours or more total. It's kind of hard to tally when the time differences change every place you stop. My first impressions of Africa were pretty identical to my expectations: hot and barren. Luckily, it was pretty smooth out of the airport as everybody got through customs without a hitch and nobody's bags were lost.
We drove to Toubaniso, the training center gifted to Peace Corps by the Malian government, which is 45 minutes supposedly south of Bamako. This is our third day here and training is starting to get as intense as it was promised. I had my French interview which was awful and an interview with one of my sector directors (I'm in the Health Education sector by the way). I understood all (ok, most) of the questions in French but I haven't practiced French since April so I forgot a lot of the conjugations and the words for certain nouns. I scored a Novice Mid which is only useful to them so that they know not to place me in a village that speaks a minority language. Since a lot of us are going to be learning French and Bambara, the people who already speak French will be learning Bambara and a minority language. I'm glad one of those people will probably not be me. My sector director is a female medical doctor from the Ivory Coast and is nice as can be. I'm really glad to be part of Health Education.
On Friday, I'll relocate from Toubaniso to a homestay family. I'm a little anxious because I only know basic greetings in Bambara and they sure as hell won't know English. I'm hoping there are at least a lot of little kids because they're the most patient and don't mind repeating things multiple times. I'll post more on that at a later date. Toodles.
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