Ala k'aw sara, Ala k'a to N kono aw ye

Homestay is now over, and I am an official Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV)! As a way to say thank you to my homestay family, I gave about 10 blessings while failing in my attempts not to cry. Two of the blessings that I gave make up the title of this entry: May God pay you all, and may I not forget what you did for me. The response to each blessing is generally “Amina” (amen).

I really enjoyed my homestay experience: living with the Traore family, learning Bambara, and getting to know the other PCVs in my village and the surrounding villages. I loved hanging out with my family each night, playing with my sisters, learning how to cook a few Malian things, drinking tea, and having many understanding resources while I was trying to learn Bambara. And, the more Bambara I learned, the more fun I had. I will miss my family a lot, and hope that I can go back to see them in the future when I can actually say more than simple sentences in Bambara.

The day before I left, my friend Matthew came by to take pictures of me and my family. Unfortunately I didn't get all of the pictures before he headed to site, but here is one picture of my whole family (minus my 4 Dads):


Also, the day before I left, Monique and Adja did “Jabi” on my feet. It's a little bit like henna, and takes several hours to finish. Here is Monique and Adja, Monique is taping the design on my feet, while Adja is applying the Jabi:


Here's a taped foot:


Unfortunately, the Jabi didn't turn black like it's supposed to, so my feet turned into a kind of crazy black and orange Halloween tie dye. Here's the finished product:


Here's a picture of three of my favorite homestay sisters, Tenen, Alima and Tia:


Homestay is over, and we spent another week at Tubaniso before officially swearing-in as Peace Corps Volunteers! As part of our celebration of the end of training, we had a talent show. There were a lot of acts, and some friends and I decided to hoola-hoop. Yes, that's right: hoola-hoop. My friend Kat is really good at hoola-hooping, and found some old pipes in the garbage which we converted into hoola-hoops. So, Kat, Sara and I hoola-hooped to the String Cheese Incident while Eric, Jeremy and Owen juggled. It was pretty ridiculous. Here is a picture of Kat, Sara and I following the talent show:


The morning after the talent show, all of the Trainees and I were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers at the United States Embassy in Bamako. The ceremony was fun, most of us dressed up in Malian outfits for the occasion, and someone who had learned each language (Bambara, Fulfulde, French, 3 Dogon dialects) gave a short speech. My homestay decided to get matching outfits for the swear-in, which was kind of a hectic process. We ended up with Basin (a type of really nice fabric, I may not have spelled it correctly) outfits, and here is the result (from left to right: Kristin, Diatrou, Matthew, Jeremy, Souleymane, John, Ali, Nick):


Here is a picture of all of the new environment volunteers in my stage (training group):


My LCF (Language and Cultural Facilitator, ie: teacher) Diatrou was a huge help for Kristin, Matthew and I over the last couple of months. He has been incredibly patient with all of us, and I don't think we would have learned Bambara as well without him, or had such a good homestay experience. Here is Diatrou and I:


Yup, good times. Swear-in is over, we're real volunteers now, and our 24 months of service has begun. I have been hanging out in Kita all week while the other volunteers in this region get installed. It has been nice to have some free time, but I am excited to head out to site on Saturday morning. We have spent the week buying necessary items like stoves, bed mattresses, buckets to do laundry and haul water with, etc. If I have forgotten to buy anything, I will be back to Kita sometime soon to get the last things I need.

That's all for this incredibly long blog entry. I am moving into the time where I will only have internet access 1-2 times per month, and with that in mind I will try my best to keep this updated. Maybe I can split time intervals of internet access into two blog entries rather than one super-long blog entry like this one. I would happily accept any suggestions! I would also happily accept any letters or emails, and I will do my best to respond to you (eventually...).

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday to Mom, Ben, Margaret, Amelie, and anyone else I've forgotten.