Final Days Before Gossi

The Final Days Before Gossi

All the Peace Corps trainees were back at Toubaniso the week before Swear In. We had finished our language training but still had some various classes in our sectors, such as Agriculture for me and Water Sanitation for Bess. Mostly… we volunteers were ready for free time… relaxing and having fun… during the week before Swear In. My friend Kevin and I set up the slack line… but as appealing as the slack line is… it couldn’t complete with going out to the “bar” – the one down the dirty country road from Toubaniso… but anyway… one night when people came back from the bar… Kevin and I introduced some of them to the slack line… and they loved it. Many people got hurt trying to walk the line for the first time while under the influence of alcohol… but despite the pain the line left an impression on several people… A trainee named Westin went to bed that night and dreamed about the slack line all night long… the next morning he came back to the line determined to walk it… he tried hard… very hard… and there is a video on my blog of Westin crossing the line… I promised anyone who walked both (two were set up making two connecting segments) lines consecutively what I’ve been calling high quality American candy bars, simply… Snickers or Twix. I called them high quality because these candy bars are vastly superior to Malian candy bars – and consequently much more expensive. Bess and Kevin were the only ones who achieved this reward… Westin did awesome nonetheless… it was amazing how many people here had seen slack lining in the United States… but never gave it a try until they came to Mali… Kevin is ordering a slack line form the United States… this is a good thing… During the final days in Toubaniso… we had an excellent crash course in the native snakes of Mali… a really experienced snake expert came to Toubaniso and showed us live snakes… many of them poisonous… and they were all snakes he caught… the man had spend of great deal of life traveling the world catching and studying snakes… especially in West Africa… he had been bitten by sorts of venomous snakes… and had all sorts of anti-venom stories and described firsthand what it was like… We all felt very educated and informed after getting his advice on what to do in Mali… when it comes to snakes. At one point in the snake presentation… I was out on the floor trying to get close to a non-poisonous snake for a good picture… the snake charged me almost as if it were springing an attacked… the man (snake guy) reacted out with his hand as quickly as snake had launched and grabbing the snake by the tail and pulled it backward so it just fell short of reaching me… although this would have been an excellent picture… I missed the shot because I was falling backwards in pure fright as everyone else laughed at me. After the snake session… Kevin and I sat under the tree where the weavers (birds) nest… I have put some of my snake and bird pictures on the blog…

Swear In was awesome… short… condensed… and I had special role… wearing the Toureg costume and giving a speech in Tamashek… everyone loved it… I was on Malian T.V. and had many photos taken of me… or at least of my eyes… a man from the U.S. embassy, a language specialist, came up to me afterwards and expressed his desire to collect my Tamashek notes – for those of you who knew me back in Bryn Athyn – how funny is this – a language specialist wanted something fom “Jawit” – ha ha. Anyway… Swear In was followed by a delicious lunch at the U.S. ambassador’s fabulous house… all I could think about was Bess’ and my uncle Eric Rohtla… someone who has been able to meet many ambassadors in his line of work… and now Bess and I were meeting one too. The U.S. ambassador himself even reminded Bess and I of our uncle Eric Rohtla. After lunch we went back to Toubaniso for a picnic… and Kevin poked my eye during an intense game of basketball. One pupil became very small, the other became very big, it was so creepy to look at, and the nurses had never seen it before. I tried to get a good picture of it but I couldn’t because – well – my eyes and brain were not working very well. Someone got a good picture… maybe I can post it later. Anyway… that night all of us Peace Corps Volunteers spent the night partying in downtown Bamako where we all stayed in a hotel with a pool – this may have been fun but everything looked very dark behind the sunglasses I used to cover up my hideously wounded eye. All I could think… was Thank God I hurt my eye after Swear In… because my eyes were all people could see of me during the speech.

It took a solid day of doing nothing other than sitting, swimming, eating and drinking for most people to recover from Swear In night… and it has taken me about four solid days to recover from my eye injury… nevertheless… Peace Corps Mali always moves forward… so two days after Swear In… we new Peace Corps Volunteers were ready to head off to our sites… regardless of our condition… all of us going North of Bamako, a good forty of us, were relived to find out that Peace Corps rented us our own Public Bus to take us Northward… this was great in that it guaranteed a little more personal space and a lot less stoppage. However… I have yet to travel through Mali without conflict… a couple hours north of Bamako and our Bus driver swerved off the road to avoid colliding with a car… he then swerved backed onto the road to avoid a large sewer ditch that would have been the death of us… and the final result of all this swerving was taking out a man on a motorcycle, whereby the motorcycle man escaped catastrophe with a heroic leap - leaving his bike trapped under our bus… it took several hours for another bus to come (another bus from Bamako that was just for us Peace Corps Volunteers) and it took some time for all our luggage to be transferred onto the new bus. Everyone was O.K – including the motorcycle man. Some of the PCV’s cried and verbally expressed that they had decided that they actually did love their family’s back home, that they did want to see them again, and that they didn’t want to die in Africa. One third of the PCV’s going north of Bamako got off the bus in Segou, a second third in Sevare, and the last third of us, the Gao group, bused from Bamako to Gao (Look at that distance on the map – Wow Baby). At least we had an entire bus to ourselves… and I probably would have even enjoyed it but I got food poisoning from lunch in Segou… at least I was able to hang out of the bus door and throw up…and that’s what I was still doing when the bus arrived outside the Peace Corps Gao Bureau – I was throwing up out of the door of the moving bus. We left Bamako at 6:30am Sunday 9/23/07 and arrived at the Peace Corps Bureau in Gao around 6:00am the next day.

Today is Thursday 9/27/07, so we have only been in Gao living at the Bureau for four days… and although this doesn’t seem like much… it really is… because life is hard here in Gao… and we’ve spent too much time in the market exposed to the sun. Since the city of Gao will be a significant aspect of being placed in Gossi, I will take some time to describe it. Gao is a large city on the edge of Niger river, some 40,000 people live here, this is amazing because aside form the river - there is nothing here but sand and some semi-arid pastoral land. There are several paved roads in Gao but most of roads are made of sand… there is some electricity in Gao but not everyone has it and it doesn’t always work… there is some running water but not everyone has it and it doesn’t always work – people still draw water from wells. A PCV can find restaurants and even cold drinks in Gao… but refrigeration is a rarity and eating out brings up sanitary issues. The only swimming pool in the entire city is found in the Mayors home – so no swimming for us. Tourists, especially from France, do make their way as far Northwest in Mali as Gao, so the city does provide accommodations for these adventuresome souls – but I really haven’t seen anything in Gao that would make the long trek here supper worth it – there isn’t much you could put on a brochure. Kidal, way up north of Gao, is even more remote and would actual fulfill a tourist’s desire to see huge rolling sand dunes… but that far north is not considered safe for travel. The Market in Gao is quite impressive and open everyday unlike the smaller cities and towns. The market consists of a plethora of people speaking various languages: Tamashek, Songri, Fullani, Bambera, French, and more. Shopping in the market can be quite an adventure… with Toureg eyes following you through their turbans, street children crowding around you and staring with beggar’s eyes, and all these eyes amongst a large mob of people overflowing the streets with activity and creating a ruckus chorus that never changes tune – shopping changes when fixed prices disappear.

Life at the Peace Corps Bureau in Gao is a little more quite… with high standing walls around the complex we create our own little American world. In here, amongst ourselves, speaking English and talking like Americans about people, food, and things back in America – we often forget what really exists on the outside of the Bureau walls. Then we hop on a bike to go buy bread and peddling down the sandy street we ask ourselves “I am really here… is this really happening”. And so it all… reality that is… becomes quite apparent to us when we realize how deprived we really are from American luxury… and how much we treasure care package items… Hint Hint !!! Anyway… as deprived as we are… we try… we have a refrigerator that sometimes works… electricity powering outlets, lights, a computer (soon to have dial up internet), and a ceiling fan… that all… sometimes work… and when the electricity is on… and the water is running… and everything is working… I might even be able to convince you that I lived in the ghetto of Philadelphia… but all in all… no one here will complain about a thing… life is pretty good in the Peace Corps Gao Bureau… because we Volunteers have each other… and we are sharing something unique… something we all chose for ourselves and for different reasons… so we all share something different and something in common… and so each night… when the sun goes down… we all climb to the stairs to the roof of the Bureau… lay our mats on the cement rooftop… and fall asleep in the city of Gao… This where Bess and I will return… the city of Gao… this is where all of the PCV’s in the Gao region will return… the city of Gao… but tomorrow… it’s time to go to site… to Gossi…

So… I won’t be able to update my bog as frequently as I have been doing… Gossi doesn’t have the means… so when I am back in Gao… no latter than a month from now… I’ll try posting again… something about site… something about Gossi…

Tahuladtanin – “Say Hi to the People you meet from me”