Update: We Have Arrived!

After over a day of relatively stress-free traveling, Joye and I have arrived in Mali! Of course, even though it was stress-free, we were still exhausted upon arrival. Here in Mali, it was 11:30pm, but due to a lazy baggage claim and the distance to the Peace Corps training site, we did not get to sleep until 2:30am! In between we also ate a light snack and received an orientation on how to use the hole-in-the-ground toilets called a “nyegen”, which I still can not pronounce. Joye and I were also greeted by a bunch of creepy-crawlies in our floor, but we have since swept it out. We may have freaked out more if we were not so tired, so we went to sleep as soon as we could!

However, when we woke up yesterday morning, everything became beautiful. The weather was not hotter or more humid than it would have been in Michigan either, which was pleasant. After breakfast, we had a session on what training will be about as well as a briefing on safety and security policies. We also briefly met the staff that will be taking us through training and learned that we will be here in the Peace Corps training site for 4 days before going to homestay training villages for 4-5 weeks. We’ll be stopping back here occasionally, at which point we will have to post our blog. Today, we also had two 2-hour training sessions about community acceptance and diarrhea (Mr. D as he is known around here) in order to prepare us for our homestay training. While we are all a little nervous to be thrown into Malian culture, I know we will be prepared for it.

Despite all of the business, yesterday we did have the chance to celebrate the 4th of July. In the afternoon, we went to the American Club in downtown Bamako, where the US Embassy was hosting a party of sorts. While 1-year volunteers love the American Club because of the burgers, our favorite part of the club was definitely the pool, which we pruned up in for a couple of hours. As we swam about, we thought about how strange it was to be relaxing only a day after arriving in country, but after our flight, we needed it.

I’ll leave you with an image that has been in mind since we flew into Bamako. Looking out the window of the plane, I noticed that the scattered lights of the city slums matched the starry night sky so well that I could almost imagine the airplane flying through space. That first night was full of the unknown, and it was alarming and a bit scary. But already, two days later, we have become more comfortable with this place and our fellow trainees. We hope that this feeling will follow us to our homestays, which will be the true test of comfort with these entirely new surroundings.

Sorry there are no pictures yet, but we promise to post them once the Internet improves.