Update: One Month at Site

Greetings blog readers! Sorry it as been a while, but Internet is hard to come by in our part of the world. However, we are proud to say that we have survived the month of September at our site! Currently, we are attending a week-long Peace Corps language seminar, because Peace Corps figures that after one month volunteers may have language or cultural questions that they would like to ask a qualified instructor. This week also gives us our beloved Internet access (from a cyber café), so if you’d like to send us an email or comment, now is the time.

We also believe that we have done well at completing our self-set objective for this month, which was to greet as many of our future work partners as possible. This has consisted of greeting a large portion of the village where we live (hereby known as Kongodugu) as well as the political and organizational leaders of a nearby town (hereby known as Duguba). Moreover, since Duguba is over eight miles away from Kongodugu, this greeting has required a lot of bike riding, especially for Jim, whose Peace Corps assignment is actually in Duguba, not Kongodugu, but his legs are stronger for it! And now that we have greeted many people, not only do we recognize familiar faces on market day, but we also get many visitors at our own house!

This month we have also been to a splendid array of social ceremonies. First, we attended a baptism of our host-family, whose newborn is adorable. Next, we spent the better half of a day playing a Malian card game during a “company picnic” of sorts for a farming cooperative in our village of Kongodugu. A few days later we then celebrated Mali’s fiftieth anniversary with a large formal celebration held in Duguba, which was not unlike our own Independence Day: hot, long speeches, longer parade, bike race, police beating unruly children, traditional dancing in loincloths, and the like (don’t worry parents, it was perfectly safe). Then, just yesterday, we accepted invitation to the twentieth birthday of Kongodugu’s primary school, which led to us each giving a speech and dancing for a crowd of people. Anything for integration!

Now that this month is over, we have begun to establish our goals through the end of 2010. Thus, in October, we hope to begin some short-term projects that will keep us busy at our site while we continue to develop language skills. For Joye, this largely consists of painting a world map mural near the school, and for Jim, this means using his newly purchased tools to start a garden (he has already started his compost pile). Then, in November, once the rains have stopped falling, we hope to make some improvements on our house, including another room for storage and a high wall to create a compound for us. This will keep us busy until December, when we will return to Peace Corps summer camp for additional sector-specific training, but more on that later.

Lastly, this post would like to announce a new category for this blog that we just starting up: Culture. These pieces will focus on a particular aspect of Malian culture and attempt to explain how it is similar and different from American social norms. Since this month has been largely centered on greeting, this will be the first topic for our culture category. Be sure to check it out to gain a better understanding of just how important this work has been for community integration.

Thanks for reading! -Jim