My Future Home

I had a really fun/interesting/adventurous week.  Sunday morning we headed out to the city of Segou.  It’s a really cute little city that every January holds a music festival: Festival on the Niger.  I checked into the nice little hotel that PC puts us up in.  It has nice rooms with air conditioning and flush toilets; I didn’t get one of those rooms.  They put us up on the top floor dormitory.  It is actually pretty cool (minus the bed bugs), the room was big with about 10 beds lined up, and my favorite part was that we get a shower and toilets.  It takes very little to make me happy here. 

So, after checking in the PCT and myself with me grabbed a bite to eat, then met up with other volunteers at the pool.  Yes.  The pool!  It was like a mini vacation for me!  I thought I wasn’t going to see a pool for a very long time, but now I know that I have one available to me 2hrs away from where I will be living.  At the pool we got some amazing homemade ice cream-mango for me! 
Monday morning came and we left for my village.  I opened a bank account in Bla (my banking/market town).  This is the first time that I’ve opened a bank account and am already in debt to the bank.  Here, you are charged to open an account- even if you have money to put into the account.  No ATM card though, just a big card about the size of 2drivers licenses put together with my picture on it and my account number, laminated.  That whole ordeal took about 2 hours and I was told that that was pretty fast!

I met the girl that I am replacing and she took us into the village.  By car my future village is reachable in 15minutes.  By donkey cart it is a 2hr. ride (I have now logged in 6hrs of donkey cartage, but will get to that later). The road: it is a dirt road, but it is in fairly good condition.  There is no public transportation that goes in/out of Kamona so my transportation means are either: car, donkey cart, or bicycle.  It’s about 8k into town. 

I had a really good experience overall at my future ‘So’ (Bambara for house).  It has 2 rooms- a kitchen area and my bedroom.  I have my very own, high-walled nyegene attached to the back of my house.  This is a great luxury now: to have your very own nyegene.  The house is pretty much furnished because of the previous vol. that I am replacing. 

The village is very lush with many crops right now.  We have corn, cotton, watermelon, peanuts, millet, beans, and sweet potatoes fields all over!  It’s great to see crops thriving.  AH! Almost forgot- most importantly my village has palm trees!  They make me so happy, even though I’m pretty far from the coast- I have my palm trees.  Great.

 

I am off to my home stay site one more time.  I will be there for 3 weeks of language training.  Not looking too forward to it, but it’s not going to be that bad.  Hopefully when I get back I will have letters and/or packages waiting for me!  Overall I am still doing well, nothing drastic is happening.  Will write when I get back!

 

When I get back, it will be almost time for ‘swearing in.’  This is when it will be official that I will be a Peace Corps Vol. (PCV)!  Can’t wait. Training is almost over.