My City in the North

I have just returned from my Site Visit. My town for the next two years will be a city of 20,000 named Douentza, which is in the Mopti Region of Mali. It is pretty far north east of Bamako, about a 15 hour bus ride. Its an amazing city with giant rock cliffs that line both sides of the city. its a great view to wake up to in the morning. I was only there for 3 days but it was enough to get a taste of what is to come in the next two years. My job is with the local radio station and working with tourism. I am pretty free to have secondary projects to help the community in anyway they want and need. There are a few other volunteers that are either in my town or within 50K from my town. It was an amazing trip but i know there will be challenges ahead and im ready for them.

Mali is a great country and the people are even better, everyone is always willing to help or just greet you with a smile and multiple greetings that start to sound like mumbles after a while. The Malians love to greet people and have about a 5 mintue speech they go through everytime they come across someone they havent met in the last 10 minutes. Hence the Malians never really being on time for anything. I mean its pretty hard to be on time if you greet everyone with a, " Ine Sogoma. E Ka Kene, Toura te, Somogo bede, Toura Tou la, E Fa ka Kene, Toura ta la, E Be ka kene, Toura Ta la.".....you get the drift. but its amazing how everyone says hello to everyone and everyone has a smile on their face.

Im still having a blast and my health is doing pretty good, about as good as can be expected. I am still making friends wherever I go, whether it be another trainee, another PCV, or a Malian nieghbor. Its been great to hear from everyone and all the news back at home. Thanks for all the love and support.

Miss everyone
-Abou Ba

Homestay and Training

I just got back to Tubaniso(our training site), which is where we have the internet. I have been at homestay which is where we learn our language, French, and get culturally integrated and basically learn how to be a Malian. I am staying at Sanankoroba, with my host family. My dad is Abdoulaye Traore and has 2 wives and roughly 6 kids, i have a grandfather named Moussa and his wife Salle who takes care of me most days with food and water. There are multiple children around and its hard to tell which ones are family cuz they call their nieghbors, friends, cousins, and anyone who they feel like, there brothers/sisters. So i have roughly 30 or so borhters and sisters. I live in a small shack with a tin roof that is loud as crap when is decides to DOWNPOUR. My malian name was given to me by my father, i am Abou Traore. its pronouced just like the monkey in Aladin the disney film, i like it. everyone calls me Abou BA, which in Barbara means Big Abou. i was named after my dads "brother" cuz that guy is HUGE and so am i, he came in from Bamako and we talked english cuz he can speak it and worked for an NGO and has daughters that he sent to university in Canada. It was fun to meet him. Everything is going good. we all have our bad days and our good days. we complain everyday at 11.30am to 12.15pm about the food. all we wish for is american fast food. we go to language classes everyday from 8am to 12noon. then go for lunch with our families and return for more language at 2.30 till 5pm. i eat lunch in my hut with one of my dad's wives usually and eat dinner with my brother Allison. i usually have spegitti for dinner with bread. its not good spegitti and tastes ok but isnt your Mom's spegitti. i have rice with a sauce everyday for lunch. its a wet rice with a mystery meat sauce. thats a little rough. i usally just eat a few handfuls of rice and call it quits. Oh yeah we eat with our hands. sounds fun but sometimes you just want a fork and spoon. ha But everything is going good and im glad to be back at Tubaniso. More later.