Homestay, Pt. 1

To say the peace corps is an emotional roller-coaster is a criminal understatement. One moment you’re in the stratosphere after completing a long series of greetings; the next you’re in hell, as you can’t understand a word of what anyone is saying.

That’s life as a Peace Corps Trainee(PCT). You’re dropped off in a West-African town, with a family whom you cannot communicate, in an environment that can kill you in myriad ways, and expected to deal. And you do.

At first you deal in absolute simplicity. One night I spent half an hour one night with Mahin, my older brother, hammering out the most basic sentences possible: I drink water. I don’t smoke. You do smoke. To communicate the concepts of “the same” and “different” we used matchsticks and pens. All this as we squatted on a mat in my cement walled room, lit by the iridescent glow of a kerosene lantern.

One night you sleep like a baby, and the next the drumming rain on your steel roof combines with crickets’ chips to create a cacophony of sound that would make a chainsaw jealous.

Then you’re expected to get up and go to class for 8 hours the next day.

At first you feel like an alien in a strange land. Nothing looks like home, nothing sounds like home, and nothing tastes like home. We’re learning Bambara, one of the main languages of West-Africa. At first, you can’t talk with anyone and everyone laughs at everything you do. Butcher a sentence? Hilarious. Get a sentence right? Also hilarious.

Niamana

I live in Niamana, a village of around 8,000 people, located 16 kilometers east of Bamako. Niamana is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It looks like a war-zone. Every building is half-complete, any most are un occupied. Most walls are pock-marked with holes and re-bar pokes out every which way.

But the city is very much alive, and there’s a reason for all of it. The re-bar is exposed on purpose, in order to take advantage of a loophole in malian property-tax, and the holes are put into the walls of un-occupied buildings by bored children with rocks and sticks.

Eight of us live here, in the Malian equivalent of a suburb (I use the term purely metaphorically).  All things considered I think I have it pretty good. My room’s big, it ventilates well, and my bathroom doesn’t stink AND has fantastic view of the surrounding cliffs. There’s something amazing about watching lightning strikes as the sun sets behind the cliffs while you take your evening bucket bath.

You adjust to life quickly when you have no choice. We can shop at the markets, hold decent conversation with our neighbors, and have a few beers at the local bar (which doubles as a brothel). We’ve hiked up the cliffs that overlook our town and danced at midnight parties with our fellow villagers. Speaking comes easier every day.

The food isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great either. A pile of carbohydrates with a sauce and a few pieces of protein on top. It’s nourishment, it keeps us going, and sometimes it even tastes good.

Thankfully, the busy schedule doesn’t give us much time for homesickness. 6 days a week my schedule is: Wake at 7, eat breakfast, go to class, come home for lunch, take a nap, go back to class, come home, harass the kids (read: practice language), talk with dad, go to sleep around 9. Rinse, repeat.

I need to sleep from 9pm to 7am in order to get  a decent nights sleep, since I have to wake up multiple times every night to sling-shot shea nuts at a pack of dogs that fights outside my window. I used to feel bad about it, but after not sleeping for 3 nights I stopped caring.

We’ve been back at Tubaniso for 2 days, going to classes and re-couperating a bit. It’s been nice, but I’m ready to go back to the village. We’ll be there for about 2 weeks before finding out where our (real) job assignments will be. That’s when I’ll update next. For now, it’s back to business as usual.

I didn’t bring my camera with me to the first 2 weeks of homestay, but it’s coming back with me this time.