Wow...

I'm back at the training center for 2 1/2 days of, well, training! I got back from 2 weeks at my homestay site and it was a trip! I live in a little tiny mudbrick house in a village down a long bumpy, watery road. There are about 30 cows and chickens that live in my front yard as my family are Puehl herders from the Mopti region. They moved to Sala in 1986. I have taken on the name of the father so everyone calls me Amadou Bary. It's pretty cool and I get to feel really accepted. He has two wives, Fatumata and Diko, six kids, tons of relatives and two houses. My family here does pretty well for themselves. I can tell because they feed me sheep almost every day, which is expensive. All I want is some chicken oh well. There is no running water in the village, no electricity, no plumbing, etc... I have to go to the bathroom in a little hole in the ground called the nyeggen. It's not fun. I got really sick from eating too much goat and sheep intestines all the time in oil... it's what they feed me. I don't eat it by choice! I have to eat it out of a big bowl with my hand and it's wicked messy, but I am starting to get better at it. The sickness was a real bummer because I was running to the nyeggen every 15 minutes for 3 days and I was dumping out of both ends... simultaneously, which i didn't even know was possible! I definitely avoid laying on the nyeggen floor after throwing up to avoid all the flies and cochroaches. My little room is always covered ni crickets, really loud big bugs and a yellow and purple gecko that shows up a few times a day. The room is painted light blue from the peace corps... all the trainees rooms are blue, with blue around the door and window outside. We call it "toubab blue" so everyone can find us. I have a tin roof that collects massive amounts of heat and amplifies the sound of rain to something resembling a jet engine. It's actually cooler than I make it sound.

I was bit a few times by a bug called a "blister beetle." Yea, it injects acid under your skin, blisters up, pops, and deteriorates all the skin around it. Real fun. So that happened on my arms and chin the first week. Those healed up, but I have a nasty burn scar on my arm. It's a sick battle wound. The clincher was waking up last week with a new blister beetle bite between my eye and nose. That was the worst pain and it was all gunked up and bleeding... I thought I was going to lose my eye. No worriers, I just washed it all the time, applied bacitracin and a week later I'm all better. Woohoo!

On a better note, I sit around outside on a mat every night, read, write stuff down, try to speak Fulfulde with my host family and watch the sky. It is HUGE in Africa. I wrote a ton of haikus one night out of pure boredem and recited them to my fellow PCTs... they loved the creativity. I'll post some up when I get a chance. Night time is amazing here becasue it is just so serene and calming in a tiny village. Everyone just hunkers down at night when the sun goes down and relaxes. I have my kerosene lamp to read by and it's pretty much all I need at this point. I have barely even used my iPod so far. I am really saving it for when I desperately need some American culture and technology. Books definitely work for now.

The language I am learning, Fulfulde, is wicked hard to learn because there are so many arbitrary rules on when to change letters, conjugate verbs, make words plural, deal with money, greet everyone a thousand times, etc etc etc it's just insane! I'll get it if I keep pushing on, though.

Mi yahan janngoyde. Jam wallen-en! (I'm going to study. Spend the night in peace)... typical goodbye in Fulfulde!