Camp Mali

So, camp Mali has been going excellently so far. I guess I should start from the beginning of getting off the plane on the runway, and finally stepping foot in Africa. The airport was craaaazy. But they had people to come help us and we got on the buses to go to our training site. (We fondly refer to it as Camp Mali because they totally take care of us completely. The food they have been cooking has been excellent, lots of sauces and they have these thin sugar cookies as snacks, which are excellent. Lucky for me I have been sweating out like 20 pounds a day. Hahaha. We had a cultural festival here, and they had traditional dancers and drummers, who were awesome!! And we got up there and danced with them. It was amazing, they were so encouraging and loved when we would break it down and dance with them. The Malian women are gorgeous. Like some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen. And they wear these elaborately tailored outfits made from all different colors that always match (along with matching their headscarf). So of course, I sit and stare at them all and gape. I bought some fabric so I am going to go to a tailor and have them make me some fun stuff. Malian people are hilarious. They have the BEST sense of humor and they all joke around with each other. They have this relationship called joking cousins where you are supposed to joke around with someone you meet who is from a different ethnic group, like playful making fun of each other, and that is what has kept the peace between ethnic groups for a long time. It is seriously the best system I have ever seen. It is so culturally ingrained that there are very few conflicts and if there are, the conflict must be resolved by a third party ethnic group. Anyyyway, back to first impressions. I feel like I have known everybody here for EVER. There are 77 of us but I guess being here we’ve all become fast friends. And we have been doing some intense training, which is funny because most of the training thus far is basically how to survive here. Treating water, food, how to stay clean, traveling methods, basic bambara (the largest native language), etc. And there is so much more to come. Tomorrow we go to our home stays (there are a few of us in local villages around our training site and we are there with two language/cultural trainers and that is where we do most of our learning). It is actually a great system to slowly integrate us into Malian life. It is weird being an extreme minority. I talked to some children, and greeted them in Bambara and their eyes popped out of their heads!! And then they responded in french, because apparently they assume all white people are French, which was good for me b/c I got to practice my French. Ok, this has been a long post, I will post again in a couple of weeks b/c I won’t have internet until then, and I will have pictures too.