Post-staging and good to go!

Hi everyone!

So after staging in Philly, a long long flight, and lots of fun at the airport in Mali, we are here! We've already survived day one and even our first lesson in Bambara. Cass and I get to stay in the same hut which has a mosquito net, a slow fan, and a light. Yay electricity! We do have taps outside and showers with running water (sometimes) as well, but the toilets are holes in the ground you squat over. And as you can tell, here at the training center, we have computers and wifi to communicate with y'all, though it's only temporary.



First things first: there are about 40 of us here in Mali for this cohort of PCTs, but there are a lot of people currently serving (like 140 I want to say?). There are 15 health education volunteer trainees (including me), 13 environmental volunteer trainees (including Cass), and 12 small enterprise and development volunteer trainees. This week we are all together in this posh little training center, so we have combined sessions on cross-cultural stuff, health and security stuff, and Bambara this week. On Friday we actually go live with a host family. Cass and I will be with separate host families, hopefully in the same village. I think there are 6 villages they are putting us in, and generally we will be in a village with volunteers in our own sector. Obviously Cass and I are exceptions a lot of the time, so we'll see what happens. (Aside: there is also another married couple here, who are from Jacksonville and are Gators, and they met in PC like 30 years ago! They are awesome and an inspiration to us.) While we stay with our host families we will be adjusting to village life, food, and we'll learning language pretty intensely. It should be a blast, I'm pretty excited. Cass is a little nervous, but he is adjusting really well. We also have amazing language trainers who will be working with us in small groups in our homestay villages.

This week we also have medical interviews to update our charts, language testing in French, and interviews with our APCDs for our sector to kind of talk about what we are interested in doing so they can place us better at our sites. Cass had his yesterday and learned that he may be placed in a town where he could teach computer classes...in French! Which is incredibly awesome news! Cass and I are kind of an exception, because we think they already know where we're going. But still, I'm sure it will be helpful for them to know what we're interested in doing.

It's breakfast time, so this will be a short update. I need to get my caffeine fix! Also not much has happened yet, hah. But so far we are seriously having so much fun meeting everyone, practicing our Bambara and French, and learning about what's going to happen over the next three months of training. If you need to get in touch with us, do it soon! Internet will be harder to come by as of Friday.

Much love from Mali,

Carolyn and Cass (who approved this post!)