Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of updates--as you might have heard, there has been a coup d'etat in Mali basically overnight and we know less than y'all do at this point. But never fear! We are safe and happy and very far away from all the craziness in Bamako. They are taking good care of us and trying to keep us updated, so we'll try to do the same. People in village are kind of upset and it's eerily quiet, but nothing bad has happened at all. We love it here and hope that we can stay with these amazing people!

We will be working on our previously-planned blog posts since it's a lot of not working and waiting right now. Stay tuned!

Hi friends,

We just wanted to write you a quick note to say that we are not able to upload pictures to the blog from our village, despite our best efforts. We can basically check e-mail and upload text, but very little else. We really like showing you guys what life is like rather than describing it, so we're going to just compose a horde of blog posts here at site and upload them in Sikasso, our regional capital, when we go next. That means no more awesome photo posts until maybe late March, but look out for them then! Blog posts to come: first few weeks at site, photos of our house, and themed blog posts about stuff like gardens, water, food/cooking/our market, day-to-day living, malaria, our counterpart organizations, making shea butter, and more! We have a lot of great stuff to show you, we promise!

<3 Cass and Carolyn

Chapter 2: Homestay Villages

In this second installment, we'll give you a brief introduction to what it was like to live in a village with a host family. As part of our training and integration, we spent two months living with a local family under their roof, eating their food, and basically hanging out with them for the times we weren't in school. We'd awake early to get to school by 8:00 am each day, Monday through Saturday, break for lunch at midday, then resume at 2:30 pm to study up until 4:30-5:00 pm each day. As for language, despite Mali being a predominantly French-speaking country (colonially), the dominant language is Bambara, so most of us volunteers have been learning that. 

Below are some photos from Cass's homestay situation. This first one is of a large rock, a landmark, that identified the village of Soundougouba Kora.

Chapter 1: Adventures in Bamako

We've started a bit late with getting this blog rolling so we're going to rewind. Here are some pictures and text of what we found in Bamako, at our training center Tubaniso, and at our various adventures in the big city. Slowly (dooni dooni), we will catch you all up!

A bientot!

Hi guys! We have been super busy swearing in, getting stuff for our house in Sikasso, and getting ready to go to our site (which is happening today!). We will definitely make some detailed posts once we are settled in at site and have time and energy to think and write. In the meantime, however, please check out the site of our stage-mate Cathy and her amazing photography. It will give you some idea of the beauty we are surrounded by...but also, there are some pictures of us too.

A bientot!

Happy new year!

Happy New Year (and Merry Christmas)! Hope you are all having a fun holiday season so far!

Here are some quick highlights of the last few weeks that we've been away from the interwebs:

- Seeing our awesome site, where we plan to (half-jokingly) open a bed and breakfast in our HUGE new house
-Getting sweet Malian clothes made (more pictures to come)

Mud stoves and mango groves

Hi everyone!

TL;DR: We are fine, we love Mali, and we're going to see our permanent site next week! Hooray! Oh and we love you all too!

So, for the last several weeks we have been learning Bambara at our homestay sites about an hour away from Bamako, where we don't have internet. Sorry for the dead blog! It will be like this until January though--definitely off and on. Cass and I are in different villages, but we are only about 2k away from each other, so we bike over and hang out at each other's houses. It's pretty fun! The last bike ride we took together was in the mango groves at sunrise in Cass's village. Personally I don't think it gets any better than that.