Of Bikes and Barack...

Greetings from the land of peanuts! In my spare time (which there is a lot of) I’ve been going out with my host family to farm peanuts, harvest peanuts, shell peanuts. I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten my weight in peanuts the past two weeks. Strangely enough, for someone who never used to like peanuts, I am really starting to enjoy them here. Even stranger, for those of you who knew my culinary tastes, I HATE peanut butter; yet my favorite meal here is a rice dish made with a peanut type sauce. I can’t decide if it’s because the sauce is so good, or it’s just the best of the 5 sauces I eat on a regular basis in village. How times have changed.

Anyway, other than peanuts, a lot of my time in village the past two weeks as been spent doing two things: bicycling and talking about Barack Obama. Last time I was in Kita I received my nice, new Peace Corps issued mountain bike, and have been logging numerous km on it since. I’ve never been particularly fond of biking, especially since I have the tendency to fall over or crash into things or something similar. However, since Peace Corps forbids us volunteers from getting on motorcycles, and I’m not about to start walking miles on end to get to other villages, I have little choice but to bike. So I have been biking to some of the other villages around my site to introduce myself and get to know the other villagers, and biking in general just to burn off some of the countless carbs and peanuts I’ve been ingesting. I have added incentive that my friends are about 25-35k north of me, and so can now get to them when I am desperately needing some American contact. I’m also hoping to start going to the 15 villages my health clinic is responsible for. The vaccinator and matron go to every village once a month to vaccinate children and examine pregnant women, and I’m hoping to be able to work in some health information sessions in these trips once I master the language. My other goal is to eventually be able to bike to my friend’s house, and from there bike to Kita- about a 85/90k distance in total. If anything, I will leave Mali with fantastic legs.

The other big deal in my village has been the American elections. I have actually been mildly impressed as to the level of interest and awareness in my village as to what’s been going on in the U.S. The fact that an African-American might be the next President of the United States of America is a big thing here (for obvious reasons). People have been listening to the news on the French BBC every day to hear how the race is going, and like to keep me updated/ask my opinion on whats going on. And everyone is obviously very thrilled that I’ve come up to Kita this week to vote for Obama. The fact that he has a white mother and black father does confuse them a little bit; there are not quite sure what that makes a person look like. I mean really, what skin color is he really? But it is a great starting point for conversations in villages about how Americans are NOT all white, but come in every shape/size/ethnicity/ what have you, and that there is a lot of intermarriage going on between ethnicities, making Americans even more diverse. Anyway, I plan on bringing lots of pictures back of Obama, so at least they know what an African-American looks like. How I do hope he wins too, because I don’t know how I can ever face my villagers if he doesn’t. Or how I’m going to explain why he didn’t.

Anyway, I know this is a fairly short post, but there isn’t too much to report that isn’t fairly repetitive or fairly depressing/hard to believe. I am trying to keep this blog uplifting and light-hearted and informative, but sometimes there is little to say about life in Mali except that it’s hard and painful and sometimes really short, and I’m not speaking as a regular volunteer going through the usual complaints about adjusting here. This past week has really made me grateful for the easy life (no, really) we have in the States, and makes me more appreciative of how people here get through life, day after day; despite the terrible things that happen, despite how much suffering they might go through.

I am here until the 6th of November for the elections, so please shoot me an email, a note, anything if you get the chance. I love hearing from everyone and everything.