The Vacation is over...

I am back in Kita again, although I said I would be at site. After coming back to Kita on Thursday from visiting my friend in another town, I decided to stay an extra two days here in town instead of rushing back to my village. Which at the time seemed to be a good decision, since some other friends were here and I caught up with them. However, after transportation left us yesterday and we are here stuck waiting for another bus to go through, I’m not sure if I should have put off getting back to village for so long. I assume I’ll get back to my village eventually, if Malian transport ever decides to come through. However, at least I know (I think) that my villagers will be happy to see me, and that everyone will be super excited to talk about Obama winning the Presidency. It is a nice feeling to be loved by the rest of the world again, and to feel proud of America once more. Here in Kita people are overjoyed, and keep talking to us about it in the market, and in the internet café the owners have printed out pictures and pictures of Barack and put them up everywhere. I feel terribly sorry for him however; although he’s starting out with a great mandate he has been given a shitty situation. No matter what he does, things are going to go wrong and people are going to be angry. I just hope that people remember to be patient and understanding, at least for the first year or two.

Anyway, despite the crazy Malian transport situation, it has been a really great week. I was thrilled to get out of town for a couple of days, and go up to Manantali, northwest of Kita. It is really beautiful up there, and the Peace Corps house up there and my friend’s house are right on the river, where monkeys come to play and hippos wander by sometimes (I saw the monkeys, but unfortunately no hippos ever materialized while I was there). So we spent our afternoons sitting on the porch drinking lemonade and watching the sunset. Because Manantali has a dam that provides hydro-electric power and my friend lives in an old contractor’s house, there was also running hot water, which doesn’t sound like much but is amazing after cold bucket baths for 4 months. So I spent my days riding around Manantali, exploring the town and the surrounding wilderness and relaxing in the coolness (both literal and figurative) of my friend’s house. There was no sitting around watching movies or hanging on the couch for hours on end, which is what I usually end up doing in Kita. So it was a great break from the stage house and from my village, although it was really hard to leave that relative paradise. Although we weren’t able to watch the election as it was happening, we were able to catch the speeches on French TV the day after, and we were both terribly impressed with both of them. Which brings me back to how happy everyone here is about Obama, volunteers and Malians both. We can only hope that he makes good decisions the next couple of years and that there is nothing too bad that trips him up, and makes him hated by the rest of the world.

P.S. I have added more pictures of homestay and Swear-in, so check them out! Its me in a Malian outfit. Hot.