Home again home again at Tubaniso . . .

Just got back to Tubaniso yesterday morning after another week and a half in Sinsina. Things are going well; I'm feeling better settled in and am enjoying haning around with my host family a bit more. I think serious thoughts of going home kind of dissipated earlier this week, and it feels better to be committed to being here. There are still so many challenges ahead that make me a bit nervous, though. In particular, the coming week will be another transition period. We are all being sent out to our sites for a couple of days to take a look at things and meet the people we'll be working with there. I've been assigned to a site in the Sikasso region called Feremuna. It's a small village of about 550 located just off the main paved road between Segou ville and Sikasso ville. There have been two volunteers there before me already, so there are a number of specific projects already in the works for me to help out with, including working with the women's organization to get a bigger well dug for their garden and helping the young men's association with a tree nursury. None of which I have any expertise in, of course, so we'll see how that goes.

This week I'm just supposed to set up my bank account, have some time to work with my local language tutor, check out my living conditions, and meet people in the village. I'm pretty nervous about all of this, since my Bambara skills are still pretty low and being alone in my village without PC staff right nearby to help out feels like a lot to handle. Plus, I'm supposed to get myself back to Bamako with public transportation. However, I will have some help with all of this. Our "homologues," the people in our village who we're supposed to work directly with are coming in to Tubaniso tonight and tomorrow night. Mine is coming tomorrow- he's a veterenarian in the village and thankfully he speaks French. He'll travel back to Feremuna with me on Wednesday.

So, a lot to anticipate coming up. The last week was all pretty good. One of the first nights I was back there was a marriage celebration in the village and I went out dancing with Jeneba. The dances during the marriage begin early in the night with the youngest members of the community. People dance in lines facing each other- often the men in one line and the women in the other, and step forward and back for most of the song. It's not until the end of the night that the bride and groom might show up and dance. In general, in Malian weddings the bride and the groom are not present for the actual marriage celebration- marriage is seen as a union of the two families more than the two individuals. I only stayed at the party until 12:30 or so, however, so I didn't get to see if the bride and groom showed up.

Hm, other highlights of the week: biked into Sanagouroba, a bigger town nearby a couple of times for some exercise, which felt good, helped the little girls get water from the pump and learned to carry water (very slowly) on my head, and finally got my host mother to let me help with a little bit of food preparation/cooking.

Anyway, think I'm gonna wind this up right now. I'm in the process of attempting to upload some photos and short videos to facebook. You can check out my progress at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015655&l=5da43&id=10301328