Now I know how the people on Oregon Trail felt

I made it back from site visit, and mostly in one piece. I am only missing a tiny little piece of my finger where I was bitten by a mouse my first night in village. Lucky me! Two rabies shots and a hamburger in Mopti (to make myself feel better) later, I am fine, and my host dad at site promised to catch the mouse and "take care of it" before I get back. Other volunteers have told me that there are plenty of ways to keep mice out, the easiest one being to get a cat, so I may be inheriting a pet in the future. Getting to site was probably the most eventful part of the whole week as it involved a 10 hour bus ride, followed by a bashee (old station wagon turned taxi) ride through brousse, a river crossing via ferry, and finally a donkey cart adventure to get to my actual village! Riding on a donkey cart was eerily similar to the beloved elementary school game Oregon Trail. I sat on top of the cart on bags of rice with about 10 other women and my bike strapped to the back. We forged a river, lost some bags of rice off the back that we had to go back for, and helped another cart get unstuck from the mud! Thankfully no one got dysentery, at least that I know of. All in all, a memorable trip on public transport in Mali. My site is really great (minus house guest)and I have two rooms, my own nyegen, and my own concession, which is like a little front yard with a tree. My host family (jatigi) is really great; they seem much more excited than my host family at homestay, and they didn't feed me to once so I think we are going to get along quite well! The village itself kind of reminds me of Emerald City in that the road literally ends at the entrance to the village, except its a red dirt road and not yellow brick haha. I do get cell phone service at the clinic where I will be working, but no electricity and no market, so I'll be going into Djenne at least once a week. I think it'll be nice to do this actually because there is another volunteer in Djenne, so it will be fun to get together even for an afternoon. Djenne also has a couple of hotels, restaraunts, and internet cafes since it's pretty tourist-y, so it'll be nice to have access to all that relatively easily. One not so nice thing about it being such a center for tourism is the little kids. They have learned how to say "give me" in french and will ask you for anything from money to your water bottle to presents! This gets annoying pretty fast, especially since they seem to travel in groups of ten and like to tug on your clothes while asking for things. I'm just hoping that since I will be there regularly they will eventually figure out that I am not a tourist and do not want to give them my water bottle haha.
It's really weird to think that I have been in Mali for over a month now! Sometimes it seems like much much longer, but it's also crazy that training is almost over. Let's just hope I can get through the next 20 days at site with my homestay family and not have to eat to every day, inshallah!

Technology Hates Me

So an unfortunate incident occured yesterday...the death of my trusty computer. I think that the battery has simply died, and cannot be recharged so this post is going to be short as the computer's at the training center are rather frustrating to type on. Saturday I leave for my site visit! I have a 10-13 hour bus, taxi, and finally bike ride from the capitol to my site, so I am pretty sure this is going to be quite an adventure! My counterpart is going to be with me, and I am hoping that between French and Bambara we will be able to make it to site! I will be at my actual site for a few days meeting the chief, seeing the clinic where I will work, and hopefully seeing my house! Then I will be in my banking town to set up my account and finally the regional capitol to meet some of the current PCVs before heading back to Bamako. All in all it should be an eventful week, and I will do my best to write all about site when I get back! Until then, I am giving up on this keyboard and going to take a shower (not bucket bath yay!) before bed.