Into the Brousse!

A lot has happened in the past three weeks at homestay and few days at Tubaniso, so I'll try to recap some of the highlights. First though, and more importantly, I passed my language test, so all systems are go for me to swear in on Friday and officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer! Following swear in on Friday morning (which will be broadcast on national Malian television!) we are having a little BBQ at a place with a pool in the afternoon and then going out to celebrate that night. They have arranged for us to stay in a hotel in Bamako that night and we have Saturday to get any last minute things we need before heading out on Sunday morning. I will be actually getting installed in my village on Tuesday, so it may be a while before I am able to access internet again, but once I'm settled I'll try and write a little more in detail about my new home!
Some highlights from the last three weeks at homestay:
I was actually able to do some techincal training, and we learned how to weigh babies, make a porridge that helps rehabilitate malnourished children, and animate groups of women on a drink that helps with dehydration. Animations (basically little 10-15 minute talks to small groups) are probably going to be a lot of my job for the next two years, so it was good to practice, especially since I had to give my talk in Bambara! We also visited a malnutrition rehabilitation center, which was of course sad, but it was also upsetting to find that the center is completely supplied by outside sources. The milk, porridge, and other high calorie foods offered to the children are all given to the center for free by NGOs. We spend a lot of time talking about sustainability in PC and to find out that the center would not exist if NGOs decided to leave or ran out of money was a little disheartening. Malnutrition here is an interesting problem because in most cases it isn't the result of a lack of food, but eating the wrong foods or getting sick and not being able to recover. The pediatrician in charge told us this outright and said that sustaining the clinic major concern, which at least demonstrates that she recognizes the problem. A step in the right direction, but they still have a long way to go to function without foreign aid. I also painted a mural with the other girls from my homestay which turned out really well! We did a picture of the food groups (there are only three in Mali) with the foods you would need to eat from each one. Then we had a community leader talk to the village about the importance of eating from all three food groups to be healthy. I'm not sure how much actual health information they got from it, but they really appreciated the mural and it was nice to leave something behind in homestay village.
One funny thing about leaving homestay was an incident with my host family. The entire week before leaving, they kept talking about photos and a camera, and I thought they wanted me to take their pictures. While I did want to take some of my host family and the village, I didn't want to take it out all the time because kids tend to get really crazy when you take their picture! I wasn't exactly sure what they were saying, so I told them that the batteries in my camera were dead, but I would try and get some new ones. Apparently, they were not talking about my camera at all, because a few days later after eating dinner, I was sitting around chatting with my host brother and a "professional" photographer came into the concession! My family hired him I guess, and I had to take a picture with every single member of the family, then me by my house, me sitting in the concession, me with the whole family together, etc. It was quite a photo shoot! Needless to say, I'm sure they'll be showing pictures of the toubab that lived with them to anyone that comes over haha. They also wanted to send me with the lovely parting gift of the rest of the chicken that they killed for my going away breakfast, but I respectfully declined and gave it to the kids to eat. I'm sure my new host family will come with a whole new set of interesting things to write about, which will be in my next post as an official PCV! Wish me luck en brousse!