Brr!! January has arrived in Mali and I am feeling it, especially since I made the mistake of bringing no closed-toed shoes to the training I am at right now. I really have no idea how I used to survive in places like Boston and Iowa. In village, everyone builds fires at night in their yards to keep warm and it’s very, very nice.

What else is new in village? There is no more old woman chanting early in the morning, but she has been replaced by an old man! I suspect they are from the same family. Long before sunrise, his voice wakes me up yelling, “A ye wuli! A ye wuli!” (“Everyone wake up!”), before he continues into a discourse about the importance of praying every day and then calls out specific people’s names who should be getting up to go to the mosque. Then he continues even during the mosque’s prayer call, as if that itself were not sufficient. But apparently I am the only person who is bothered by this, because I have never heard anyone else in my neighborhood say anything about him.

Many people in my village associate me with the community health center where I work, especially vaccination days. We have both routine childhood vaccinations every week at the CSCOM, as well as special national campaigns that occur several times a year. I don’t actually put needles into people’s arms but I do a lot of the paperwork. As a result, I’ve noticed that a favorite discipline technique for parents in my village when I’m nearby is threatening children that I will give them shots if they don’t “shut up and eat”, or “take their medicine”. This tactic is startlingly effective but it makes a lot of children keep their distance from me.

So besides this and the baby weighing I talked about in my last post, I don’t do a lot of work at this point. In Peace Corps, the training I am at right now typically marks the point at which volunteers start attempting projects in their villages. I was really nervous about this period because I was afraid that people in my village would expect a lot from me. But then I realized that as the first volunteer at my site, no one really has any idea what I’m supposed to be doing. Plus, I don’t think that any one in my village will ever be more impressed by anything than they are by the fact that I water my own garden. People literally gather around the fence that surrounds it as I water, marveling at the fact that I can indeed carry buckets of water.

A few weeks ago was Tabaski, the Muslim holiday that takes place a couple months after the end of Ramadan. I ate so much sheep. Traditionally, you are supposed to have a new outfit for the holiday so I used it as an excuse to take lots of pictures with people. And I promise I will post these pictures soon.