3 hours in the life of a PCT

September 13, 2007
Ramadan started today, so to celebrate, after class we went to the bar. Actually, we go to the bar most days, but I usually only drink Fanta because I get dehydrated sitting in the hot African sun all day. Also, I'm usually fighting off some kind of sickness, including my current killer cold from hell, which was passed around my village and I, unfortunately, caught.The bar is about a 20-minute bike ride away, in a bigger village on the paved road. Some other volunteers are also living there for training. Around 5:30 I am enjoying my second Fanta and we are playfully arguing with out Malian bar friends (whom we see most every day) about whether they can really call us Toubabs. The word has become rather insulting, especially when adults use it to address you ("Toubabu...ca va?"). Kids screaming it over and over as you ride your bike by is almost cute, but it still gets old. We settle on a deal: they can call us "white skin" if we can call them "black skin." The Bambara word for African, farafin, literally means "black skin."

Meanwhile, the horizon in the east has turned a very menacing shade of gray, and the darkness is moving very quickly in our direction. The other people I'm with think they have time for one more round, but I panic and quickly bid farewell, saying sanji be na sisan! (rain is coming now!) to the Malians, who are well aware of this fact.Malian rainstorms don't play. Two minutes after I leave the bar, a cold wind starts blowing fiercely, and I can hardly pedal by bike. My skirt is flying up but no one notices because they are all rushing around like mad, packing up the fruits and vegetables they are selling, and others are trying to get their donkey carts under cover. I turn onto the dirt road leading to my village; the wind is blowing the dirt into the air violently, and I can hardly see and am choking on dust. When the rain comes here it really comes, and with the first drops I feel I start to get nervous. Some other trainees, Amanda and Davin, live a little ways down this road, and I make it to their house just as the rain starts falling harder. I wait it out in their room for a little while, but as soon as the rain lightens I leave. I'm nervous because it's getting late- 6:30, and when the sun sets, at 7, it really sets. There aren't any lights on my road, and I don't have a flashlight. I'm also nervous that I won't even be able to get home at all, because the bridge (see picture below) tends to become flooded during rainstoms, and if it's flooded now I'll be stranded on the wrong side.

The sky is illuminated every few seconds by awesome huge lightning bolts that light the entire landscape. It's still raining a bit. Luckily, when I come to the bridge the water is low enough to pass, though not without covering me with mud in the process. The sun is rapidly setting and I'm riding through every mud puddle in an effort to get home quickly. I ride into my village covered with mud, straining to pedal, as dirt roads turn to mud when you add water.

My host mom is cooking dinner at my house, and attending to a screaming baby, as I arrive. I get matches from her to light my lamp, and fill my bucket with warm bathwater from the pot in the cooking hut. I'm finally feeling calm, having arrived in one piece, but when I go into my nyegen (bathroom) to bathe, I find one wall has a hole in it in a bad place. An entire wall of my nyegen crumbled completely a few weeks ago in a huge storm, along with many of the walls around town and half of my family's cooking hut. The wall was rebuilt with sticks, branches and a black plastic tarp, a temporary solution at best. Today half of it has been blown away, exposing the bathroom to anyone in the field or road behind it. I'm scurrying to find a place for myself and my lamp in the nyegen where I can see but not be seen. The rain is still falling as I reposition myself, my bucket, my lamp once, twice, 3 times. Finally I give up and take the fastest bucket bath in the chilliest rain I've felt in Mali, laughing at the craziness of the last 2 hours. I hurry into my room, trying not to get recovered in mud. My dinner tonight-chicken meat! No bones, no fat, maybe the third time I've eaten chicken here, and the first time with my family. I guess dinners during Ramadan are special occasions. I enjoy my dinner, sitting on my mat warming up next to my oil lamp. Yeah, this is totally what I signed up for.