First, thanks to my friends and family for the kind messages you've sent me about my host mom's death. It was a difficult few weeks, but spending Christmas with PCV friends and New Year's with Malian friends made for a positive end to the year.
For Christmas, I travelled up to Manantali, a town on the Bafing river. A huge hydroelectric dam was built there in the 1990's which supplies power to Mali, Senegal and Mauritania. It is a quirky town because there is a typical Malian village on one end, with subsistence farmers living in mud huts, but then there are dam workers who live in a gated community on the other end of town. The gated community reminds me of what a circa 1980's run down Florida retirement community would look like, with tennis courts, a supermarket-type store, and bank and post office. Since the hydroelectric dam is right there, the entire town is supplied with cheap electricity, so even the smallest mud huts have power.
There is a Peace Corps house in Kenieba which is located between these opposite ends of Manantali. The house consists of two huge cement huts with straw roofs and is ideally located in a tranquil spot next to the river. Spending a few days in Manantali is a genuine escape from the heat and dryness found in the rest of Mali.
The Christmas party was nice and relaxing. It was great to catch up with fellow second-year volunteers and meet some of the volunteers who arrived last year. The volunteers who are based out of Manantali did a great job hosting us and organizing our meals. We roasted three pigs for Christmas dinner! Though it was tough to be away from home for now the third Christmas in a row, it was comforting to know I would be home next year. Also, I was not happy to miss the huge snowstorm that dumped two feet of snow in the northeast!
The river as seen from the Peace Corps house
Down at water level
Hippos! Luckily they like to stay on the other side of the river.
Did you know hippos are the deadliest animals in Africa?
The Peace Corps house in Manantali
The hydroelectric dam
The day after Christmas we hiked above the dam to check out the lake. It is a huge body of water, stretching across an area of 180 square miles (I did some research on Wikipedia... it's more than twice the size of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and about the same size as Lake Tahoe). When the river was dammed, the lake flooded more than 50 villages and displaced about 12,000 people.
Lake Manantali
These trees are bare except for these beautiful red flowers that bloom this time of the year
I traveled back to Kenieba after Christmas and celebrated New Year's with some of my friends there. New Year's is actually a pretty big holiday here, meaning another chance to eat good food. If they can afford it, Malians like to eat chicken for the New Year's feast. One of my neighbor's invited me to eat dinner with them, so I bought a chicken and we enjoyed it with french fries and fried plantains. I stayed up until midnight and got to see fireworks going off all over town.
Here's wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2011!
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