A Whirlwind January

Wow, it has been a busy month. I travelled twice to Bamako and twice to Dakar with a few days in Kenieba between each trip. That's more than 1600 miles on the road. All that travel was worth it though, because my parents came to visit!

I met my parents in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, which is located on a peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. They had just left a ton of snow behind in New York and I left the heat and dryness of Kenieba. I've decided that the best way to recover from jet and bus lag is spending lots of time on a lounge chair by the ocean. I didn't think I would miss the ocean as much as I have since I've been here. It's funny how you take something like that for granted, as I grew up and spent every summer on the shore. Just being back by the ocean, feeling the humid sea breeze, was really therapeutic.

We spent a couple of days in Dakar, recovering from our long trips and exploring the city. Our ultimate goal was to travel overland to Kenieba and spend a few days there, so we hired a 4x4 and driver to drive us across Senegal. It took a day and a half to get all the way to Kenieba. I have to say my parents were troopers, putting up with the long travel in such a foreign environment.

The three days we spent in Kenieba were action-packed and a lot of fun. The shea butter women's association put on a big show for us one morning, singing and dancing and acting out how they gather the shea nuts and turn them into butter. They gave a goat to my parents and cooked it up for lunch, which was a huge feast that we all enjoyed together. We walked around downtown Kenieba, greeting the mayor and visiting the postman and some of the business owners I've worked with and gotten to know over the 16 months I've lived in Kenieba. I invited my mom to add a post to the blog, so I'll post her recap of the trip sometime next week.

My trips to Bamako were to prepare for the next group of Peace Corps trainees who arrive this Wednesday, February 2. I was asked to be a technical trainer for the new batch of trainees, leading some of the sessions about the Malian economy and how businesses operate here. Though I was reluctant to accept since I am really busy with projects I'm working on in Kenieba, I thought it would be good to help train the new volunteers. I was in Bamako at the beginning of January for a training workshop, and now I'm back here doing prep work for PST, the same two month training I did in July and August 2009. I'm splitting the training duties with another volunteer, so I will be able to spend most of February in Kenieba and will lead the training sessions in March.

After that, I'll be heading home for a few weeks in April to attend my cousin's wedding. I can't wait to be home, though it will be pretty surreal to be back in the US after almost two years away. It's going to be a busy few months leading up to my trip home, but I'm glad to have some meaningful projects to work on as well as help out with training the next group of Peace Corps Mali volunteers.