we begin

James and Me! BCamp

It's September! Yay! I feel like this is a big accomplishment, getting through all that August had to offer with leaving homestay, to swearing in, to moving to site, to then staying at site, and trying to figure out how to stay in touch with all my Goodfella peeps without running my phone bill into the ground. (I think I've done all of the above pretty well, except maybe the phone bill part.) 

as you can see i welcome the new month with quite the excitement. it was even better because i got to have my first official visitor! (more exclamation marks, more excitement) jamie came in from koyan, which is somewhere around 20km from me. she's close, but not a walk in the park close. a two hour walk, two versions of African public transportation, and almost 4 hours later, and jamie met me at the one restaurant kati offers (ok, so by one restaurant i mean an eating establishment to which someone of the western world would consider a restaurant with chairs and a menu and staff). we chatted, we ate, we chatted some more. our main goal was to get to and find the bank. now, it may sound like an easy task, but after a nice hike around town and finally finding the bank behind a small strip of shops and next to someone's house (because that is where all banks are located) some nice military officer told us the bank closed at 3pm. On a thursday? oh yes. and what time was it at that point? 3:01pm. No wonder it feels as though nothing ever gets done! so back we hiked, all the way to my house on the other side of town. About an hour later we plopped down in my living room area convinced that tomorrow would be more successful and willed the fan and sad air conditioning unit to work (now i know I should NEVER complain about the lack of working AC considering I have it, but since i've told everyone and their mother i have it, i would like to literally blow them away in cool air). 

we continued the evening on the internet. we were able to skype with amy and brooke, two fellow BCampers, in Sikasso, which was funnier than productive once you account for the poor internet connection and the three minute delay. jamie was able to catch up on all her emails and facebook messages and talk to a billion people. i cooked dinner...my favorite...mac and cheese (with peas so it's like healthy). we ate and splurged on Cokes and talked. we talked about how much we miss American food, about site, about Africa and IST, and boys and clothes. it was therapy i didn't know i craved so much. 

we stayed up to late and willed our bodies to get going the next morning. once we were full from bread, nutella, and bananas we headed out again. Bank. Check (after only one hour waiting!). Market? Check. Street food. Check. Eating your weight in potatoes...bonus. We bought fabric, went to the tailors and are currently having two new outfits a piece made. Cross your fingers that they turn out. We battled the Malian sun all day and finally got back to my house early afternoon. But we weren't done. We paused just long enough for Jamie to say bye to my host family and collect her stuff and we were off. She had to get back and i was supposed to be making an appearance at work. We huffed and sweated up the hill towards town again. We made one last stop at a shop to pick up final things of upmost importance: cold drinks, laughing cow cheese, candy. And finally, as quickly as it seemed she came, Jamie was off. And I was sitting in the office of IEP. Working on syllabi. 

it's amazing what a treat it is to have someone come and hang out with you. someone to look at you with a sideways and knowing glance when someone asks you a question you don't understand because you don't speak the language well, or someone who also takes over thirty seconds to figure out how much money to pull out at the market, someone who worries you are too close to the cars on the road or that you didn't eat all your dinner. those things matter and i didn't realize that i didn't have them until jamie filled the spot. 

and now i'm left alone again. to fend for myself a little while longer until i have another visitor or figure out when to go with the girls to bamako. hopefully all of that will begin sooner rather than later. 

we are all beginning to exist without one another. while we cling to the friendships and the voices on the phone and the hope of constant text messages, we are here to be our own people, to create our own experience, to make our own impact. we tell ourselves it is what we came to do in the first place. 

so here we are. 

and so here we begin.