I’ve come to snuff the rooster.

I love Mali. The roosters here know who is boss-- ME! Most of you are aware of how roosters have tormented me over the years. Well, for whatever reason, the roosters here in Mali have a healthy fear of me. One wave of my handheld fan and even the largest rooster quivers. In fact, I picked a rooster up the other day. If I do nothing else here I will feel accomplished.

A lot has happened in two weeks! I weighed in at 129 lbs. this morning. That’s a 13 lb loss in one month. Meanwhile, I eat nothing but rice, macaroni, oil, yams, bread and peanut butter. I weighed myself in the morning, before breakfast, but I’m averaging about 132lbs. From what I understand this will change as my body adjusts, so I’m living it up while I can.

Back at the homestay things have been rather eventful. The other day we were in class when all of a sudden we heard this bird freaking out in the tree above us. A snake had wrapped itself around the bird’s neck and was suffocating it! It was insanity. The snake was just waiting patiently for an unsuspecting bird to land in the tree and then BLAMO. After much discussion it was decided to “take care of” the snake, as is custom in Mali because they are considered to be evil. Our teacher shot the snake out of the tree with a slingshot.

I have made 2 cultural faux pas so far. First, I have been sweeping my room at night. I take three baths a day, and I thought that I would sweep before my last bath so that I could get sweaty and dirty, and then wash it off. Well, as it turns out, Malians do not sweep after sunset because they believe that it sends their good fortune out the door. Who knew? Then, I had been given a bag of sugar so I put it in my trunk for safekeeping. Well, there’s no such thing as safekeeping in Mali and ants attacked both my sugar and me one night. I put the ant filled sugar bag into another bag and then threw it out. I then had to spend an hour chasing and squashing hundreds of ants by headlamp. Anyway, someone saw me do this in the pitch dark and went to my mom the next morning saying, “Rokia, do you have so much sugar that you can just throw it away?” They told her that their third cousin’s brother had seen me do this the night before. Apparently, which makes sense in hindsight, you do NOT throw out any food items in Mali. They have ways of removing such problems from the sugar. Who knew?

We got to go to an expatriate swimming pool the other day!!! It was amazing. I had a salad and ate it with the same, if not more, enthusiasm as those who had cheeseburgers. It was a great day. It’s funny how, now, having amenities is culture shock. I was definitely overwhelmed.

Most importantly, I found out where I am going to be spending the next two years of my life! I will be working with a NGO on producing quality onions and then helping them to find a large buyer. I’ll give you more information as I read through all of the paperwork. If you want to know my exact location just send me an email and I’ll let you know. I will be visiting my site for five days next week with my counterpart agency and I am very excited about that.

That’s all for now. Thank you so much to Aunt Cathy for my package of delicious soaps and nailbrush! Also a special thanks to Ron for everything he did for me before I came and for what he continues to do for me while I’m here! I’ve been a sad panda for the last two weeks without any snacks (hence the 13lb weight loss) and I just got a package from Ron with snacks, and reading material, and noise canceling headphones to help with the sound of the bats! You’re the best! I use my headlamp, backpack, and steripen all the time. Seriously, you’re a lifesaver. Xo

Hope all is well on the home front.