The Big News Update...and Welcome to Guinea PCVs!

First off, Welcome to the PCVs from Guinea!

For those not in the know, Guinea, the West African nation to our immediate southwest, just recently had elections and they didn't go over so well. People are rioting in the capital and many protesters have been shot and killed already. As a precaution, Peace Corps Guinea will be sending its 106 volunteers to Tubani So for the next week, possibly longer. We have been told they will be arriving tomorrow morning - they are on the road as I type. Because Michele and I will be in Tubani So today and tomorrow helping train new language testers, we should be here when the Guinea-kaw arrive. It will be pretty interesting to meet a bunch of PCVs from another West African nation. Workers have been all over Tubani So today trying to find any spare room they can get to fit the new 106 residents, as there is no way of telling for the moment how long they will be here. This is the address of one of the PCVs in Guinea that I have followed on and off the past 6 months. Read it to find out more about the PC in Guinea.

Secondly, it is now 6 months since we have joined the Peace Corps. 6 months ago today (give or take a day, my memory isn't that great) we were on a plane coming to Africa. Congrats to our stage.

Lots of things have been going on behind the scenes here in Mali and in West Africa in general. First off, Michele and I have known about this for nearly two weeks but did not want to post anything about it on the blog while things were still being discussed: we will be changing sites. Blendio will not be our village anymore and the people of Blendio will not be the ones we work with. The most straightforward way of explaining why are due to security issues from our being robbed twice and tensions between our homologues that would have made continuing in Blendio and Kassambougou difficult. But all is not sad.

We will be moving (at the earliest) Monday to pick up our stuff via PC vehicle in Blendio, spend a night or two in Sikasso-ville, then head up to the PC stage house in San in the region of Segou. Our new site will be the town of Diaramana (pronounced Jar-a-mana). It is a new PC site - as in we will be the first 2 PCVs in this town. They have been waiting for a volunteer since 2002, and seem extremely excited that Michele and I will be there soon. I guess every time a door shuts another one opens.

I really can't say much about the town yet as I have not been there before. But this is what our paperwork has said: it is the commune capital (largest town in its county) and has 4000 people. It is roughly 20km off the main road between the cities of Bla and San in the Segou region. It is about 50km from Bla, which will most likely be our banking town. We will be living in a 6 room concrete house originally built by the NGO World Vision but recently vacated when the NGO left the town. They have a broken solar pump and 3 of their 6 hand pumps are broken. I'm told the people are very excited about designing and building advanced latrine systems in the area - I won't find out exactly what that means until I get there.

Michele will be working at a maternity in the town. They do not have a full fledged CS-COM (mini, rural hospital), just the maternity, so Michele has the potential of working with a lot of baby weighing and vaccinations. She is not excited about that. But, we are both looking forward to working with the local school to teach sex ed and health classes. Michele is also very gung-ho about starting her girls soccer team. I won't be able to write more about our projects until we get there and actually have a chance to analyze the situation in Diaramana.

The plans at the moment are basically to play by ear whatever needs to be done to accommodate the new arrivals from Guinea - there is a fairly good chance that will may not have a car ready by Monday to even take us to our old site. We basically have a little less than a week of downtime (which is kind of nice since we've done so much training the past month).