'Room Temperature' depends on where your room is

And here, it's about 81 F. Tomorrow everyone leaves for homestay for two weeks. Here we get 5 hours of language class a day, then some cultural discussion, then the usual homestay benefits--eating all our meals with our Malian family and having them help us use the language.

I'm heading to Moribabaougou, about 17 km outside of Bamako to learn intensive Bambara, the local language which 80% of Malians speak. I'm incredibly happy about this: nearly everyone in Mali speaks either Bambara, french, or both, so unlike some of the minority languages, I should be ok anywhere. Which, right now, is the reason why I still am in the dark about my permanent work site. I was told due to my grassroots experience (over office or beureucratic experience) that I'd most likely be put in a pretty small village, working at a community health center. Called Centres Saite de Communitaire (CSCOMs), these things are initiated by the village and are incredibly limited, only having some midwives, birthing attendants, and maybe even a nurse. In the Malian health care system, you have to go up to the regional level before you can get to a Nurse Practitioner or even a doctor.

It's absurd being in a country where there is still the colonial language (French) and the many local languages (Bambara being the majority). For example, Claudine, our Health Ed instructor is from Cote d'Ivoire. She has french and limited english, but her assistant only has limited french and her local language. Since every health volunteer has at least some knowledge of French, it's everyone trying to meet somewhere in the middle-- the volunters trying to use their limited french, Claudine using her slightly less limited english. Nearly every conversation goes this way, falling into a mix of french/English. Hopefully, it will get better with knowing Bambara. No Malian wants to speak french unless they really must.

Since leaving Philidelphia, the immunization count is now at 7 since I received 2 more today. Fortunantely, this Typhoid is the first one that has really hurt (the Rabies is surprisingly fine). I have honestly probably doubled the total number of immunizations I've had. Such is being a health worker in Africa.