Briefly,

I've been busy working toward my language exam, but I thought I'd comment on the recent news stories about Mali--mostly, the severe flooding in West Africa.

Rainy season is nearly over, but for about two weeks, it thunderstormed every night, flooding my family's compound every now and again and sections of street. People here respond to rain a little bit how the US southeastern seaboard responds to snow: everyone stops everything and just sits at home, fearful of venturing out. My family looked at me like I was crazed when it was just letting up rain, and said "you're going to school in this??" And rightly so: two of our side streets where flooded out, and you don't want to walk through standing water for risk of some water borne parasite. Weakly built houses also have a tendency to collapse in on themselves (I checked my family's house after some houses fell in and was pleases to see they spent the extra money for secure metal beams and attachments over wooden beams and leather to tie boards together. If it rains particularly hard or for a long time, the electricity and/or phone grid is also cut, making venturing into flooded streets even more treacherous. In the southern regions of Mali (Kayes, Kouilkoro, and Sikasso), the soil or rivers can accomodate the influx of water. In the northern regions where there's only sand, entire roads are submerged under water because there's no place for the water to go. On site visit, most of our volunteers in the the northern regions had trips which involved sitting on top of the bus while the driver drove through standing water. Or actually getting out to help push the bus/car through water.

The other most relevant hazard of rainy season, other than property damage due to flooding, is that malaria will tend to be worse: more standing water equals more mosquitos. Just before I left my homestay, one of my younger sisters was sick. The word for malaria is the same thing for chills and fever, so you can never be sure if when they say "sumaya" it really is malaria. But her low-grade fever, general malaise, and the fact that I know she doesn't sleep under a mosquito net makes it pretty likely that she does have malaria. Nearly everone here has malaria to some extent. But malaria contributes to why the age five and under mortality rate here is the highest is the world: you're either strong enough to just live with the malaria, or you just don't make it. She's six. I'm terrified if when I go back and visit my homestay family in december if she'll still be there.

Fortunately, rainy season seems to be nearly over. Clouds have been coming through every night, but it no longer thunderstorms--although you can still see the lighting far away, so someone somewhere is still getting rain. Rainy season is followed my mini hot season, and then by october/november, the winds come off of the desert and it's cold season.