Insomnia

My bed is a warzone. It is after two in the morning and I cannot sleep. There are more mosquitoes in this room than if I were sleeping outside. I do not understand. How could said infiltrators possibly have gained entry? The window is closed and sealed tight. The door has been shut for days and continues to be shut. How did they get in? Or perhaps they spawned from the invisible pool of water in the corner of the room...I am at a loss. This makes no sense. I cannot sleep. Joost gave me a net and I have erected it. I have no faith in it though. If this many mosquitoes gained access to my nearly airtight room they should be able to penetrate the fibers of this net with ease. How is this possible. It should not be. Now the Internet does not work. My head is throbbing and my legs hurt. But I don't hate Mali. No, no, not yet. In five minutes perhaps. But right now I am not filled with frustration. Merely wonder at how things could possibly be so incredibly uncomfortable in a place that promises quite the opposite. My own room. Air conditioning. Electricity. Hot showers. Wireless Internet. All the amenities one could imagine. How could it have gone so wrong?

Applying to Grad School from Mali

If you don't know how to laugh about it the whole process would be incredibly frustrating. Internet is super slow (when it works), I don't have ready access to printers or scanners, and the power doesn't even stay on all the time. If my friends aren't home I can't get on the internet. Phone calls are super expensive and good connections are rare. I get distracted when my friends want to hang out (which is most of the time) - hard to say no when I know the village would not offer me such opportunities. On top of that, Peace Corps gives me a lot of crap for not being at site. All of these things make it difficult to get anything done. Good thing I only want to to apply to one school - The University of Michigan. Too bad they have to make their application insane.

Taking the GRE Saturday morning was an interesting experience. I hopped in a cab whose driver said he knew where the test center was. This made me happy since I had little idea. I ended up on a busy road somewhere near where I thought my destination should be, but I didn't see the signs for it anywhere. After asking a few people who had no idea I started to panic. While making frantic early morning wakeup calls to friends who might be able to get directions I stopped another cab driver who said he knew where it was. He took me around the corner, down a dirt road full of cows, and dropped me off in front of a building I never could have found myself that turned out to be the right place. Good thing I left a cushion.

The proctor was a pleasantly fat Malian who spoke a few words of English. He showed up late. The test booklets were severely lacking in the required answer sheets so it took half an hour to sort that out. Eventually, after a lengthy discussion on how the air conditioning (although at 9 a.m. it was already pushing 90) might negatively affect the girl sitting next to me with a cough that sounded like tubercliosis, to the sound of kids crying outside the windows, we started the big exam. The proctor left during each of the six sections, but for the second one he was gone for a bit too long. He came back ten minutes after we were supposed to stop writing and gave the five-minute warning followed by the statement: "I geeve extra time for evereebuddy."

Structure? Not in Mali.

Having no deadlines or necessary routines is nice, for the most part. It seems every time I try to implement anything along the lines of a schedule my efforts go down in flames. For example, I had planned on leaving Bamako to head back to village this morning; yet here I am typing out this update. It can take some motivation to pull myself out of an English speaking community replete with airconn, satillite TV, swimming pools, free food and drinks, even my own bedroom. My little mud hut in a village where I don't have much in common with the people and little work to do tends to pale in comparison - although it is quite peaceful.

It is an all day affair to get there. First I wait (45 minutes on average) for a bus to leave, then I sit on said bus for 2-4 hours sweating pretty much the whole way. Once I get to Bougouni I have to track down my bike, pick up some groceries at market, then ride 20k to my village. Once I get to my house I need to unpack, get water, clean up, and cook some food. If I am not in good health this oversize task turns into something nearly insurmountable. I like to set a date for this journey and it often times falls through. It would be nice to have some semblance of control, but alas, this is Mali. Things don't go as planned. In fact, the word "plan" has adopted a different meaning for me here. Plans are merely momentary intentions that might be carried out sometime in the future. This time I am still in Bamako because I am too sick to do much of anything - same as the last time I tried to go back.

Involving H2SO4 and Hearing Loss

The journey back from site yesterday went much smoother than usual. I woke up around 6:30 to a light drizzle. Not enjoying the prospect of riding 20k through the mud and rain I packed all my valuables in plastic bags and hoped for the best. As I departed the village all precipitation stopped - it was as if my exposed presence in the elements held back the clouds. Unfortunately the mud failed to yield. In a few places puddles (or small ponds) spanned the entire width of the road so I had to try my luck at sloshing through them. The key is to hit the muck at just the right speed. Too fast you get soaked with spray; too slow the bike gets bogged down. Having plenty of practice I wasn't too worried - perhaps I should have been. I hit the water just right, but didn't anticipate the steep slope which slid me sideways forcing the soggy. I put my foot down in a surprisingly deep section of the pond. Oh well.

As I arrived in Bougouni with one wet foot the rain started up again. I ducked into the house where I store my bike to escape the downpour and waited until it let up. After almost an hour I ventured out toward the bus station and some random guy was nice enough to stop and give me a ride. I showed up on time (is there such a thing in this country?) for the ten-o'clock bus, bought a ticket, walked on, and it left promptly! That never happens! Sitting in front of me was a real-life Charlie Brown. He managed to pick the seat under the roof vent that wouldn't close. It rained on and off as we rambled on to Bamako, and when it did, he got his own personal downpour. A bit worse than my soggy. I ended up making the trip in record time with miraculously few holdups or hassles. Quite a nice way to cap off a somewhat rough ten days in village...

About halfway through those ten days I rode into Bougouni to resupply. It was a beautiful morning for a bike ride, but other than that everything seemed to be going wrong. The wait at the bank was excruciating (at least it was open), my bike pump went missing (at least I didn't get a flat), my phone stopped sending texts (at least I could make calls), the list goes on, and its length was getting to me. I made it back to my mud hut, rather winded after riding 50k, and tried out the power inverter my mom sent so that I could use my laptop to do some writing. It doesn't work. I figure the contacts on the car battery are pretty corroded, so I could try cleaning those. I get out the metal file and go to work on the positive terminal, my face very close to it so that I could see in the dim light. The file goes back and forth, back and forth, removing bits of junk that could be interfering with the current flow I so desperately wanted. On one of those cleansing strokes the tip of the file touched the negative terminal. What resulted was an explosion so loud my neighbors thought a shotgun had gone off. Meanwhile, I was covered (face especially - good thing my glasses were on) in sulphuric acid and wasn't hearing much more than a distorted ringing. Hmmm. After dousing myself in water and waiting for the smoke to clear out much of the afternoon was spent cleaning up the mess. I ended up laughing about it a lot. It transformed my frustrated morning into a carefree (although a bit jumpy) day. Bummer to have to go without power until I get a new battery though.

On a side note, I saw something I thought very strange a few days before the big explosion. I was riding my bike up a rocky hillside and stopped to look at what I thought was a baby snake (a fairly common occurrence) cruising down the gravel slope. It was light tan in color, but didn't seem to be moving quite right. Snakes tend to stay in track while this thing seemed to be mimicking the desired motion with decreased efficiency - it was almost flopping like a fish out of water. It covered a meter or so pretty quickly and right before my eyes the thing quit trying to be a snake and turned into a millipede. Its color instantly changed to dark brown as it righted itself and employed hundreds of legs to continue on in a much slower, but more natural fashion. I shook my head and rode off wondering what weird wildlife (as there is no shortage here) I would come across next, whether in its natural environment or on my dinner plate.

Doctor Dawn

Peace Corps has, in my opinion, a pretty good health care system here. There is always someone on call whom I can reach by phone in an emergency. For routine visits making an appointment is optional and there is rarely a wait. The doctor I see also acts as a pharmacist and takes care of all the billing (funds courtesy the US Government). The office even has a couple bedrooms should I need to rest or spend the night there. Although Peace Corps Mali's medical facility is not all inclusive most issues can be taken care of on-site. Dentistry, optometry, and lab work, among other things, are contracted out to Malian facilities.

Today I needed lots of lab work done. After meeting with the Peace Corps doctor, a Cuban lady named Dawn, I was sent down the street a few blocks, on foot, in the scorching sun, to a Malian lab. I waited no more than five minutes (without having to fill out any forms) and was ushered into a small room where a doctor expertly filled five or six vials with my blood while being interrupted several times by employees and other patients. Personal space and privacy don't mean too much around here. Samples dropped off, I sweated back to my air conditioned starting point to finish up the consultation (blood pressure, weight, temperature, etc). Lab results were to be back this afternoon or tomorrow (minus the blood that was sent to Washington - thats almost like me going, right?). The whole ordeal took under two hours - ten minutes of which was spent in a waiting room. Except for the short walk riddled with harsh UV rays and old dinosaur I much prefer this to our American health care system.

As far as my health is concerned, this current ailment is by far the most enjoyable while at the same time the most troubling. Since Friday night I have felt like a decent amount of Tylenol PM has been trapped in my bloodstream and can't find its way out. The vacant staring, slurred speech, shallow breathing, and trouble walking a straight line has left me drunk but without the hangover. I doubt it is anything serious, but just so long as there are no long-term effects I wouldn't mind the ensuing excitement should it be. In the words of Snow Patrol, "For once I wanna be the car crash...not always just the traffic jam."

Time for Some Bloodwork...

My health has been slowly winding down over the course of these two weeks I have spent in Bamako. It started out with our old friend Mr. D who joined me here for the first week. Then the physical side rallied only to see my mental state drop the ball...into a few days of depression. Last night something else hit (along with the resurging Mr. D). It might be a severe lack of our 26th element, as the steaks in this country are left wanting, leaving me anemic. Who knows in this part of the world. I have almost quit guessing about what is making me sick because it could be so many different things...and I am sick so often...that I just let my body figure it out on its own and define my health by the activities I am able to do.

Last night was volleyball at the American Club. Always a good time...but my "ability to do" was in question. I had to peel myself off the couch to make an appearance, but it was worth it. We played 2on2 and even though I was too tired to walk a straight line, thinking I might keel over onto the wet sand, we still won. Since last night my breathing has been incredibly shallow, speech slightly slurred, and I walk like an old man with a stoop. People say I am drunk and/or smoking something. My mouth tends to hang open and my eyes are droopy. In fact, my whole face feels like it is about to slide off like melting wax. On the upside, none of this bothers me in the least because I am in such a good mood! It is more of a joke than a concern...but I suppose it would be prudent to head into the doctor's office on Monday...

Blogging Begins

As a Peace Corps Volunteer near Bougouni, Mali I have plenty of spare time on my hands. Even though I have been here for over a year I haven't jumped on the blogging bandwagon...until now. I stuck to mass e-mail updates which I have uploaded for those who want a little history on my time and thoughts here. I also finished a couple short stories recently for anyone with interest to check out. It wouldn't be complete without videos, so check those out as well if you are looking for something to do. Let me know what you think. I guess that's the point, right?