Posh corps

I had a fun weekend with the Peace Corps folk this weekend. But first, Saturday afternoon, I went over to Nicolas’s house for lunch. He cooked a delicious meal of fish with vegetables and homemade tomato sauce. Whatever his French organization is called has a really nice house (by Douentza standards). It has a kitchen with a sink and an actual bathroom! Anyhow, we hung out for a little while, then I headed off to the internet.

There, I ran into Phil, who said that Dave and Dan, the new guy, had just gotten into town, so I headed over to their house. Dan is replacing Derek, a volunteer who went home, in Boni, so he officially belongs to our Douentza crew. He’s a nice guy. His self-described interests are “rock climbing and drinking beer.” We hung out for a little bit, then I went home to get some work done before meeting up with them again for dinner and drinks. They all collectively like Oumar, so we invited him out with us for some beers.

It was extremely windy and dusty on Saturday, but luckily, it brought some cooler air with it. I was all settled in for a great night’s sleep when I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and threw up everything I’d eaten that day. Maybe the fish didn’t sit right. I felt fine afterwards and went back to sleep.

Sunday came around and I achieved some work in the morning. After lunch, I braved the market to make it to the Peace Corps house to see if they were there. (The phone network was so bad that I couldn’t get in touch with anyone.) Indeed they were, and Dave had just gotten a DVD from home that he wanted to watch, and I’m the only one with electricity or a computer (because I’m part of the Posh Corps). Consequently, we all caravanned back across the market to my house and watched Appaloosa, some old west movie with Viggo Mortensen (however you spell his name). It was surprisingly good.

We hung out for the rest of the day, drinking beer and playing ladder ball, until I went home at around 9. I wanted to get work done, but I was exhausted, and just read some of my book and went to sleep.

Dave and Dan left today to go to Senegal, but Phil’s still around. I’ll go say hi after this. I’ll probably be going to the village on Wednesday and then to Bamako on Monday. Hard to believe it’s almost the middle of February.