Happy New Year!

Another New Year's celebration spent in Mali - last year in Hombori, this year in Segou. I have to say that this year was better. Last year had its charms - I was drinking beers and watching the live broadcast from Bamako of the festivities with a couple of Malian tour guides while my mom tried to sleep through a particularly vicious intestinal parasitic invasion. We were in a straw hut; it was cold. There was no hot water. Not so fun. This year we stayed at a nice hotel, had a catered buffet dinner (with the best pork chops I have had in a very long time), while watching a really quality Malian band perform live. I even had on a party hat. I'm catching on - when I see how other volunteer parents are travelling through Mali, I am amazed that my mother was interested in coming back. I put her through a lot. She is one tough cookie.

Now it is back to business, and that means back to well digging. I have started buying the cement and rebar that the crew is going to need to finish these bad boys off. I hope everything goes smoothly. I want to see this project completed, and it is hard to know that I am just starting up my work while all of the volunteers that I came into country with are getting ready to leave. I'm not sure where those two years went. But even as my friends are counting down days and daydreaming about all of the treats they are going to gorge themselves on when they get home, I'm still grateful to be here. I think that I still have a few productive months left in me. I realised that the other night when I went out to dinner with a group of friend in Bamako. Many of the volunteers in the group were extending their service, like I am, and there were several others who had married Malians and were continuing to live here. It really felt like a community, and there wasn't any of the bitterness that is all too common in volunteers that are about to leave. Spending time with them made me really happy about my decision to stay here for a few more months. We'll see if I'm still singing the same tune when my third hot season rolls around.