Dogon Trip Part1

Surprisingly, this has turned out to be an actual vacation! No desert sleeping for us! I thought it was going to be quite scary and had been referring to it as an "adventure" not a vacation. I imagined sleeping outside in the desert with no security around, not having bathrooms, no clean water, huge desert creatures/critters, going hungry, etc. However, we have been able to stay in the PC stage house up north that someone in our travel group miraculously rememebered! So we id sleep in our tent, but on the rooftop, in a gated house :). The care ride was difficult because there is almost nowhere to stop (you have to pee in the bush/brousse-this is what the french call the bush). and there is only 1 road and it's bumpy and uneven and narrow. At least we had rented our own private car (SUV) and there was a bit of air conditioning. I cannot imagine having taken public transport for this trip. I see the big packed, over-crowded giant soutreman-like buses. They look awful.

The road situation is pretty mind-boggling. There is only 1 route to many of these cities, and often the route is not direct. We were heading north, but first had to go way south before going back up. We left around 8h45am (7am from jade's village) and arrived at our final destination around 8h30/9pm. We did make one long stop in a city called Segou to pick up some other PC volunteers and have lunch at a wonderful place. We ate pizza and beef brochette. Sooo good. First real food I've had in awhile. It will be hard to go back to jade's village after all this wonderful food.

Segou and Dogon country in general is nicer than Koulikoro region (where Bamako and Jade's village Sanakoroba are). There are les people and it seems cleaner. It's spacious and the architecture is different. They still have concessions but they are much more interconnected and have little straw huts inside. Today we went to Jigeybonbom, and it's a typical town here. Small enclosed town with winding streets inside and little concessions with huts. The "dugutigi"-village cheif wanted to charge us soooo much for just rice and sauce so we decided not to eat there. So he told us there was a charge of 250 cfa to walk around. That's not much so we ended up paying it anyway, even though it was probably made up. There was like a crowd of about 20 people and kids who followed us the whole time, trying to sell us stuff, or just look at us and try to hold our hands. Everyone else in my group made "little friends" but I kinda refused to do that. Lol, honestly though, cause the stuff these kids play with and get into, and put their hands into is soooo gross and I try to stay as clean as you can over here. In the end, all their "little friends" tried to get something out of them at the end of trip lol.

I've met a lot of PC volunteers on this trop. We are a group of 6 and we are staying in the PC house with others. Sadly, it seems like government ineffieciency and bureaucracy has seeped into the PC as well. There are several volunteers who are early terminating due to issues at their site. It seems like PC has some incompteent folks who won't fix these issues they have been having. One girl has had people repeatedly break into her house and they won't move her site somewhere else. Another girl had men chase her with guns. She however, found out that there has been Al-Qaeda activity in her region, so they have moved her out. It's sad to hear these stories and one of the older PC volunteers says she overheard PC saying like "well we will replace the ones who leave". They aren't solving the root problem at all. They are just letting talented people go and just shoving new people into the same old problematic areas. These volunteers had great potential and good reasons for being here and they aren't leaving after one month like those who can't handle peeing in a hole. They are leaving after a year, because they are prevented from accomplishing the goals they had when they arrived.