Dixie chick

I've been going through my photo albums looking for pictures of Dixie. I started to get upset when I realized there were no pics of her anywhere. I know there are some photos of us at my moms house, but I really wanted to find some in the scrapbooks I made of high school and college. There were none.

Then, as I started looking through the photos, even though she wasn't in them, almost every picture I looked at had a memory I associated with Dixie. For every prom, cotillion, bridesmaid, and formal photo, several hours were spent with Dixie joking around about boyfriends and prom parties and just goofing off in general. In the pictures from architecture school where I chopped all my hair off, I remember Dix being so excited I wanted to do something different and convincing me to add red highlights, even though they turned out pink.

I met Dixie when I was 13. That was 13 years ago. I grew up with Dixie as a friend. And as weird as it seems, she was always a constant. She never seemed to age. I went from little girl to adult in the past 13 years while Dixie stayed the same in my eyes. She was always young, beautiful, and fun. The same way she'll stay in my mind for eternity.

This past week, as I've been trying to come to terms with Dixie's death and the circumstances surrounding it, I've gotten some sentiments from family and friends that have been consoling...

Even though I've never been religious, my sister's Bible verse gave solace to us both: Psalm 34:18 "The lord is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit"

When talking to Ann Marie, I couldn't understand why someone who had the most caring and giving soul of anyone I've ever known could end her own life. AnnM said that for someone to be able to give so much love, empathy,and compassion to everyone else and have such a huge heart, it was that big heart that could so deeply feel hurt and pain. It was her natural nurturing that made her feel so much sorrow and grief when it wasn't returned to her.

A friend of my mom's said that Dixie died from heart problems. She had a broken heart that never got fixed.

Now there are so many of us that are brokenhearted by the loss of such a beautiful person, inside and out. I just hope that someday Luke and James know what an amazing person their mother truly was.

How Time Can Fly

A year ago today, I woke up happy, in my hut, in Madina, Mali, eager to get to know my new surroundings and begin my new life. By the end of the day, I was sobbing in the back of a Peace Corps vehicle watching my new life disappear.

How quickly things can change.

How quickly a year goes by.

How quickly I forget how it felt to be there, how it smelled, how exciting it was, how exhausting it was, how difficult it was, how easy it was.

How quickly it all ended.

Mmmmm... ribs.

Who knew this was even possible?


So for the past few months, I've been living with one of my upper ribs out of whack. FUN! Who doesn't like a little stabbing chest pain in their day to day life?



As I get older, freakier and freakier things keep happening. When I asked my grandma what was happening to me she replied, "you're getting old!"


Damn!



No one wants to hear that from their grandma!!!

Another year older...

It was a weird birthday. I took some time off after the 4th and went to Wv to visit family and hang out with my parents.

On the morning of my birthday I went to the driving range to hit golf balls with my dad. It was a perfect day... bright and sunny, no clouds, 75 degrees and a slight breeze in the air.

My dad points to the 13th hole of the golf course and says, " you see that pond next to the green?"

"Yeah," I replied.

"I want you to spread half my ashed in that pond when I die," he said.

"Uhhhhhhhh... alright" was about all I could come up with.

After we got back to the cabin some of my mom's friends came up to visit. We spent the afternoon sitting on the mountain-side at the ski resort listening to the symphony. While we were killing time waiting for the symphony to start, my dad pulls me aside and points to one of the ski slopes.

"Do you know what slope that is up here?" he asks.

"Uh, I think so... is it the Meadows?" I answered.

"Yep... Do you see that little cluster of 3 trees at the top of it?" he said.

"Uh huh..."

"I want you to spread the other half of my ashes in between those 3 trees when I'm dead." he said.

What a weird thing to keep bringing up! At least that will be a memory that sticks with me for a while.

So, Britne... what did you do on your 26th b-day? Go out with friends? Get crazy?

Nope I sat on a mountain-side, listening to a symphony play the Indiana Jones theme song, while my dad showed me all the places he wants his ashes spread! Weird!

On an altogether different note: I've been a smitten kitten lately.

For about 2.5 months now I've been skipping around my office (and everywhere else) like a little schoolgirl... or like a damn fool, which ever you prefer.

It came to my attention the other day that in the past 2.5 months, I haven't really listened to my ipod at all during work. I use it to distract me while I'm working and I guess I've been distracted enough to not realize I wasn't listening to anything.

The other day, I decided to pull the ipod out of my purse and get some work done. I put it on the "Most frequently played" playlist. As it played all the songs I listened to the most this past winter I realized something... I was in a very dark place this winter.

That came as no surprise. I knew I was in a pretty bad funk/ depression this past year. What came as the surprise is that I'm not anymore! I didn't feel all those dreary feelings while listening to my ipod.

This spring and summer have been great so far... thanks in so small part to the new fella! So thanks, Fella... you've brightened up my year!

So, so far 26 started out weird... but I'm weird... I like weird... weird is good... I'm looking forward to more weirdness!!!

Bittersweet Bike

I've been wanting to get a bike for quite some time now. I got a used one on ebay and it came in the mail today. I've been getting so pumped about riding my bike to work. When the box arrived today I dragged it down the hall and into my apartment and ripped it open.

The bike was in several pieces. Not to worry, I thought. I had the same type of bike in the Peace Corps and that one came in a million pieces and I managed to put it together. I sat on my floor, on top of the cardboard box it came in, and started to assemble my bike.

As I'm sitting there, hands covered in grease trying to remember how I attached the breaks to the front wheel 9 months ago, I thought to myself, Damn I wish Justin were here to help me do this again. Justin was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali. He had been there almost 2 years and was a skilled "bike guy"and they had him come to help us with the mechanics of putting these contraptions together. He helped all of us clueless people put our bikes together and was very helpful.

Then I had a sad realization; Justin died 8 months ago. Just a few days after I came home from Mali. I barely knew Justin. The few hours he spent helping me with my bike was our only encounter. It didn't keep me from getting pretty bummed today. Most of my memories of Mali are bittersweet, happiness mixed with sadness. And now, as I struggle to rebuild my bike, I find myself grieving for someone I barely knew and it makes me miss my PC friends more than ever. Some are coming back to the States to visit this summer though... and I can't wait!

The Real Charlotte's Web

In general, bugs don’t bother me. They annoy me but I’m not afraid of them, worst case scenario, I will jerk my hand or foot back quickly if I think one is crawling on me.

In Mali, I had 5-10 large African cockroaches crawling in my hut every night. I ignored them for the most part. Now that I’m living in Charlotte I have a, more or less, roach free existence. It’s beginning to be bug season now and I live in a 120 year old, load bearing masonry building (meaning lots of cracks and crevasses for critters to get in).

So, I didn’t find it too shocking to see a cockroach crawling up the wall in my bedroom the other night. They might not bother me, but I’m not in Africa anymore so I don’t really want them crawling around me while I sleep. I went to do what most of us do when we see a big bug; I tried to whack it with a shoe. Unfortunately, he saw me coming and scurried up the wall. Damn! It was at this very moment that I realized the pitfalls of having 16 foot ceilings… they inhibit proper bug whacking. I’m a towering 5’ tall and have maybe an additional 12” when my arm is extended and this little bugger was high tailing it up my gigantic wall, far out of my reach.

My bedroom is practically one giant window. The window itself is about 8’ wide and 12’ high. The window is located on an exposed brick wall. At some point in the past 120 years the brick had been painted and had recently been sandblasted so some red brick is exposed through the off-white paint. This irregular coloring made it extremely difficult to find the roach when he wasn’t moving. The window starts a few feet off the floor and goes just about to the wooden ceiling. Right where the wall and ceiling intersect there is a hole. A brick is missing and just a dark void remains. My little roach buddy was taking his time making his way to this cockroach haven.

I rolled my bed (the frame has wheels and I have concrete floors… lots of fun when you are bored and like to bed-surf… right Jessie?) to the other side of the room and jumped up with my shoe and swatted again. Still out of reach. I ran into the living room and grabbed a chair and threw it on the bed and climbed up… Damn, still not tall enough! My little buddy was getting higher up the wall. I remembered the weird xmas present my mom gave me; a bucket of dishtowels, chewing gum and roach spray. (I don’t know why… weird gift giving is genetic in my family. I’m looking forward to doing it myself and am well on my way actually)


I grabbed the spray and climbed on my rickety tower and sprayed up the wall. Still not enough!! Damn, damn, damn!!! He was almost to the hole. Defeated, I put the chair away and scooted my bed back to its original position. I stood there, feeling very small and thinking that my sleep would be haunted by the creepy crawly feeling of a cockroach crawling around me. I looked up at the window and watched as my roach nemesis crawled into the dark hole. Right before I turned to walk away, the roach came running out of the hole. He was booking it as fast as he could. As I watched with puzzlement a HUGE spider came running out of the hole after the cockroach. The roach was trapped. The spider was behind him and a 12’ freefall was in front. He chose to jump. He landed directly at my feet and I was waiting with my roach spray. He’s dead now. I watched as the spider slowly crawled backwards into the hole. Thanks Spidey!!! Too bad though… he’s dead now too.

Ode to Africa...(bug bite, fattening footwear, mosh pits and more!)

Bug bites: Now that I've been home over 4 months (damn time flies) you'd think that all the bug bites I accumulated while in Africa would be gone... but oh no... not mine! Luckily all my bug bites are in, Ahem, unseen areas. Because at some point, in my sleep-deprived, malnourished, mephloquine haze logic, I thought that because my skirts were mid-calf length, that's as far up as I needed to spray with bugspray. I mean, how on earth would a flying insect be able to breach the fortress that is my long flowy skirt!? Well, with skin as sensitive as mine, maybe it was a good thing that I didn't experiment with what would happen if I sprayed a concentrated amount of Deet in the general direction of my...

Speaking of sensitive skin, my henna scar is almost gone. My "angry scar" so accurately referred to by Michele, has lost it's puffiness and the redness is almost completely gone. Most of the time you can't see it at all. Except for when I'm hot. If I'm on the treadmill, in a hot shower (ahhh), or even shakin' it on a dance floor, it comes back in all it's angry glory!! It's a very odd phenomenon! The PC gave me the paperwork to have doctor look at/treat it. But I'm not going to use it... I like my scar! Whenever my blood gets pumping I get a funky little reminder of Mali and I like it... now if I could just get the hair on my arm to fade back to blonde.

Bars: In Sanankoroba, my homestay village of about 7000 people, my fellow homestay volunteers and I were pretty much busy all day, everyday except Sunday afternoons. That was "study time" aka hang out, speak English, and do anything but study time. There wasn't much to do in S'town but there was one bar. And by bar I mean a large concrete building with a few chairs and a guy who sold alcohol. Hey, We didn't care, it was alcohol for god's sake! Mali is a predominantly Muslim country so alcohol was pretty hard to find. The neighboring homestay villages quickly heard of our little oasis and would bike in on Sunday afternoons and hang out as long as possible.

I loved our time at the bar. We would all just sit around and play cards, compare intestinal parasite horror stories, take turns fanning each other so we could pretend we were in air conditioning, drink really terrible beer, or the worst wine you've ever had. I usually went for the wine. For 700 CFA ($1.40) you could get a 40 oz(ish) warm Kastel beer or an entire bottle of wine. The thrifty girl that I am always went for the wine... and that stuff was like moonshine. I would usually split a bottle with someone and that was enough to make the bike ride home a little more adventurous than it already was.

My FAVORITE memory of the bar came on my third visit or so. I knew there was something odd about this bar the first time we went but everything in Mali was so new and so different that I didn't really pay much attention. They had murals painted on the inside walls. Not many places were painted so I actually thought it was nice to have some scenery. The paintings were of Malian women in non-traditional Malian clothes. The clothes were almost American looking which I thought was kind of cool... just shorts and and tank top, stuff we are used to wearing. Then the next time I was there a Malian woman was at the bar. Now it is pretty taboo for women to be seen in such places, hell, in a Muslim country it's taboo for men to be in a bar. We could sort of get away with it because everyone knew we were foreign and non-Muslim. This woman was... well... kinda scary. For a Malian woman, she was very unkempt. Her hair was big and frizzy and she was wearing shorts and a tank top and just hanging around inside. I thought, "well that's pretty uncommon, but whatever... where's my wine?" It wasn't until the next time when I was chasing around the bar's unofficial mascot (a little gray kitten) that I noticed the big sign painted on the wall in the hallway. The sign had a big arrow pointing down the hall and next to it was the word "Chambre" Now anyone who has taken French knows that chambre is the word for Bedroom. Now the wheels start turning!! Huh, risque images of women painted on the walls, scary women wandering around, a sign pointing to the "chambre", and what kind of place serves alcohol in a strict Muslim country anyway?!? Holy crap!!! This place is a BROTHEL!!!!

Now, do you think that stopped any of us from going? Not a chance in hell! What a beautiful memory to take away from the whole experience... Me and my new friends bonding over moonshine on Sunday afternoons at the brothel!!!! Man, I wonder what the villagers thought?... "Damn, there go those 30 peace corps kids off to the whore house again!" Classic!

Bikes: The day my bike showed up to my homestay village was one of the most exciting moments of my whole trip. It sounds stupid but I was jumping around like a maniac when that van rolled up with my shiny blue Trek (that we all built ourselves!) on top. It was a 30 minute walk from my family's house to our school every day. Now, it wasn't uphill nor was it in the snow but it was down a dusty highway in the hot African sun and you never knew what you were going to run into (literally... bull.) Those first few days were tough. Especially when we only got 2 hours for lunch. It sounds like a lot but it was 30 minutes each way, then a good 15 minutes trying to get myself to stop sweating, 15 minutes to eat, then another 30 trying to remember how to say, "Uhhh, N be taa lakoli la... Kan ben wula fe." (Uhhh, I'm going to school now... see you this evening)

The good thing about those first few bikeless days was it gave me a lot of time to get to know Amanda. She was the second person I met in the Philly airport, she ended up being my roommate at Tubaniso, and my closest neighbor at my homestay village. Amanda was my best friend. I knew Amanda was my best PC friend the day we filled out our emergency action plans. We had to draw maps of how to get to our huts, locate where a helicopter could land if need be and all kinds of other safety stuff. There was one line on the bottom of the paper that basically said... If someone in your immediate family dies and we have to show up at your hut to tell you, do you want someone in particular to be there and if so whom do you want to come? Well I put down Amanda and didn't even say anything to her about it. When it was time to turn in our paperwork I handed mine to Amanda to turn in for me. She looked at my paper and said, "you put me down?" then held up her paper, "I put you down!!" I have to admit, I got a little vaklempt. I was touched.



Amanda and I would walk to school together. It was so fun. Neither Amanda or I spoke a lick of French and we hadn't had much Bambara training yet but we knew what people were shouting at us on our walks to school. Actually people weren't shouting, little kids were. It was so cute!! They would come running as fast as they could when they saw us and they'd start shouting, "Tubabou Tubabou" which means white person or foreigner. Then you would hear these little squeaky voices shouting "Bonjou Bonjou Bonjou" and their little arms would be waving just as hard as they could!! The cutest part was that no matter what country or continent you live on or what language you speak, no little kid can pronounce that "R" sound. I can still hear those little high pitched "Bonjous" in my mind. Those kids would get so excited if you would wave back to them or touched their hand when they reached out for yours.

The day our bikes arrived was like Christmas!! Our teachers didn't bother trying to make us pay attention they just let us go nuts! All 9 of us in my homestay village hopped on our bikes and tore that school yard up! My commute was cut down to just 10 minutes each way and there was some resemblance of a breeze if you went fast enough! The weird part was, there were no "Bonjous" that day on our way home. Those same kids who were usually so excited to see us were hiding behind their mothers and standing as still as statues hoping we wouldn't notice them. "What the hell is going on?" I thought. Then we realized, of course they are afraid of us, we might as well have rode home on a spaceship, that wouldn't have been any more frightening to them. Sure, they have bikes in Mali, but old rusty beat up bikes not the matching bright blue shiny bikes like we were riding. And the helmet... oh the helmet. No one wears helmets in Mali except for Peace Corps volunteers because if we don't we will get sent home. What a sight I must have been with my clumsily large helmet and blue bike, with a cargo rack attached, and my black flowy skirt swishing back and forth to the rhythm of my constant peddling. I noticed that when I was riding around I would start humming, " Dun dun dun da da da Dun dun dun da da da" I felt like the freaking wicked witch!! Maybe that's why, on that first day with my bike, instead of being chased by little kids holding out their hands I was chased by a little boy with a big stick!!!!! It kinda freaked me out! Luckily all the kids were used to us in a day or two and the overall excitement of our presence resumed. Unfortunately all those little kids soon learned my name, Awa Samake', and they would chase me while shouting "Awa Awa Awa Awa Awa Awa Awa Awa Awa..." I have to admit... after a few weeks of the constant Awas... my own name was starting to sound like fingernails on a chalkboard.

And yes, I did consider Awa to be my own name. The "Br" sound just isn't found in Bambara and it was just impossible for any of them to say. So I was Awa, meaning "Eve". At first I loved the name but after a while it really started to annoy me, which a lot of other volunteers were feeling as well. Not only did our host families and neighborhood children call us by our Malian names, but so did our teachers and eventually fellow Peace Corps friends. It was more than once or twice that you'd say something like, "Hey um, um, ... damn, Fadiby what's your American name? Oh, that's right... hey Kyle, can I borrow a pencil?" Only one of my teachers knew my American name. That's probably only because he, Moussa, was pretty young and pretty in tune with American pop-culture and was familiar with the pronunciation of my name. Oh, but don't get me started on Moussa.... I can gush about him all day!!! Just think Taye Diggs, but well educated and multi-lingual!!! And well dressed! How Moussa was able to keep his white button down shirts so clean and crisp I'll never know! By the end of the day I was always covered in dirt! Maybe that's why my Malian family would say "I ko... I ko..." to me all the time. That meant "Go wash... Go wash!"


When we first arrived, the volunteers that had been in country for a while told us that we were going to feel like one of two things in Mali.... a Leper or a Rockstar. It didn't take long to understand that feeling. Everywhere you went people would point, stare, yell, laugh, ask for things, give you things, touch you, etc... I started to get freaked out when people I didn't know would shout "Awa Samake" and wave as I walked down the highway. I had no recollection of meeting these people but obviously they knew me. We were always being watched. You definitely are living in a fish bowl as a PCV in Mali and probably as a PCV anywhere in the world. One afternoon I was waiting for Amanda at the crossroads between our homes. There was a small dilapidated mud-brick wall under a tree near where I was supposed to meet her so I jumped at the chance to sit in the shade. As I waited I saw a familiar Tubab on an even more familiar blue bike, it was Aaron, a volunteer from Tamala, the closest homestay village to mine. Aaron got off his bike and sat down next to me. We started up the normal Peace Corps conversation, "So has food gotten any better at your place?"... "Ooh, check out this bug bite. What do you think it is?"... "What color is your poop today? Really, mine is a lovely shade of.... " As we carried on our conversation we noticed a little boy hiding behind a tree watching us. We ignored him. Then some friends of his showed up, they also hid behind the tree. Then a few more showed up and they grew more courageous as a group and came out from behind the tree. Neither Aaron nor I really even noticed. Then Aaron stopped and said, "Whoa, check it out... 1,2,3,.....9" There were 9 little kids sitting next to us on that same mud-brick wall. At home, that would have really annoyed me but in Mali it just became normal. There was always a group of people around you at all times, no matter what.

I decided If I had to choose, I didn't want to be the Leper. I wanted to be the Rockstar. So that's how I decided to deal with it. When those kids would chase me on my bike shouting "Awa Awa Awa..."I would just hold out my hand and touch as many of their outstretched little hands as I could, like I was reaching into the crowd from my stage... Unfortunately there was always one kid (usually the same one) who would grab my hand and not let go and he usually got dragged through the dirt behind my bike for 10-20 feet while I tried to undo his vice-like grip... but that was his fault, not mine (he annoyed me anyway.) As much fun as it was to be Awa the albino rockstar, I genuinely started to miss Britne. I know it sounds ridiculous but in that environment, where you've changed your looks, clothing, eating habits, bathing habits, transportation, language, culture, friends, family, pretty much everything... the one thing you do have is your name. And when that too is changed you start to go through a little bit of an identity crisis. The only time I got to be Britne was at Tubaniso (the PC training center) and our time there was brief. Although, now that I have Britne back, I'm really starting to miss Awa, especially since I know I'll probably never get to be her again.

Holy Shit Moments: For the most part, once I was in Mali, I was so busy that I didn't have the time to step back and look around and really process the things around me. But every now and then, for a fleeting moment there was overwhelming sense of "Holy Shit, I'm smack in the middle of Africa!" and I meant that in the best way possible. We'd go on bike rides through the bush to visit other Peace Corps friends. We'd stop to rest and as a group we'd have a collective "holy shit" moment. Laying outside at night staring up at the sky and seeing more stars than you ever knew existed usually sparked "holy shit" moments.

For me, the moments seemed to happen most often when at Tubaniso. The Peace Corps is pretty hardcore when it comes to rules. We all knew they were for our own good, but that didn't mean we were going to abide by them. The main rule at Tubaniso was don't go outside the compound to the main road after dark since it was the main road between Mali and Guinea and drivers rarely use headlights so it was very dangerous. On our second visit to Tubaniso we found out there was another "bar" close by. Now this one wasn't a brothel, it was just a guy who owned a fridge. And inside that fridge was a glorious golden beverage we like to call beer! So, of course, as soon as all the big wigs had gone to sleep we set out for the bar. We usually headed out in groups of 5 or 10 at a time. Usually one person would remember to bring a flashlight. So there we were, 10 eager Tubabs wandering down a dusty road, over a rickety bridge, with no lights except for one or two flashlight bulbs (and I mean NO light! Just the moon and stars illuminated the way) tripping over every speed bump and twisting your ankle in every pothole on our 20 minute hike to our favorite stomping ground. Besides the sound of small talk amongst the group, there wasn't much noise other than crickets and frogs. It was then, under a canopy of stars and a cacophony of crickets you'd see a palm tree. Big deal? Well, for some reason it was. You'd pass a palm tree in Mali every now and then but when you did see one, it was always perfect; perfectly straight, a full umbrella of palms that were perfectly spaced and the richest shade of green. They reminded me of big green 4th of July fireworks (on a stick.) Everytime I passed that palm tree on the way to the bar it got me all warm and tingly inside and then I'd always have a "holy shit" moment. Sometimes someone in the group would even verbalize it. Unfortunately, my last time at the bar we all got busted by Bokar. Bokar is one of the big wigs and he sounds about like a Malian Elmer Fudd. Bokar rolls up wearing a wife beater, while about 40 of us are sitting in fridge guy's front yard drinking and proceeds to lecture us.... "Twaineeees, it is faaww to late to be heeewe!" With a speech impediment that cute how can you get mad at him?

Peace Corps Time Travel: Who needs to invent a Flux Capacitor to travel through time when you can just join the Peace Corps? In the PC, you get to go back in time in two ways: 1) age 2) time period.

1) Age. Being in Mali was so much fun! I got to be 15 years old all over again. You hear it on almost a daily basis, "I wish I could be in high school again..." "if I could do it over again, I would" etc. Well that's exactly what you get to do in the Peace Corps. You have to follow STRICT rules. What you can/can't wear, can/can't possess, who you can't be seen with, what vehicles you can't ride in, where you can/can't go, when you have to check in, and a whole bucket full of others. Also, you have to go to school all day, everyday for the first 2 months. Except this time, you like the teachers and like learning and there are no grades and only one test and 2 chances to pass. (That was the language test... and what a frightening experience that was! The first time it was in a grass hut, with a stranger who had nothing but a chair and a tape recorder. You sat down, he pushed record and started grilling you with questions in (insert random language here). I totally felt like I was being interrogated!)

All you want to do all day is hang out with your friends, and if you get free time, you have to ride your bike over to their house/hut/whatever. We had to sneak around to drink alcohol and give money to our guy friends to buy us cigarettes (because only women who are prostitutes smoke there) Then we would hide behind the school house to smoke them and if anyone walked up, we'd drop the cigarettes behind our backs and try to play off the smoke that was coming out our noses!!! We had families who cooked and cleaned for us and always wanted to know where you were going or where you had been. There were no bills, no 9-5, none of that stuff. It was just like being in high school. And this time, I loved it!

2) Time period. At first, everything in Mali seemed so foreign but then I realized that Malian culture wasn't all that different from ours, it's just like American culture.... just 100 years ago. There is no plumbing or electricity. If you needed to "go" you went to the communal nyegen, which was a hole in the ground the size of a coffee can, in an open air space, with no roof, surrounded by 3 1/2 shoulder height (on me) walls ( 1/2 because you had to get in somewhere.) If you wanted to wash your hands, or anything else for that matter, you had to draw water up from a well or walk to the community pump (if they had one) and haul it back (on you head) in a bucket. To cook, you used a pot on a fire. To clean, you used a bucket, a washboard, home made soap (Fight Club style), and hung them anywhere you could to dry.

If you wanted to read at night or just see anything at night, you had to use a lantern. I did have a shake flashlight and a crank flashlight/radio combo. Listening to the BBC was my only way I kept my sanity at night during my homestay. I was all alone in the pitch black room, on the worlds most uncomfortable bed (a twin sized metal frame with a 1" piece of foam as a mattress), with cockroaches all over the walls, sweating my butt off inside my oh so tightly tucked in 'skeeter net. The juice in my crank radio didn't last long. But not to worry, I had a solution. I would sit on my bed, my right hand fanning myself with my fifalan (straw fan) while I held the radio with my feet and cranked it with my left hand. It was a lot of work and took some serious coordination but it was well worth it to hear English!

When you needed to buy something, you went to a Butiki (Boutique in French) which can only be compared to a general store that you see in old westerns. They sold matches, lanterns, rice, millet, roach killer (whoo hoo), superglue (???), and a handful of other necessities that you pointed to and the guy behind the counter would get for you. You bought food from a market. If you wanted to eat chicken or goat, you had to go kill one. You bought fabric that you then took to a taylor to make clothes. Families and friends would sit outside and drink tea (loaded with sugar... hell yeah!) and talk all day. If you needed to go somewhere you didn't have a car so you would walk, ride a bike, a horse (a camel in the north), or even ride on the back of a donkey cart.

Kids went to school in small masonry school houses. They sat at little wooden desks on little wooden benches. Nothing was computer generated. Anything hanging on the walls was drawn by hand. There were shutters on the windows but no glass. Kids had the summers off of school for the same reason American children originally got summers off, to help tend to the fields with their families. Everyday, when I went to school in Sanankoroba, I would go inside and look around the classroom. I could always invision my grandpa as a little boy sitting in a school house just like that one. When I was hunched over, scrubbing my laundry in a bucket, I pictured my great-grandmas doing laundry the same way. When my friends and I would stay after class and play cards on the school steps, I could see my grandma and her friends doing the same thing.

People ask you all the time why you wanted to join the Peace Corps. Volunteers give a variety of different answers but a common one that they want to get in touch with their roots. A lot of 1st generation Americans give that answer. Maybe their parents were from West Africa and they wanted to experience that culture. The LAST thing on my list of why I wanted to go to Africa was to get in touch with my roots. My roots are obvioulsy no where near Africa but that is exactly what happened. I felt like I learned more about where I came from by being in Mali than I ever have by living my life here. Ironic, isn't it?

Fattening Footwear: Meat became my enemy. Pretty much the only thing I ate in Mali was rice. I was lucky, a lot of people ate mostly millet porage called Toh. My brother Shek and I always ate together and always ate from the same bowl (right hand only!) The rice always had a sauce. My favorite was Tigedagana (peanut sause) and then there were the not so good ones, dried fish sauce, some green leaf sauce... etc. Every now and then you got a chunk of okra or tomato mixed in as well. And once in a while you got some "meat". At first, I was thrilled to see meat! I would have done anything for some protein. At first, I would also ask what it was. "Is this chicken? Fish? Beef?" I always go the same answer. "It's meat." I took that as "It's goat."

The meat novelty wore off quickly. Malians don't eat meat for the taste, they eat it for the fat content. In a country where so many are starving, the bigger and fatter you are, the better. So, the fattier the food you eat, the fatter you will become. So the best cuts of meat to them were the fattiest, most grissley, non-edible pieces. Not only that, but they didn't bother to remove bones from the meat. There's nothing like sticking a big piece of fatty goat in your mouth and then pulling out a neck bone. Mmmm mmm good!

I finally learned to just eat around the meat. When Shek wasn't looking, I would knock a piece of meat to his side of the bowl and he would eat it. Shek was a smart guy. He knew what I was doing and he didn't care, more meat for him! One night while eating dinner (it was pitch black outside when eating dinner so you had to use the moonlight to see your food) I picked up what I though was a potato out of the bowl and popped it in my mouth. Uhg!! Not a potato!! It was a gnarly piece of meat. I chewed and chewed but it was all grissle and it wasn't going anywhere. After several minutes of this my gag reflex started to kick in and I knew I had to get rid of this stuff! Swallowing it wasn't an option, it just wasn't going down. You woudln't dare try to put it back in the bowl. All the animals that usually annoyed me while eating were no where to be found and I didn't have the heart to throw it on the ground.

My host family treated me like royalty. The Peace Corps gave them a few dollars a day to feed us and also to upgrade the meals for the entire family. Even though I had a hard time eating what they served me, I knew that it was a real honor to be given this kind of food. Besides me and Shek, no one else in the family was eating this way. I didn't have the heart to throw that meat on the ground since their own children really needed to be eating it and here I was, just tossing it aside. There are no paper products in Mali.... at all, so just tucking it inside a napkin was out of the question. Then I thought of a story my dad had told me about when he was growing up. My dad hates beets, always has, always will. When he was little his grandma would force him to eat them so he would slip them into his pockets so they would think he ate them. Unfortunately they turned his pants purple and he got caught. Ah ha! An brilliant idea. I'll just shove this meat in my pocket and the problem will be solved. Oh, shit... I'm not wearing pockets. Hmmmm.... well then, I'll just fold it into the bottom of my shirt and tuck it in a little so it doesn't fall out. So that's what I did. A big slimey hunk of fatty goat meat saturating my tshirt with goat stench. And, I couldn't just get up and leave since my routine was to hang out a while and sit with the family. If I got up right away they would think something was wrong and follow me to find out and I'd surely get caught. So there I sat for the next hour and a half with the goat meat tucked into my shirt, and of course the dog and cat showed up and kept sniffing me! Finally I was able to get up and leave and chucked the piece of goat into the dog's pin on my way back to my room. Unfortunately I couldn't do laundry for a few more days so my only pajama shirt wreaked of goat for several nights!

This same situation happened again when I was on my site visit (only hours before I left) and this time I decided not to stick the large hunk of sheep fat (that was the best meat my village could afford and sheep is FAR worse than goat) in my shirt. This time I decided that the only place I could put it was my shoes! I was wearing my chacos (sandles) so I tore the large hunk of fat in half with my teeth and slipped equal parts under each one of my heels... and kept it there for over an hour until we left to go back to my hut. And again I was followed by every animal within a 10 hut radius. But what a bittersweet memory it turned out to be, I will never forget the feeling of sheep fat squishing under my heals as I walked home on my last real night in Africa.

Coming Home: Leaving Mali turned out to be almost as much as an adventure as being there. Once the decision had been made, I was put on a bus from Bougouni to Bamako (a 3 hour drive) at around 7pm right before it started to rain. The bus back was probably the most horrible part of my entire trip. When I was leaving for my site visit, only days before, I was put on a similar bus. It was a charter-type bus, which I was thrilled about. Normal transportation is on these broken down rickety little vans. So when I saw this larger bus with real seats and a/c (god forbid they ever actually use it) I was so excited.

Then there was the trip down to Bougouni. These busses go barreling down the road at god knows what speed while the driver slaloms around the potholes. Potholes are a whole different species over in Mali. By comparison, if they have potholes, we have shot-glass holes. Not only was the bus violently swerving from side to side, but also swaying from side to side since the driver had mistaken the bus for a sports car, and if another vehicle happens to be coming towards you, well, you’re plain shit out of luck, because then it’s just a game of chicken. Just hope you are in the bigger bus (for this exact reason the P.C. had warned us to never sit in the front of a bus) Sometimes there were so many potholes, or one was just so freakishly big, that the entire road was impassable, so the driver would just ride on the sloped shoulder of the road, never bothering to slow down.

I was just thankful the trip was only 3 hours. I tried to relax but I had a vice-like death grip on the handle in front of my seat. My language professor kept trying to talk to me but all I could do was stare out the window. Why I kept staring wasn’t very logical, and I knew that at the time, but it made me feel more secure. I thought as long as I saw it coming (what was surely my eminent death) that maybe I’d be able to brace myself just in time to not die. Not likely. I kept looking at some of my Peace Corps friends that were on the bus and they looked equally as freaked as I was. I eventually chilled out a little once I used my airplane trick: Whenever I’m on a flight that is really turbulent, I just watch the flight attendants, and they are as cool as a cucumber. They never miss a beat or bat an eyelash; they just keep on getting coffee and telling you to get your bag out of the aisle. Observing their poise always gives me a sense of calm. I used the same calming technique on the bus. I was freaked out, the other first-timers were freaked, but the Malians were just going on about their business; eating a snack, feeding their baby or just carrying on conversations. Once it was over I was glad I had (what I thought was) a week before I had to do that again.

So three days later there I was, back in Bougouni, on my way to Bamako, at dusk, during the rainy season. The P.C. has a rule: under no circumstance are you allowed in a vehicle after dark. Drivers rarely use headlights and the roads are dangerous enough in broad daylight so they are very strict with that rule, unless you are leaving, then it’s “eh, just risk it… here’s your ticket.” We were maybe 10 feet down the road before we stopped to pray. Yep, the bus stops and almost everyone gets off to pray, it was pretty cool actually. Then we were finally off. There was a storm cloud looming over us and as I sat there I kept muttering, “please don’t rain, please don’t rain, please don’t rain…” then there was a “plop… drip, drip, plop, splat, splat, splat…. Whoosh!” It started to downpour. Now, I love the 80’s song “Africa” by Toto, I actually listened to it a lot while I was there, but at that very moment, I was not “bless(ing) the rains down in Af-ri-caaaa,” I was curing them! I assumed my position: death grip on the handle, actually white knuckling it (baring down so hard that I didn’t realize until later that I was clenching my jaw and ended up with the worst headache of my life), forehead planted on the widow for a better view, and gazed fixed firmly on the road ahead. I was so obsessed with watching the road that I didn’t even pay much attention to the fact that my skirt was drenched even though there were no windows open. It was somehow raining just as hard inside the bus as it was outside.

A few hours later I noticed something familiar, Sanankoroba, my homestay village. I saw the phone cabine’ my host family owned and the road to my family’s house and I said goodbye as they passed. I was sad to see them go by but it was pretty much the only thing I actually got to say goodbye to. After we passed S’town there was a sense of relief. I had gone back and forth from there to Bamako a few times and was somewhat familiar with the road ahead and knew it was in pretty good condition. About 15 minutes later, as I peered at the road up ahead, I saw a blur dart out in front of us. As the bus swerved violently to miss it, the driver lost control and we went skidding down the road. Luckily, the driver regained control of the bus and kept on going. Once we were headed in the right direction again, I looked down and realized something; I had let go. I wasn’t holding on to the handle anymore. As soon as I saw the blur in front of us, I had dropped my hands and head and actually remember thinking, “Well, it over.” I felt a brief sense of calm after that. Then I looked around the bus at the other passengers, they were up in the aisles, standing in their seats, shouting, shaking their heads back and forth… they were freaked out! Then I joined them. All I could think of from then on was, “get me off this bus… Get Me Off This Bus…GET ME OFF THIS BUS!!!”

I soon reached Bamako and after a short, slightly less freaky taxi ride to the P.C. bureau, a chauffer arrived to take me back to Tubaniso for the night. It was past midnight when I arrived and I walked straight to my hut and went to sleep, I didn’t care what the protocol was. I started to get really upset at the realization of the consequences of my decision; it’s over. It was a fleeting moment of sadness because I knew there was nothing I could do about it now, what was done was done, and I was just thrilled to be safe at Tubaniso, off that god forsaken bus and in my Peace Corps built hut with it’s metal door and lock. I flipped on the ceiling fan (Tubaniso actually had electricity) and crawled under my mosquito net for the last time and even though my head was throbbing, I got the first night (and last) of sound sleep since I had arrived 5 weeks earlier.

The next morning I awoke to a man banging on the door, telling me to pack my bags and meet him at the réfectoire. I scribbled a note to my roommates wishing them luck with their two years and unloaded everything I could onto their beds that would be pointless for me to bring back to the US (peanut butter, kitchen knives, playing cards, etc) I walked down to the réfectoire and nibbled on some bread and when the chauffer arrived we threw my bags in the van and we were off. Usually, when you leave, it takes a day or two of paperwork and quite a while to find a flight; except in my case. There just happened to be a flight leaving Bamako the morning after I made my decision so I was rushed through the whole medical and legal process. “Here, pee in this, poop in this, give us some blood and sign here…. Good Luck!” Due to the 10 vaccines, giardia, and my henna allergy, I had become very friendly with the Peace Corps doctor and nurse, Dr. Dawn and Assita, so seeing their sad faces and saying goodbye so soon was pretty rough.

Not long after the medical was over, I was taken to the airport to catch my flight to Dakar. Lucky for me, I had a 9-hour layover after my first flight, and even luckier that the first flight was 8.5 hours late. While trying to get on my flight in Bamako I learned a few things about third-world air travel: lines mean nothing, money will get you everywhere, and it can only be compared to that of a mosh-pit, if you want to get through you just have to push and shove and muscle your way to the front. (Not to mention that the airport in Bamako completely ran out of gas just a few days before I left… the entire airport!) By the time I finally boarded the plane it was nighttime and had started raining again. It was about a 2-hour flight on Senegal-Air to Dakar. As we were approaching the airport I looked out the window and saw a big storm cloud hovering right over the airport. I don’t know what it looked like from the ground, but from the air you could see lightning flashing every few seconds. It was already 2:30 am, with a slippery runway, and now a storm cloud flashing lightning all around me, I was terrified. The only thing I had to occupy my mind was the airplane safety pamphlet, which I read about 12 times, it seemed like an appropriate time anyway. We bumped around in the sky and circled Dakar for half an hour waiting for the storm to pass before we finally landed.

Trying to catch my connecting flight to JFK, I made a mad dash through customs in Dakar and was standing there looking a little dumbfounded trying to figure out where to go when a man looked at me and said (in English), “Did you come from Bamako?”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Are you going to New York?” he then asked.
“Yeah!” I said enthusiastically. Thank god, the Peace Corps in Senegal had someone come here to help me. I, so naively, thought. The man gestures outside and I follow him. He runs outside into the parking lot, with me in hot pursuit, in one building then out another, then under a barricade then back out, then through the crowd of people outside then back inside.
“Go in here…. No, no, go in there, no, try in here…” This couldn’t be right, I thought.
I stopped him and said, “What are you doing? I need to be over there,” pointing to the check-in counter. He then grabs me by the shoulders and turns me around and points inside the airport to a security checkpoint that said “Police Formality.” In West Africa the Police are known for their corruption and will shake you down if you look like an easy target.
The man then says to me, “Do you have Senegalese money?”
“What is Senegalese money?” I asked.
“The CFA,” he replied
“Yeah, I have CFA, why?”
“You have to give my friend 15,000 CFA ($30) or you won’t be able to get through that line,” he said.
“I don’t have to give you anything. You aren’t getting any money out of me,” I snapped.
“You don’t understand,” he snapped back, “you can’t go unless you pay.”
“Do you understand this, FUCK OFF?!” I snapped as I jerked his hand off my shoulder and stopped away. I then turned around and said with a smile, “Nice try though.” He smiled back. West Africans are even nice people when they are trying to rip you off!

Frustrated and running even later now, I ran to the check in at the counter for my next flight on South African Airways. Oh thank God! A second-world airline this time, unlike the rickety old Senegal-Air plane I had just been on. I told the lady, ”I need to catch my plane to New York.”
She said, “you are too late, the door has been shut.”
“Has the plane left yet?” I asked,
She said, “no, but the door is shut so you can’t get on.”
I told her, “Well, then just open the door and let me on.”
She obviously said, “no.”
This went on for several minutes before I finally gave up. “Well, when is your next flight to JFK?” I said in a tone of desperation.
“Tomorrow night” she answered.
“Tomorrow? Oh hell no. I’m not staying here any longer. I’m not going back out into that parking lot full of vultures just waiting to rip me off. When is the next flight to America, I don’t care if it’s JFK, just anywhere in the US?”
“Tomorrow night,” she said to me in a snotty tone.
Grrrrr. I was getting pissed at this point. I waved bye-bye to my Peace Corps personality the second I stepped on that plane in Bamako. From there on out, I was in “Get Me The Hell Out Of Here” mode.
To add to my growing frustration, the ticketing agent then said, “It doesn’t matter when the next plane is. You were late, so it’s your problem, not ours.”
“My flight was 8 and a half hours late,” I protested.
“Well, you weren’t on our flight, you were on Senegal-Air, so take it up with them,” she said.
I could feel myself starting to lose it. It was now 3:30 am Thursday morning. I hadn’t bathed since Monday evening or had a real meal since that same time, a meal that consisted of a few chunks of oily potato and me stuffing sheep fat in my sandals. I took my concerns over to the Senegal-Air booth and got the run around from them and finally came back to South Africa Airlines.
I started all over again, “You need to let me on that plane.”
“I already told you,” the ticket agent snapped, “you weren’t on our airline so there is nothing we can do about it.”
“Don’t give me that crap,” I said angrily, “South Africa Airlines owns Senegal-Air so I know you can actually do something about it.” (It pays to read all those in-flight pamphlets on the plane!)

The woman shot me a look that could kill and rolled her eyes at me as she huffed, “Well, even so, I don’t have the authority to do anything so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Well then, point to someone who actually has more authority than you do,” I said. She pointed to a man behind me and I marched over to him and demanded that he fix the situation. About an hour and a half had passed by this point and the plane still had not left and until that plane took off, I wasn’t going to give up. I got the same answers from this guy as the previous few people I had talked to, except I had thrown every shred of politeness out the window, and as ashamed as I am to admit, I was getting pretty loud and obnoxious. I eventually came to the realization that these people weren’t getting me anywhere, so I had to think of something else. But what else can you do in this situation?

I had an idea; I’d just get on the plane without a ticket. I mean, it’s a third-world country for god sake, how organized can they be? I was obviously on the brink of deliriousness at this point but it seemed like a logical idea at the time. I marched up to the “Police Formality” booth and was asked for my boarding pass. Instead, I slid my passport to the officer as I forced a smile and batted my exotic blue eyes (exotic in West Africa anyway). The officer handed my passport back to me and waved me through. Ha! 15,000 CFA my ass! I ran through the security line and threw my purse onto the x-ray machine. As I scurried through the metal detector I was asked for my boarding pass and just like before, I handed over my passport and batted my tried-and-true baby blues. They waved me through. Holy shit, this was actually working! I got to the gate (one of two in Dakar’s airport) and handed the woman my passport.
“I need to see a boarding pass,” she said.
I rummaged through my purse and pulled out some sort of receipt from my last flight that looked like a boarding pass and handed it to the woman.
“This is not a boarding pass,” she said.
“So?” I said matter-of-factly.

She motioned over to a guard and I was escorted back to the ticketing area. Damn, so close! Now, I was back where I had started and even more pissed off than ever. I marched back over to the man who had the most authority and started demanding the same things as before, except louder and with a much more serious tone. I followed the mans every move. For about 45 minutes this man had his own stalker. I could tell he was just trying to get away from me, but I wasn’t letting him out of my site! I had been at this whole charade for several hours now and was running out of steam and, on top of that, a little logic was actually starting to creep back into my brain and I decided I better not try sneaking on to any more planes. Spending the night (or longer) in a Senegalese jail didn’t seem like a very pleasant solution to my problem. Especially since NO ONE knew where I was. I hadn’t had the time to call home to tell my family I was en route to the US and I was no longer associated with the Peace Corps.

Just as I was about to give up, another woman, in the same situation I was in, heard me shouting at this guy and joined in. She was traveling with her mother, sister and daughter. Her mother was raised in West Africa but she was from New York. So, as you can imagine, the little squabble I was having got much louder once she and her family jumped in. Then someone else heard what was going on and started shouting too. Then another. And another! The next thing I knew, there were 30+ people standing around me demanding that they be let onto the plane too! I took a step back and looked at my angry little mob. Men were pumping their fists in the air, women were waving their tickets and yelling, “I paid $3000 for these tickets!”, children were, well they weren’t really doing anything besides standing there but the more the merrier. Even though the South African Air representative was holding his ground, I knew my best bet was strength in numbers. And if I had to be part of an angry mob, then I wanted to be with these West African New Yorkers! That’s about the roughest, toughest group you can have!

The man from the airline kept saying that there was nothing he could do since the plane was already on the runway. I was exhausted so I let my mob do the shouting while I just stood there an observed for a while. As I stood there, admiring the mayhem I had created, I noticed something odd; a group of white people standing in the corner wearing suits and funny hats. Had it been any other time, I might not have ever noticed them. But after over a month in Mali, you can spot a white person a mile away. I don’t mean that in any bad way whatsoever. Growing up in a melting pot, you tend to not to notice a slight variety of people. In Mali however, where they are a completely homogeneous race, you notice even the slightest variation in skin tone. I started to think. Okay, obviously these people work for the airline and there are only two airlines here, Senegal and South African. There isn’t a very large white population in Senegal so I doubt the entire flight crew would be Caucasian, but South Africa…. Oh shit, South Africa! They do have a large percentage of white people there! These people had to be the South African crew!!

In my most pissed off tone yet, I pointed across the room and shouted, “The flight crew isn’t even on the plane yet!” Everyone looked and for a brief second, no one said anything. Then all hell broke loose. The angry mob became a completely irate mob. The South African representative started running around, whispering to other employees, making phone calls, then announced that only people willing to leave behind their luggage could get on the plane (thinking this would deter people from getting on). I was first in line to get that ticket. There was one woman in our mob who was complaining that she had missed her flight to DC and someone needed to find her a flight to Washington. I looked at her and said in a very bitchy way, “Lady, shut up! They are never going to get you a flight to DC since YOU missed your flight. But if you shut your mouth you might get on this flight to New York.” She nodded and I didn’t hear another word out of her.

As the man was about to hand me my ticket he said, “You can only get on if you leave your luggage behind.”
“Funny,” I replied, “my luggage got on the plane for 4 hours ago, but I didn’t!”

I got my ticket and went back to the gate only to find out that the plane wasn’t on the runway like they had been saying. It hadn’t even finished boarding yet. Back at the medical office in Bamako, Dr. Dawn had told me that my labs showed that I was severely dehydrated and after this whole airline fiasco, I was parched! I knew about the new airline restrictions on gels and liquids (thanks to the BBC station I picked up on my radio in Sanankoroba) but I needed water. I bought a 72oz bottle of water and drank a few swigs by the time I got to the front of the boarding line. Before you could enter the plane your carryon had to be manually searched, and by searched I mean completely dumped out and rummaged through, which I was completely okay with since I was a little concerned about the security of the flight. As I stood there with my giant bottle of (banned) water, the officer dumped out my bag and out tumbled my gel toothpaste and deodorant. Back in Bamako, I had the foresight to realize that I wouldn’t be bathing for quite a while, so the least I could do was bring deodorant and toothpaste with me. I was completely willing to give up my contraband but all the officer noticed as he rummaged through my belongings was my giant wad of cash. The Peace Corps had given me far more money then I could spend in the short time I was there so I had a few hundred Euros and several thousand CFA (a few hundred dollars worth) stuffed into my purse. The officer fanned my money out in front of his face as I shoved my toothpaste and deodorant back in the purse. Great, now everyone knew I had loads of cash in my pockets. Fantastic, I thought as I finally stepped onto my flight to JFK.

I got to relax on the long flight from Dakar to New York, but I couldn’t sleep. I watched cartoons and ate some cheese (vache qui rit… how ironic) and before I knew it I could see Manhattan. Oh, how happy I was to see New York!!! Never before had the big apple seemed so calm, so clean, so easy, and so overall pleasant.

Once the plane had landed, I had about 20 minutes to get to my connecting flight to Atlanta. I don’t even know if the plane had come to a stop before I ripped my seatbelt off and headed for the door. I was the first person off that plane and was in a full out sprint to get to customs. I’ve never run that hard in my life. As I hauled-ass through the long corridors I knew I would have to slow down to get through customs as quickly as possible, odd as that is. It seemed as if luck was on my side that day, since usually customs lines are long and slow, and there were hardly any people in line at all. I picked a line at random, not necessarily the shortest one, since it’s a universally known paradox that no matter which line you pick, it turns out to be the slowest.

I quickly got to the front of the line and slid my passport to the customs agent. Another agent in an adjacent booth looked at me and asked why I didn’t get in his line, since it was shorter. I said with a flirty grin, “Because you aren’t as good looking as this guy,” which was obviously a lie since the guy asking was young and cute and this man was in no way attractive. He was at least 30 years older than me, balding, overweight, and slightly unkempt. He got a good chuckle, and probably a healthy ego boost, from my comment and just stamped my passport and told me to have a great day. I got my passport back and continued my sprint to my next flight. “Ah, success,” I thought and simultaneously as that went through my head, a man stuck his arm out and stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Do you have a connecting flight ma’am?” he asked.
“Yeah, and I’ve only got a few minutes to get there,” I panted, completely exhausted.
“I’m sorry miss but if you are coming from an international flight you have to wait for your luggage, then re-check it to your final destination.” He insisted.
“What? But I don’t have time, I have to go,” I said with a pleading tone.
In a stern voice he said, “I’m sorry ma’am but there is no way around it.”
“But I don’t even care, I don’t want the luggage, I just need to get on my flight,” I begged while trying to squirm out of his grip.
In a slightly irritated voice he replied, “Ma’am, you don’t have a choice, you have to…”
“…I don’t have any luggage,” I exclaimed! “I didn’t check any bags.”
“But, you just said that you…” he said perplexed.
“… Yeah, I forgot, I didn’t bring luggage. Just this purse,” I said with my most convincing ditzy blonde demeanor and pushed through his arm and continued my dash towards my next flight.

After taking the wrong tram and getting completely turned around in JFK, I finally made it to the Delta check in. I asked the ticket agent if I was too late and she said no, I had made it just in time. She picked up the phone and called the gate to let them know that I was already checked in. “But she’s on her way,” I heard her say. “She’s coming right now. Are you sure?” she said again. “I’m sorry ma’am. The gate agent won’t wait. He’s closing the door in 10 minutes and he said he won’t let you on.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said in complete desperation, “but I made it on time, this time.” It was useless. The woman could see in my eyes how defeated I was and that I must have had a rough time up to this point. She told me not to worry, that she could get me a later flight.
“Okay, I have a flight to Atlanta in 90 minutes and then a connecting flight to Wilmington at 1pm, do you want to book this flight?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
As she went to hit the key to confirm the flight she said, “Oh! The flight to Wilmington has just been cancelled. There is another flight later; I’ll book that one instead. Oh! That one’s been cancelled too!” I could feel my eyes starting to roll back into my head. I wanted to collapse right there. “Apparently, there is a hurricane making landfall on North Carolina’s coast this afternoon. A lot of flights on the east coast are being cancelled,” she informed me. “I can’t seem to find a flight connecting to Atlanta.”
“I really don’t care about Atlanta,” I said, “just get me anywhere in North Carolina it doesn’t have to be Wilmington.”
“Well, there is a flight later in the evening to Raleigh, but I can’t get a flight to Atlanta,” she said again.
I pleaded with the agent, “Lady, I don’t care if you have to fly me to Los Angeles to get me a connecting flight to NC, just get me to North Carolina!”
“Oh, I can get you a flight to Atlanta in an hour, then to Raleigh at 3pm” she said.
“Great!” I exclaimed.
“But before I can print the ticket you need to get South African Air to sign off on this voucher since we had to change your final destination,” she informed me.
“Oh shit!” Here we go again, I thought.

I made a mad dash back to the tram and several minutes later arrived at the international terminal. I somehow found the South African booth right away and asked them to sign off on my voucher. “Sure,” they replied, “but none of us have the authority to sign it, you’ll have to wait for the manager. He gets here at 3pm.”
“But my flight leaves at 10am and I need this signed,” I said.
“Sorry,” they said.

I then made the inverse of the mad dash that I had made only seconds before and got back to the Delta area. “No one is there to sign it,” I said, “they are all useless. The only one who can sign it won’t be there until 3pm.”
“But your flight is in an hour,” the woman said.
“Yeah, I realize that,” I said, “but what can I do?” The woman slyly looked over her shoulders and pulled the voucher off the countertop where no one could see it and signed it.
“No one will know,” she said.
“Oh, thank you so much,” I said with a huge sigh of relief.

I grabbed my ticket and ran to the security line. I still had my deodorant and toothpaste in my purse and a bottle of water from the airplane in my hand. I knew better than to try to get away with sneaking anything onto an airplane in New York. There was a sign at the beginning of the security line with banned products and only the water and toothpaste were explicitly restricted. I decided to take my chances with the deodorant but I really needed that toothpaste too. By this time, it was mid-morning Thursday. The last time I had had a real (kind of) meal or bath (albeit out of a bucket) was on Monday evening! As I stood in that security line, I pulled the toothpaste and toothbrush out of my purse and begin to brush my teeth while waiting in line. As I made it up to the x-ray conveyer and metal detector I spit the toothpaste into a trashcan and dropped the tube of paste and water in right after. I wiped my mouth with my arm, as I had become so accustom to doing in Mali, and strode through the security check.

My gate of departure was the first gate after the security line so I had plenty of time before my flight. I walked into the first souvenir shop and bought an “I heart NY” t-shirt. I marched straight into the bathroom and changed into my new shirt and threw away the one that I had been wearing for the past 3 days. The stench had become permanent by that point, it was useless hanging onto that shirt. The worst part was, when I was in Bamako and Dakar, my stench didn’t really bother me since there were plenty of other smelly people around, but now I was the only smelly person, and I was seriously smelly! I took a birdbath in the airport bathroom and cleaned up as best I could. I was deliriously giddy over the running water and toilets while washing up; I was elated to see them again. What a novelty they were!

I was only hours away from being home and had yet to call to tell anyone where I was. I knew I was going to completely lose it when I called home so I tried to go ahead and get as much out of my system while I was in the bathroom. I was able to squeeze out a few tears but not nearly as much as I needed. I couldn’t wait any longer. It was time to call.

I went to the nearest payphone and called home. Keep it together, for god sake, keep it together, I kept telling myself even though I knew it wasn’t going to be possible. The phone rang a few times and my mom answered.

“Mom…?” I said in a shaky voice.
“Hey Brit!” my mom said followed by a long pause. I was trying to talk but was already in hysterics and couldn’t find the way to muster up any noise, let alone speech. “How are you,” my mom asked?
“Ahhhhahhahhhhhh…..” I started sobbing. I had the phone up to my ear, my head in my other hand and my entire body was shaking.
“ARE YOU ALRIGHT?” my mom said?
“I’m (sob, sob) in (sob, sob) New (sob, sob) York. I’m coming (sob) home. My flight from (sob, sob) Atlanta gets to (sob, sob) Raleigh at 5pm. If you can’t get there (sob, sob) I’ll stay with Ben or someone,” I somehow managed to say.
“We’ll be there to get you,” my mom said.
“I have to (sob, sob) go now,” I said and that was it. I was tapped out. Running a marathon wasn’t nearly as exhausting as the trip I had just made. I had nothing left in me. I moved to my gate and found a cozy little corner to sit in. I pulled my knees into my body and curled my purse up in my arms and leaned my head against it, sitting in a, more or less, vertical fetal position. My flight to Atlanta was about 90 minutes late. At this point, I didn’t care. I was almost there.

Once I got to Atlanta my flight to Raleigh was running about 30 minutes late, but why wouldn’t it be? The flight to Raleigh was rough. Real rough. It’s such a short flight that you are only flying over the weather for a few minutes. The rest of the flight you are either taking off or landing. Flying into that kind of storm was a little more than nerve wracking. During the first half of my journey home I kept asking God to not let me die over there. In my mind I kept pleading, for my family’s sake, let me die on American soil, where they can recover and embalm my body. Don’t make them have to try to find my decomposed corpse in some African desert. So, even though that last flight was the most terrifying, I was the most relieved. Even if the plane did go down, my family knew where I was and at least they wouldn’t have to wonder what happened to me.

I made it to Raleigh in one physical piece. Emotionally I was broken down into microscopic pieces. As I came down the escalator to baggage claim, I saw my mom and dad waiting for me. Even though all I wanted to do was cry, a huge smile appeared on my face and I gave them a big hug. “Thank you for giving me two years of my life back,” my dad said to me.

My mom motioned over to the baggage claim area and I said, “Oh forgot it, there’s no chance, I’m never going to see that luggage again.” We got in the car and had to drive in the Hurricane all the way home from Raleigh to Jacksonville, over two hours. We stopped by my brother’s work so I could say hello and then my parents wanted to take a detour to Wilmington to see my sister. They hadn’t told her anything about me coming home. They really didn’t have much time to say anything to anyone. We got half way to my sister’s before we realized it was too dangerous to drive down there. My mom called Jess on her cell phone and when she answered my mom told her she had someone she wanted her to talk to and handed the phone to me.

“Hey Jess,” I said trying not to get choked up.
“What the hell,” my sister said, “What’s going on? Are you kidding with me? Is this a three-way call?”
“Jess,” I said, “I could barely figure out how to call from Africa, let alone conference call!”

My dad asked what I wanted to eat. “Taco Bell,” I exclaimed! During the 2-hour drive we didn’t pass a single Taco Bell. My dad kept asking if I wanted something else. “Nope, I want Taco Bell,” I said. We finally passed a Taco Bell when we got to Jacksonville. Due to the horrendous driving conditions, we were the only car on the road and definitely the only car at Taco Bell’s drive thru! My dad pulled up and rolled down his window, covering his face from the driving rain with his hands while shouting, “I WANT A BEAN BURRITO.” I was giddy in the back seat! A few minutes later we were in our neighborhood and it was completely flooded. We parked the car on a curb a block from our house. We all crammed our burritos down our throats and rolled up our pants and waded through the flood to our house. “Damn, I thought I was done doing this,” I yelled with a chuckle!

I got home and jumped straight in the shower then went to bed. As I lye in my bed my mind was swimming. I couldn’t believe I was home. What had just happened? How on earth did I get here? I wasn’t supposed to be here. It was nice to be home but it felt surreal. I fell asleep and was quickly awoken to make one of several bathroom trips. I now know first hand that Taco Bell is FAR worse on my GI tract than Giardia ever was. But what the hell did I care? I had a toilet!!!

On one of my trips downstairs I noticed my mom was sleeping on the couch. She sat up and said, “We’ve lost electricity and it’s too hot to sleep upstairs (I hadn’t noticed, it felt fine to me) do you need a flashlight to see where you are going?”
“Flashlight, ha!” I said, “are you kidding, I’ve got my Africa eyes on!”

Even though my life in Africa was only 1/26th as long as I thought it was going to be I still learned a lot while I was there. It’s amazing how much soul searching you can do while all alone in a hut in the middle of Africa. I came to some realizations about my life that it takes some people a lifetime to realize. One of the hardest things I learned was that I’m not nearly as strong as I thought I was. I used to think that I wasn’t afraid of anything. Now I know how small I am in the whole scheme of things. I’ve let myself down in a way that I didn’t know I was capable of and I struggle with my decision to leave every single day. I’m still mourning my loss of Mali and as the months go by it gets harder to deal with. Thoughts of Mali and the Peace Corps fill my every waking thought and not a single night has gone by that I didn’t dream I was still there. I loved Mali and all the people I met while there. In the first few days I was back I couldn’t figure out my emotions. It felt like I had broken up with someone. But that’s exactly what it is. Even though I truly loved Mali, I had to leave, I knew deep down that it wouldn’t work out in the long run and as much as it hurt, I had to say goodbye. I just wish I had been able to say goodbye to my friends and family in Mali. My family I will probably never see again, I can’t wait until the next two years go by so I can see my friends again!

N be Mali fe. N be sogo n Mali la su o su. N taara so, n ka teriya be to senna.