Dear Family and Friends:

I might try to telephone today but I am still not sure how to do it.   things are going well.  I found out my site!  I am going to be living in a small town called Kemeni.  The nearest city is the city of Segu and the nearest larger town is a no kidding a town called BLA!  My roommate betty will not be too far away living in Bobo land,  a tribal Christian group known for beer drinking and eating dogs.  My nearest neighbor is a boy named Zack who  is ten kilos away. My village is located on a main road.  I will be working with the local health center, called a CSCOM, the radio station, local schools, and the mayors office.  my house is located in a concession with a large family of brothers, their wives people have more than one here, parents, and children.  They eat Toe everyday so I might foresee it wise to cook for myself every once in a while or learn to really like toe.  Its this really tasteless thick pasty stuff with slimey ocra sauces.....but hey I might be really craving the stuff before too long, I have learned to eat with my hands I am sure I can learn to eat that.  I am provided with my own stove, and neagan otherwise known as a somewhat less conventional bathroom.  Next weekend I leave to go visit my site for a week so I will have more information to tell you about ly family, job, town, and home.  So now I am going to relay a small story to you which occurred the other night.  My roommate and I were fast a sleep in our beds as we are in the habit of going to bed early tired from studying and speaking French all day when we awoke to loud djembe playing and the chants of children.  We walked outside our concession to find a group of teenagers dancing, playing the drums, and singing.  We asked them what they were celebrating for......I mean it was 2:30am in the morning........it turned out that they were celebrating the circumcision of a 14 year old boy which had occured the night before while all the volunteers were being baptized with Malian names.  All of the other teenagers his age and a little older were there to celebrate this young mans entrance in to manhood, but the boy himself was at home in bed.  Betty, my roommate, and I followed the kids and did our best imitation of African dancing for a little while and then went back to our beds, the kids however stayed up dancing until the sun rose and the cocks crowed........which in contrary to popular belief do not actually crow just when the sunrises they crow oh about 4:00am or earlier and continue for a insane amount of time, not to mention the donkeys which holler every few hours continually through the night. But none the less we went back to our beds only to wonder the next day was it a dream?   But verified it with others in the village that the event actually occurred and that we were in fact dancing under the moonlight in between dreams.  Ok, well I better go.  I miss you and will write soon.

love,

Pattie