Village visits and our New Year's holiday

Fancy outfits and fancy dancing on New Year's Eve.

During the recent holiday break we spent 10 days in Koutiala.  For 3 ½ of the days we were attending a staff retreat for our mission.  We only see some of the people in our group, those who live far away, once or twice a year, so it was really nice to have everyone all together for a few days.  It ended with a big New Year’s Eve party full of food, singing, and dancing. 

The best part for me was that we spent 2 days in villages doing outreach with Centre Esther.  I love going to villages! 
On December 27^th we went to Finzankoro, the village I spent 3 weeks in last March trying to work on my Bambara language.  This was really my favorite village visit ever because I was going back to where I had been, where I knew people and they knew me.  I was excited to see the family I had stayed with.  Can it really have been 9 months since I stayed with them?  The 2 boys who were 6 months old back in March are now 15 months old and walking around.  They both had completely forgotten me and didn’t want the white lady to hold them. 
It took about an hour to get there on a very rough and dusty dirt road.  You can’t expect to ever go more than about 30mph on a road like this, and sometimes much slower as you are swerving around whatever needs to be avoided.  There were 6 of us crammed into a small Toyota pickup, so I was glad that it only took about an hour to get there.  

Playing a game with kids in a village.

Eliane did a health teaching in the village church.

We started by singing some songs and then I went off with the kids while the adults stayed in the shelter to hear a health teaching and presentation.  Everyone from the village’s church was there as well as plenty of people who don’t attend the church.  The village chief was even there with his counsel!
We distributed lots of clothes and some toys and JP did cleaning and bandaging of wounds and we prayed for healing for sick people.   Then we got to eat a nice lunch of rice with sauce.  After lunch everyone sits around to chat and rest and the young men boil up Malian tea and offer little shot glasses of the syrupy drink to whoever is interested.  Finally about an hour before sunset we asked for the road.  When you visit someone you have to ask for the road, you can’t leave until they say its there.  We wanted to get back before dark, this time of year that’s around 6:30pm.
It was a really nice day, and our other village outreach - January 3rd in Ngolonianaso, was similar.

 So we were at the retreat for 3 ½ days, 2 days of the 10 were traveling to and from Bamako, 2 days were in villages, so that leaves 2 ½ days I haven’t mentioned.  I had hoped to spend that time going around to visit friends and do some fun stuff during our trip, but unfortunately I spent almost all of that free time in bed with a fever and some kind of nasty cold/flu.  The weather was terribly cold for Mali, even for it being cold season.  It dipped down into the 50’s every night!  With no heating in the house that’s quite chilly and I think that it contributed to me getting sick.  Now, 2 weeks later, I am much better but still coughing a bit.

Jean-Patrick cleaning and bandaging wounds.

This girl got a dress and some new sandals, I think she is happy inside but just not used to smiling for the camera!