The challenge of the day: Katharine has to learn how to eat with her right hand. In fact, Katharine has to learn to do everything with her right hand even though she's left-handed. Wonderful. In our cross-cultural training class today we learned that when Malians go #2 they don't use toilet paper. Instead they wipe with their left hand (and some water) and that is why it is forbidden to use your left had for things like eating in Mali. HA! Although I have yet to try the Malian method of wiping, I am trying hard to train myself to keep my left hand pretty much out of the picture.
Anyway, that's beside the point. Mali is beautiful. The stars are amazing and the color green is still all around despite the desert land and termite mounds surrounding our huts. We started our Bambara language classes today and I learned that one of the most common phrases 'i be sho dun' which means 'you eat beans'. Apparently it's incredibly inappropriate to fart in Mali so a common joke is to tell someone that they eat beans. We walked around the training center today telling a bunch of the Malian men that they eat beans. They laughed like crazy and then joked back at us by calling us 'toubab' (white person/foreigner).
Another thing that I discovered today was the beauty of a shower of any kind. It's so hot here (even though we're in the rainy season which is the colder part of the year) and there's nothing better than a cold shower at the end of the day. It only drips out of the showerhead though so I have to let the bucket fill up and just dump it on my head. Although the shower might be a bit of a struggle, the freshness I felt walking back into the hut made it all well worth it!
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