Hello from Magna!!

I am sitting in the internet cafe in Mango, which is a 15 bike ride from my village, where there is a fairly decent connection for the moment. Tonight will be my last night in Magna before I head up to the regional capital Dapaong to meet up with the other trainees before heading back down south to Gbatope to finish up the last few weeks of training. Post visit has been overall very positive. I was the first to be dropped off from our group Saturday evening and it was a very surreal feeling to be driving up to the village that will be my home for the next 2 years. My village is scattered among corn, millet, and sorghum fields and it is incredibly beautiful right now. Apparently when I get back in November, the crops will be already harvested and I will be able to see long distances. Now, I cannot see far because the crops are so high. My home is a cute two room cement house with a tin roof in a family compound. I have no electricity or running water, but I do have my own latrine that has a toilet seat cemented to it! I also have my own private shower area that has no roof, so I can take showers at night under the stars!!! There are three other small houses in my compound that house my host father, his two wives, and three of their children (one teenage girl and two little girls). My host family also raises animals, so in my compound there are two bulls, goats, sheeps, doves, chickens, and one dog. My front door opens onto the compound, but my back windows look out on fields where there are no houses, so that is really nice. My host dad and older sister speak french, but both wives only speak Anofo, so I have a lot of motivation to keep studying and learning the local language. I have already had to repeat the basic greetings so many times that I am starting to learn them. Although I am going to be living in a small village, I am only a 15 minute bike ride on a flat dirt road to Mango where there is a market, post office, internet cafe, and another volunteer who has already been here a year and who has many contacts. I have already made the bike ride every day and the women in my compound walk into town everyday with food on their head to sell, so I can definitely make the bike ride easily. Bikes also seem to be the primary mode of transportation from my village, so it is not even weird for me to be biking. The only weird thing is that I am wearing a helmet. Also, my bike has gears, so I can fly by men who are definitely way more fit than me but have no gears on their bikes. I have already met the school teachers, the chief, local government officials, and different NGO workers and it seems like I will have many different options for projects and people to work with. Overall, I am really happy with my site and I am excited to come back at the end of November and start my service!!!