Oh, you want to know what's going on aside from my ongoing battle against intestinal parasites? Sorry, didn't think you cared!

We've just passed the middle of the rainy season. There was a weeklong dry spell but it's started raining again, a good soaking every day or every other day. The mornings are often cloudy and cool -- maybe even cooler than in the US this time of year. The rain and reduced sun makes our yard, and the hills to the north, very green, and brings out some different flowers. This morning I could see six blossoms on the hibiscus plant in the front yard. All but two have since succumbed to the midday sun. Normally there are dozens if not hundreds of bright pink bougainvillea blossoms on the wall at the front of the yard, but they have all fallen off.

We have an ant problem. There are three sizes of ants: a) tiny ones in the bathroom, that hide in E's damp towel and bite him aprés bain b) medium ones in the kitchen that don't bite but crawl over everything, including the actual food I am preparing, and now c) huge ones in the front room, with black heads and tails and brown middles. These ones bite. I know this problem is getting serious because normally, I am the kind of person that scoops up crickets and takes them outside, brushes ants gently off the counter, and puts stranded worms back in the dirt after a rainstorm. I just don't like to kill things unnecessarily. But these ants, I've started stomping and smushing the little bastards, with no regrets.

I've been busy at work. When I first started at Geekcorps, last year, I went in a couple afternoons a week. That grew to three days a week and when I returned from my June vacation I started going in five days a week. I don't work all day, every day on Geekcorps, but I am doing more than ever. One reason is that we have a new stagiare -- an intern. His name is Cheick Oumar and he is a young Malian we are training to be a 'webmaster.' At Geekcorps this means that he should be able to build and manage websites using SPIP, the open-source CMS we use. He'll be with us for five months, and we hope to help him find a permanent position after that.

Interviewing candidates for the stagiare was interesting. They don't have equal opportunity employment laws like we do in the US, so everyone puts their age, gender, and marital status on their CV. More than a few include photos.

I'm spending a lot of time with Cheick, and I'm also trying to get work done on another website, one I'm doing as a volunteer with ICVolunteers, as well as some professional websites for friends.

When I need a little break from the web work, I have some translating to do. Some of the Geeks went to the Forum of the People in Fana, Mali, in July; one of their friends who was staying at the Geek house asked if I could help translate the articles in the forum's newspaper, Le messager de Fana, from French to English. I've done three so far. It is hard work and I have to get help from native speakers, but I find it really interesting. If you go to the Forum website and look for English versions of the articles, those are mine.

I'm trying to wrap all these things up neatly before I leave on the 22nd for James and Maria's wedding in Barcelona. Four of us from Photo Club will meet there, and after a few days in the city we are going to rent a car and drive around the Costa Brava, staying in Girona and Begur.

Training Cheick the stagiare, translating the articles, sitting in business meetings, and conversing with my French and French Canadian and other francophone friends makes me wish I'd worked harder on improving my French. I was dedicated to it for the first few months, but once I got a working knowledge, I neglected it. I've been really lazy about it until a few weeks ago and it shows. I am slow to put together a sentence and when I do, my pronunciation is terrible. Ah well. If we go to another francophone country I will start classes again, or find other ways to actively improve.

Which raises the question that everyone wants to know: how much longer we are going to be in Mali?

Well, we are still waiting to hear if E's project got extended. If it didn't, we will leave Bamako at the end of September. That adds a note of urgency to my current workload, because if that's the case, when I get back from Spain on the 2nd I'll have just a few weeks to pack up and move.

Of course, at the same time that I'm mentally preparing myself for leaving in September, I'm mentally preparing myself for staying through December, which we will if the project gets extended. It's a bit of a mental workout, trying to think positively about both these outcomes, when they are not too far away. But we should hear any day now ...