It's all part of the adventure!: Koutiala

We made it to Koutiala today! We drove 6 hours, stopping for lunch in Segou. The drive was interesting. The roads are very narrow, and there are lots of potholes. The main rule of the road is that smaller cars yield to larger cars....and pedestrians yield to everyone. There were a few times where we had to swerve completely off the road to avoid hitting a large vehicle coming towards us because it took up all the road.

Most of us had shawarma for lunch, which was sort of like fajitas. It was beef (not positive it was beef, but I think so), onion, tomato, and pita-type bread.

Once we arrived at our guest home in Koutiala, we unpacked, and then most of the guys went with Anco to look at a road that had been flooded (it is wet season). I didn't go, but from what I'm told, some Malians tried to take their mopeds through the water, and once they made it to the other side, the mopeds no longer started. Shocking. Also, our guys were entertained by one truck that was being loaded with as much as possible, and someone started tossing live chickens from the ground to the top of the truck. I guess some were tossed a little too hard and went completely over the truck. Two young boys were herding a couple cows, and the cows started crossing the river, but the river was too high for the boys to follow.

Moussa and Batuma (not sure on the spelling of their names--housekeepers of the guest homes) made dinner for us and made runzas, which were very good. Anyone from Nebraska knows what a runza is -- bread with beef, cheese, and onion on the inside.

Things about today:
-Steve must really like peanut sauce and Nutella because he talks about it all the time. Oh, he loves the bread too.
-Jason is really good at Phase 10.
-D'jino pamplemousse is a really good drink (tastes like a combination of Squirt and Fresca with a little grapefruit juice).
-I'm really bad at Phase 10 and once Jon "wrote me off" from the game, I decided to work on this blog.
-We experienced our first dust storm and the question arose: "just exactly how many men does it take to put a tarp over luggage on top of a truck?" Apparently, it takes 9.
-Bill is a great banker. He was given the task of getting all our money exchanged into Francs and then figuring out how to divide the Francs back up among all of us (they only gave large bills for the most part).
-Andy NEVER stops eating, but at least he didn't give away any of our money today.
-Larry has something in common with his wife and doesn't handle food on international flights very well (or so that's what we think caused him to not feel the best).
-Rachel isn't a fan of shawarma, and Jon isn't a fan of all the onions that come with every meal.
-Adam has taken my spot on Phase 10 and is catching me up!
-Chris has been to a lot of countries -- I think he said 16 (somewhere close to that) so he's our traveling expert (along with Jason who flies domestically all the time for work).
-It would be really interesting to see Andy, Jason and Jon play a game of Trivial Pursuit because they are full of useless facts :)
-There are a lot of bats here, and they make a lot of noise.
-It is quite a task for Bill and Steve to make powdered milk. As I was typing most of this, they were having a very serious discussion on how to convert the measurements. I think they ended up just guessing at the end.

Tomorrow we start our hard work. We are supposed to be ready to go (including eating breakfast) by 7 am and then we have roof, garden, and water tower work. I think there is also some work we need to do with the chicken coup. Rachel was talking to Kristen today (she works at the hospital), and she said she might get Rachel and I involved with a surgery at the hospital one day while we are here, but it sounds like Anco has a lot of work for us, so I don't know what we will be doing...working hard.

Pray that no one else gets sick, that we minister to people through our actions, and that we accomplish a lot of work tomorrow, and no one gets hurt.