Sorry its been a few days. Much of transferring appears to involve hanging around in town waiting for things, which doesn’t leave me with a lot of time or motivation to post anything.

Anyway, I have only one major task left, and that is to buy a plane ticket for Ben, who lacks a credit card. He is vacationing in Timbuctu so its just me. Everything else has been taken care of this week. I was offered a post in Niger. I had an interview a couple of days ago and yesterday got my visa application in. Right now it seems likely that I will leave on Monday, but it is not set in stone.

Most people have left now. There are maybe 20 or so of us. The transfer staff that flew in from Washington have returned to the states. All the Guinea Peace Corps staff have left. Those of us who have not left for transfers are just working with Mali Peace Corps staff to make our transfers happen. But by now nearly all of us know where we are going and its just a matter of making it happen.

Sajay left for Zambia last night with Jess. They both have some pretty exciting posts. A contingent including Caitlin who are going to Botswana left this morning for a short trip to see some of Mali before they leave for their country. Transfers to Mali have begun their orientation and training, and so they are still with us, which augments our numbers by maybe seven. So the countries that are left are: Niger (just me going), Burkina Faso (maybe five transfers), Benin (three or so) and Madagascar (one married couple). Everyone else is still around.

Saying goodbye has not been fun of course. It was sad to see Sajay and Ben leave, and the end of our group. But in a nice way the evacuation to Mali brought us closer than we would have been otherwise, so I appreciate that.

So our compound, once filled with the uprooted lives of 90-odd people and the assorted cavorting, has died down to a small number of stragglers who are more or less just waiting to leave.

And seeing the Mali transfers walking around with their shell-shocked stares is a sort of hint of future for me. I think we all arrive in our new countries and wonder why we didn’t just COS and do something else. But I am also at times elated. This is, more or less, exactly what I want to be doing right now. That will calm down when I arrive, but it still feels good.