"Consolodation" in Mali

the Ok, so here is the low-down on what is going on in Guinea and what tha means for me....

ON sepember 28th there was an incident in the Capital Ciity of Conakry where soldiers killed 157 people that were protesting the candidacy of the current military president. The killing, raping and maming came, from all reliable accounts, unprovoked. At first Dadis Camara, the President, said that he was sorry for what happened. Then he came out saying the military was jus defending themselves, and now he says that the oposition party, the one holding the protest, hired the people to dress up in military outfits and kill the protesters to make Dadis Camara look bad.

Son after this happened the military took all of the bodies no riddled with bullet holes and sent them to a mosque where some family could claim them. the rest of the bodies are said to have been put in a mass grave somewhere. The whole situation is incredibly sad, especially onsidering how peaceful and non violent Guineans are. Before September 28th, I would have thought something like this would be imposible.

ok, so now, what that means for me. All Peace Corps Volunteers and a majorty of the staff has been ordered by the state department to leave the country. After Peace Corps fighing tooth and nail to keep us in,Peace C orps went through the logistical nightmare of contacting and picking us all up to move to the border. This is a difficult situation considering the lack of cell phone coverage in huge swaths of the country and few roads.

We eventually made it to Mali and are staying in the Mali Volunteers training site and us 100+ volunteers will be staying here for the nex 2 weeks. It is a difficult thing to leave a villiage that you have been working and living with for as long as some of us had, s Peace Corps makes special effors to make us as comfortable as possible and to have some distractions. Also, the Peace Corps Mali staff has bent over backwards to accomodate us.

So now we wait. The State Department will decide in 2-4 weeks if we can go back or not. Realistically the chances are very low. So, my other options are as follows. And this list is basically most ideal situation to least: I can...

Transfer to a different country in the same region and just finish my service

Transfer to a country outside of my region, go through some training, and stay for the rest of my service

Transfer to a country outside my region,, go through training, and stay for another 2 years

Go back to America and wait for the program to reopen

or end my service while keeping all of the benifits I would have gotten if I was there for 2 full years.

so, we'll see what happenes in the coming weeks. When the decision about us going back is made, I will have to choose an option very quickly, so I am doing some soul searching right now to decide on what is best.