weekend

The sun is rising in Sikoro, orange colors meeting red rocks. last night i saw more stars than i ever have here - not just the big ones, but the carpet of shady dots and even some milky way.

i wish i had posted more recently - i've phrased so many posts in my mind but it's gotten away from me. I drafted a couple posts but they kept turning into novellas -- haha i'll try to keep to the highlights of the past couple weeks, novella chapters available on request (caution: reader risks sprouting handsome white beard).

1.mali is meeting the midwestern great plains on the top of my head: i have corn rows!

2. Rock-climbing in Siby – passing rural villages with square brick buildings and lush mango trees, on an adventure led by a rock-climbing fanatic ex-pat high school physics professor named randy (peas in a pod with my dad). It was so beautiful – our guide traversed along the cliff face in FLIP FLOPS! Sweet lord. We rode the back of randy’s pick-up up a gorgeous natural arch. at the end of the day we had dinner at appaloosa’s, home to burritos, waiters in ten-gallon hats and Ukrainian prostitutes. Ole!

4. a wonderful dinner with Fanta and the family and Alex, my new host bro and lovely new MHOP clinic-organizing man. Snapping and popping frying chicken kebabs and potatoes, with salad and onions from the raw chicken marinade up in there, yurrrm! It was my first big amoeba risk, and a rollicking adventure to take it with fanta, host bro papa and alex. if amoebas populate the Zoombiniland of our tummies in the next couple weeks, we’ll set up some Arrested Development and tag-team the nyegen under the stars.

5. (unrelated) SICKNESS! Proudly beasted my first malian sickness – i felt like THIS but it was actually very small fry (no ghiardia mom). More weirdly, I got a bad head cold – usually reserved for wintry providence sci li nights. luckily I stole a bag of my dad’s Halls Citrus. Awww yeah.

6. We tried a new Chinese place for dinner but found out it was 100% brothel dangit -so we went to a Lebanese place that boasted an ass cheezburger, ass salad and ass chicken. we suspected donkey meat but it turned out to mean Assiette (with all the trimmings). Thank goodness – donkeys, as well as cows, walk all through sikoro and their slow clip clop is a lovely shield from the zipping motorcycles on the morning walk to work. (I just ate one though – at soukeina’s house this afternoon, for the 40th day after her mother’s passing.) Our house is in Lei Carre, pig square – an old Christian family has raised pigs there for 300 years.

7. THE SURVEYS ALMOST DONE!!!! Just came back from another “office hours” at the multifunctional center and we can count the number of families left to resolve on one hand. I asked lassi who sells the best bamakois cake – we’re having a PARTY tomorrow.

(party pictures added after the fact! haha one is of ami keita and oumu camara, two lovely and sassy-pants health workers- ami keita is pretending to cut off my head. it was smashing - we demolished 4 cakes! oumou developed her own bambara alphabet and taught it to 200 of her neighbors....i can't even imagine it.)

8. the best-dressed Malian taxi competition continues – each one we enter has a new combo of bright blue fur seat covers, leopard print drapes, life-size obama head flags – or minimalist for the stripped-down-metal Transformers look. Haha furriness is a theme in Malian living rooms too – my host fam has giraffe print furry sofas topped with bright pink chintzy genie-puff bulbs. “see ya later decorator” or “blinded by the light?” definitely the second – I’m a convert.

more pictures -- shadowing Soukeina at her clinic; radio siguida joli, mhop's radio broadcast; and hiking up a rocky cliff to Point G, the biggest hospital in Mali, which overlooks the Niger river and all of Bamako.

Much love from sikoro – thinking of you.

Xxxxx hawa gaku