December Update

It has been a busy month!

I traveled for nine days earlier in the month. I left in the dark on a 5:45am train with snow falling and wind blowing thick drifts to head for the airport in Hamburg. The local train in Hamburg did not go all the way to the airport that morning so it stopped and I had to walk through the snow to a bus stop a few blocks away to connect to the airport. The snow was thick on the ground, in the road and in the air and of course is was still dark. The sunlight started coming when I got to the airport which they were plowing to keep the runway clear. I caught an early flight to a connection in Paris and spent several hours in a layover there. There was snow on the ground in France also, which seems strange to me as I always picture it as warm. The flight was delayed an additional hour (which is not bad as air travel usually goes), and we were back in the air as it started getting dark again. We flew directly over Palma, Mallorca Island in the Mediterranean, then flew over Algeria. I could see the lights from cities near the coast but as we went over the Sahara I also saw clusters of lights out in the desert that seemed to shimmer. I sat next to a woman on the plane that worked with UNESCO to try to preserve a mosque in Djenne (the largest mud/brick structure in the world). Finally close to midnight we landed at the airport near Bamako, the capital of Mali. I showed them my visa for Mali (which was down to the last minute to get in Germany being a non-EU citizen ... paperwork). There were people playing scams at the luggage pickup ("I saw your friend waiting for you outside." What is your name?" "I will go tell them." If you say your name they will say yes, it is them... and you end up being pressured to take a taxi with their "friend" ... all stuff I am used to traveling in Africa before. It is easier to not get started in conversations with these guys and they move on to the next one.) Outside there was a swarm of crowded people trying to get your attention and you have to be very careful about pickpockets. I got through them. Got in a taxi to the hotel. Then we're off to downtown Bamako. The night guard at the hotel lets me in through the gate, but before I leave I get the taxi drivers phone number for a trip back to the airport at the end of the journey. Then I get to my room with a mosquito net covered bed after midnight, wash up, and try to sleep. It is warm! and I traveled here with a coat and heavy clothes on, the winter coat I had to carry folded under my arm from the airport. I can't sleep of course so I wash my clothes in the sink and hang them to dry on a clothes line on the balcony. I listen to cars and motorcycles go by and people walking and taking at night.

The next day my contact is not there but does appear later in the day (she missed a flight and was delayed getting back to Bamako). We make a plan for the week and I am off in a taxi again to get money changed, and to pick up a sim card for the new phone. Back at the hotel I try out the sim card. It connects but for a long time I am not able to contact V, so I call my brother in the US and ask him to tell V I made it and everything is fine. Almost as soon as I do that I try one last time and get through to V and talk to her and the kids on the phone. We made arrangements to ride with a missionary family in their truck to Mopti-Sevare, leaving 7am (the father/husband can't go because he needs to see a dentist the next day so I get his space in the truck). I get some street food, on the corner you can get bread and spicy meat kebabs with some greens together in a sandwich. Walk around for a bit to take the place in. Repack for the trip tomorrow. Go get some supper at a nearby restaurant (capitan fish, from the Niger, and rice). After dark back at the hotel a small gecko sneaks into the room and I manage to get a picture of it on the ceiling. There are geckos everywhere, once you start looking for them, darting up walls and behind objects.

The next morning I have my bag ready and at the truck before sunrise. We tie everything in the bed in the back. Then four adults and two small girls, the missionaries daughters, get into the extended cab and we are off. We drive northeast all morning, with a short stop for gas, dodging herds of goats, sheep and cattle that are crossing the road and passing donkey carts. We stop at the house of a friend of the missionary family for lunch. When we go in you have to be careful to take your shoes off at the door. We sit around a big bowl filled with rice and with cooked chicken and sauce on top. You eat with your hand out of the bowl. You have to be careful to only eat with your right hand. Touching the bowl with your left hand is insulting. You also eat out of your sector of the bowl, an imaginary pie slice that corresponds to your position. There is an imaginary circle in the center that is shared by all and has most of the meat piled up. You can take food out of this section and add it to your own, but don't take food out of another section. It is insulting to turn anything down and you are expected to eat as much as possible. Here travelers have a "sacred" quality and people are eager to provide for travelers because "they are close to God." It is the opposite of the idea in the US of apologizing to the host for "putting them out." Towards the end of the meal they bring in a huge pile of sliced watermelons for dessert and several older men come in to greet us. You also have to be careful to only shake hands with your right hand and your left hand can be placed to your right elbow (optional, but makes sure you don't touch anyone with your left hand) while shaking hands.

After lunch is finished we move on, it is very hot (which is a welcome change from N. Europe). We put scarves in the windows on the sunward side to provide some shade. We stop at one point to check the radiator. It has a slow leak but has plenty of fluid. One person almost open the cap and I stop them because the engine is hot, and show them the overflow container on the side to check. One funny thing is the air intake hose is long gone and has been replaced locally by a sewn leather tube. I wish I had a picture of it. The landscape is flat and getting drier the father we go. There are baobab trees and termite mounds scattered around. I walk up to one large termite mound that has a tree growing out of it and a bees nest, for collecting honey, is placed in the tree.

I send messages to V a few times with my phone but the gaps between connections are growing. We stop near Djenne and buy some snacks (I get some oranges, peanuts, and small muffins). Then I get a message from V that someone has used our bank card to buy airplane tickets a few days before (before I even left for the trip) in Frankfurt so the card has been suspended. The bank won't talk to her because the account is in my name and insists on talking to me or having a signed form faxed to them, which is impossible. V explains to them I am traveling in Africa and can not be in constant contact but will return next week to take care of everything... Anyway, we have to keep moving, it is getting late and it is dangerous to travel on the roads after dark. We get to Mopti just as the sun is setting. First we stop at the missionaries house and have supper with them and meet the rest of the family. Then there is a shared house my contact has nearby, we walk over and I am given a room. It is sort of a small compound with a locked gate and wall around the place. A small side house and a larger main house. A well and outhouse. The main house has a central room and individual rooms branch off of that with curtains hanging over the doors. There are steps that lead up to a flat roof that I thought of sleeping on because it was much cooler, but I was too tired to set up my tent. There are several Dogon living there and I greet them and have tea with them. We are sitting outside under a mango tree that has green mangos hanging off of it. The tea is fixed in a small silver pot on top of a raised container with coals in it. It is green tea and is brewed very strong, you drink it out of a tiny glass. It is brewed three times from the same leaves and they talk to each other while we wait for it to brew. They are very friendly and one person invites me to the place by saying "You left from your fathers house and came to your fathers house." Later I bring out an orange to eat and they ask if they should get someone to peel it for me, I say no it is fine, this is the way we eat it in the US/Germany, which they seem mildly surprised about. I offer them slices of the orange. They ask many questions about where my parents are living, how many kids I have, how old they are, ... which is an indirect way to ask my age. Age is very important here because it dictates a lot of interactions, such as who can be asked to do things for others. After a while I excuse myself and get some sleep.

The next day we met up with a missionary from Denmark that was visiting and all headed over to Mopti (we are actually staying in the next town, Sevare). It is a bit far to walk so we use local transportation. There is a pickup truck a few blocks away with a driver yelling to people he is going to Mopti. We get in the back and sit on wooden boards that are placed around the sides, and the back of the truck is covered by arched poles that have sticks and small pieces of boards fastened over the top. We are crammed in tight, when the sides fill up some people sat on sacks in the middle, one person across from me is holding some chickens by their legs. We fit eleven people in the back of the small truck. Finally, the driver is satisfied that no one else can possibly fit and, collects money from us and we start toward Mopti. The sides were open so a breeze came through and honestly, having a cool breeze made it more comfortable, despite being crowded, than riding in the closed bus, another option for getting to Mopti. Half way the truck slows down and pulls off to the side. The left front tire has worked its way loose, so they take out a tire iron and start tightening up the lug nuts. Then we roll forward a few feet and they tighten it up some more, all the while other trucks, buses and motorcycles are flying by. Then we get going again and pull into the bus station area in Mopti. We take a taxi through a maze of streets and end up in front of a butcher shop with a bunch of guys hanging around and chunks of meat hanging up and knives laying around. We wind our way past and behind the shop and into the house of a friend of my contact. They invite us inside (remember to take your shoes off at the front door), lay a mat and blanket on the floor for us to sit on, then bring us a large cup (/ small bowl) of water followed by a huge bowel of rice and sauce with cooked fish on top for us to eat out of for lunch. I make a mistake with the water; in Kenya and Ethiopia we often washed our hands with water that was kept outside restaurants in pitchers or brought to us before eating. I thought this might be the same so I washed my hands in the water (including the forbidden left hand) then my contact told me it was for us to drink out of. They were all easy about it however and just laughed and got a fresh bowl of water. While we eat everyone talks to each other in a mix of Fulani and French, when we finish they bring in some peanuts for us to snack on. And the host brings out some jewelry and clothes he sells in the market in town for us to look at. I take the opportunity to get some gifts to take back to my family. Afterward we walk around Mopti a bit. There are a lot of stalls selling things along the banks of the Niger where boats come in to dock. It is very crowded and people are selling all kinds of things, but one thing that catches my eye is slabs of salt that are being cut and sold. The salt is traded from the Timbuktu region to the north. I ask if I can take a picture but am told no. Then back to Sevare in a covered truck, and I make a stop in the local postoffice to pick up some stamps for postcards. Back at the house we get some dinner from town, a huge bowl of rice with meat and sauce on top, I wait for the other people to start eating and no one eats for a while, then my contact tells me that they are waiting for me to start since I am the oldest one present, which completely surprised me. So I sheepishly take the first handful then everyone starts eating. That night I pack minimally for going out to the village over the next few days and plan to leave behind as much as possible at this house (winter coat, gifts, changes of clothes, ...).

The next morning we are off again toward the village I came to visit. One of the people staying at our shared house went off to school early that morning. Before we left he was already back saying the teachers were on strike that day. We walked down to the bus area to get a ride to another small town first, and meet up with some people from the village there (they travel there on market days to sell things from the village). On our way to the bus stop we see a commotion up ahead. A huge crowd is coming and people are getting out of the road. We step off in front of a shop and watch, the crowd is yelling and marching by and I am told it is people that work at the school. They are on strike and protesting. We go on to the bus/van and pay for our spot. We pack into the back again, this time it is much hotter because it is closed on three sides (except for the back entrance). One guy that works for the driver and tied packages to the top of the bus is hanging onto the back. Part way one of the bags comes off the top, we stop and he runs back to get it, brings it back, there is some arguing and inspecting from the owner, and then he ties it back on top. We meet up with contacts from the village and walk around the market for a while. I take the opportunity to ask how to greet people and to thank people in the villages language. There is also lots of dried fish for sale, clothes, fruit and so on. We stop and get lunch, then make some tea, then load up into an old truck the village uses to travel to market, with bags and sheep tied on top, and head out to the village. We stop along the way at several smaller villages and people get on and off with their bags. Finally, just before nightfall we get to the village. It is built of mud bricks up on a cliff on the edge of the valley. There is no electricity and no cell phone reception. I am greeted and welcomed by lots of people. We walk up part of the cliff to get into town, by then it is dark. I set up my tent on a flat area between two houses (to keep mosquitoes away while I'm sleeping). Then the chief comes to visit and we all eat supper together. He seems very nice and via translation tells me I am welcome to the village. I respond by saying thank you in his language, which is a big surprise and big hit as forigners never are able to say anything in their language. We talk for a while then turn in.

The next morning just before sunrise a man brings us a rooster, held upside down by the legs, as a gift and says that he wants to be our friend. In the morning the women walk down to a pool of water in the valley below and fill up huge gourds full of water to carry on their heads back up to the houses in the village. Many of them do this with babies tied to their back and many are also wearing bright color prints. There is a long (by our standards) greeting exchange as they meet each other for the first time each day. In the houses the water is stored in a clay bowl that is covered and water is dipped out to use during the day. Many of the men head out to their fields in the valley carrying tools or working with animals. There are a lot of goat like sheep. There are two wheeled donkey carts for carrying heavy loads around. Everywhere I go the people are very friendly. Fodder for the sheep and goats is kept on the roof of open structures that also provides shade and the younger men sit on mats in the shade and talk and brew tea. I hang out with them for a while. In the middle of the day it is very hot and everyone sort of takes it easy. There are groups of kids running around and they find me fascinating and watch everything I do. If I walk toward them however some of the younger ones are terrified and run away. I search for three small rocks of the right size, and their curiosity grows, then I turn to them and start juggling the rocks, and they chat quickly with each other about it. Then I put the rocks down and later I see them picking them up and trying to juggle them. In the afternoon we walk to the next village and visit there, walking is the only way to get to it, there is no road and the trail is rocky and twists in some points so even a motorcycle would be slowed down. There was a little kid that saw us as we came around a corner and was terrified, I never saw such a small child run so fast. We greet some people in this village that my contact knows and everyone seems to be very nice and friendly. Before we leave to return a man says some kind of blessing for us. On the way back a woman gives us some huge ripe mangoes that she has just collected as a gift. When we return it is getting dark again, we have the rooster for supper over a bed of rice and talk with the chief some more.

The next morning I have to pack to get ready to start the journey back. We have some coffee and I eat a mango (by the way the day before I had the best guava fruit I have ever tasted). I brought some small gifts, one is a hand cranked flashlight that I give directly to the man that gave us the rooster. The rest I give to the chief for him to distribute. Another guy gives me a bag of small hard candy as a gift.

To get back I ride on the back of a motorcycle down the trail and past several other villages until we get to the road. There I wait in the shade on a mat with several other people next to the road. They are curious about me but we can not communicate very well because of language barriers. So I draw in the sand to explain where I am from. I draw an outline of Mali with points for Bamako, Mopti and a point for our present position. Then around that I draw an outline of Africa. Then Europe with France and Germany. I put a point for Paris. This all seems to be understood very well, since Mali was a French colony there is a lot of familiarity with France and Paris. Then I put a dot for Hamburg in Germany and explain with "Allemand." Then I point to myself and connect the dots. Of course they think I am from Germany so I draw the US "Amerique" and connect a line from Hamburg to the US. Then I talk/draw about some other countries I have visited, how cold or hot they are, and so on. While doing this trucks pass by or stop and people get on or off. At the rest stop they are also selling gas with is in glass bottles in a wooden rack by the road. Eventually I meet up with my contact and the chief and we all get in the back of a truck and ride to Mopti. There we go out for dinner with the chief and make arrangements for me to travel back to Bamako.

Early the next morning, before 6, I have my bags packed and am waiting for a motorcycle ride to the bus stop with a guy that is also going to Bamako. The guy oversleeps, I call him at 6:30 and he comes rushing, picks me up and we ride across town to the bus stop. There bags are tied on the top, including a motorcycle toed on top of the bus, and we get in and soon are on the road. There is a cardboard box full of chickens that get loose at some point and provides some entertainment as they are caught and put back in. The bus stops briefly in several towns for people to get on and off. Then we stop for lunch and I buy some sheep stew for me and my travel companion at a roadside diner. Then get a bag of peanuts from a kid selling them next to the road and we load up and are off again. This time there are two men that are arguing about the situation in the Ivory Coast (the former president refuses to step down after the election and there is a standoff, also between two militaries support and could erupt into civil war). The argument ebbs and flows with other people on the bus interjecting comments from time to time. My travel companion seems agitated but doesn't say anything until a certain point then starts yelling and goes on for a long time. Other people on the bus seem to agree with him and make comments, then he seems to get the whole bus going against this one other guy and is making one comment after another that the rest of the bus shouts their agreement with. Then the conversation is over and the original man is quiet and looks out the window. In the late afternoon we suddenly pass another bus that is turned on its side in the road and the bags that were tied on top are spilled all over the side of the bank. The bus stops and everyone gets off to go look at the accident. Then everyone gets back on the bus and we start moving again. After about 20 minutes a truck with sirens goes by heading for the accident. Closer into Bamako there are large fires burning on the hillsides in the distance to clear land for agriculture. Then finally as it is getting dark we wind our way into Bamako and get to the bus stop. Then I get my bags and a taxi and we split up on the way into town. I am staying at the original hotel and he is staying with a friend of his.

The next morning I run some errands and travel around Bamako a bit. I take several taxis between points but I have plenty of time and walk back across the bridge over the Niger on foot. I get some street food and repack everything and then call the taxi of the man that brought me from the airport. He picks me up to take me back to the airport. I check in, get through security and passport checks then as it gets dark I am waiting for the overnight plane back to Paris then a connection on to Hamburg.

It is cold when I get back with snow on the ground...

Also, in Decemebr we had Christmas, which M had a lot of fun decorating for, and T's 12th birthday. He decided to wear his pajamas the entire day and had a lot of fun with silly string, opening presents and a cake.

(I will add pictures next)