Burkina Faso and Mali

Things that have been interesting about an overland trip through francophone africa include -

Burkina--

learning that there is something more endearing about being heckled in french than in english.

after straining to catch a few words of Twi for 5 months, feeling like I practically speak french (which I don't, by the way). I think I irritated my austrian host in Ouagadougou (from couchsurfing.com; she has moved to burkina, in part, to force herself to learn french) by extrapolating from english and spanish and understanding almost as much as she (who has been studying furiously).

people in burkina didn't seem to feel particularly shy about looking at hardcore porn in an internet cafe. In fact, [as i wrote this part of the blog a week ago] the guy next to me is watching porn right now. And the other night the guy next to me was too. I think that's 2 out of 5 internet cafe visits in burkina including immediately adjecent porn. God knows what everyone else in there is doing.

maybe i just haven't fully grasped the intricacies of french language yet, but french keyboards are spectacularly nonsensical. why would you make it so that you have to push SHIFT to get a normal period? I know they use periods in french. And the ( is on the 5 key, while the ) is on a key to the right of the 0. And there is this special Alt Gr key (in addition to Shift, Alt, and Ctrl) that you have to use to access things like the @ symbol, which definitely took me 3 internet cafe visits to figure out.

Mali --

So. I arrived in Mali last wednesday night. Given that the general theme of my time in Africa is "an odd odd world," I decided to stay with some of my father's patients. My father is a pediatrician in Baltimore. Why shouldn't he have patient's in Bamako? Well, this American ex-peace-corps woman and her Ivoire-ian husband moved to Baltimore some years ago when the war broke out. They then moved to Bamako, where she works with some program related to the JHU school of public health. Apparently, while they were in Baltimore for a month or so this past summer, my galavanting came up, an offer to host was made, and the lesson was learned never to offer to host me if you don't want me showing up no matter where you live in the world.

Subtitle: an Expatabulous Thanksgiving

The night after my arrival I was invited, by my host family, to a Thansgiving potluck. It was being held at the palacial home of an American woman (national head of USAID) and Malian man (physician, head of NIH programs in Mali). The expat community here isn't that big, and everyone is Someone, it seems. It was all yankees, a few brits (BBC correspondants and such), their spouses, and a veritable regiment of "metisse" (mestizo/mixed) children of various shades tumbling around the yard (basketall court, pool), being watched by their African nannies, while we big kids sipped wine and beverages from the open bar and enjoyed the finer aspects of post-colonial west african life. Odd. From the roof of their house there was a spectacular view of their neighborhood -- ACI 2000 -- an upscale area of mansions and hotels sprouting out of scrub brush, each flanked by dusty lots, boasting only bits of incomplete construction, make-shift football (soccer) posts and occasional thatch walled hovels.

When I came to Mali, I was planning to come through Bamako for a day or so, stop at the project's offices here, then head to Segou, a few hours east, where MVP has another site to inspect, and then do half a week or so of touristy stuff (either go to Dogon Country - a unique ethnic area of Mali, or Timbuktu - perennial target of travellers since time immemorial). Then I was going to debate with myself whether to spring for a one way flight back to Ghana, or cheap out and take the 40+ hours of buses back.

Well, instead of these grand plans, I've ended up staying in Bamako and working. It happens. Even so, it feels like a vacation. After rural Ghana, Bamako is like Paris. French. Baguettes. Art shows. Runs along the riverside (Niger, not Seine).

Guided by Guen, the master's student from Columbia Teacher's College who has been working at the MVP offices here for about 2 months, I've quickly fallen in with something of the young expat scene here, which involves employees of innumerable NGOs, whose french acronyms rarely mean anything to me, californian peace corp-ers, international school teachers and a smattering of assistant attaches and other such dipomatic folk. Languages heard include english, french, bambara and even spanish, spoken gladly last night at Karaoke (yup) when the Dutch PhysEd teacher from the American International School of Bamako (who has 4 years in ecuador, but only 3 months in Mali and whose mastery of spanish and french reflect such experience) stopped by.

Not surprisingly, Toto's "Africa," or the chinese synthesizer version available in Malian karaoke, was a big hit.

I'll be sad to leave tomorrow to take 3 days of buses back to the bush. But it looks like my plans for the new year have been shaping up and I might find myself back in Mali before too long.

So here's the likely deal:
Flying back to NYC on December 18th.
Somewhere on the eastern seaboard between York, Maine and Baltimore through the holidays.
Working in the NYC MVP offices for the week of January 7th.
Flying back to Bamako mid January for a few more weeks work a the offices here.
Continuing to the MVP site in Mbola, Tanzania until next summer.
I might try to fit in some tourism along the way (dreaming of Madagascar and Reunion)

Who wants in?