Two and a half weeks removed from Senegal, I admit feeling rather disinclined to document our vacation there. Not that it was not a great time. The weather was terrific (about 20 degrees cooler than here), the nearly deserted beaches of Popenguine and Toubab Dialaw were fabulous, and even the pushy vendors of Dakar could not detract from its cosmopolitan flair. But something about returning to noisy, dirty, smoggy Bamako felt good, familiar. Of course, I’m ready for another vacation at this point. There have been a couple of noteworthy developments since our return. For one, we have found ourselves as the unwitting employers of child laborers. It sounds bad, I know, but it is not what we intended. When we came back from Senegal, Nora’s laundry lady came to use immediately with two electricity bills ... read more

I settled down to write a long entry chronicling the myriad things that have happened since my last post, but now that I’m at the keyboard, I feel like that task is too daunting—a lot has happened! Instead, I feel more inclined to give just a brief look back at the past three weeks. In that time Nora and I went to the Festival on the Niger, had Nora’s parents and brother visit us, traveled to Dogon country, and returned to Bamako with the first wave of hot season sweeping over us. Now, those three weeks of activity and heat seem quite distant. Nora has since departed for North Carolina along with her family to attend the funeral of her grandfather, leaving me in quiet solidarity. Moreover, the weather has changed yet again. The days have ... read more

Well, this is my third day back in Bamako, and though I have felt compelled to write since I’ve been back, it’s been a bit of whirlwind. First things first, though. On December 23rd I took the bus to Sevare, which is a small city next to Mopti and is the main starting point for Dogon country expeditions. The day started out smoothly. My taxi driver arrived on time (6 am). The bus left only 15 minutes late (7:15 am), and it was a new bus company that only admits passengers from planned stops, meaning that we would not be stopping repeatedly by the side of the road throughout the trip and that the bus would not be ridiculously crowded with people sitting and standing in the aisle. Nevertheless, I had a particularly gassy seatmate, and ... read more

Wow, it’s been far too long since my last post. As I recall, we were still in Niono when I last wrote. That was two weeks ago, at which point the slow pace of life was starting to drive us to restlessness. We were also embroiled in a bit of a conflict, for Nora’s supervisor/logistics coordinator was staging a coup, refusing to send us a transport back from Niono even though her supervisors had agreed upon this arrangement. By the time the weekend of November 30th had rolled around, we had made up our minds to take a bus back, although we were not too happy about this considering the number of irreplaceable documents that we would be forced to stash under the bus and that it would nearly double the travel time to 8 hours. ... read more

Today is our sixth day in Niono, and, I must say, it has grown on me. Last Tuesday, Nora and I woke up at 5:30 in order to be ready to leave by 6am, but that didn’t happen. We probably should have expected that given all of the delays that we had experienced leading up to that day. When the Save The Children SUV finally pulled up to our house at 7:15, it was a relief that the much talked about trip was finally happening. Getting out of Bamako proved to be the tedious part. We navigated through morning traffic for what seemed like an hour before we finally hit the open road. And when I say/write “open road,” I mean it. Even though the way to Niono first leads to Segou, a relatively large city ... read more