It hasn’t even been 10 hours since we arrived back in Bamako, but I’m so eager to commit my memory of our Morocco trip to writing that even having recovered little from our red-eye flight I will attempt to do so now. Nora and I had left Bamako last Monday at 3:30 am, arriving in Casablanca at 7. With 6 hours to kill before the arrival of Nora’s sister, Sarah, and her boyfriend, we hopped a train into the center of town with the intention of eating breakfast and heading to the Grand Mosque. We were a bit disoriented, and so [View Full Entry]

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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 f [View Full Entry]

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Nora chided me the last time she read my blog for always claiming shock at how long it’s been since my last entry. It’s a genuine sentiment, though. Perhaps I’m easy to shock, or perhaps the notion that I have of myself as a regular blogger is woefully misplaced. In any case, wow, it’s been a long time since my last entry! When I look back over the past three weeks, one of the only defining things that comes to mind is the heat. It is ridiculously hot these days! Hundreds during the day, 80 degrees at night. As it gets [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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I realize that it’s been quite some time since my last entry, and though I have been quite busy in that interim, when I catalog the events of those weeks, only a few things stand out. But, boy, do they stand out. More on that in a bit. Since my last writing, I’ve been up to my ears in research. I’ve received over a thousand pages of questionnaire data from collection here in Mali, which represents not quite half of what I will end up with. I’ve also been collecting online survey data from students back in the U.S., and with [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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After what has felt like a short amount of time in Bamako, I’m headed off early tomorrow morning to Mopti (a 10-hour bus ride), where I’ll meet Nora, who has been in Tominion. The next day, Christmas Eve in fact, we’ll head off to Hombori (a 4-hour ride) together to meet our friends, who are visiting from Durham. I know that I have expressed it repeatedly, but I can’t say it enough just how unbelievable it is that it’s the winter holiday season back home. The sense of timelessness here is so thorough that I often have to pause and consider [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Well Thanksgiving is already upon us, and I can barely believe it. I would just as soon forget that it is, but Nora keeps reminding me that it’s her favorite holiday (it took me a while, but I got the hint that I can’t let this day go unobserved). Even knowing the month (and keeping track of that has been surprisingly difficult in this backwater that is Niono) is hardly a marker for the passage of time as one day looks remarkably like another. We don’t have big plans for today, and what plans we do have Nora’s made for us. [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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