Blood in the streets

It's been a busy few weeks for me here in Bamako.  A few weeks ago (September 20th, to be exact) it was the end of Ramadan, which is marked by a huge feast to commemorate the end of a month of fasting.  Everybody gets dressed up in new clothes that they have made for the fête (French for "party"), and they visit friends and family and share a gigantic meal. I guess you could compare it to Christmas in the States in terms of importance.  Seeing as my wife and I aren't Muslim, it didn't hold a lot of significance for us although she was given Monday off, and Tuesday was Malian Independence day.  Hey, four day weekend for her.  It was cool to see everyone celebrating around town.

The most memorable thing from the weekend was the mass slaughtering of cattle that took place on the Saturday before the end of Ramadan.  Everyone is expected to sacrifice a cow for the feast.  Driving around town that day was a pretty wild scene.  There were people out everywhere slaughtering their sacrificial  cow.  It seemed like every few blocks a couple of guys were chopping up a cow with great vigor, and as the day went on I think I was literally able to smell the stench of death in the air.

It's pretty expensive to buy your own cow, so people will pool their money to buy a cow and then share the sacrifice.  At my wife's office, they were passing the hat so she threw in a few bucks as a show of solidarity.  Of course, that bought us a few pounds of fresh beef for ourselves.  My wife went to the office to pick up our beef mid-day on Saturday and came home with a plastic shopping bag full of our share.  Bear in mind that when they slaughter a cow for food, they use everything.   Some pieces were really, really tough, and we also got a piece of the heart, which we opted to give to our neighbors as I'm sure they appreciated it more that we would have.  We marinated some cuts and grilled them later that night.  The meat was tough, even after some tenderizing and a few hours of marinating, but it wasn't bad.  I can say with confidence that it was the freshest beef I've ever had.

The next day my wife's boss invited us over to his house for the big feast on Sunday.  My wife stayed at home with his wife and family while she prepared the meal, and her boss drove me around the neighborhood to greet various people that he knew.  It was fun, although a little strange.  My French is coming along a bit, yet that was no help since everyone was speaking to each other in Bambara, the local language.  We'd show up at somebody's house, exchange greetings in French, and then I'd sit down and listen to them talk for twenty minutes about whatever until we left and went to the next person's house.  Everyone was super nice and I really felt welcomed in each home.  The meal, which we had later that day, was excellent as well.  They slow-cook the beef in a pot for hours so it's very juicy and tender, and the rice and sauce that go with it are spectacular.  It's like pot roast to the nth degree.

For the trip to her boss' house , my wife got dressed up in a boubou - check it out:

I wore a button-up shirt and khakis.  No picture was taken.

In some exciting personal news, I've started working.  Finding work locally is just not happening, so I've turned to the internet to help me find contract work as a technical writer with some success.  It's a bit strange to be working on a project with someone whom I never see or actually speak with.  The work has been really interesting and a bit challenging.  I'm still trying to figure out how full my schedule actually is, since I'm paid on an hourly basis and and when I finish a project, or part of it, I don't have anything to do until I hear more from whoever I'm working for.  That makes for some short workdays at times, but on the whole I've been enjoying it thus far.

I've also started playing bass with a few other expats.  I brought my bass guitar back with me after home leave, figuring I'd have the time to work on my skills and maybe find some opportunities to play.  The group I'm playing with is made up of a German drummer and alto saxophonist and a British pianist.  They want to play jazz which means I've had to dig into an old instructional book I have on playing walking bass lines.  I've never really learned how to play bass that way and it's something I've always wanted to do.  With my current situation, I have the time to practice and a good group of musicians to practice with.  So far we're playing some pretty basic songs ("Take 5," "Georgia On My Mind," "The Chicken," and "Caravan") which is fine by me since I have a lot of work to do to get my chops in order.

Finally, I was able to get a bike, or at least most of the parts of a bike.  Thanks to a connection I have here, I got the frame and most of the necessary components of a Trek 820 mountain bike.

The bike is in solid shape, so I just need to find a way to get the parts I need together and have them shipped over here.  Quality bike parts simply can't be found here, so if I can get some decent-level stuff off ebay or craigslist, that will be fine.  It'll cost a little bit to get what I need shipped from the States, but it's no biggie since it will be great to have a bike to get around town with.  There's a group of guys that go mountain biking on Saturday morning in the hills outside of town, too.  I'm sure I'll be able to sell the bike for whatever cost I put into it whenever we leave here.  You just can't find decent-quality bikes in Bamako.

Oh, and today I picked up a package from my Aunt Noreen in the States.  Ah, the delicacies that were found within!  Cheez Wiz, spices for making Italian beef, a box of macaroni and cheese, and a few popular culture magazines such as "People" and "The National Enquirer."  Thanks, Aunt Noreen!

Fun at the ol' swimmin' hole

On Saturday, my wife and I and some friends took a trip outside the city to an area near Sibi, which is about a forty-five minute drive west of Bamako. The trip out there is pretty easy once you get out of the congestion of the city, thanks to a very nicely-paved road. Our plan was to do some hiking in the morning, have a picnic lunch, and then go for a swim at a nearby waterfall.

Upon arriving at the park entrance, we paid a small admission fee and met up with our guide for the day. There aren't any clearly marked trails in the area, so we needed his help to get up the arch and to the waterfall. After exchanging pleasantries with the other men working at the entrance, we were off.

Our friend Lynda drove us all in her SUV, so we used that to get up the road towards the natural arch. The road was pretty bad in spots and there's no way our ACME-provided Toyota Corolla would have made the trip without a broken axle or three. After about a fifteen minute drive, we started our short hike to the base of the natural bridge and our eventual destination - the top of it.

Here's a shot of the natural bridge from below, before we got started the climb:

and here's my wife and I, to offer a sense of scale:

See, it's only about twenty feet tall. Actually, no, I'd guess the top of the arch was several hundred feet above where this picture was taken. The hiking wasn't too difficult and thankfully we were in the shade a fair amount, circling amongst the rock formations as we made our way higher and higher.

We had a little bit of climbing to do, but nothing outrageous.

Once we made it to the top, we had a fantastic view of the Niger river valley stretched out below us.

This shot above is looking east, with the Niger River off to the right and the bluffs on the left stretching all the way back to Bamako. The scenery reminded me of Utah, only a lot greener thanks to the rainy season.

After enjoying the view and the cool breezes atop the bridge, we made our way back down and embarked on the forty-five minute drive to the waterfall. The road was probably one of the worst roads I've ever been on. We drove through small rivers, sand pits, and mud puddles on a deeply rutted dirt road. After about twenty minutes, the novelty of off-roading started to wear off and I think most people in the SUV were wondering if we were ever going to get there and once we did, was it going to be worth it?

When we finally arrived, we were greeted with this view:

It's not really the sort of image I'd associate with hot, dusty Mali. The pool was roughly ten feet deep on the right side and about three feet on the left side, which made it ideal for swimming in the strong current from the falls and then relaxing in the shallows

Apart from some locals who came to watch the crazy white people go swimming, we had the place to ourselves. The falls were running strongly thanks to three days of heavy rain and the temperature of the water was perfect.

We ate lunch on the rocks and swam for a few hours, and then made our way home mid-afternoon, exhausted from a long day outdoors.

Ah, the rainy season

We're in the midst of the rainy season, which means a lot of rain (obviously), mosquitoes, and humid weather. Personally, I enjoy a hearty thunderstorm every once in a while and we've had more than our fair share over the past month. On Monday, I was working on my laptop during an especially heavy rain. Every ten minutes or so, I'd think, "Wow, it's really coming down out there" and then return to whatever it was I was working on. It wasn't until I got up to go get a drink from the kitchen that I noticed some water staring to come in underneath the front door. I quickly moved what few things that were on the living room floor onto the furniture. Once I got the the kitchen, I was surprised to see water seeping in under the back door as well. Again, I took whatever was on the floor and moved it onto some shelves. As I headed back toward the front of the house, the water was steadily filling the room and now covered most of the floor. By this point I started running around the house, grabbing everything I could off the floor, shutting off the circuit breakers, and unplugging whatever was plugged into the wall sockets.

Within five minutes, the entire house was flooded to a depth of an inch or two. Outside, the situation was even worse. All around the house the water was at least a foot deep and the street in front of the house was a fast-moving river. The disgusting part was that all the water that had flooded the house was coming in off the street, so there was mud, leaves, and who knows what else flowing around inside our place. I took some old towels and jammed them under the leaky doorframes in the side and back of the house to try and stem the flooding.

Fortunately, the heavy rain stopped after about ten minutes and the water inside the house never got any higher than that initial inch or two. My wife soon arrived home from work and we started the long process of cleaning up. We spent most of the night clearing all the water out of the house and cleaning up the mud and sediment that was left behind. It made for a long, tiring evening but we got a good start on things. By around 8pm, the house was relatively dry. Thankfully, all our floors are tile so there wasn't any worry about flooring getting damaged, and I was at home when the flooding started so I could clear everything off the floor. We didn't lose anything to water damage. I spent all day Tuesday sweeping and mopping the floors down with bleach to clean it up. Oh, and I escorted a frog out of the house on Monday night, too.

We were pretty fortunate, all told, and things could have been a lot worse especially if there had been no one at home. We got some sandbags to help seal up the leaky doorframes so that should help things from getting bad again in the event of another downpour. I confess that during heavy rainfall over the past few nights, I find myself waking up and checking to see if the house is flooding again. Rainy season should be over at the end of September so there isn't much longer that I'll have to worry about this.

I'm over my bout with malaria, though it's taken a while to get my energy back again. Oddly enough, my wife came down with malaria the week after I had it. Maybe we were bit by the same mosquito. She's just about over her malaria, too, though it did sap a lot of our energy.

I substituted at the American school yesterday. In the morning I taught a middle-school English class about literary hyperbole, then supervised economics and algebra classes, and taught some high schoolers how to play the Beyonce song "Halo" on guitar for their music class. The day finished up with me watching part of "An American Tail III: The Treasure of Manhattan Island" with a class of second graders in the library. All in a day's work for a sub, I guess.

Jungle Fever

Honestly, every time I think to myself, "Boy, I really don't have anything interesting to write about in my blog this week," I end up having some kind of nightmarish experience that proves to be more far more "interesting" than anything else that's gone on in the past few months. This time around, I got malaria. No joke.

Now, before coming to Africa, I knew all about the precautions one should take to prevent getting malaria:

• take anti-malarial medication (check - I'm on doxycycline, a pill that I take once a day)
• sleep under a mosquito net (check)
• cover your skin while outside after sundown to prevent mosquito bites (check - plus, I don't spend a lot of time outdoors after dark anyway)

While I was on home leave, I made sure to keep taking my pills just in case malaria symptoms showed up, and to also keep the medication levels in my blood at a high enough level so it wouldn't take time to build back them up again when I returned to Bamako.

So, when I had a mild headache last Thursday morning and felt not quite myself, I figured I had eaten some food that was slightly off, which is not an uncommon occurrence. Or maybe I had caught some little flu bug that was going around. I took my temperature throughout the day and it was hovering between 99 and 100, which really isn't that high, and it didn't seem to be going up. Later that day, after a nap, I felt better and whatever trace of a fever I had was gone.

The same thing happened on Friday. Woke up, didn't feel right, had a tiny bit of a fever, just a hint of nausea, a few aches and pains, but that was it. They never seemed to get worse, and the temperature would come and go. My wife strongly encouraged me to go to get tested for malaria, but I thought that if I had malaria, the symptoms would present themselves and get worse. Instead I felt like I was being teased by them. Again, by the afternoon the symptoms were gone. I was on the medication, I'm taking all the steps to prevent getting bitten, so what did I have to worry about?

On Saturday and Sunday, I felt fine. Totally fine. "Well, whatever that was, I'm glad it's over with," I thought. That Sunday night, though, I started having terrible headaches. They were so strong that they would wake me up. Now I started to wonder if something was up because I almost never get headaches, especially ones so bad they wake me up.

So, Monday morning I headed off to the clinic to get tested for malaria. My wife met me there and helped with translating since I was having a hard time thinking straight due to these headaches. The clinic was clean and relatively modern - after a bit of a wait, they brought me into an exam room and took a tiny blood sample to run the test. The nurse asked me all kinds of questions and took my temperature. I didn't have any of the usual symptoms such as the chills, high fever, digestive problems, cough, runny nose, etc. It takes about a half hour for them to do the test, so I met with the doctor while I was waiting.

He was very nice and spoke excellent English which was a blessing. He, too, didn't see many symptoms and was wondering if my eyeglasses were bad, or if there was some other reason why I would be having headaches. While he went to get the test results, I asked my wife if she seriously thought I had malaria. She said no, and I said I didn't think so either. How could I have gotten it? We haven't been back here that long, I take the pills every day, I don't remember being bitten at all in the past few weeks... it didn't add up.

So, you can imagine our surprise when the doctor came back and said that yes indeed, I tested positive. I guess the anti-malarial medication was keeping my symptoms at a minimum, but it was definitely in my blood. He wrote me a prescription for some medicine to take care of the malaria, told me to take Tylenol and Advil for the headaches, and said I should come back on Friday for another test to see if I still have it.

As soon as that night, I started feeling better. I finished taking the medicine last night and after getting up this morning and not taking anything, the only effects I still feel are that my eyeballs are a little sore. Otherwise I feel fine. Normal appetite, no headaches, fever, chills, etc.

What's so strange is that here, malaria isn't treated as a big deal. 500 million people a year are infected with it and one million of those go on to die from it, so it's not some unknown disease. Yet when people in Africa talk about having it, it seems to be regarded about the same as getting chicken pox. I suppose that's because it's so common here and it's so easy to get treatment for it. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm incredibly lucky because under different circumstances, I could be in the hospital or worse right now. I'm very fortunate that things didn't get any more serious for me and the cure is as simple as taking some pills twice a day for a few days.

At any rate, I'm feeling much better, and I guess that years from now when I'm seated in my wingback chair, filling my pipe with tobacco, and getting ready to regale my visitors with tales from my life, I can get a faraway look in my eye and say, "Back when I had malaria in west Africa..."

Back from home leave

After a little over a month away, I'm back in Bamako. While surprisingly stressful at times, my home leave was great. I ate a lot of food, did a lot of shopping, and was busy with various social engagements for almost the entirety of the trip.

My wife and I went to Munich for almost a week before heading back to the states. Munich is a fantastic place to visit. The city is very walkable, there's plenty of public transportation available, and lots of people speak English which is pretty handy. We had a nice hotel near the city center and spent a lot of time walking around the city, seeing the sights and enjoying some nice weather. We rented bikes one day and rode around most of Munich which was cool, and we took a train up into the mountains to stay in a small town for a night. After living in Africa for a year, it was a trip to go someplace where everything worked, ran on schedule, and the streets were clean, clean, clean.

After Munich, we spent a night in Paris which was... okay. I've never been super excited about visiting Paris so I guess I had low expectations going into my time there. I saw all the things you're supposed to see like the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Arc De Triumph, etc, but it was kind of like seeing Washington DC; having seen it all, I don't feel a need to ever go back to see it again. There were also a million tourists there and admission to everything was really expensive. It felt more like visiting an amusement park instead of one of the world's great cities. Later that night we went to Montmarte and had dinner in a less touristy area of the city which was better, but still - I wasn't as entranced by Paris the way that so many other people are.

A week after leaving Bamako, we headed back to the states. There were doctors to visit, mail to open, shopping to do, friends to see, and food to eat. Boy, did I eat. I gained ten pounds in the last month which is no small feat for me. Yes, I had White Castle (thanks, Nora, for bringing me some on Saturday) as well as a lot of other trashy food. It was really good. Even things like Cheerios, ice cream, or PB&J on wheat bread tasted amazing.

Other highlights from my time at home, in no particular order:

• going to a White Sox game (thanks Kevin)
• playing hockey a handful of times
• spending some time with my wife in downtown Chicago
• going sailing with my in-laws
• seeing my old house in Chicago - it's been foreclosed on! Whoa.
• enjoying sub-70F temperatures
• scoring a ton of great shirts for cheap at Village Discount in Chicago

And, of course, it was great to talk to and spend time with everyone that I did. Sorry to those that I didn't get to see or spend a lot of time with while I was home. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I was busy just about every waking moment while in Chicago.

We're looking to come back home this Christmas, and the next time we're back I hope to do a better job of setting up times to visit people so my time can be more relaxing than stressful.

If you'll excuse me, I think it's nap time. Getting over this jet lag can be rough.

Random Thoughts Before Embarking

We leave tomorrow night for our home leave, and my wife and I are pretty jazzed. Mali has been a great place to be these past three months but we're both looking forward to time in Europe and the US. We've both been online shopping up a storm, purchasing things we need (and want) so they'll be waiting for us when we arrive back home in just over a week.

What follows are the thoughts and experiences I've had over the past two-ish weeks:

• Last Friday was my last meeting with the students from the YES program. I was working intensively with a few kids who needed help with their English and we focused on lots of reading and listening exercises. It was cool to get to know them a little more personally over the past few weeks. It's possible that I'll see all of the students in the airport since they're flying out to the US on the same day that I return from home leave.
  


• I've begun experimenting with making my own pad thai. There's lots of Asian food to be found in the grocery stores here - key ingredients such as fish sauce, rice noodles, and tamarind aren't too tough to locate. I bought a cheap wok for around $10 from the Chinese supermarket located downtown. The first batch of pad thai I made almost killed my wife and I. We both lapsed into sodium-overdose comas about twenty minutes after we ate and I drank enough water to drown a fish once I woke up. The next batch was better, but I still have a ways to go before I'll go around telling people that I can whip up a mean pad thai.
  


• In other food-related news, a Vietnamese sandwich stand has opened up not too far from our house. For 500cfa (about $1), I can get a pretty tasty sandwich. It's made on French bread and has a little ground beef, a few cold cuts, some lettuce, tomato, and onion, and it's seasoned with ketchup, soy sauce, hot sauce, and a few other ingredients that I can't readily identify. For a buck, it's pretty filling and I have it at least once a week for lunch.
  


• On Saturday my wife and I went on a canoe trip down the Niger River with a few friends. It was nice to get out of the city and the heat wasn't too oppressive. One stretch of the river has some rapids which were fun to navigate our way through. Lots of locals said hi and waved as we passed by. Man, most everyone we meet in Mali is super nice. It's great.
  


• The dry season is winding down here - it seems like it rains at least every other day and the dirt roads are getting pretty rough. Hopefully by the time we get back from our home leave, we'll have missed out on the humidity of the dry-season-to-rainy-season transition.

Counting down the days

Things have been pretty slow for me the past few weeks in Bamako. I don't have much in the way of exciting news to report - sorry. I'm still trying to find full-time work out here. I was hoping to find work at the US Embassy but they're in a time of transition this summer. From what I understand, US foreign service workers change their posts every two to three years and the way the schedules have worked out here, there's a turnover of 70% of the embassy employees. They're all leaving for new posts soon or have already left. That means that lots of programs are finishing up and no new ones are starting. Most departing employees I talk to say that there will be positions opening up in the next few months once the new staff arrives and settles in. If nothing comes through at the embassy, I'm also looking seriously into working remotely doing contract tech writing, web design, instructional design, etc. The web connection here has been solid and the speeds are good enough that I would feel comfortable working with customers on some projects.

In the meantime, I've been spending some time working with a group of Youth Exchange and Study (YES) students. The YES program is run by the US State Department and offers students from significantly Muslim countries such as Mali the chance to study in America for a year. Almost every Saturday for the past few months, I'll talk with the 15 or so students who have been chosen for the program about life in America and what they can expect when they arrive in the US in August.

It's been pretty cool. All of the students will be in the US for their junior year of high school and they're all bright kids. Their English is excellent, to the point where I'd never guess that some of them weren't native speakers. So far we've talked about food and restaurants, sports, life in high school, American cities, as well as going off on countless tangents. There isn't a set curriculum that I'm teaching from - I'm more providing them with the opportunity to ask questions about America and get used to listening to an American speak in English for a few hours at a time.

This Saturday I'm going to talk with them about music in America and what happens when kids "go out" with their friends on the weekend. Starting next week, I'll meet with the students three times a week and in addition to covering the nuances of American culture, I'll go over basic American history and government. There was a good documentary out last year called "American Teen" that was shot in Warsaw, Indiana. I'd like to show them parts of that so they can get one (very Midwestern) perspective on what high school in America is like.

In the back of my mind, though, my wife and I are thinking about our upcoming home leave. We've finalized our travel schedule and will be spending a week in Munich, a night in Paris, and then heading back home for several weeks. There's shopping lists to put together, doctor and dentist appointments to be made, and dining options to be considered. Will I go to White Castle just once, or multiple times? Will Buona beef taste even better than I remembered it? Will my body go into shock from ingesting so much trashy food? In a little over four weeks, I'll find out.