Confession of an Idiot

That would be me, the idiot.  A few days ago I made a quick trip a couple blocks away to the little market. 
The little market isn’t very big, as its name implies, and so there isn’t as much to be found there as in the big market, but if I only need a few basic things it’s great because I can walk there and do my shopping quickly.  This day I was looking to buy some peanut butter (just ground peanuts really, sold in any desired quantity out of a big tub), some dried fish (I boil this and feed it to my dog and cat), and some hot peppers (no meal here is complete without throwing one of them into the sauce). 
Malians are super friendly, so it’s normal that I would be greeted over and over as I made my way between the seller’s tables.  I came to a halt as two people in front of me were blocking my path and smiling widely at me.  They started greeting me and I suddenly realized that this wasn’t just a random greeting, but they seemed to know who I was and though I thought they looked sort of familiar, I really didn’t know who I was looking at.  But that happens fairly often.  It’s easier to remember who the one white lady is in the sea of black faces.  So of course I smiled back and did my appropriate greetings.  They were a mother and daughter by my guess.  Before we each continued on our ways the daughter asked me “Aunty, can I come to visit you soon?”  and I said “Of course, no problem.”  I went on and kind of forgot all about this episode until yesterday when I was home alone and there was a knock on our gate.  I went to the gate and asked who was there.  “It’s Suzanne.  Remember I said I was coming to visit?”  I opened the gate and saw that it was the girl from the market. 
Shoot, why hadn’t I asked Jean-Patrick who she could have been?  But then, the chances aren’t very good that I would have been able to describe the mom and daughter well enough for him to figure out who they were.  “Well, they were African, wearing African clothes, sort of looked like everyone else in the market…”
So I welcomed Suzanne into the house (knowing her name didn’t help at all) and gave her a cup of water to drink as we sat down on the couch to visit.  Ok, so I need to chat and try to figure out how I know this girl (or how she knows me as it would seem) without her realizing that I have no idea who she is.  So asking her last name is out.  Probably I shouldn’t ask her if she goes to church or where she goes to school, because maybe she goes to my church or is a student at our school.  On top of feeling limited as to the questions I could ask, this girl was not very talkative.  It turned into a lot of sitting in silence and looking around the room.  It’s so much easier when I have groups of girls come to visit; if I am one of 5 people in the room I only have 20% of the responsibility to make conversation.
I came up with a brilliant idea.  “Can I take your picture?”  Sometimes people love to have their picture taken.  I asked to take a picture of Fanta my clothes-washing-lady once, and now whenever she has new clothes made she comes over in them and asks me to take her picture.  I figured that if I had a picture of Suzanne I could show it to Jean-Patrick and he could tell me who I had been entertaining. 
So we went outside and I took her picture.  Then I asked her if she wanted to come back in for a while or if she was ready to head home.  Thankfully she said she was ready to go.  I offered to walk with her part of the way.  So we walked a bit, and she volunteered that her family was staying at the base.  Ok, so she has some connection to our base.  Good, this is one piece of the puzzle.  Then she mentioned something about Douentza, which is a town in the north that is not safe to be in because of the problems in the North of Mali.  Oh!  I think this all makes sense now!  She is the daughter in a family that normally lives up north!  Wow, I solved it just before parting ways with her.  So I guess I have met her before, but should I really feel bad that I didn’t know who she was?  We have meetings only once or twice a year where all of our group’s families come together, and then there are 80 people there, so it’s hard to remember every person that I briefly meet.  And as I said before, it’s a lot easier to remember the one white lady, the one who sticks out in the crowd.  But I definitely felt like a big idiot even if I think I did do a good job of not letting on that I had no clue who she was.  Would it have been better to just say right from the start “I’m sorry, how do I know you?”  What would you have done?

travel adventures

My trip from Minnesota to Mali was really good.   Highlights for me were my last 2 American meals:  breakfast of an egg and cheese biscuit sandwich in Chicago, and a big burrito in Washington D.C. ( I really miss Mexican food when I’m in Mali!)  I enjoyed my last experience of being able to recognize everything on the menu and then getting my food immediately after ordering (some of you are anti-fastfood and don’t think that’s such a good thing, but when I’ll be spending several hours every day working in the kitchen and not getting instant food for another 2 years, I had no qualms about it)  Ok, so besides the good food, I also enjoyed watching a couple of movies on my long flight.  I could have made a bigger effort to sleep on the plane, but I usually can’t sleep well while traveling anyway. 
I was supposed to have 3 hours in Dakar between flights to check through customs and get my passport stamped, go find my baggage on the carousel, go out of the airport and back in through different doors to check in for my next flight.  Three hours would have been plenty of time.  The only problem was that my plane was delayed for 2 hours in Washington, D.C. and so by the time I got to Dakar there was only 1 hour before the plane was scheduled to take off (so maybe 35 minutes before boarding).  I was sure I was going to miss the flight.  I got through customs as quickly as possible, luckily there weren’t big lines and the officers didn’t hassle me.  I rushed to the baggage claim, grabbed a rolling cart (they’re free in every African airport I’ve been to) and waited impatiently for my 2 big checked bags to come by.  The first one showed up – a regular rectangular rolling zippered suitcase.  I waited for the next one.  I had thought I was so clever to pack all my heavy and unbreakable things in a cheap bag from Mali.  These bags can be found in any market and only cost $2-3.  They are a sort of woven plastic and people here travel with them all the time.  The reason that I thought it was clever to pack in this sort of bag is that it only weighs a few ounces.  A regular suitcase can weigh 8-12 pounds, and that is 8-12 pounds less of my stuff that I can bring in the allotted 50 pounds per bag.  Sounds like a good plan, right?  Well, it turned out to be a terrible plan when I found my cheap bag burst open and my clothes and things in sight coming toward me on the carousel.  It had all been stuffed into a clear plastic trash bag by the airport workers, and was sure to tear open again.  I didn’t have time to freak out and rummage through my things to figure out what was missing.  And I was sure that there would be things missing; I was trying to remember everything I had packed in that bag.  I just had to get it on the cart and get out of the airport so I could get back in the airport to check in for my next flight which could already be boarding by this point.  I pushed the cart out with a little detour before the door: they made me send all of my bags through an x-ray machine before exiting the airport.  This makes no sense to me unless they want to assure that I didn’t steal something from the plane or in the airport.  I got out of the airport, around the road to the departures door, and into the line to check in for my flight which I was sure I would be too late for by now.  While I was in the line a guy came over to me to offer bag-wrapping services.  Wow, what a perfect solution to my problem – for $3 he took my bag that had burst open and been stuffed in an even flimsier bag and wrapped it up in layers of green plastic wrap.  Now I still didn’t know what items were missing, but at least the things I had left would stay together.  I checked my bags, got my boarding pass and dashed to security and then to my gate.  Somehow (the somehow being that “This Is Africa” I suppose) the boarding hadn’t even started when I got to my gate.  I made it!
When I arrived in Bamako (so happy to be back in Mali!) a friend came to pick me up at the airport.  The first thing I wanted to do when I got to the base was buy another bag so that I could open up and transfer all of my things from the exploded bag in to the new one and figure out what went missing.  So in a deliriously tired state, after having just traveled for 25 hours after only sleeping 5 hours the night before that, I walked up the street and bought a bag for $2.40 and went back to the base with it.  I got some scissors to cut through the layers of plastic wrap.  I transferred each item into the new bag and realized with relief and awe at what I believe is answered prayer for my trip that nothing was missing.  Not one thing. 

getting from here to there

Traveling between the USA and Africa is a long and tiring trip no matter what, but the way I’m doing it this time is a bit special.  When I left Mali in April I went by car with friends to Senegal.  Then I bought a round trip ticket between Senegal and Chicago, and a separate ticket from Chicago to Minnesota because it was so much cheaper than flying direct to MN.  In returning to Mali, I am using the return ticket between Chicago and Senegal and I’ve had to buy two more tickets to connect each end of that.  So I have 3 tickets to get back:  Duluth to Chicago, Chicago to Dakar, Senegal (which has a layover in Washington,D.C.,) and Dakar to Bamako.  This means that instead of checking my bags once and not thinking about them again until my destination, I have to collect them and recheck them in Chicago and Dakar (so 3 times total to check in with my bags for flights!)  It will be a long trip, and of course once I get to Bamako I’ll have another 7 hours on the road to arrive home.  But that will be the next day because I’ll be awfully tired after dealing with about 25 hours straight of travel and a 5 hour time change.
I will leave my mom’s house at 4am on Sunday and if all goes according to plan, I should get home and see Jean-Patrick around 2pm Tuesday.  I’m excited, but I kind of wish I could just skip over all the travel and just suddenly be there.  Oh well, maybe I'll get to see a cool new movie on one of my flights or something.

weird stuff in Texas

This picture shows the front of a house that someone has decorated with a bunch of junk.  What you can't see is that the junk continues throughout the yard.  There was an old couch and a microwave amid the other stuff.  I was wondering if these folks might just need some help hauling stuff to the dump, but I was told that this was very "East Texas".  Ok.  I kind of prefer to keep it simple. 

This caught my eye outside of some car shop place.  I think its sculpted together with muffler parts.  And then dressed in an old shirt.  God bless Texas.

Beach Day

When I am in Mali I really miss the beach.  I've had a few chances to swim in pools in Mali, and those opportunities have been wonderful and welcome relief from the sweltering heat.  But a pool is not the beach.  I love the sand, the waves, the birds, the nature of it all.  I dream about how I'm going to spend all this time at the beach when I get to the states, but then things get busy, and the beach isn't so close, and it just happens that I haven't gotten to go too often to the beach when I get back to the states.  So when I do get there I want to take it all in, savor the moment, make it a memory in my head that I can think back to on one of those 108-degree-with-no-A/C-days in Mali
. 

I had a really nice time at the beach the other day.  Sun was shining, breeze was keeping it not too hot, the water was... well, its Lake Superior, so the water was absolutely freezing cold!

My mom was a lot braver or tougher than me, and I only got my legs in the water.  In the above picture you can see my mom's head, so she was actually swimming!  Way to go Mom!