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Saturday, December 15, 2012

Badalabougou



We were really blessed to be able to move into a nice apartment in a good neighborhood.  A friend who worked with our group lived here but moved away, so that’s how we found it. 
The neighborhood of Badalabougou is very centrally located in Bamako.  The city is divided by the Niger River, which is just a 5 minute walk away from the house.  The north side of the city has the downtown area and JP’s school is up there too.  We live just south of the river between the Martyr’s Bridge and the New Bridge.  There is one more bridge in the city and it’s newer than the New Bridge, but they didn’t want to change the New Bridge’s name, so the newest bridge is called the Third Bridge.  Not very creative, but better than calling it the Newer Bridge I guess.
The names of the neighborhoods here are all quite a mouthful.  But if you know a bit of Bambara (or ask someone to explain) you can often disect the names and make some sense of them.  Badalabougou is broken down to ba-da-la-bougou, which means “river-mouth-place-neighborhood.” 

I took a few pictures from our side of the river.  In this one you can see the Martyr's Bridge.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

before + after: bedroom built in


Here are the before and after photos of a project I did in the main bedroom of our new apartment.  It is unusual to have any built in cupboards or closets in houses here at all, so its a nice bonus to have this closet.  However, I really wasn't a fan of the diamondy design.  I got some fabric and covered the small doors and the center panel.  To be more specific, I covered pieces of cardboard in fabric and staple gunned them on.  What do you think?

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

new apartment


Here is what our apartment looks like from the outside front. 
The building has 4 units, we are one of 2 on the bottom and there are two upstairs.  Across a wall from us there is an identical building.  The apartment is a bit smaller than the house we lived in before, but still plenty of room (maybe except the kitchen, which is more of a "kitchenette").  The biggest thing to adjust to is the yard and the whole privacy factor.  At the house we had a big yard and it was surrounded by a high cement wall.  Here there are bricked pathways around the building and any of the building's other residents or visitors could pass by a few feet away from my windows at any time. Curtains aren't just decorative here!
 
This picture is taken from the roof of our building and is what part of our street looks like.  There are a lot of sheep and goats in our street, here you just see a few sheep, but if you were to go down a bit further there is a herd of about 25 goats hanging out in the street.  Our dog Teddy now makes an effort to avoid them as he was head-butted by a protective mama the other day.
The street here is also filled with small children and quite a bit of debris.  There is a lot of construction going on and within the neighborhood the roads are unpaved and very rough. 

Monday, December 3, 2012

Moving (or TRYING to move!)

Sheesh!  I haven’t written on my blog for quite some time!  Well, we’ve been REALLY busy lately with packing and trying to move, then finally actually moving, and then unpacking and settling in.  These things take time and energy.    
So heres my story of what moving was like: (Oh the stress!)

We knew we were going to move but didn’t know when.  Jean-Patrick was registered for school, but the school hadn’t given a start date for the school year.  Kids’ schools usually start right at the beginning of October and run to the end of June.  But universities are often a month or more later than that, and this year seemed really unsure because the school year had been messed up a bit last year because of the coup d’etat and all that.  So I was actually hoping that JP’s school wouldn’t start until January so that we could go to Chad to visit his family for Christmas as planned.  We didn’t want to move until we knew the school would be in fact starting soon.  I had a women’s retreat in Bamako the last weekend of October (which was fabulous… maybe I should write a post on that, too) and so of course it was just a few days before I was going be leaving for a long weekend that we got word that JP needed to go to his school.  He went all the way to Bamako and to the school to find out that school actually was starting in 2 weeks time.  JP was going to hurry back home and work on getting the packing started while I did my weekend trip to Bamako.  But this was all happening during the time of the Tabaski Muslim holiday, and it wound up that there were no places available on any bus – tickets had been reserved long in advance for the days surrounding the holiday.  So JP was stranded in Bamako for like 5 days more than he planned to be.  We called someone to feed our dog and cat and we got to see each other in the city!  We also got the papers signed and deposit paid on the apartment we would be moving in to.  It would be ours as of November 1st.  We went back on Sunday Oct 28th to Koutiala thinking we would work real hard to get things all packed up super quickly and then move at the end of the week.  JP’s school would be starting on Monday, November 5th, so we needed to be moved before that!
We spent long days packing as well as tying up all the loose ends that go along with leaving jobs or ministries and friends and a house, lots of accounts to be settled and responsibilities to hand over.  I was really hoping we could move on Thursday the 1st.  By Tuesday night it was clear that we wouldn’t be ready in time, so we made a plan for Saturday.  JP called people and met with people and did all he could do to try to find a truck to move our things.  One truck that was lined up fell through on Saturday morning, and so another possibility (previously rejected because of high cost) was reconsidered.  The truck boss came to the house to see our things that needed to be moved.  At this point we were totally ready to go, everything packed up and just waiting.  The truck boss looked at our stuff to judge how much space it would take up in his truck and struck a deal with us saying that the truck would be filled 50/50 with bags of millet and our things, thus sharing the cost as well.  Then he said it was too bad we waited so long, he could have had our stuff on the road that night, but now we’d have to wait until Monday.  Obviously this was a problem since JP needed to be at school in Bamako (7 hours away) on Monday morning. 
JP left for Bamako and I stayed to wait for the truck.  On Sunday an announcement was made asking people to show up to our house on Monday evening to help load the truck.  On Monday evening, just before the truck was supposed to show up (around 7pm- after the sun has set and so its not as hot)  I had 15 helpers waiting with me at the house.  And then a messenger came to let me know the truck was not coming and I should send the helpers home.  But don’t worry, the truck will come soon, any time really, they are still just working on finding bags of millet to fill up half the truck. 
The next time (I can’t remember which day it was anymore) I had 6 helpers waiting with me when the truck was supposed to come.  And again it didn’t come and I had to send the helpers home.  They said it would be Friday evening, November 9th (as in a whole week after we had really wanted to move, and all this time our apartment is paid for and sitting empty!)  Friday evening I was thinking that if the truck didn’t come this time I might have some kind of breakdown.  Oh, also, on Wednesday my friend who was moving into our old house did finally move into the house.  So I was still living there with all of our belongings taking up the whole living room and saying “sorry, I know you want me to move all this stuff and me and my pets out of what is now your house, and I’m trying, but what can I really do?”
Friday night at 7:30 the truck finally arrived!  I was so relieved!  This time there were only 2 helpers (that’s what happens when you cry wolf I guess.)  But the truck boss was there and had 2 helpers, and then there’s me, so 6 people total.  It took us 1 ½ hours to get it loaded up. I was not so impressed with the way our stuff was put in the truck – it was all layed down up on top of piles of bags of millet. Not quite what I had in mind.  I figured we’d find a lot of broken things in unpacking.  And a lot of our furniture was beat up, but not one broken dish even, so it could have been worse.  We’ll definitely do the whole moving thing differently next time though!

They said they’d drive all night and get to Bamako very early Saturday morning where JP would direct them to the apartment and help get it all unloaded.  I was to go in a friend’s car on Saturday with the dog and cat and be getting into Bamako in the afternoon.  I was really looking forward to arriving at my new apartment that would be filled will all our boxed up belongings.
On Saturday morning when the friend came with the car to get me and the pets, I had put the cat in a lidded basket and bungeed the top on.  I had asked around but couldn’t find a cat carrier box to borrow.  The basket idea seemed like a good one until I was just about to place it in the car and the cat flipped the lid open and rocketed out of the basket and zoomed off to hide.  He wasn’t too impressed with the basket idea I guess.  He would not come out from hiding, so I had to leave for Bamako with out him, but finally (4 weeks later) he will be getting a ride here this next weekend (in a taped up cardboard box with breathing holes.) The dog seemed to enjoy the car ride, his first one ever, and he stayed calm the whole time. 
Saturday afternoon I was getting in to Bamako and I called JP to see if our stuff was all moved in.  Surprise, surprise, the truck hadn’t arrived yet.  So I had to go wait with him at the mission base.  JP had been staying there because it would be hard to live in a completely empty apartment – no stove, no fridge, no bed, etc.  I kept thinking the truck people would call at any moment, but they didn’t.  When JP tried to call them there was no network coverage, meaning they were somewhere out in the sticks, out of the city still. 
I went to sleep very frustrated on Saturday night, and to be honest I was just a bit wondering if maybe the truck people decided it would be better profit if they just sold all our stuff.  Sunday morning went by and finally around 2 on Sunday afternoon the truck people called and JP went to direct them to the apartment.
When the truck got near our apartment they found that the roads in our neighborhood were not designed for a big freight truck, so they had to park some ways away.  JP had to hunt down a smaller truck.  Then he and his buddies unloaded our things from the big truck onto the smaller truck which drove over to the apartment and then they unloaded from the smaller truck into the apartment.  This took them 4 hours (remember it was only 1 ½ hours to load!)  I waited in comfort, and boredom, at the base during this time. 
JP came back to the base to have dinner and get me and Teddy the dog, and we got to the apartment just after 9pm.  We dug through our stuff and found the bed mattress and sheets to put on it and got that arranged and called it a night.  The next morning JP left early for school and I started the process of unpacking - another adventure altogether, but thankfully this time it was on my schedule.