Hi hi, everyone!
Apologies for the utter lack of communication coming from my end. Cari and I spent the last week exploring outside of Bamako. Since I was living out of my backpack, I thought it best to leave the computer behind. (I did, however, bring my USB key with me. Aaand just realized that it is still in a lovely internet café…in Ségou. Oops.)
Otherwise, our trip was GREAT. We travelled east, stopping one night each in Ségou, Djenné, and Bandiagara. From there, we hiked three days in Dogon Country, a super-isolated and super-beautiful region of the country. Yesterday we bit the bullet and took a 10-hour bus ride all the way back to Sikoroni. Our reward: cheeseburger and banana split at Broadway Café, the one authentic American restaurant here.
I am so happy to have seen Mali’s “bush”, if only because I realized how little there is to see. The bus would go hours and hours passing nothing but fields, grass, dirt, and trees. When it
encountered villages it would stop, and people selling snicky-snacks would pile on advertising their wares – “shi be! gateaux be! ji be! shefan be!” a.k.a. shea fruit, sweet bread, water, hardboiled eggs. Not exactly a Mickey D’s off of I-95, but it definitely had a similar feel.
In Ségou we took a boat ride, in Djenné we saw the world’s largest mud structure (a big fat mosque), but the Dogon hike was definitely the highlight of our adventure. We hired a guide, Hamidou, who walked us from village to village along a magnificent cliff side. In some of them we met the dugutigi, giving him a couple kola nuts as a sign of respect. At night we stayed in campements, little tourist lodgements in each town. Very rustic and mostly all outdoors, including sleeping arrangements – which consisted of a foam mattress under a mosquito net. (Catch that, Mom?) Everything was so
different from Bamako. Fewer people, fewer – like, zero – stores, less electricity…although at one campement there was a shower-from-above arrangement, instead of the standard bucket bath!
This paragraph clearly does not suffice to describe the trip. I’m having a hard time deciding what to write about. Hopefully these photos will help.
So yeah, now it’s back to BKO for 2 weeks. Crunch time for the microfinance project! I have to finish drafting an info sheet about other microfinance orgs in the city, finalize the borrower profiles, and print out 50 literacy/math workbooks. I was supposed to put together education materials for an entrepreneurship course, but it definitely won’t get done before I leave. Either way, I plan to start on it. There are tons of other little things to finish, and I’m a little intimidated looking at it all. Kind of looking forward to a busy couple weeks, though. Can’t believe I’ll be home so soon!!
Mali-love to you all,
Djeneba
Apologies for the utter lack of communication coming from my end. Cari and I spent the last week exploring outside of Bamako. Since I was living out of my backpack, I thought it best to leave the computer behind. (I did, however, bring my USB key with me. Aaand just realized that it is still in a lovely internet café…in Ségou. Oops.)
Otherwise, our trip was GREAT. We travelled east, stopping one night each in Ségou, Djenné, and Bandiagara. From there, we hiked three days in Dogon Country, a super-isolated and super-beautiful region of the country. Yesterday we bit the bullet and took a 10-hour bus ride all the way back to Sikoroni. Our reward: cheeseburger and banana split at Broadway Café, the one authentic American restaurant here.
I am so happy to have seen Mali’s “bush”, if only because I realized how little there is to see. The bus would go hours and hours passing nothing but fields, grass, dirt, and trees. When it
encountered villages it would stop, and people selling snicky-snacks would pile on advertising their wares – “shi be! gateaux be! ji be! shefan be!” a.k.a. shea fruit, sweet bread, water, hardboiled eggs. Not exactly a Mickey D’s off of I-95, but it definitely had a similar feel.In Ségou we took a boat ride, in Djenné we saw the world’s largest mud structure (a big fat mosque), but the Dogon hike was definitely the highlight of our adventure. We hired a guide, Hamidou, who walked us from village to village along a magnificent cliff side. In some of them we met the dugutigi, giving him a couple kola nuts as a sign of respect. At night we stayed in campements, little tourist lodgements in each town. Very rustic and mostly all outdoors, including sleeping arrangements – which consisted of a foam mattress under a mosquito net. (Catch that, Mom?) Everything was so
different from Bamako. Fewer people, fewer – like, zero – stores, less electricity…although at one campement there was a shower-from-above arrangement, instead of the standard bucket bath!This paragraph clearly does not suffice to describe the trip. I’m having a hard time deciding what to write about. Hopefully these photos will help.
So yeah, now it’s back to BKO for 2 weeks. Crunch time for the microfinance project! I have to finish drafting an info sheet about other microfinance orgs in the city, finalize the borrower profiles, and print out 50 literacy/math workbooks. I was supposed to put together education materials for an entrepreneurship course, but it definitely won’t get done before I leave. Either way, I plan to start on it. There are tons of other little things to finish, and I’m a little intimidated looking at it all. Kind of looking forward to a busy couple weeks, though. Can’t believe I’ll be home so soon!!
Mali-love to you all,
Djeneba
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