Full house

We’re back to a pretty full house here in Douentza. My reign as mistress of the house ended when both Abbie and Jeff returned yesterday, with Minkailou as well, so that puts the number of lodgers here at five. Kirill will be coming back on Thursday, just in time for the fourth, so then we’ll be full to the gills. It’s nice to have some other Americans to keep me company, and so good to see Abbie so we can talk and decompress. Last night, we all sat in the AC room and watched the opera Carmen on my computer. Jeff certainly likes him some opera, with a glass of wine, singing along : « toreador, toreador ».

It was market day yesterday in Douentza, my first market day here. The town was buzzing with sights and smells and people from all over the region. Seydou and I went out in the morning to pick up our weekly supply of cucumbers and green peppers, and even then, the streets were so crowded you had to elbow your way through. In the afternoon, Abbie, Seydou, Minkailou and I headed out on mission Get Nice Clothes Made for the 4th of July. We bought cloth and took it to the tailor to have an outfit made for each of us. We figured Jeff would probably gripe half-seriously about the guys not needing new clothes, so we had it be our secret mission. When we came back in the evening, Jeff was sitting outside the door and asked what we were up to in the market and where everything was we bought. We just laughed it off and ran inside. He’s kind of the dad of the project here.

Work is going well now. It’s still rather fatiguing doing four hours of elicitation, but I feel like I’m making progress. Jeff sat with Ramata and I for a while this morning and we went over some verb paradigms to try to find the basic verb form ; I was encouraged by the fact that my ear wasn’t too far off in terms of tone. Baby steps…

Slight correction on the address. The order of address constituents should rather be :

Laura McPherson
Cercle de Douentza, Region de Mopti
Mali, West Africa

I would put West Africa, as I don’t trust the post office to know the difference between Bali, Mali and Malawi, and God knows it’ll already take long enough for letters to get here without being shipped to Southeast Asia first.

With the rains and wind, the air temperature has finally cooled down a bit, which is a blessing. If there’s no wind, it can still be hard to fall asleep at night, but it’s a world of improvement over the beginning of the month. Now it's nearly pleasant to sit in the courtyard listening to the chatter of a dozen little red finches that inhabit our tree. I much prefer their cheeping to the obnoxious screaming of that goat in Tongo-Tongo. Maybe I'm a terrible person, but I hope they sold it at the last market.