Materials posted

Also, a couple manuscripts of mine have been posted on the project website (see link in the side bar). On the front page, there is a little bio about me with a description of my fieldwork, and under the manuscripts link at the top, you can find a preliminary grammar sketch. It is devoid of a lot of data that will come up in later chapters in the grammar, but it gives an overview of what the grammar will cover.

Lazy Bamako

Happy Halloween! I’m certainly not celebrating it here. I already look weird enough, I don’t need to dress up to look like a monster.

Bamako continues to be relaxing. Yesterday, I got my bank errands done all by myself in the morning, kicked around the artisan market for a while, then went to Restaurant Central to meet Salif for lunch. In the early afternoon, I went back to SIL, took a nap, then spent the rest of the day half being productive, half wasting time on the internet. I thought I was supposed to see this other Fulbrighter, but she never called me. That’s okay, though, because just staying in was nice too.

I slept in until almost 8 today (can you believe it?!), ironed some clothes, ate some yogurt, and am now working on my grammar some more. I may see Salif again today, or I may see one of two Fulbrighters, but I’m waiting to be contacted on all accounts. There’s a bakery down the road that I might walk to, because a croissant sounds pretty dang good. We’ll see where my laziness meter points to.

Tomorrow Kevin gets here! Just one more day.

Photos

With the fast internet of Bamako, I have posted my latest photos! You can find them here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2086176&l=2dfc8&id=13302275

Good cop, bad cop

Once more, I find myself in Bamako, with only a slightly arduous tale behind me.

Yesterday afternoon, Oumar and I got on the motorcycle and managed to get all of my baggage and ourselves to the highway. I wanted to go a bit early, after the debacle with the bus arriving way early in late August. While sitting there chatting about needing visas for Ghana and Burkina, it struck me that I had forgotten my passport back at the house. Without my passport, a whole lot of my trip to Bamako (embassy, banks…) would be impossible.

We left my bags under the perhaps not-so-watchful eye of the ticket man and zoomed back towards the house. However, yesterday was police check day in town on motorcycle papers. Oumar had known this since the morning, so I gave him the papers we have and we figured it would be fine. Not. This one particularly mean cop demanded our license (‘vignette’) and actually compared the number to the number on the motorcycle—turns out, they didn’t match up. This meant that he had the right to confiscate our motorcycle. You better believe I got pretty upset. My bus was about to leave, our papers weren’t right, the cop was being mean… another nicer cop came by to try to sort things out, and he took me to the house to get my passport, all the while consoling me as I sniffled with rage.

In the end, we went to the town hall and had to buy a new license. The one we had was for our DT motorcycle that was in Songo with Kirill, not for the Star. 12 dollars later, it got worked out. Perhaps it also helped that I sort of knew the guy working at the town hall. He’d given me a ride back from the internet before, so he knew my name. It was all rather upsetting, but it turned out all right.

I even got my bus on time, which turned out to be a nice, actually air-conditioned Gana bus. In Sevare, Seydou met me at the station and we had dinner together before the bus carried on its way. It was nice to see him, if only for ten minutes. Back on the bus, the man sitting behind me asked if I was American and if I was going to the embassy. When I answered yes to both questions, he told me he had a courier for Gaoussou, whom I’d met before, and asked if I could bring it to him, which I agreed to. We talked about politics for a while (the election is on everyone’s mind). It was nice to not feel so alone on the bus.

We pulled into town when the first tips of dawn were just beginning to show. I found a taxi just fine, who even told me a fairly reasonable price, and the only problem was that my bag got peed on by the sheep who was in the baggage hold. Now I have even more clothes to wash than I had planned.

I got to SIL and took a nap and a shower before heading back out to the embassy. When checking in, I ran into Rosemary, another Fulbrighter, but of the professor variety. Friendly doesn’t even begin to describe her. She’s married to a Liberian (who lived in Guinea after the war?), has spent a lot of time in Africa, and was bursting with excitement to be back.

We went through the security briefing, which was pretty ridiculous. To sum up: don’t make friends with your guards because they will just ask you for money; if you meet any Russians, North Koreans, Iranians, Cubans, etc., report your interaction to the embassy; north of Mopti, there is crime; north of the Niger, don’t go there, except if you want to, in which case, it’s okay.

I had lunch at the cafeteria, where I could get a bacon cheeseburger! That made my day. Then I used their fast internet and headed back to SIL to do some laundry and get some groceries. For the next couple days, I intend to just sit at my computer and use the internet, when I’m not running errands or seeing friends, that is. I may be busier than I thought.

I really like Mali, though. The people are so friendly and it feels so safe. It’s good to stay on your guard, but taxi drivers, store keepers, embassy workers, everyone is full of humor, which makes it a very pleasant place to stay.

New digs

In about 24 hours, I will be hitting the road for Bamako. Just some last minute work and packing to do. Oumar painted the AC room today, and it looks terrific. We took the cardboard down from the screens to let in some air, and the place has a whole new feel to it—nothing like the dank office it used to be.

I’m getting to know some of the other usual suspects who come around the house now. Ali who is involved in something that takes him between Bamako and here a lot (bus company, maybe?). Dauda with the gimpy left hand. Abba/Voltajazz who kicks around the neighborhood and flirts with Ramata. Now that my Dogon is getting better, I can connect with people better, even if they speak Jamsay or some other dialect. At least I can greet in Tommo-So and feel like a bit less of a Toobob.

Kirill has recovered from his malaria and is now back on track. I think he’ll head out tomorrow morning, then me in the afternoon. The former palace will belong to Ramata and whoever else stays here so I can lock up the main house. Even her father might stay until Wednesday, depending on whether or not the person he’s waiting to see comes in from Dianwely today.

I got a curtain made for the door yesterday at the market. I had gone out with M. le Maire, and he took me to an old tailor just set up along the road. The sewing machines are ancient here, foot pedal models, but even old-looking for that. They seem like something right out of the 1910s. But the tailor peddled away with his old, leathery bare feet, and 25 cents later, my curtain was sewn.

Malaria (not for me)

End of October already—time certainly does go quickly. I’ve been here nearly a month now. Just another three days, and I’m off to Bamako, and a week from today, Kevin gets here. It’s a lot to look forward to.

M. le Maire had to go to the village for some official purpose (taxes maybe?) yesterday morning, so the last couple days have not seen as many new words enter the dictionary. I worked with Ramata some, but now I have been spoiled by how rich her father’s French is. Especially now that the sections remaining contain a lot of more abstract terms (How do you say “hold something laterally by pressing between the legs or beneath the arm”?), nuanced French is a must. Tomorrow, her lodger is going to come do some work, and I think his French is really pretty good. M. le Maire speaks better French than I do, so I really lucked out there.

Another black ant worked its way into my mosquito net this morning and bit me on the shoulder. It comes in uninvited then has the audacity to bite me when I roll over in my sleep. Black ants really are assholes.

We’re getting ready for work on the AC room. I’m having a couple more coat rack-type wall hangers made today, then painting should happen on Monday. My new home will be all set to go for when I’m back from Bamako, insha’allah. I asked if they’d found any more scorpions and was relieved when they said that scorpions always come in pairs, so now that they’ve killed the two, there shouldn’t be anymore. They say scorpions don’t both twins for that reason. Either they don’t sting twins or even if they do, it doesn’t hurt. Or if they do and then a twin spits on it, it stops hurting. Something along those lines. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have a twin, so I’d better watch out still.

Kirill went to the doctor today since he had been feeling ill off and on for the last week or so. Turns out he has malaria, poor guy. I guess you really can’t let your guard down here, even if you’re on meds. I went to the pharmacy and got him some anti-malarial medication, so he should be back up and running shortly.

I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but every evening at sundown, there is an army of toads that appears from the top of the courtyard and hops out the door at the bottom. I never see them come back. Presumably they do in the morning, but maybe not. Maybe there's an infinite source of toads behind our house. Also, the millet harvest is well underway now, so donkey carts heading out empty in the morning and laden with big bundles of millet spikes in the evening are a common sight. I rather like the sight of the millet bundles. A little girl gave me a millet spike today. Not sure what to do with it other than crunch the grains for fun, but it was a nice gesture.

The stuff nightmares are made of

It’s been a few days—sorry about that. Kirill got in on Monday, as expected, with his assistant, also named Seydou. It was really nice to see him and speak a little bit of English. We even celebrated with some mildly terrible Malian beer (Castel).

Work has been progressing steadily. Most of the large noun sections of the dictionary are done. Now it’s on to a lot of verbs and adjectives and other more abstract concepts. Time goes quite quickly, though.

I have realized in the past couple days that if I were to draw a Venn diagram of things that give me nightmares and things that are found in Mali, a large portion of my nightmare circle would overlap with Mali. Just to gross all of you out as much as I have been grossed out, here are my sightings the last few days. First, there was a wind scorpion in the shower. They aren’t dangerous, they’re just spider-like and extremely gross. Minkailou killed it and that was that. Then, Seydou (from Songo) and Kirill have found two scorpions by the door in the AC room, both of which were squished. I had been sleeping very soundly since I returned because I was living the lie that scorpions were done for the year. Needless to say, that night, I had three consecutive insect nightmares. Finally (and most disgustingly), last night we were sitting in the courtyard chatting when I saw something scurry over. I shone my flashlight on it, and it turned out to be a spider, about the size of a quarter, but it’s entire body was writhing with hundreds of baby spiders. Now, perhaps this would engender feelings of maternal sympathy in some, but it made me want to vomit.

We’re re-painting the AC room on Monday, and you had better believe that I am going to christen it with copious amounts of insecticide.

It seems we’re on the brink of guava season here. Oumar gave me a couple this morning, small, pink inside, and delicious. They say smell is the sense most closely connected to memory in the brain, and I’d believe it. Just smelling the guava on my hands brought back waves of memories of cool, smoky mornings in Delhi, eating breakfast guavas on the terrace with Mikko and Kiira. Soon such memories will be melded through smell with those of Mali. The brain is really a fascinating place.

Hermitude, sometimes a must

Yesterday, I remained a hermit all day. I didn’t step foot outside the house once. In the morning, I didn’t feel particularly well, but I got an hour of work done before M. le Maire had an appointment at the bank. I thought he might come back quickly, but he ended up being out all day.

I killed some time with Solitaire for a while, then retreated to my room, where I could alternately nap, play solitaire, read, write poetry, ponder my grammar, etc., for the remainder of the day, save meal times. It was market day, but I didn’t have the energy to go out and see if there was anything good. Chances are if there were, I would have heard about it from someone.

This morning, I found work frustrating for a while. I felt trying to pin down the meaning of a word was like trying to nail jello to a wall. It got better, though, and I just need to accept that completely this dictionary will not always be a fun task, but it’s a worthwhile one nonetheless. And as much as it would be great if it were always fun, that’s not the point—it’s my job and I need to get it done.

M. le Maire told me today that no one has ever been “disappointed in me” in the village. That was nice. Ramata echoed something similar a few days ago, when she told me that the whole two months I was gone, people would ask about me every day. I’m glad they seem to like me, or at least take interest in me. I feel bad that I won’t be able to be back out for a few weeks, but the roads are just so hard that to just pop over and say hi isn’t exactly an easy thing. I’m toying with the idea of going out on Saturday to come back on Monday or something, but I don’t want to risk not having a ride back and missing my appointment in Bamako. I guess I’ll just send my regards in the form of a poorly crafted Tommo-So letter that can be read to people.

Kirill should get in this evening, and Minkailou is taking off to Sevare for a few days to see his family and settle some money issues. One week to go for meǃ

Linguistic Update

It’s been a while since I’ve given a linguistic update on Tommo-So. Here is a little bit about the Noun Phrase (NP):

Nominal morphology is rather isolating. It employs a lot of clitics, even to express things like plurality. An NP can be made up of some combination of the following constituents, in order:

a. possessor NP and/or pronoun possessor
b. noun stem
c. adjective
d. determiner /gɛ/, demonstratives /nɔ́/ or /ní/ (this, that), or possessive pronoun
e. plural particle /mbe/
f. numeral
g. ‘all’

Both the demonstrative and plural clitics have no tone of their own, but rather get their tone from the preceding noun. In citation form (i.e. out of context), they are often pronounced low, but within a phrase, the tone is usually identical to the final tone of the preceding noun. For instance, /tàgá=mbè/ ‘shoes’ /tàgá=mbé yàà=bé-m/ ‘I saw shoes’.

A relative participle can also come in slot c., creating quite a distance between the noun stem and the constituents that follow (d-g). However, in a relative clause, the numeral precedes the relativized participle. Here is an example of a complicated NP.

ànàn tààndù-gò mí sɛ́gìrì=gɛ̀=mbè
men three-GO I met=Det.=Pl.
‘the three men that I met’

Like adjectives, the relativized participle also causes tone dropping on the head NP, including its numeral (which, if you recall from long ago, does not drop its tone when part of a possessed NP).

I still don’t have a good analysis of what I simply glossed as –GO. This suffix is found sometimes on adjectives, always on numerals (when not used in counting), and sometimes on adverbs and with stative verbs. I think it has something to do with a temporary state of being, but I have yet to work that out.

This is but a brief introduction. Any insights or questions are welcome.

A storehouse of knowledge

Ramata’s father is such an interesting guy. He’s very knowledgeable—I think he’s done a little of everything. He’s part mayor, part pharmacist, part weaver, part farmer, among other things that I’m forgetting now. His French is excellent, which makes it easy to work with him, though he doesn’t understand why I repeat things so many times as well as Ramata does. That comes with time, I guess.

A couple nights ago we were talking about what a shame it is that the Dogon are abandoning their traditions because of Islam or other influences of the modern world, that even if you adopt new customs, you shouldn’t forget the old. He is a very introspective man, and I’ve got quite a bit of respect for him.

Despite raining fairly hard a couple days ago, rain did not leak into my room, which I took as a small victory. Yesterday it was quite humid, though, as all of those muddy puddles returned to the sky. Today is hot too, but not as bad. Just really sunny.

Today, M. le Maire and I went through the section of the dictionary on medicine and diseases, which was quite interesting. As I said, he works sort of as part-time pharmacist, so he was a good one to talk to about such things. Malaria, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, polio, diabetes, many kinds of headaches, a plethora of skin diseases… just going through the list was enough to make anyone a hypochondriac.

School still hasn’t started for Ramata. She goes there every morning, just to come back an hour or two later (after chatting with friends, I imagine). No one is really sure why. Maybe the teachers are on strike? Maybe the notebooks haven’t gotten there yet? Such uncertainty for the start of school would be unheard of in the States, but no one seems particularly alarmed here. Mildly annoyed, but not alarmed.

Working hard, for now

Real work has started! Ramata’s father, after spending the night at a friend’s house, came this morning and we worked for a solid 3 hours at least. We’re going to take work back up in the late afternoon for another hour and a half or so. At this point, I probably have about 1500 words properly filled in the lexicon, out of about 7500. It’s progress, at least.

The sky has become rather fall-like here—overcast, almost white, but seeming much taller than a summer cloudy sky. This is the first time I’ve been in another country long enough to experience all of the seasons. It is for reasons precisely like this one that I wanted to spend a full year in one place. I want to really get to know Mali in a way I could never achieve in, say, India or Japan.

Faku-hoy for lunch today. As an integrated Dogon-foreigner, I can make fun of it as well as its creators, the Songhay. People just throw around the word “slave” as if it were nothing between themselves and their ethnic “cousins.” It still shocks my American ears.

Under two weeks until going to Bamako now, and then my boyfriend Kevin will be here to keep me company. Excited doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about that.

Well, some rain and wind has kicked up since I got to the radio. Hopefully rain isn't pouring into my room through the hole in the wall, thus soaking my mattress and possibly iPod. I thought rain was supposed to be done.

Productivity back

The last couple days, I have started to become more productive. Ramata went off to school in the morning yesterday, only to come back around lunchtime, saying school hadn’t started yet. In light of that, we got about three hours and 200 words of work done, which felt good. Then, this morning, since Ramata’s father still hadn’t come in, I arranged to work with her former lodger for a couple hours.

Around lunch time today, M. le Maire, Ramata’s father, showed up. Not sure why he was 2 days late. “External circumstances.” But no matter, he’s here now, and we can begin work tomorrow or maybe even a little this evening. At this point, I’m not sure how to interact with him. On the one hand, he’s my guest, but on the other hand, my linguistic consultant. He’s like my father, being Ramata’s dad, but also just a casual acquaintance. And on the one hand I feel responsible for entertaining him, but on the other hand, he spent 20 years in Douentza and knows the town and its people better than I ever will. I’m sure all of this will become clear soon.

It’s fun having Ramata here, almost like having a sister. She just tells me anything now, which is nice. I think from this point onward, things will start to settle into a routine, something I desperately want.

We destroyed a mud-dauber wasp nest today in the hanger. It was so gross—full of larvae and eggs. Just thinking about it makes me feel sick.

Other interesting sights as of late: a man riding his bike with a live goat draped around his neck and a man in an outfit made entirely out of the ridiculous shark fabric from this summer.

Market madness

Market day has rolled around, the first one I’ve been present for since mid-August. It’s just as crowded and stranger-filled as I remember it being. It’s all right, though, it’s a nice lively change. Ramata and I went out and bought a watermelon and some bananas, fighting our way through crowds. Now, at least, the days are beginning to cool off, so you’re not a sweaty mess by the time you get back. Market mornings are the best. A couple people come by and chat, you can watch ox-carts, donkey carts, camels stream past the door, but the house hasn’t become the Hotel de Ville yet.

The last couple days were better than the week preceding them. Minkailou came back on Friday night and Seydou went to Anda for the night last night and got back this morning. I’ve been busying myself with work on the grammar, which is beginning to take shape. Ramata’s father should be coming in today, so then tomorrow I can start real work on the dictionary.

During the afternoon yesterday, Ramata and I walked across town to her former lodger’s house. It’s the peanut harvest now, and his courtyard was filled with uprooted peanut plants and women separating the peanuts from them. Fresh peanuts are delicious—still moist with an earthy flavor, much better than the months-old bags we get in the States. It continues to be an interesting experience eating only what’s in season. Guava season can’t start soon enough. I’ve heard many good things about it.

Yesterday evening, a big dust storm blew in, followed by a light shower. I was afraid the rain would come harder and leak into my room, since there are places that need repair after the rainy season, but luckily the rain stayed light and cooled things off, making for a pleasant night’s sleep.

Word on the street is that Kirill is coming into town a week from tomorrow, then I head to Bamako two weeks from Tuesday. I can mail my absentee ballot from the embassy, and good thing, since otherwise I don’t think it would get there from Douentza in time. Our post office is a little behind the times.

In other news, my hair is doing the India thing and beginning to fall out big time. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that, but it bums me out. I guess I’ll try to cut it short in Bamako and see if that helps. Also, I can’t help but look at the cockroaches in the bathroom differently after reading the Metamorphosis. I still don’t like them, but somehow they’re more tolerable.

Laura drives a motorcycle; the village is unproductive.

My first village trip of the season is over. It was both good and incredible boring, at intervals.

The journey to get there was interesting this time. As soon as we got out of Douentza and onto the highway, Seydou handed the steering wheel (or handlebars, as the case may be) over to me, and I did my first long drive. I cruised us all the way down the freeway, swerving to avoid the hundreds of potholes, but otherwise doing very well. We turned off the freeway to head towards Borko, but pretty soon we ran up against a flooded low spot that I was too afraid to cross, so we stopped so that Seydou could take over. At this point, we noticed that the engine (which we’d just poured a fair amount of money into getting tuned up) was leaking oil, all over my pant leg too, I might add. We decided it would be closer to head a little ways up the freeway to a town to get it fixed than to power through until Borko, so we set off again with me still at the wheel.

Once we got some screws tightened, it was back on the road, and though I was still scared to death, I powered the motorcycle through the watery spots, which left us soaked but safe. I drove all the way up to Borko, putting the motorcycle into second gear and powering up the steep, cobbled road.

At Dogani, we ran into a neighbor of ours from Douentza whom we had just seen that morning. It turns out that he and two other guys were also going to Tongo-Tongo by pick-up truck (though how he had failed to mention this or I’d failed to hear it in the morning, I don’t know). They offered to put the motorcycle in the back and drive it there, but after it got banged up on top of the 4x4 the other day and with a full tank of gas, we declined. However, we unloaded the baggage (including myself) on them, and Seydou went ahead alone.

I should have stayed with the motorcycle. The truck was in terrible shape (like most vehicles here, but especially bad). The windshield was punched in, my door would neither open nor lock, the windows had lost their cranks so they were permanently down, and the transmission would screech defiantly anytime the driver tried to change gears. Reverse seemed especially jammed. Each time we finally got it in gear, I was sure it would be the last. After getting lost and scraping up against many a tree, which sent showers of spiders and inchworms down upon me, we finally made it to the village about an hour after Seydou got there.

Despite the fatigue from the road, it was nice to see everyone. They all seemed glad to see me, and I swear almost every person I ran into, whether I knew them well or not, asked how my brother’s wedding was. Word sure gets around quickly in a small village.

Seeing Ramata again was especially nice. We even hugged, which I’m not sure if Malians do a lot of. However, all of this excitement soon died down, and it was back to the grind for everyone. This meant Seydou and I spent a lot of time just sitting there.

My plan was to stay until Friday, but it is just so unproductive being there, with everyone busy with their lives and no one particularly held to working with you, that there was just no point. Monday was especially bad. In the morning, I went with Seydou and Bureima to where the women pound millet and got words for that. But then I got nothing accomplished the rest of the day. Needless to say, it was a frustrating start to my work.

Tuesday was better. I observed and filmed the whole process of making millet porridge in the morning then hunted some grasshoppers in the afternoon. People came by and talked more on Tuesday as well. Then on Wednesday, I got some vocabulary for different kinds of baskets and for the harvest from Ramata, then gathered probably 50 plant specimens in the afternoon. I’ll have my hands full trying to identify those for a while.

We were told the village was going to dance on Tuesday night. However, Seydou and I sat around after dinner, with no sign of anything. Around 8, we decided we’d lie down and rest until something started, but before I knew it, it was the next morning, and to my knowledge, I had done no dancing. That was kind of a disappointment. I guess the rational was that because the director’s wife had fallen ill and needed to go to Sanga for surgery, no one really felt like dancing. Fair enough. But they could have at least told us there would be no party. We were definitely the village losers that night.

The trip back was tiring but not too eventful today. I did some driving, though not as much as on Sunday. I’m just glad to be back. Ramata should be coming in tonight with some guys carrying out a population census, and then her father should be coming to start work with me on Sunday. We’ll see how these plans materialize.

I think the reality of the length of stay is beginning to hit me. I had a terrifying moment the other day where I realized that it would be over 7 months until I ate my next burrito. I don’t know if I’ve ever gone 7 months without a burrito! Sacrifices indeed.

Heading out tomorrow

It continues to be hot. Quite hot. My only consolation is that Malians are remarking at how hot it is, which means it’s unusual, which suggests it may end soon. I hope so. I especially hope that it cools down or is somehow inherently cooler in Tongo-Tongo, since we’re slated to leave tomorrow morning. This also lets us avoid the usual crowd of Sunday visitors, who become rather tiring rather quickly.

I’m working on learning some Fulfulde. Seydou has a friend whose name I will not even try to spell who insists on only speaking to me in it, and I’m picking up some words. Specifically, I can carry on a more extended greeting ritual than I could before (it ended at “hello”) and say some key phrases like “come and eat.” Insha’allah, I’ll have a decent grasp of both Fulfulde and Tommo-So by the time I leave.

It’ll be good to have Ramata in the house again. Things are awfully quiet without Jeff and Abbie. I’ve been doing a lot of reading (currently: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka) and also making headway on my Tommo-So grammar. Starting Monday, it’s back to elicitation and getting new data, which is tiring but obviously essential.

Hopefully, I’ve finally rounded the corner on jetlag. Last night was the first night I got any sort of decent sleep since I left home. The night before, I lay in bed until it started getting light, frustrated and thirsty but not wanting to leave the safety of my mosquito net due to the slew of large grasshoppers which are the Bug of the Moment. Yesterday, I bought a double-sized mattress, which allows me to stretch out without fear of running up against the mosquito net, where crowds of hungry mosquitoes accumulate, pinned there by the strength of the fan. The combination of the extra room and a good ol’ Advil PM knocked me out.

Anyhow, off to the village tomorrow. I should be back on Friday, if all goes well.

Homecoming

I’m home! (That is to say, I’m in Douentza.) On Tuesday, I met my friend Salif at Amandine for a drink, and then Jeremy came to meet us. We went together to the bus station to inquire as to whether buses would be leaving for Douentza the next morning; we were told they would.

Jeremy is a real nice guy, a couple years older than me, who will be doing research on archiving texts in Timbuktu. It’s good to be making some new American friends in the absence of Jeff and Abbie. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy t he company of my Malian friends—I do. But sometimes you just need to speak English with someone who understands where you’re coming from.

I was beginning to despair for Mission: Douentza Wednesday Morning, since it was past 9PM and I had heard nothing about my bag. However, just when I’d given up and started to brush my teeth, the expeditor called and said he was outside SIL with my suitcase. The departure was back on.

Since I was going to have to be at the bus station at 6AM, I tried to go to bed at a decent time, but the monsters of jetlag woke me up at 1AM and continued pestering me until circa 3AM. When my alarm went off at 5:40, the last thing I wanted to do was get up, but get up I did, and I called Jeremy to see if he and his taxi could swing by and pick me up so I didn’t have to walk through the penumbra with more bags than I can carry searching for one of my own.

We made it to the bus station on time, only to be told that in fact, there was no bus going to Gao (via Douentza) that day. I was taken aback, but the ticket guy quickly added that there would be a bus going to Sevare at 8. We said fine, got aboard a nice new bus with TVs playing African music videos, and were off.

My first daytime bus ride went well. We got to Sevare in only 10 hours (I feel like it usually takes 12) and were comfortable while getting there. It was very nice to have Jeremy’s company. We split a nice fried egg sandwich in Segou (they know how to make a good egg sandwich there) and no one got left behind due to ill-timed peeing or anything. When we got to Sevare, we began asking around about transportation to Douentza. I figured if we found something, all the better, but if we didn’t, we could either spend the night with Minkailou, Seydou’s brother, or if worse came to worst, a hotel.

People had all sorts of different ideas about the state of transportation: there was nothing going out, there would be full-fledged buses leaving from the station, we’d have to take a private taxi, we could go and catch a mini-bus. This persistent but friendly taxi driver named Daouda finally told us he would take us to where the minibuses left, we could inquire there about possibilities, and if there was nothing, he’d either take us to Douentza for $120 (yeah right) or he could take us where we needed to stay. We piled our stuff into his old, beat-up taxi and went up the road to Gao to the sanctioned mini-bus stop.

The mini-bus hustlers (for lack of a better word) told us yes, there should be something, but no one was sure at what time. It was only 7, so we figured we could wait it out and eat some greasy chicken and fries while we were at it, which is just what we did. Lo and behold, around 8, a mini-bus came up going to Douentza, and we got on, getting to ride shot gun, no less.

It took 3 and half hours to get to Douentza from Sevare. I’d forgotten how bad the roads are. We had to go around 30 miles per hour much of the way just to avoid the various potholes. Also, our wheels destroyed many a small creature (toads, rock dassies, and saddest of all, something that looked like a little fox), which, sitting in the front, I was unfortunate enough to see.

It was 11:30 when we got in, but Seydou came to the highway to meet us. We got back to the house (how good to see it!) and pretty much instantly went to bed. Unfortunately, despite how tired I was, jet lag and heat kept me up a while in bed. Turns out, we’re in a little heat spell, but hopefully that should break soon.

Jeremy left for Timbuktu today. I’m glad we were able to make contact. Now, if I’m in Timbuktu, I can look him up, and he knows he always has a place to stay in Douentza (which goes for any others of you who happen to come through here, by the way).

Back to the grind. Back to “Toobob, donne-moi cadeau”. Back to this hot, dusty town. But back to my things, and my friends, and greasy donuts for breakfast, and the chattering of the robot birds. It’s even good to see all the goats.