Back to brousse tomorrow

This stay in Bamako is almost over. Tomorrow morning, I will head out to Douentza on the morning bus. All of these options I had for traveling with people (Jeremy yesterday evening, Dave and Braxton tomorrow evening), and here I am deciding to go alone. See, here is my thought process. I don't have anything to do here tomorrow, and if I take the morning bus, not only will I not have to try to sleep when I obviously can't (then sleep in my own bed!), but also I will be able to read and write with the daylight. I've perfected the art of sitting and staring at nothing for hours (the village is great for honing this skill), so I might as well have some light to do it in.

Yesterday, I went over to Niarela and met up with Dave and his family for lunch. Jeremy, my Fulbright friend, was also randomly hanging out at the same hotel/restaurant Le Campagnard, so we could touch base about our travel plans. Dave's parents and sister were really nice and paid for everyone's lunch at a patisserie. I also met another Peace Corps person, a young woman named Jenny who's been here for 2 and a half years based around Bamako.

After lunch, Dave's family wanted to do some souvenir shopping, so I went back to Rosemary's house. She has a beautiful Skype with webcam set up. For the first time in 3 months, I saw my parents. While not in person, it was still quite nice.

I made a big salad for dinner, then went out and got a beer with a lot of PC kids. I didn't want to keep Rosemary and her family up, so I came back before they went to bed. I certainly don't want to be an imposing house guest in any way, since they're already kind enough to be putting me up.

This morning, Rosemary and I set off to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (CNRST -- the Malians inherited the love of abbreviations from the French) to renew our research authorizations. Well, I actually never had one of my own, but rather am on Jeff's, but I went to see if I could renew it somehow. I apparently needed three passport photos, which I didn't have, so they told me it would just be easier to get some pictures of Jeff and to come renew his in February. Shows how important the piece of paper is in the meantime. Rosemary got hers no problem, though. The woman working there was Bambara and insulted me (jokingly?) a lot about being Dogon, so much that I thought she should be Songhay! The ethnic cousinhood is always interesting here.

Afterwards, we went back to the same patisserie and had breakfast with Jeremy, who was also trying to get his authorization, then back to Rosemary's for lunch.

I decided I should go to the bank so long as I was in Bamako, so I grabbed a taxi and headed across town to the BNDA after lunch. My plan was to meet up with Dave afterwards and have him take me to this infamous "spice lady" in Niarela, but when I walked into the bank, my hopes were dashed. I took a number, only to find it was over 100 people away from the number they were currently calling. Some people got fed up and I moved up about 40 people, but it still took 2 hours to get my money. Everyone was getting fed up. We were all comrades in Operation Bank Misery. To make matters worse, I'd told the taxi driver to wait and then take me to Niarela afterwards, and I couldn't leave the bank to tell him either to wait or go since they'd closed the door to the outside (the bank would be closing after we got through). So finally after 2 hours, I went back outside, and the driver was there but fed up, and I was fed up, so I just paid him a bunch and went back to Rosemary's house.

That's when I decided to leave tomorrow morning, so I got my bus tickets, and I've been hanging out ever since. I'm enjoying the last bit of CNN and decent internet I'll be getting in a while.

And for those of you who are wondering, Kevin got home just fine, so that's a relief for me.

Next post from Douentza!

PS Those of you who want snail mail from me (postcards, letters, doodles) should send me your addresses. I will have plenty of time to write.