Farewell to friends

All of my friends (save Nicolas) have gone their separate ways now. Yesterday morning, I got up at 7:30 and drove Dave the 25 kilometers to his village, Dimba Toro. It’s a pretty drive, down the freeway towards Borko, so I’m familiar with it. It was the first “big” trip I’d taken with my new motorcycle, though, so that was fun.

He has a really nice house in the village. I guess the Peace Corps has standards: cement floor, screened doors and windows, a water filter, his own little courtyard, etc. Makes my house look like I live in a pile of mud. Because I kind of do. We walked around his village on the obligatory greeting tour. It’s a Najamba-speaking village, a dialect of Dogon close to Tommo-So, so most Najamba speakers are bilingual in Tommo. Dave doesn’t speak any Dogon, only Fulfulde, so his villagers were surprised and delighted when I could speak it. I stuck around for probably almost an hour and then drove back through an incredibly strong dusty wind to Douentza. I wish my village were so close to home.

After I scrubbed myself clean of all the road dust, I went to have a last lunch with Phil. We made grilled meat and Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches, a nice break from rice and sauce. I took him up to the spot on the road where his transport to Ngouma comes, and we waited there for almost 2 hours, sitting on a ripped palm-frond mat under a thorny tree. Eventually the overcrowded 4x4 came by and he climbed on top, ready for his 90 kilometer journey.

I went home and did some work for a while. M. le Maire got into Douentza, so we had dinner together, and then with Oumar, we split a bottle of white wine I had brought back from Bamako. I’m expanding their wine horizons, little by little. All they know here is not even wine. It’s just like rubbing alcohol with red coloring. A couple months ago, I brought back red wine, and so now they were amazed to find white wine. I tried explaining to them the differences between kinds of grapes and how there are even a lot of different kinds of reds and whites, but they didn’t totally get it. In any case, we chatted and had a pleasant evening.

When I went back into my room, there was a red blinking light on my computer where the battery symbol used to be. My battery, which had been on its last leg for a while, is officially no more. This means that my computer doesn’t work unless it’s plugged in, which is okay, but not great. And my back-up computer is a Mac that doesn’t support a lot of my work. Hence I am not in the best of spirits today. Couldn’t it have waited another 2 months?