Impending voyage? TBD.

My weekend was fun and productive. I worked some more with M. le Maire, finishing up the last of the texts to transcribe, on Saturday afternoon, then that evening, I met up with Nicolas at the Tango for a beer. Hanging out with him is good, since it forces me to clean up my French, which kind of takes a beating in Mali otherwise. Though I must say, I have greatly increased my French vocabulary from working on the dictionary.

Sunday morning, M. le Maire and I started translating the texts, but as usual for a market day, people constantly came by to greet and we gave up the effort after a while. Nicolas came by and we chatted, then I got a call from Dave saying he’d gotten into town. We decided on doing a pasta lunch, so went to the market to pick up the essential produce. I spoke a lot of Tommo-So there, since it seemed that every woman selling what I needed was a Tommo.

When I got to Dave’s house, some people from his village were there. We cooked lunch for all of them, and chatted in a mixture of English (me and Dave), Fulfulde (Dave and his villagers) and Tommo-So (me and his villagers). It was fun, and they really enjoyed the food. Dave said his boss was coming up that evening and that maybe we could hitch a ride to Sevare with her the next day, since apparently there will be a shindig for St. Patty’s Day in Bandiagara, but she never ended up coming. Maybe today.

I went back home after lunch to see if M. le Maire was around, but he wasn’t, so I worked on my grammar, finishing a rough draft of the chapter I intended to get done by Tuesday. After eating dinner with M. le Maire and Ramata, I went back to Dave’s house to see if said boss came in, but she hadn’t. We got a couple of beers in any case.

This morning, I went over to see Fatimata again, since I’m getting some things made, then chatted with M. le Maire. He’ll be going back to Tedie tomorrow, and I might be going to Sevare this evening, depending on Dan and Dave’s plans. I was going to go down on Wednesday anyway, and I would like to hang out for St. Patty’s day, but if no one else is going down, I’m not going. To be determined. If the next blog entry is from Sevare, I will let you know.