HAKUNA MATATA!

NOTE:  As of January 17, 2012, I have moved my blog to my new website:  www.onegirlsadventures.com

I will still be doing duplicate posts on this website for the next 6 months or so, but plan to close it down after that.  Please go to my new website and subscribe!!

MERCI BEAUCOUP!

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Hakuna Matata...they actually do say that here in Mali, even though the phrase is Swahili.  I am not quite at the "No Worries" stage :)....but working on it each day!

So I write this now from a little hotel called The Sleeping Camel in Bamako, Mali.  My room is absolutely bare minimum in its decore and furnishing....but what it lacks in design flare and comfortable furniture, it makes up with many, many, many tiny brown bugs that LOVE to crawl all over me.  They aren't particularly unique bugs...they kinda look like the little ones that infest flour bags in warm places like southern California (I am pretty sure I opened a bag down there once to find these little creatures).  But at $25 a night, I would expect these guys as my roommates....at least they don't make a lot of noise.

My room in Bamako! 

There are actually 2 Beds in this room....the other one is broken though (go figure).

Floating above the bed is the mosquito net that I will most definitely use tonight since there is a bit of a Malaria problem in this country...in fact, I met a guy from Seattle today who is recovering from Malaria. And YES, I can anticipate your first question, he was taking his malaria pills. Those don't guarantee a thing!

Ouch! One of those wretched little bugs just bit me!  Lets hope that doesn't swell to high heaven.  His sniffer must have been bad cuz I have Deet on to the max :).

My departure from Senegal this morning was rather anti-climatic, which means I didn't run into major plan altering snaffus just mild ones that still allowed me to get the airport on time (albeit the hotel owner did tell my driver to "go as fast as possible"....because of their doddling, not mine).

Fatima and Me!

Fatima took good care of me at my Dakar hotel.

The necklace I bought on Goree island.  It is ebony and bronze (you may recall it was also spit shined by a sales woman).  The tank I bought at Banana Republic....cotton, spring '09 collection. :)

Boarding my flight to go to Bamako. 

This airline is out of Burkina Faso. It was an incredibly comfortable ride.

Most surprising to me were all the people meandering about as we taxied for take-off!! They were finally asked to take there seat when we revved the engine to go down the runway :).  Love Africa!

They even served us a full meal on the 1 1/2 hour flight.

I chose the chicken...which I ate, left the rice, ate the baguette and butter, left the mayonaissey looking salad and, of course, devored the dessert :)

Some of my first glimpses of Bamako.

Again I took some really neat videos that give a great sense of this place, but don't dare try to download them as the bandwidth here is the size of one of those coffee stirring straws.  But it was incredible as I flew in to see all the rectangular shaped mud huts with tin corrigated roofs. So Simple. So Plain. They were usually surrounded by a mud fence and had clothes drying in the hot sun and goats tied to posts. 

I gasped as my taxi driver drove me by an outside market with a sea of dilapidated vending stalls.  Some with cages of chickens stacked 10 high, others with sides of meat hanging in the sun, some selling  fruits and  vegetables....all of them so close to one another and so packed with people...it was like nothing I had ever seen before.

As rustic as the picture above looks, it accurately depicts a lot of the streets here in Bamako.

These are storefronts.

When I got to the hotel, I spent time getting to know my neighbors.  The hotel is owned by an Australian man, so he attracts a lot of English speaking folks like myself.  I was surprised that my neighbors in room 1 (I am in room 3....but I like to think of it as a suite) are all from Seattle!!!!  One of them, Samantha, actually lives on Capitol Hill too :)....ah, ain't the world small.  They are a group of musicians making their way across Mali and basically doing jam sessions, live and recorded, with other Malian musicians.  Music is SO IMPORTANT here in Mali....and the talent of the musicians is incredible.  They are having a dream-like experience as they perform with some of the most talented artists in Africa.  Another couple I met, Glen and Clare, is on their honeymoon!!!  Glen is from Canada, Clare is from England, they met in Thailand and for their honeymoon they are doing a 7 month overland trip of Africa in a Land Rover they bought in South Africa 6 months and 2 weeks ago.  They said if they can survive this trip together, they can survive a lifetime together.  I tend to agree.

I spent dinner at this kitchy, yet delicious, restaurant called The Appalossa.  The owner is Lebanese yet he apparently has an obsession with America's wild west. It felt a little like walking into Africa's interpretation of the OK Corral. John Wayne's picture hung on the wall, Georgia license plates dangled near my table, a American Flag waived proud in one corner and elephant scene tablecothes graced every table....what sent me into hysterics though was that the poor servers in this restaurant even had to dress like cowboys!!!!  Black cowboy hat and all!!  I tried to get a photo of us with our server below:

Our server is the one in the way back, his black hat is a bit shadowed, but trust me it is there :).

The guy in the white shirt, Mo, may help me with my Timbuktu trip...we are still negotiating a price. The guy in the blue shirt is the one that spotted me at the airport....so I am sure whatever I negotiate with Mo, he will get a cut of.  I still don't really know who that girl is....the restaurant we were at did have a bevy of Eastern European girls behind the bar who mostly sat smoking on short stools (so you would look at the bar and just see a line of well coiffed tops of heads and smoke coming up...it was truly bizarre)...they served drinks as well as offered more tantalizing services after hours.

My lebonese meal of hummus and tabouli at The Appaloosa Ranch.

Lady Gaga serenaded me for most of this meal.

Oh, Peace Corps volunteers also were at this restaurant tonight...it was fun talking to them a bit.

Mo and I go into final negotiations tomorrow so I need to be well rested for that meeting at 10am...ish :).  I still seem to be a magnet for our mini 6 legged friends...er, annoyances...but trying to be tough :)....I mean, really, I did wrangle a 2 inch cockroach in Senegal...these guys are nothing!