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| Badia checking out our bananas |
Finally, I can say that the house starts to feel like "home" even if there are still workers wandering around every day. There are days when I have the impression that while they repairing something broken, consecutively something else brakes down. One step forward, two steps back...
Having endless patience is the secret for survival. I have tried all kind of methods with the workers during the past month, from being very friendly to being extremely difficult and nothing made a difference. They just keep smiling and they always keep the same (slow) speed as before. And I have to keep double checking all what they do and quite often have to ask them to redo it all. Now I also know that if I ask them to come in the morning, they might arrive in the morning but the following day and if they say that they have work for 2 days, means that they will be there (not necessarily working) for at least one week.
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| Tea making accessories |
Tea is very important for the Malian people. Everywhere on the streets you can see that same funny metal construction for the coal, the same small teapots and small glasses. Knowing about this tradition, my first decision was to offer those accessories to the 4 permanent guards in front of our house, together with the local tea and sugar. So now, not only that they offer me tea from time to time but they also take over the task of hospitality and they make tea for all the workers active in our house. Quite often there is a one big happy gathering in our carport with 10-15 people (workers, guards, driver, gardener, etc.) drinking tea.
There is one other interesting element in the Malian culture. People eat with their (right) hands. And not only people on the street or the workers but also people at the offices, like in the kitchen at my husbands office. And they are really good at it because when I tried to do the same, the food was all over the place (my blouse especially) but not in my mouth. But I will keep practicing...
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| Pirogues |
Last Sunday, friends invited us to their "paillotte". Don't worry, I had to ask myself, what that was exactly. :-) They are the "equivalent" of what we would call summer houses, little cabins with straw roofs, except that they are very basic with pounded earth floors and no electricity. Expats rent them for the weekends to get away from the polluted, hectic and hot city.
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| The paillotte |
This paillotte was next to the Niger River at a breathtaking place, 1 hour drive, outside of Bamako.
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| Fisherman greeting us |
We had a very nice afternoon, with picnic, watching hundreds of pirogues passing by and me, looking at my friends bathing. They did convince me about the nonexistence of crocodiles and hippopotamus, but the dark brown color of the water wasn't inspiring me, so I turned down a swim in the Niger River... just to see my first crocodile swimming in that same river this morning... Quite a shock seeing them NOT in a cage, like we are used to in Europe! ;-))
Never a dull moment in Africa!
