Postcards galore!

Thanks for all the responses to our call for postcards. They are great. Our collection has tripled in the last month. To those who have sent some, we say well done. Some of you have not. You are reading this thinking you have been to lazy to send us one. Shame on you. Now you are reading this thinking, “Oh my god, how do they know I am reading this thinking I need to send one but have been too lazy!” Don’t ask scary questions, just send the postcard.

The postcards are an interesting way for us to see who is reading our blog. For instance, our friends Missy and Bryce reacted quite rapidly after being called out for not sending us one from Jamaica and dispatched a postcard from Sweet Briar College tout suite. We also got a nice one from their dog with the typical dog greetings, although we suspect she just looks at the pictures and doesn't read it at all! Interesting note: dogs do not sign with a paw-print as one might expect but rather prefer to spell out their whole name and title. This tagline read, “Bananas the Dog.” She was apparently worried we would confuse her with all the other “Bananas” with which we hang out.

Mark’s brother Brian lives in Scotland and has been the best so far at updating us on his travels, having sent the first and most postcards to date, even if he has only been to Manchester, England. Actually, he really has been to some cool places from Glencoe in the highlands of Scotland to the picturesque town of Zadar on the Adriatic Sea. All you folks out there who were going to be the first to send us greetings from Croatia just got scooped! Strangely, we have not received one from him since publically requesting them. His roommate, Katherine, is on the ball, however. It looks like she was back stateside and visited Disneyland. How do we know? You guessed it…postcard. She must have read about our, “If you could be anywhere in Disney right now where would it be?” game (Mark’s answer, by the by, is nearly always Mexico at Epcot Center with a frozen margarita in hand while Sam’s changes daily).

We got two from Mary Jones, Kelly’s mom. One card was from Chico Hot Springs, where Sam and I got our first taste of Montana and one a picture of the ubiquitous Mickey Mouse. This brings up a sad point. Kelly has been sent home from Mali for medical reasons. While we are saddened by this development, at least we’ll get a postcard from her. Hardly much of a silver lining. This goes for Natalie and Steve too, who left us last month (by their own decision, fortunately), as well as our friends in France, Washington, etc. You know who you are: get those postcards in the mail.

Speaking of parents, we got one from our old roommate Jon Schiebel’s parents. They are some of the nicest and most giving people we know (our family west of the Mississippi) and are so happy to hear from them. They could not have raised a child who would not send a simple postcard to some old friends. Jon’s must be in the mail on its way to Africa right now!

Our friend Marie Venner’s mom Nancy has been following our blog. She has been trying to glean a bit of what life is like from our writings since Marie does not give her adequate updates on her own. Bad Marie, bad! She sent us an envelope filled with propaganda postcards designed, it would seem, to make us take a second honeymoon in Hawaii and then make us live in California after we return from Mali. While we may not be relocating that far west, she has foolishly invited us for a meal and a place to stay. Careful what you wish for Nancy, especially when you are making offers to poor souls in the Peace Corps, as they may never leave.

Sam’s old roommate Kysa sent out a card. She tragically mentions looking forward to Boston College football this year. It looks as if Kysa may be the only person in for a longer year than us!

Kevin Coughlin, the technology adverse buddy from Wyoming of leather tele-boot fame, is in his element. He gets to send things through the mail again! Who are we kidding, we know he still hand writes checks to the electric company and worries about getting them postmarked on time.

One final card came from the lift operations department at Jackson Hole. This one made us both laugh out loud. The new tram with the old “King of the Tram” driving it was hilarious (thanks to everyone for throwing in your two cents on the back.). That tradition is hanging on like the old “Andre the Giant has a Posse” stickers!

As for you, you could not be reading this and not have sent us out a postcard, could you? No, that’s crazy talk…

Mike & Sarah Visit (West of Bamako)

Mark’s cousin Mike and his wife Sarah are teachers. While they love the youth of our nation and want to help them improve themselves, blah, blah, they really do this job to support their world travel habit. Each summer they pack up their gear and hit the road to some of the coolest travel spots on the planet, from Central America, to Southeast Asia, to India and a bunch of places in between. Therefore, Sam and Mark were surprised to hear Mike and Sarah’s desire to visit Mali, one of the world’s least cool places on a number of levels. We attempted to dissuade them but they insisted. So, in the middle of the night at the beginning of August, they stepped off the Royal Air Moroc flight (often an adventure in itself) and into the West African night for a month.

They had already spent three weeks in Morocco and so were ready for the heat. The filth may have been a different case.

We started off with a trip to the zoo because everyone needs to see the decaying manatee, right? Here they are in front of the rotting carcass which, during the rainy season, sits in a pool of standing water that acts as a sort of racid stew, marinating in its own putrefaction. See if you can imagine the smell just by the forced smiles on their faces:




We spent a good deal of time at the zoo, more than intended actually owing to the turtle sex show we were mesmerized by. How long would it last? Turns out turtles copulate much longer than we would have guessed. So long that we had to give up on it. A later check of the internet (the most authoritative news source ever devised) revealed that we well might have been there until dark watching those two. There is video but you will be spared.

After the zoo we headed northwest, to the tourist hotspot of West Africa, Yelimane. People line up to see the sites, which include but are not limited to: Sam and Mark’s old house, Mauritania, the millet and peanut fields and the egg sandwich seller with the most flies in the region to name a few attractions.

We had a great time. Mike and Sarah got to experience the same feeling Indiana Jones feels when he enters a small village as they entered the house and connected mosque of the Imam AdoulayeAziz Ly. They got to have kids climb all over them and probably held more babies than they had ever expected to in such a short time span. They got to hang out with the famous Ablo, Kadja and their family as well as eat and drink plenty of tea with Django and his clan.

One day we went out to the fields to “work” so they could experience a real day in an African millet field. They got the whole experience, all right. It started with a five kilometer walk to the fields, followed by a snack, some actual backbreaking work (mercifully little) and then it was on to tea and nap time.











At one point, we all had a good laugh as Ablo pooped in a hole he had dug with his daba and then scooted his butt along the grass like a puppy for lack of water to wipe himself. We all walked back except for Ablo, whom we left sleeping alone under the tree out in the field.







On our last day in Yelimane Sarah and Mike made an absolutely unbelievable proclamation. Mark came over to them with a kid named Solo, who they declared the most beautiful kid ever.



(Bear in mind that, at this point, Sam and Mark had agreed for months already that Solo was the ugliest kid in Mali so they were dumbfounded by this.) For the rest of the trip they made allusions to Solo as the best looking child in Africa. Not sure if there are any Muppet fans out there but if there are let us say we had always thought Solo looked like a Doozer from Fraggle Rock. Suffice it to say he is not the cutest kid in Mali*. We think they know they got it wrong but just stuck to their guns out of stubborness.

We headed to Kayes next and got out of town the next day after a pre-dawn pirogue ride across the Senegal river. It was certainly a different experience than the average Boston morning commute they do. It was a fun trip out west, where tourists only go when they are completely lost.



* Mark pictured with the actual cutest kid in Mali...