Djenne

The Lonely Planet guide to West Africa opens up its description of this town with, “One of the premier sites in West Africa…is worth as much time as you can give it.” This says a lot about West Africa. While definitely a cool town with the world’s largest mud building, the giant mosque at the center of town, we feel we may have to disagree with LP on this one. Since it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, nobody can construct a building in town out of anything but mud, making it definitely interesting and visually striking: but an extended stay hardly seemed necessary.

The highlight for us was visiting with our friend Stacy. How she lives among the constant harassment of the omnipresent touts is at once a mystery and a testament to her fortitude.
Here's Sam being approached by one of Djenne's smallest and cutest touts. We’d had enough of them after a few hours. Wandering the streets during the days and hanging at her house at night was great. Stacy had just returned from the States and so, while Sarah and Mike might not have been as awestruck, Sam and Mark were completely captivated by her stories of good beer and cheese!


We then headed to Mopti. Using Susan’s house as a home base, we explored the eastern (known as “north”, although I am sure Mike Cahill, the sole remaining member of Peace Corps Malitania, bristles at the mention of a location being “north” when it is really just east) part of the country. Here’s Sam and Susan, looking giddy as schoolgirls at a slumber party to be reunited. In point of fact, looking way too much like giddy school girls at a slumber party, way too much. More from Mopti later…

Mike & Sarah Visit (East of Bamako)

In certain circles, Mali is known as “the Crown Jewel of West Africa” for the amazingly cool stuff that can’t be found anywhere else. We took this designation with a grain of salt both because we had never been out east, where the amazing stuff is supposed to be, and because we had not seen anything for which it was worth coming all the way to Mali on a vacation yet. Considering each “Paris of West Africa” that we had visited along the coast of Africa was progressively worse than the one before (there were a number of claimants to this title, from Dakar to Conakry to Freetown), we harbored some doubts as to the veracity of this latest claim. Since the family was in from America and since we had already visited the touristically underwhelming west, we headed out east to see if those who travel in the dubious “Crown Jewel of West Africa” crowd have ever actually travelled to Mali.

Team photo:
Let's break this up into managable pieces...

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...

Call for Postcards

As we said, we have moved to Bamako. We are trying to decorate our place and would like your help. Please send us postcards to improve our postcard wall. It has only been added to by Mark's mom, twin brother and his wife and his older brother. It doesn't matter whether you think your location postcard worthy or not, just send us one from where you are or where you visit. They will all be exciting additions to our wall, be they from Jackson Hole, Wyoming or Mendon. Vermont. You could live in Belfast, Maine or Kingston, New Hampshire or Boston or anywhere else (including Mali!). All those places are places we are excited to visit when we return. So be good, like Brian Hannon when he went to Croatia and sent us a postcard. Don't be a Missy McEwen or a Bryce Walker, who did not send us a postcard from Jamaica!

Our soon to be brilliant (with all your help!) postcard wall.



Postcards get sent to:

The Hannons P.C.V.s

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 85

Bamako, Mali

West Africa

(Believe it or not, it is actually necessary to write out West Africa to avoid your postcard ending up in Malawi, Bali, Malta or any number of other places they have been known end up. As you may guess, Mali is pretty low on the recognition scale and therefore postmen often believe you to have been unsure of where you wanted to send your own mail so they try to help you out. Sometimes they just make the mistake themselves. Thanks mail service.)

Please, send these cards a.s.a.p. and often but that is all. We are big city kids now with access to all sorts of conveniences and don't need big packages. Thanks to anyone thinking about that but save your cash and buy us a drink when we visit!

4th of July

We headed to Manantali recently. There is an annual gathering of Peace Corps volunteers in this western town for the 4th of July. It was really nice to get away from Mali for a few days. By that we mean that the scene was quite American. There were people speaking english all around, listening to tunes and drinking beers just like back home. There was even a full roasting pig on a spit.
Sam and Kelly rode bikes up to the Manantali dam in the morning and had a look around while Mark stayed behind for some more traditional entertainment. It is a strikingly beautiful 73km long reservoir behind a surprisingly stout dam.

Not a lot of constructions here fit into that category.

It was billed as a bit of a redneck affair so Mark got right into it with the handlebar mustache/mullet combo (note: full pig on spit in background). A few people assumed that Sam must be horrified by this look until they found out that it was Sam who cut the mullet in the first place. After that they may have been more disturbed by her than him.
Everything went so well that Mark stayed a few extra days because his service had yet to start up. Sam headed back with the crew to go to work. Public transport was a slightly longer trip than the Peace Corps land cruiser that had brought her there but that is just west African travel. Mark hung out with the hippos and monkeys and the Manantali volunteers for two more days and was lucky enough to ride back in Peace Corps transport again. Score!

Moved

We have moved. No longer do we dwell on the edge of the desert. We now live in the capital city of Mali, Bamako. There are trees around our new house! Needless to say, this is a big change. While we will miss our families in Yelimane, we will not be missing the oppressive heat and frequent sandstorms. We recognize that Bamako will be hot and also has sandstorms but right now it is rainy season and those problems are a few weeks off. Hey, if you can't lie to yourself to whom can you lie?

Here's some pics of what we leave behind:




















For the benefit of our European friends:

















And for those of you out there in mummifying cat land who are wondering...