A Malian 4th of July
It’s my first night alone here in Bamako after quite a peaceful day. I literally spent the entire day in my pajamas - I guess I just felt like a lazy day. It’s been a rather cold weekend here. Everyday the temperature hovered between 75 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit (yes, everything is relative) and last night, as I was walking back from next-door where I was babysitting, I saw that our guard had tied plastic bags around his hands and legs to protect against the cold…very bizarre.
I had a very nice end to last week, because rather than going to ASDAP on Thursday and Friday, I went with Lynn to the Save office, where I did lots of translating for her. It was certainly difficult at some points (many new vocabulary words) but it was SO nice to finally have something concrete to do.
Yesterday for the 4th I went with the family next door to the US Marine house here in Bamako, where the had a cook-out for the American community, complete with hot-dogs, a swimming pool, and a mean-spirited tortoise. And ping-pong. For some reason, ping-pong has always seemed like the quintessential military past time - I suppose I can thank Forrest Gump for that.
It will be interesting this week to see how the dog, Trusty, behaves. I have this theory that he only gets crazy when Lynn is home, because he is always chill around me (except when I go to put the leash on him - yesterday during that struggle I actually chipped a tooth a bit) and so far it has held up, but we’ll see how it goes.
I had a very nice end to last week, because rather than going to ASDAP on Thursday and Friday, I went with Lynn to the Save office, where I did lots of translating for her. It was certainly difficult at some points (many new vocabulary words) but it was SO nice to finally have something concrete to do.
Yesterday for the 4th I went with the family next door to the US Marine house here in Bamako, where the had a cook-out for the American community, complete with hot-dogs, a swimming pool, and a mean-spirited tortoise. And ping-pong. For some reason, ping-pong has always seemed like the quintessential military past time - I suppose I can thank Forrest Gump for that.
It will be interesting this week to see how the dog, Trusty, behaves. I have this theory that he only gets crazy when Lynn is home, because he is always chill around me (except when I go to put the leash on him - yesterday during that struggle I actually chipped a tooth a bit) and so far it has held up, but we’ll see how it goes.