I can now say I have been in three continents in 24 hours! We arrived around 9:45 last night which means it was about 2:45 Sunday morning for you guys. It was all pretty crazy. We boarded the large plane with an incredibly colorful crowd, no doubt we already stood out. On the plane I realized we were some of, if not the only people on the plane speaking english and it all started to hit me that I was going to a place far outside of my comfort zone and many miles away from home. I got a few solid hours of sleep, watched part of a One Direction concert, and conversed awkwardly with the flight attendants because of the slight language barrier. It was a six hour flight and then we reached Bamako. We were rushed through a line where we had to fill out a declaration of entrance card and show our visas/passports and then we met the in-country director of the Mali Rising Foundation- Alou. He and a few friends assisted us in grabbing our luggage and pushing through the swarms of people to our car. We then met Alous's good friend Baboo who monkey'd on top of the car to store our stuff and then drove Alou, my dad, Ivy and me to our hotel. It was around 10:30 when we landed, and nearly midnight by the time we had our largest bags stored, our personal items situated in our rooms, and were hanging out in our room eating goldfish and beef jerkey.
I think our first hotel, La Venise Malienne, is pretty cool. There is a small bed for me and a medium bed for my dad and Ivy. Both of which have a bug nets hanging above it for when you sleep at night. Our bathroom is simple with a toilet, sink, and a small bar of organic soap. The whole room doubles as a shower with a small step down in the middle for the water to drain. I am pretty relieved to have both a shower and a toilet. There is also this really cool courtyard in front with tables and chairs. It's nice and shady and theres a little turtle cruising around.The air conditioning is also pretty fabulous in our room and I appreciate it a lot more after walking around in the heat the next day.
I didn't get to bed until about 1:00 and was up at 9:00. I wasn't very tired so falling asleep was difficult, but once I did, I slept like a freaking rock. My dad and Ivy must have too because there wasn't any snoring the whole night...let's see if this lasts. We put ourselves together, ate a breakfast a man at the hotel graciously made us. We ate a few eggs made into an omelette, coffe, rolls with butter, and some delicious cherry juice in the front courtyard of the hotel as the Muslim call to prayer started playing. For those of you who don't know, because I sure didnt, it is played five times day and when it is people stop, face Mecca, pull out their prayer mat, and pray. Alou then came to pick us up in his car with his friend Oma and we headed to the city to run some errands.
The city is pretty much what I expected- absolutely crazy. There is no wrong way to drive a car so the next time my little brother gives me crap I'll tell him about Mali and how everyone just swerves through the lanes. There are a few cars, bikes, and the majority of people have a little motorized scooter. We drove past many "scooter gangs" of a bunch of people cruising around with at least one other person on the back. Everything is dirty and crowded and crazy. We first had to exchange money so we talked to Alou and he found us someone who could do it for us. Alou was sort of our translator as my dad tried negotiate the exchange rate. The main languages here are French and Bambara, and boy do I wish I spoke them. Language barriers freak me out. People will just walk up to you assuming you speak French and its really awkward to sort that out. I didn't understand what was said but its amazing how much you can understand through body language and the words "big paper".Clearly, the man wanted my dad to pay far more than the normal exchange rate and he wasn't having it. It was quite the process, but they soon figured it out and then we were off to "Office Depot", as my dad called it, to buy some more school supplies other than that which we had packed with us. When we walked through the streets we were recieved in totally different ways, but were universally looked at like complete freaks, which I suppose we probably are here. Some people would point the bottom of their shoes towards us which is kind of the equivalent of flipping us off, and others would ask us to sit down and smile for pictures when Ivy had her camera out. I was thankful to have Alou, Baboo, And Oma with us. They showed us where to go and walked behind and in front of us. Office Depot was about 10x10 and stacked to the rafters with French books, pens, pencils, you name it. It took us another little while to decided what we needed, how much, and how much we were going to pay. Luckily, my dad had his currency converter handy through all of this to make sure we weren't getting jipped. We ended up buying paper, pens, and some really nice illustrated dictionaries. We wanted to locate and Orange store which is basically their main cell phone provider here to activate my Dad's phone, but they were all closed so we decided to stop for some fresh bottles of water at this nifty little shop and were then on our way back.
We made it back home around 2:00 P.M and all crashed for a couple hours. I think I will get used to the time change soon, though. For tonight we are eating beef jerkey, goldfish and protein bars for dinner. It's pretty insane that I can sit on the Internet in our front courtyard totally still plugged in to everyone back home. It's about 8:30 PM here and 1:30 in Salt Lake. Looking forward to a shower tonight, seeing the rest of our group tomorrow, and visiting the villages later in the week. Following will be some pictures Ivy snapped since we've been here. I appreciate those of you reading and will keep you all updated.
A big thumbs up from me in Bamako! Pictures will follow if we don't have another power outage in the next ten minutes.
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