Solidarity

"I hope you had the time of your life..." song lyric

My last days in Mali seemed to have passed ibn a blur, now looking back, although at the time the minutes felt like hours. That always happens to me when I am looking forward to something.

There was no agenda, just spending time with all of my favorite people and doing the things that I liked to do. Unfortunately our trip to Dogon country was cancelled last minute in a manner that did not allow us to resume plans on our own. That was disappointing but such is life.

Rodney and I were both through with Andrew in our last days. We decided to hang up our benefactor coats and let him rough it and get his own food and water the last few days. He literally spent whole days in his room with the door closed to the point where Rodney texted him to see if he was still in there and even resorted to shutting off the fuse for the room to see if that could make him come out.

In his defense, maybe he was licking his wounds after I shared with him my very truthful but not so positive perception of his behavior during our time in Mali. I said that perhaps it was too late to change what had occurred here but that he could take this as a lesson for moving forward in life because my guess was that he didn't have many friends if he treated everyone the same way he treated us. Really though I don't think it phased him. He is still at a point where everything is about what he wants and not what is fair and he worries not about the consequences of his behavior. We did try though.

Rodney and I decided to have a get together at our place for all the people who had been so nice to us. We realized quickly that a lot of them did not know each other and so tomake the get together less awkward and also to be realistic, as we couldn't feed hordes of people, we settled on inviting 5 people over, Constance, MAxime, Amadou, Mamadou, and Tacao. We could have invited Xavier (Moses), Safi, Ouima, and Safararou etc. but these were people who were likely not to come alone and ultimately we had to draw the line somewhere.

I washed the muddy terrace. Tacao had come over a few days before and frowned at it asking why I didn't clean it. Well I did but everytime it rains and wind blows, more thick mud. I'd rather hose it down but no garden hose... And why am I the one that has to clean it? Realizing that our guests would frown upon me once seeing the terrace I got out a mop bucket and began to mop and scrub at the stubborn mud spots. Within a second I was perspiring. Tacao came over and indicated that she would halp. I thanked her but refused. So she came over and took the large rag away from me. What I had been trying to do was use the large squeegee on a stick to swish the large rag around, similar to mopping back home. Different ball game folks!

She dipped the rag in the water, wrang it out with her hands (I had been trying to avoid that close contact with the water) bent at the waist and began moving the cloth around the floor with her hands. MUCH more effective! So I imitated her. Then she swished more water out of the bucket onto the stubborn mud spots and squeeged them too. In this manner we cleaned the entirety of the terrace, the steps and the garage. Rodney kept trying to get her to leave with him but she said no that we were cleaning. Grateful again! The terrace was sparkling when we finished and ready for our grand party...