ze news wif me

this morning when i woke up, mamadou was pooping on the floor outside my room and eating matches. ohhh mamadou!

things are really good here lately...ive been uber-busy. ive been going to lots of concerts (boubacar traore on sat night was amazing!) and doing my share of dancing. there are these "cultural spaces" where theres always traditional music going on and people relaxing or dancing its great. weve made some cool rasta friends that we go out with a lot which is nice because they love to dance and be silly too. and ive still been climbing my hill just about every day. it turns out that my hill is aka-ed as 'rasta hill' hahah... all the rastas live there, but not in the part that i pass on my way to the top! its mango harvesting time which means you can get 2 for 5 cents...yum!

im very accustomed to malian life now... bucket showers are heavenly now rather than inconvenient and i think i prefer peeing in holes in the ground to western toilets... as long as you cant see the maggots at the bottom. toiletpaper is like a silly past-time as is silverware and spacious public transport. here, we get around by sotramas - big green minivans with the backs gutted. you wouldnt believe how many people they can fit in just one sotrama. we can seriously squeeze like 20-25 and just when you thought there was absolutely NO space left, two fat ladies enter and somehow squeeze in. you might get sat on a little bit, but thats just the nature of the game. you can get most places taking only one or 2 sotramas and each one only costs 125 cfas which is about 25 cents. its a good deal. if you want to take a taxi you might have to pay as much as 4 dollars (thats if youre going like, 40 mins away) and that is just completely unacceptable!

speaking of money, having bills are a curse here, even if theyre only 2000 cfas (4 dollars). if you try to pay for something using a 2000 cfa bill, people will look at you like "are you kidding me? you want me to give you change for this?!" and depending on who you talk to you, they might even just say no because they dont have enough change for you. our prog director gives us money every month for transport and food and such, and he gives it to us in 5.000 and 10.000 cfa bills and were all like NOOOO because we know noone will accept such bills. its like paying for a banana with a 100 dollar bill... they think were crazy!

nonetheless, im def getting good at the system. i know where to break a bill and i will argue in bambara with a sotrama apprentice over 5 cents if i know hes ripping me off because im a tubabu (whitey). its the the principle! classes are over next week and im excited to start isp. i think ive found a really great womens coop to work with. its in a village just outside bamako so i can still live here, and its a farming coop that also does fabric dying and literacy programs for its members. i think there could be a lot there...plus i just really want to farm. im determined to be good at bambara because i know the women there wont speak french...so ive been working hard at that!

i have a busy weekend coming up and tonight were going dancing, so i best be heading off.

k'an si!