Selected musings from my household appliances and other dysfunctional objects

Fluorescent lights: Kermit is an innocent lamb. There she is, racing to the bathroom, flicking my switch, hopping anxiously from one foot to the other, waiting for me to come on, looking blindly into the darkness above, expecting a ferocious lizard to leap for her throat, waiting for the lights... Waiting... Waiting... I wonder at what point she begins to lose hope. The moment she realizes that she is no longer in Kansas and that I alone hold the reins over her full bladder. MWAHAHA-- ahem. Excuse me. Back to Sharon in the bathroom. I begin to buzz lovingly, knowing that her hopes will rise again... After three weeks, she still believes that I will turn on in any reasonable amount of time. MWAHAHAHA-- *cough* Sorry. Back to Sharon in the bathroom. I begin to flicker tantalizingly, and she hops a little faster... I reflect that if a lizard were to Carpe Diem, she would no longer need my lights... MWAHAHA--HA--VE--to--control--evil--laughter... 

My life as an agony aunt. A comparatively filthy rich one.

People like to talk to me. All sorts of people.

The guy with the dreads you see sometimes at the bus stop, but you never talk to because he reeks of weed?

The old woman who is a little lonely because her children never visit, and who she likes to keep fit by taking a walk (alone) everyday at precisely 8am?

The guy who picks his nose incessantly and who once wanted to be a pharmacist?

The… person in a floral print dress and stubble?

The woman who survived breast cancer and is helping her sister do the same?

The teenager who has all sorts of dreams about the future but can’t quite seem to make it through high school?

That’s right: I’ve talked to ‘em all. I feel they sense the jagged edges of a life dropped, broken, and clumsily glued back together.

Or I look like a quiet schmuck in jeans who spends way too much time at bus stands.

Sotrama days are here again

So Friday night was spent playing Bang and Beans. Beans is the best game invented by human kind. Find out about it – buy it – love it.

Saturday was a little bit more iffy, and I’ve decided to give you an in-depth view of my mind in an effort to explain how things went down.

8:00am – Wake up

Me: Nonono! Go back to sleep, you silly twit – it’s too early.

Bed: *sloshes comfortingly*

8:01am – Still up

Me: You cannot ride a sotrama in this condition! You will be sleepy and you will wake up in a gutter in Indonesia. Go. To. Sleep.

Bed: *sloshes threateningly*

8:02am – Up like Jack’s Beanstalk

Me: Fine, if you will not sleep, I will punish you by staying in bed. No, you may not read. No, you may not eat breakfast. Bad Kermit. Bad!

Bed: *sloshes in confusion*

8:03am – UpUpUpUpUp

Me: I dreamed that I bathed in hair remover. I think my brain is telling me that if I don’t cut my hair, it will spontaneously combust. I wonder what time it is.

Bed: *sloshes admonishingly*  

8:04am – You guessed it

Me: I think I will dye my hair pink and then shave it for breast cancer and then I will have banana bread for breakfast and I don’t know if I’m hallucinating but time is moving backwards and I don’t think this is going to be a good day.

Bed: *sloshes in commiseration*  

Lizards are taking over my world

You know that little kids' song about the day the teddy bears have a picnic?

There must be a Malian song about the night the lizards have a convention.

You know where they have a convention?

In my roof. (And other associated places over my head.)

You know what they discuss?

How to kill me.

My first view of Mali

Malibya

A monument which I cannot currently recall the name of

The 50th anniversary (of Mali's independence in 1960) monument

A monument to the people who died during the coup in 1991. I couldn't get a picture of the front so you can only the see a bit of it here, but there is a statue of a mother wailing (hands raised) over the body of her child. 

The beautiful city of Bamako. (This is after a nice, cooling rain. I have yet to get a good picture of when it becomes all sepia with dust before the storm hits.)

Steve and Becky C have a self-mutilating parrot, many speedy turtles, and a totally cool son. They also have two other cool sons, a cat, two dogs, a couple of bunnies, and myriad roosters and chickens, but we're going to have to make do with what we have.

A dead lizard that was waiting for me when I got home one night. (In case you're wondering: yes, that is its tail. Yes, it was flipping around as though demon-possessed - the tail, not the dead lizard.)

The view of a storm from my front porch. Again missed the yellowy-brown dust storm that preceded it.

Sabre, our guard dog, ran up to keep me company as I chased a frog that landed on my doorstep to escape the storm.

THERE HE ISSSSSSS! I called him Squishy and he was mine. And he was my squishy. And then he hopped out of my life.

Sabre being clearly unimpressed that I was following the frog and not petting her hideously smelly (but very sweet) head. 

A Promise

I'm about to go into one of my rants again, so all you non-believers close your eyes, hum a song and chillax for a while. (Or read it - you never know what you'll learn.)

Christianity in Mali

Last Sunday, I was part of a Bambara church service for the first time. The room was packed (as it was the final day of a women's convention), and once again I didn't understand most of it, but the gifted Sharon G translated some of it for me. The highlight was the music. The choir consisted of a large group of women, two of them on drums, who danced (!) and sang the most amazing songs about the ten bridesmaids and being the five who were ready, about Jesus' disciples leaving Him in the garden but the women following behind Him... You can't imagine this level of joy until you've seen it in action: the music is absolutely amazing. Pretty soon the whole room was filled with these bouncing African women and one very confused, rhythm-less, periodically spasming Anglican one. I also managed to butcher a Bambara version of Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus! It was very thrilling!

Week 1 (Officially) - Part 3

As I was saying in the last post, the missionary community that's built up here is a great one. There's a pretty big group of ex-pats out here, but they're really close-knit. Thus, on Saturday I was invited to a reception for a couple who'd gotten married over the summer before returning to Mali to teach at BCA. The flipside to this lovely invitation is that I had to bring finger food.

(This was tricky because to an Indian, everything is finger food...)

So I decided to make aloo tikki.

Week 1 (Officially) - continued

Tuesday was my first ESL class - a Level Four in which about twenty men and two women stared at me from lawn chairs and I wanted to crouch in the bathroom until they'd all gone away. Again, the class was taught with Becky C, so she took most of it (because it was my first time) and I took over for about a half hour at the end. Most people did contribute really, really well, and I felt a lot better about teaching the class by the end.

Highlights of the lesson: being mocked for my adopted last name (which, by the way, is actually 'Diarra,' pronounced 'Jada' – who knew?), and one man who said to me, “As my brother Obama said, 'We can, and we did!'”

Week 1 (Officially)

(Because it was unofficial until now.)

Monday morning started bright and early because I had to be at Bamako Christian Academy to supervise Grade 10 and then Grade 9 math classes from 7:30 – 9:00. This is great because it means I have to get up early and not spend half the day in bed...

Because Mali and Libya go together like peanut butter and nutella. Or not.

The most bizarre piece of news that I've heard here is of Malibya and You Know Who's (a modern day Voldemort, I suppose) reach into Mali. I'd known that northern Mali was dangerous territory, but I'd never imagined that You Know Who would have the freedom to build a government complex in Mali's capital. I'm not too sure on the specifics, and I don't want to botch news as we all know that I'm no unbiased journalist, but here's an interesting article that has provided, truthfully, about the extent of my knowledge on Malibya's claims to Mali: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/29/mali-farmers

Becky C and her wonderful children explained all this to me as we painted the town red... Well, as I was driven around and gently reminded to keep my camera under wraps when we passed the police.

This little piggy went to supermarket...

...where everything was outrageously priced! I mean, really! A bottle of shampoo cost 3 500 XOF! I don't care that it's roughly the Canadian equivalent of $6 - my 'thrifty' Indian soul was offended on general principle. It was the same in India! I understand the concept of great exchange rates, it's just... the thought of paying 1000 anything for anything at a store... I know, I know: straitjacket and padded walls, stat.

Wait, take me back!

So it turns out that the three-day flight to Mali is only half the battle.

After stepping foot into the miniscule airport, there was a long lineup for customs, one separate office for 'Visa,' and another for 'Health.' I had the customs paper that I filled out on the plane, I had a visa, and I had proof of a yellow fever vaccination – so many choices, so few functioning brain cells...

It's all up in the air

I have arrived safely in Bamako and it's nighty-night time, but I had to blog it before I forgot it. I've had more adventures since arriving, but this is just something I wrote during a layover. More to come another day!


Ok, so the flight to Heathrow was bearable - everything after that is a blur. I had a six-hour wait in London, and would like to take this opportunity to inform readers that Heathrow is stuck in a time warp. I slept, I woke up, I checked the time, a minute had passed, I grew old and grey, another minute passed... Rip Van Winkle had it good. 

“I found a dead body, you know,"

is not something you want to overhear at an airport. However, the woman ahead of me in every line was absolutely frothing to share her good news. I'm not sure if it was at the Edmonton International or not, but I did hear something about a wedding... and the a dead body.