Bou bous are taking me by storm. Woman and men stroll around in such colourful and beautiful hand made outfits known as boubous! For woman, they usually consist of a skirt and matching top made from the same material that hug their figures. However, the material is fairly think and with them being tightly fitted – I don’t know how they stand the heat, but everyone does! I have been visiting the tailor of course of a regular basis – they love us in there. They are Ghanaian and so speak English very well. I’m sure they are loving our business also but we are getting local rates for clothes which is next to nothing!

We went to Segou for the weekend because there was the annual Festival on the Niger River taking place. We were very interested to see what a Malian music festival would be like. The journey there was our first hurdle to tackle. Segou is about 3hours drive away and it wasn’t possible to book travel. Instead, we were told to be at a certain petrol station for 2pm. By the time we set off in our promised bus, it was 4pm. We’d had plenty of offers mind at the petrol station for lifts to Segou from passing locals but though. It felt like the whole of Bamako made a trip to Segou for this festival! We just so happened to take the same mini bus as a band performing at the festival – which obviously excited us all! They were from Senegal and we very nice to us, inviting us to their after party and offering us oranges and carrots! The bus was your average mini bus but managed to fit about 25 of us in and with people in the aisles it was hard to get out. However, there were always plenty of people selling food and drink at the windows when we stopped so we only needed to exit when we needed the toilet and this was a case of climbing out of the windows and jumping. The 3hour journey took us 5hours and I don’t think I’ve ever sweat so much!

It was all worth it though because the festival was amazing. We watched performers such as Salif Keita, Habib Koite and Sauti Soul who are apparently big Malian and Kenyan artists and after watching them I can see why. The festival was on the river Niger which all the locals seem to use to wash their clothes and their selves! There were lots of Tuaregs at the festival – the people of the ethnic group from the north of Mali who wear long robes and head scarfs covering nearly the whole of their face. In Segou, we stayed with a host family instead of a hotel in order to save money and it was a wonderful experience. There were eight of us girls who stayed with Awa and her family of three lovely children for approximately £4 per night. We slept outside under mosquito nets and had refreshing bucket shower over the hole in the floor toilet. It sounds horrific but it was actually lovely, we didn’t need anything more. Segou was a nice place, just as dusty and smelly but less cars and bustle in comparison to Bamako. Instead they had moto-taxis and heaps of donkeys!

We met two Americans at the festival who had just completed a rally from London to Timbuktu in a 1989 New York Ambulance! When we found this out, we became determined to get a ride back to Bamako in this Ambulance and we succeeded! The two guys, Mike and Steve were more than happy to give us a lift back so long as we made a donation to the Charity they are donating the Ambulance to here in Mali now they have completed the rally. We obliged and rode the five hour journey back to Bamako in the ambulance. It was very fun and we thoroughly enjoyed getting the hammock out inside and dangling our feet out the back doors! We were also invited to the handover ceremony of the ambulance to their chosen charity which just so happened to be the Salif Kaita foundation! (one of the performers from the festival) so we were all able to meet him a few days after seeing him on stage. He was very nice and even invited us to his private island which made us all jump and squeal as soon as he turned his back! The ambulance will be used as a mobile clinic to treat people with albinism, leprosy and other skin conditions. The ambulance will treat 5000 people per year, and save 1000 lives.

One thing that I still find funny is the lack of shops selling fruit and veg here. There is plenty of it and instead of shops, woman seem to carry big bowls of one particular item on their head and you kind of just buy it when you see it! Street stalls of lettuce and tomatoes are dotted everywhere too.

All the projects are going well but a bit slow – we have all come to terms with this now though and accepted that things just run slower here. My chalk event is in motion and I am in the process of inviting everyone personally. The sensory garden and playground is also going well. After shopping and pricing up we estimate both to be built for about £150 which is great and well in our budget. We are also proving ourselves as fairly good English teachers. We have discovered how best to work with the blind students – lots of dynamic activities instead of blackboard stuff. For example, we designed a game of blind-folded directions. One student was blindfolded and another gave directions such as right, left, straight-on etc in order to navigate them from one object to another in our open-air mud hut classroom! Using the blindfold – it meant both blind and sighted children could play.

On Valentine’s Day we came up with a game of Secret Valentine which was just like secret santa. We had to do nice things for our valentine during the day but they’re not supposed to know who their ‘admirer’ was. It was a lot of fun!

We have sampled the Malian nightlife on a few occasions now and the clubs are very different to Western clubs playing a mixture of African and western music. We are always the only white people in the club which usually proves a novelty for the locals. A Friday night a few weeks ago came to an amusing end when we finished off in a bar by our dance studio full of male dancers showing off their moves which was hilarious when one gave a full on performance to us! Apparently homosexuality doesn’t exist in Mali and is especially not tolerated but we did question whether we were in fact in a gay bar when three men dressed as cow boys seemed to be giving a private performance to some others. Some feminine practices seem to be the norm here for men for example; it’s common for male friends to hold hands in the street. We also went to a Bob Marley tribute night last week at a local outdoor venue which was very good with an excellent turnout from the expat community!

playing drums with children at AMALDENE

the directions lesson

drying clothes by the river

sleeping arrangments

the host mother -Awa

the new york ambulance