Malians seem to love Gaddaffi namely because he gave a lot of money to Mali and built places such as the fairly grand ‘Lybia hotel’ in the commercial centre of Bamako. His name is everywhere, local restaurants and even our local barbers are named after him. As a strange contrast, they also love Obama with his face equally as prevalent around the place. There are T-shirts and material with his face everywhere – even boxer shorts with ‘OBAMA’ written on the waistband!

As many of my photos have shown on facebook, I have been making many trips to an orphanage we have been introduced to. The lady who owns it ‘Bibi’ is a friend of one of the IS staff and is a very inspirational woman. She’s a larger than life character who always greeting us with a big hug and kiss. She claims to have not had a day off in 20years – she’s a wonderful sales woman – she often has other white people visiting and leaving money etc but essentially it’s how the orphanage has come to be there. Admirable really. The first time I went there, I knew I would be returning often! There is about 20 babies under the age of 6months in one room all sharing various cots. We spend hours in there playing, changing, feeding and washing the babies. It’s a dream – for me anyway I love it. They are so bouncy and cute. Most of them are chubby and fairly happy but they all have bad chests , various skin conditions  and plenty of mosquito bites. But I guess this is inevitable all being in the same vicinity. More often than not we come home covered in poo, sick and dribble! Ive been going for about 6 weeks now and in that time, two new borns have arrived who are very scrawny and tiny! Most of them are abandoned either due to the family unable to afford it or the mother dies during childbirth. Another story is a mistaken pregnancy for whatever reason.

Work has been frustrating at times recently especially with the playground. We have been waiting on various NGO’s who are wanting to form partnerships with us before going ahead with building the playground. However, the NGO who we have been discussing with failed to meet our deadlines and so we’ve finally decided to go ahead with building the playground with just our budget meaning it will be a smaller project but at least we can see the final result. So we have now ordered lots of equipment from the artisans who will be completed in the next week or so. The chalk marketing and sales conference that I organised took place last Thursday and was a success. I spent quite a while giving out invitations personally and organising how the day will run. The day was meant to commence with a presentation about UMAV, SOPRAM (the company that employs blind people to make the chalk) and the chalk itself. However, the TV cameras were really late so we had to give the tour of the workshop area first. It showed the invitees the blind people working making the chalk, packaging and also the cleaning mops that SOPRAM make as well. The cameras finally turned up and so JJ was able to give the presentation. I was meant to say something about our group but the International Service director ended up giving a long speech detailing what I was going to say and due to time constraints I wasn’t able to repeat L Refreshments and chalk presents followed this and everyone was very interested in the chalk and UMAV. People asked lots of questions so hopefully it will spur on some contract liaising. I appeared on Malian TV for this event and that’s the second time I’ve been on TV here in Mali (the other time was with the Americans at their rally ambulance ceremony). I haven’t seen any of the programmes because we don’t have a TV here but seeing as there are only 3 channels in Mali, I’m sure plenty of locals have seen me. The only reason I know is because the IS staff come into the office the next day saying they saw me on TV the night before! This along with my radio programme confirms that I am definitely more famous in Mali than in England!

There are children everywhere in Bamako, apparently 42% of the population is below the age of 15 which goes some way to explaining what we see. Everyone seems to live in compounds with about 4-5 mud shacks surrounding a communal courtyard area. Some have a well to get water and others have a running tap to share between the houses. I’m sure everything has order but some look so dirty and messy. Rags for clothing hanging up drying and plastic bags everywhere. The dirt tracks that these houses sit on are littered with rubbish, open sewers and goats. More often than not now I have seen little kids playing in the sewers and other children hanging out with their friends by dangling their legs in them.

The average Malian house here doesn’t seem to have a kitchen. Instead, the woman (only) do all their cooking on a portable coal stove outside. No matter how wealthy the family, all cooking and washing up is done outside in courtyards or just the street. They also don’t tend to have fridges and instead face the market on a daily basis to get food for cooking. Limited food is on offer. If you don’t like mangos, peanuts, tomatoes, onions, rice and things focused around those staples then you’re pretty much screwed in Mali. There are quite a lot of western restaurants around serving pizzas etc that are considered expensive and they are to Malians and we also have to be careful because of our limited living allowance but when you think a pizza is about £3 its not expensive at all!

I’ve been pretty lucky in the health department so far, I haven’t contracted Malaria (which seems to be surprisingly common among locals) and haven’t had any food poisoning despite the sheer amount of rats and lack of fridges. However, over the weekend just gone I had an awful fever and sickness, probably down to heat stroke. I made the mistake of going to the market for 4hours in the mid-day heat which is never a good idea but even worse after a night out. I spent the next 24hrs in bed sweating profusely. Yuk. It reaches 40C now most days which is pretty dam hot especially when there’s no air con.  

Not long till im back now L