Today is the last day before I head to Niger. I am catching a shuttle tonight at 11:00 and will arrive very early in the morning. Its a direct flight, so I am not exactly sure what necessitates my traveling during the night, but who am I to question the wisdom of the Peace Corps flight planners?

Anyway, I have some chores I need to get done before I go, so I am taking a 2pm shuttle into Bamako and hopefully will be returning quickly. Mostly I just need to buy another bag, but also I need to get a plane ticket for Ben (yes, still).

We were given a little vacation to a town called Segou Friday and Saturday. It was a three hour bus ride to spend and evening in a giant room with 13 other volunteers and one shower. But the boat ride that we took on the Niger was nice and we got to see a couple of artisan market areas. Some volunteers made their own little scraps of mud cloth.

All of which reminded me of how difficult it is to be a tourist now. You don’t see Malians wearing mud cloth, so how authentic is it really? But that is sort of true of all cultural leftovers now that we are moving into the new glorious era of world pop culture (sarcasm). There are few dances left that are performed for their own sake rather than to encourage people to come watch and spend money. Its a strange line to walk. The end result is I spent most of our visit walking around the marche and hanging out with the little kids.

Other thoughts too, but maybe I will go into them later… Its a weird sort of listlessness that is seizing me on my last day. My laundry is washed and hanging out to dry in the rain. I can’t get into town until 2. So there isn’t a lot to do. Really I’d rather just be at my new place and settled. I haven’t really had a home for about a month now. It will nice to have one again.