And I'm back...temporarily

Camilo and I are staying at the Peace Corps compound. Again. After escaping. But it's free and Bamako is expensive and we are currently jobless and traveling, so it works. We are leaving tonight to go to a Catholic mission run by some Colombian nuns until our flight Sunday morning.

Why are we back in Bamako 4 days before our flight, you ask? Well, we'd planned on 2 days here, but after being upcountry and harassed to no end we decided to throw in the towel and just come back. It's really hard being in a place with a burgeoning tourist industry - while Dogon Country was amazing, it was sad to see that the villages receive very little of the money from tourism (it mostly goes to the guides and the lucky villager who has a restaurant in town). In Djenne, home to the world's largest mud structure, the kids begged like you couldn't even believe - which is annoying for us because we know that many tourists give money, thinking that the kids are starving. But, in reality, they are hurting more than helping. It just encourages the children to skip school and encourages their parents to tell them to try and get food on the street instead of providing it for them. Perhaps I will end up as one of those holier-than-thou PCV types who thinks they have all the answers?? Ew. Hopefully the next couple months of traveling will provide a transition to the developed world...

Dogon Country was great. Tony, Michelle (hereafter referred to as Michony) Cam and I took a 12 hour bus ride to a small town where we met our guide and spent the night. Early the next morning we took off and visited one town, where we saw impossibly dirty kids, the oldest looking men you can imagine and some incredible mud buildings. Then we walked 5km to another town, which was even more picturesque. Due to the oppressive heat we spent about 5 hours hanging out on a covered rooftop, eating some rice and sauce with chicken and drinking cold drinks (thank goodness for generators, since there is no electricity in Dogon!) After another 4 or 5km walk we ended up in another village, where we dropped our stuff off and then climbed up into the old village. Dogon is a bunch of small villages strung together and has some really interesting history and traditions. The people actually lived up in the cliffs until 10 or so years ago and we climbed up to look around. There were some really old areas where Pygmy people lived - they must have been so small, because none of us could have fit into the little holes! These structures weren't too high up, but others were ridiculous. They think vines used to grow along the cliffs and that people used them to get up to their homes - there was a lot of fighting between tribes/villages and people needed to be high up to protect themselves.

That night we slept on a roof under the stars - beautiful but cold! And the ladder was scary, so I promised Michony and Camilo that I wouldn't climb down to pee in the middle of the night (my bladder doesn't like me), so instead I went to the other side of the roof and peed into the drain!! I was so happy they all stayed asleep while that happened...and I was happy to sleep on the roof, since I saw a giant rat go into one of the bedrooms beneath us! I hate rats.

The next morning we got up super-early and hiked 11km. It was exhausting and our chain-smoking guide was just zipping along. We kept on yelling at him to wait up! We stopped in 2 villages before lunch and then went to a market after the afternoon heat became marginally less oppressive. Sadly, we realized that all markets in West Africa are pretty much the same and that we are totally used to them - the novelty has been lost. But we did get to taste some millet beer, which was better than I expected. I'd still take a glass of wine over that any day. Or a Milwaukee's Best.

That night we climbed up some serious cliffs (my legs ache just thinking about it) and got to a village at the top, where there were a zillion white people. Or 12. But it felt like a lot! We had some amazing grilled chicken, cold sodas and slept under the stars again. The first night there was a lot of sand blowing around and I felt like my face had been sand-blasted during the night, but the second night was much better and I slept like a champ until a donkey started bleating in the loudest imaginable way. At 4am. C'est la vie. Oh, and we also saw a traditional fetish man's (I don't know exactly what to call this guy) hut, which had headless lizards and monkey skulls stuck into the outside walls and all kinds of other creepy stuff. I'm sure it is all very traditional and interesting, but I just thought it was gross!

Our last morning we hiked another 5km to another small village where a car picked us up and took us to Mopti, a semi-quaint town on the Niger River. We checked into the Catholic Mission there and spent the day wandering around, buying frozen bissap to keep from boiling to death. Camilo bought a boubou and a headscarf and Michelle and I both bought fabric to wrap around our heads/shoulders so as not to be scandalous and considered prostitutes during our travels in Mauritania (me) and Morocco (both of us).

Camilo and I said good-bye to Michony early the next morning as they headed back to Bamako and we headed to Djenne. I won't write too much about it, cause it just wasn't that great. We spent another night on a roof, ate the most fried omelette sandwiches imaginable, met a nice Polish guy and wanted to beat up the kids who wouldn't stop asking us for things. After a 10 hour bus ride and a 4 hour wait for the Peace Corps shuttle we made it back to Tubaniso, where it is annoyingly like summer camp but free.

Sunday morning the Mauritania Country Director is picking us up at the airport. We have an excel spreadsheet of all our plans and have now added Portugal to the trip, which I'm really thrilled about. We have hostels reserved in most of Portugal and Spain and a few in Morocco. I'll be sure to keep updating as we go along. Everyone says the people in Mauritania are really nice and helpful and just as likely to give us something as rip us off, which will be a nice change of pace from tourist-y Mali!

Here are Cam's pictures (he's such a better photographer that I've stopped taking photos and instead just hold his crap while he runs around and gets good shots)...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51956952@N00/sets/72157594510772937/

Oh, yeah, and I bought my ticket back to the US! It's for April 20th from Barcelona to Chicago. I have a couple days before Zach and Kelley's wedding. Can't wait!