rainy season came. it basically just means that the heat isnt around every single day. but its funny i never really liked rain before i came here, and its kind of grown on me. maybe its some sort of a contagious reaction, people here literally go crazy with joy whenever it starts raining. little kids run around the streets yelling and screaming; everybody sleeps good.
and you dont really have to go to work if it rains because the roads become super super mudddy and nobody has raincoats and if it rains all meetins are kind of unofficially cancelled.
vania came to visit last month and it was alot of fun. we ended up taking a trip to ségou, a town about 2 hours from bamako, its quite a bit more laid back, clean, well organized and overall just more boring than bamako. anyhow, while over there we had a chance to meet with a congolese family that i know here. their story is pretty crazy and i guess happens all the time here
They were basically at the very very top of the power elite in congo. her husband used to be the head of the ministery of health and a special advisor to the president or prime minister. you can still see it in him when he talks, hes well spoken, charismatic and confident. he speaks french like someone from france, which isnt very normal. They had money, tons of power, sent their kids to live in Europe and in the United States. had bank accounts in all these different countries. They were well connected with all the others in their small circle in control of the entire country.
then the revolution went down and everyone else in their circle was either killed or fled. They themselves were forced to flee the country on foot, through the forest, wife; daughter; son and father. the husband still has bullet wounds in his side and foot from their escape. they lost everything, their money, power; their friends, they spent some years just going around to different countries in west africa and finally landed in Mali, the only work the husband can find is as a teacher in a small, private school; they live modestly to put it nicely and for reasons i dont quite understand have no way of accessing any of the resources they amassed while in power. the really hate mali and complain about how bad it is here and how much better it is in congo
i guess ultimately it makes you wonder what they had to do to get in that position in the first place, it seems like not to many people get into power like that in africa by kissing babies. if you did stuff that made people in the country so mad at you they would throw you out by force, maybe you deserved it.
work is going well. we just sprung for a very expensive high speed internet connection for one of the computers that i somehow managed to talk them into. it was just in time because right after that we got a pretty nasty virus going through here and the only way to get rid of it was to painstakingly disconnect every single of the 7 or 8 computers and bring them to the spot where the internet is in turn to update the antivirus i had installed. sounds like fun doesnt it?