Bamako blues

So we've been here at the training center for two weeks for our in-service training, and gnawing our hands off. The excitement of being with 60 Americans all day for two weeks quickly wore off as we realized with horror that there was no nap time! Barely even time for even tea between our packed schedule of technical lectures and language classes, field trips and administrative sessions designed to remind us that we are, in the end, owned by the government. But at nights we pitch a fire, and hopefully someone pulls out a guitar and harmonica as we sing soulful recreations of Beyonce and Outkast to the drum of an upside down bucket. Or maybe we spark up the hookah and toast some pumpernickel bread using a rake (we all could sure use the fiber), enjoying the comraderie of people who are just slightly crazy enough to live in a mud hut for two years in West Africa.
Luckily I've gotten out of the walls of the Training Center into Bamako a few times, where we dance feeling uncomfortably modest next to the blue eyeshadowed Malian prostitutes. Finally we head home to the sound of the 5am call to prayer, waking up at 9am to grab ice cream before heading back to sessions.
Even though I never felt the urge to see him in the US, a bunch of us decided to go to the Sean Paul concert, a fundraiser for Malaria prevention. It turns out Sean Paul is as bad in Mali as he is in the States. As he finally stepped on stage about 4hours after his promised arrival, the Gendarmes started to grow anxious looking at the rowdy crowd, and started to push us all. We moved like cattle, and in the rush I lost one of my shoes. Thankfully I found another on the ground, albeit an inch lower, and we hobbled our way to the exit right as a chair was thrown. A wise exit, and a warning never again to go to a big concert here.
And so as IST comes to an end, off I go to hike through Dogon country among the villages carved into the mountains.