The Winds of Change

Rain last week at my apartment

I started this blog post last night* as the winds screamed and the dust whipped outside of my apartment.  With the door open to let the breeze come off my balcony through the screen, I could hear the storm brewing and take advantage of the strong cool breeze coming into my bedroom- ahhh.  It also meant a lot of dust made it onto my newly cleaned bedroom floor, but you win some and you lose some!  The wind was a relief on a night when my A/C unit didn’t seem to want to blow cool air, but it made for unsuccessful blogging.  I didn’t get much past the title of this post before my electricity flickered and then everything went black. 

It was really coming down!

The winds have really been picking up in Bamako and with them, come the rains!  I hope that this is a sign that the hot season is ending and the rainy season is well on its way to cooling things down and turning things green***!  We have had a couple of mango rains and a couple of teasers, but I am thinking optimistically that this is the start of something a little more serious!  Impending rain cancelled my trip to Banankoro last Thursday and forced me to retreat back to my house with my research assistant because I couldn’t even see enough to drive her home!  Earlier this week I got stuck in the car waiting for Zak to bring food from inside a restaurant.  He had to make a dash for the car when it became clear that the rain was not going to let up.  Today, the rain has forced me to stay inside rather than driving to Banankoro with my research assistant.  I was hoping to start a week of village stay to wrap up fieldwork, but alas, mother nature conspired against my plans by unleashing a downpour complete with booming thunder that sounded like a mine explosion (or at least what I imagine that would sound like).

My apartment building and neighboring phone tower after a big rain

The world is becoming greener, muddier, cooler, and more slippery, but the winds are not signaling just the coming of rain and the change of seasons around here.  I know I have written several times of changes going on, and I think that’s because it’s easier for me to write about the atypical or different things that happen to me here, rather than describing the day to day events that seem really routine to me.  This time, the changes are most significantly marked by an exodus of friends and colleagues and a vacation season (meaning lots of people taking trips to the US and elsewhere) that has left me feeling rather antsy to think about my plans for the fall  (and beyond) and to work a little travel into my life.    

Change: Zak's hair.  Before.

My weeks have still been consisting of a few days of teaching English and a few days of researching in Banankoro, but that, too is ending this week with my final English class and a push to wrap up interviews with village women and leaders.  By this time next week, I hope to be able to report that my fieldwork has really come to a close.  Now I transition into a period of basic analysis and “Where do we go from here?”  This question is one that has been creeping up for a while now, and I am now faced with a self imposed sense of urgency to create a game plan about what I can and will do in regards to the program that I have spent the past several months evaluating.  There is a long and complicated back story that accompanies this question and I’d be happy to share it with those of you who might be interested.  But I’ll just say for now that I am beginning to realize that there is only so much that one person can do and that a year is the blink of an eye in the scheme of things.

After.

More change will be coming soon, as my grant officially ends in August.  I am eagerly awaiting responses from applications submitted in April/May and will know within a few weeks what the general plan for my coming months will look like.  I may be jumping the gun a bit, but as so many around me begin to leave Bamako, I am beginning to feel like things here are coming to a close for me, too.  And in a way, they are.  But there is still a lot to do and much to enjoy!  However, it’s really never too early to start thinking about my next trip, right?  Weigh in, friends… Morocco, Ghana, Senegal, France?  What do you think….?

An exciting change!  The addition of a puppy to my life!  Meet Zira!

*I actually started this blog post about a week and a half ago (at the time, it was last night).  For some reason I have become terrible at finishing posts... I actually have several half finished entries sitting in Word waiting to be scrapped or saved...

**When I started writing this post, the arrival of rainy season was not yet totally apparent, but now, I think I can say that with rains about every other day it is here and picking up force.  

More change in Bamako- the third bridge being constructed in town

***Mali typically has a rainy season from June- September/October (or thereabouts) and the wettest month is August with an average of 8.7 inches of rainfall.  Temperatures decrease quite a bit during this time and the banks of the Niger River swell during this season.