On Wednesday Ed and I decided that we wanted to walk home from the school. Usually we take public transportation -a van system called the sotramas -or taxis, but to really get our bearings we wanted to walk and see what we are missing as we zoom blindly by.
The first half of the walk was figuring out where a safe place to walk would be. There are no such things as sidewalks, only roads and motor car lanes. On the side of most places, however, are dirt areas that we can walk on, but that does not guarantee the safety of the pedestrian, mostly because motor scooters may try to pass and tend to weave on and off the road. Quickly we figured out that the best way is to be alert and be ready to do a lot of dodging- kind of like the video game frogger. As we continued along, we were both getting quite warm, I remembered the gas station with ice cream!
During our walk, Malians would greet us or yell out to us -toubabo- or the word for white person in bambara. We would smile and wave and I typically mumble something that could sound friendly back to them. At one point a man walks up to Ed and shakes his hand and starts asking questions in Bambara. Ed gave the typical "huh, no bambara or French, only English" statement and the guy switched to his limited English. The jist of the conversations was "Hi, Im Alex. I work right here. If you ever need anything, come find Alex. Bye". I was laughing at the guys friendliness and the randomness of "if you need anything, come find me". We walked away laughing and enjoying the humor of the situation.
We eventually reached the gas station and got our ice cream, then realized that an ATM and grocery store are also nearby so we decided to stop. ATMs are found in little rooms outside of banks-and are refreshingly air conditioned. Ed withdrew his money and we were about to leave when an African man walked into the booth with us. I was a little sketched out, but he looked rather frazzled and said he needed help withdrawing money. I glanced at Ed and we decided we would at least see if there was anything we do- but I stood by the door ready to bolt if it got sketchier.
Apparently the man is from Senegal and needed to catch a plane home that night. He is diabetic and needed insulin, but his bank card wasnt working, and he lost his wallet in a taxi. He said he didnt want money, just to see if we could help. (I have to pause and laugh at this because he wanted help from the tu-bobs who have only lived in the country for less than 2 weeks) Anyway, he asked if we could go to the pharmacy with him and maybe get him the insulin he needed. Ed looked at me and asked what we should do (mind you, because this is Africa, up until this point I was ignored during the whole discussion-which helps because I can watch and gauge the situation). I told Ed lets see what happens, just do not give any real contact information or let him know how much money we have (which really wasnt much).
We left with the guy and walked up the road about a mile to the pharmacy. He entered and started asking for insulin. They brought out a pack of five and it was 60,000 CFA (which is $120). We said there was not way we could do that, we dont have that kind of money. The guy said he understood, but do we have any friends we can get a hold of to help out? At this point, we realized that this situation was not going to have a happy ending- we would not be able to pay, nor did we want to give him any money. We both stated we have no phones (a lie) and we dont really know anyone-we havent lived here very long (truth). Ed decided to leave him with an email address (fake) and we asked if we could pray with him for this situation-which we did. Finally we walked away and continued on our journey home.
We back tracked to the grocery store and as always, enjoyed wandering around gawking at the random food. We were both pretty hungry and grabbed some pasta and sauce to make for dinner. We left the grocery store and proceeded to the old bridge- which we have to cross to get to Eds house. Neither of us had realized how long the bridge is or how fun it is to people watch. We walked over the Niger, busting out our cameras for the first time, and took pictures of the river as well as what we can see of the city. (I will post these eventually).We made it to Eds house no problem. VICTORY in navigating the streets of Bamako, because it can be very confusing. The journey took just over 3 hours- which if done without stopping would be only an hour and half. I was fun to walk the streets, greet the people, and smell more of the city. Its been fun exploring and jumping into life overseas. There is so much that is hard, but so much that is interesting. I am relishing this "honeymoon" stage of cultural adjustment- because I know I will have hard days as well. But for now things are exciting, sunny and full of interesting stories.
