grand excursion update part 1

i am back from our grand excursion!
as usual i do not have as much time as i would like to update but since today was our last day of classes and the next month is free for independent study, i am on my own schedule now and will probably be able to update more regularly.

for independent study (isp)i will be interning with the apdf - Association pour le Développement des Droits de la Femme - examining cross cultural approaches to addressing the problem of domestic violence. two interesting things that i plan on looking into are the apdf's strategy of mediation between abusive husbands and their wives, and also the present project of constructing mali's first dv shelter. i will be working in french and writing most of my paper in english though i plan to write up a portion of it in french to present to the organistation at the end. during this time i will be staying with my family in bamako and can walk just 20 minutes to the apdf office so that is great. my family is great too -- upon returning to bamako last night they made me herbed chicken -- real chicken -- and plantains for dinner and then gave me mangoes after that because they know i love this food. especially chicken. we dont even have an oven but we went to someone elses house just to bake the chicken. it was really good :)

speaking of grand excursion, let me tell you about it. be forewarned, i had trouble taking in a lot of hte tour guide info bcause it was in french so most of what i learned from tour guides was second hand thanks to peers of mine that are more fluent and kind enough to translate. still i am sure i missed a lot of stuff. eventually pictures from before the excursion and of the excursion will be posted. i promise. it just takes forever to load that stuff.

*** first we went to segou, then djenne, dogon pays, mopti, and then stopped again at segou for one night and returned to bamako yesterday. we spent lots of time in buses and roughly about two days in each city, visiting historical spots, the grande marchés, and the river and holding lots of little kid hands while telling them that no, we can not give them gifts or pens or water bottles or money. more on that later.

i am happy to be back n bamako where i dont play the role of tourist so much. while touristing was necessary on the voyage and what i wanted for a short time, it got tiring by the end. i do however have many gifts to bring back for myself and for you probably too. every artisans stand is like a museum -- the items are beautiful. unfortunately it is rare that the visit does not include a lot of hassling from vendors.

next time will post a city by city break down. each region was different from the one before it and eachcool in its own way. i especially enjoyed djenne and mopti.

in other news, i heard jayz and beyonce got married! woah!