"j'adore le mentalite blanc!"

a phrase you don't hear often, huh? i walk to apdf every morning now and then walk home for lunch. sometimes i go back to apdf in the afternoon. its about a fifteen minute walk, used to be twenty but i cleverly found a short cut that also takes me past a nice alimentation where i can buy some yellow colored juice in a bag that i like to think is pinapple soda type drink but most likely is something else. its good. juice in a bag is popular here. its on every corner and cheap and cold. other popular bagged items include water, milk, and yogurt. you just bite out a corner and suck on it. the juice in a bag is half frozen and very refreshing. i plan on making some when back in the us. anyway, point being, on my walk i sometimes pass this malian man who is very attractive and also, like nearly all the men i have encountered here, very friendly/aggressive towards us white american women. if he was not so nice to look at i would not talk to him. he is the one that said he loves america. and the white mentality. i am not sure what he meant by this.

on another note, it has started raining here. a few days in the evening between 4 and 7 or in the middle of the night. the first time it rained recently, it started coming down really hard and i danced and showered in it with the 8-12 year old boys in my fam. i dont mind bucket showers for the most part, but it is really hard to wash my hair. so i had to take advantage of the heavy streams of water running of the roof to get in a good (clothed nonetheless) shower. i sort of love when it rains here because it cools things off dramatically (the other day it was 41 c which is almost 106 f! and they say it gets hotter in may). however it really is a pain for the women of mali who have to sweep away the water after to try to expediate the drying process. everything that is dirt becomes mud, in courtyards and side streets and main roads too. so the rain is not all good. i guess i have mixed feelings about it.

my work with apdf is coming along slowly. i am reading a lot and slowly getting up the confidence to speak with the women that work there and ask questions. now that they are more familiar with me they have begun to talk with me and explain some of their work, which is helpful. today i began looking at letters written by women who request mediation services from the apdf. in the letters they describe the problem they have - often they are classified as 'disagreements of personality' with their husbands and less frequently but still a few per every month, phsycial violence or threats of. tomorrow i will go with apdf staff to a big conference about human rights internationally and in mali. hopefully despite the language barrier i will still be able to take something from it.

in other news, i recently made a list of all the kids in my host family: there are at least 23 under age 18, not counting at least one, maybe more, of hte bons (servants) that are under 18. 14 of the 23 are under age 7! its a good thing i like kids. when i came back from my mini usa trip, i brought lots of books wich i read with the kids almost every day. the adults like them too because they have easy to learn english.

in still other news, i have malian fabrics to get tailored into dresses and skirts once i find patterns i like...

what else?

i celebrated passover with a couple other students. made latkes surprisingly sucessfully.

speaking of food, i ate at a restaurant chinoise recently which is the same food as everywhere else in mali haha.

that is about it for my life here.

i am excited for my summer internship in brooklyn and for living in brooklyn and hiphop in nyc. recently bought tickets to the paiddues festival which is about half the price of rock hte bells i think, and almost hte same lineup.

next time i have access to my pix, i will post some from the grand excursion and tell you about it via captions.