Food here in Mali (by Matthew)

Food in Mali (by Matthew)

This past week we have had the pleasure of eating twice at one of Sévaré’s finest establishments, Mac’s Refuge. Mac is an American who is also a Malian citizen. He has lived most of his life in Mali both as a missionary kid and a missionary himself. Now he is “retired” and runs a little hotel and restaurant here in Sévaré. We have had 3 meals there the past week, all of them wonderful.

Every evening, Mac serves dinner and each evening has a theme. I don’t know all the themes yet, but I know that Friday is Asian cuisine and Saturday is Mexican Fiesta. We went to Asian night on Friday and had the best Thai soup I have ever had followed by fried rice and other Chinese dishes. The meal was wonderful and it was great getting to chat with colleagues and Mac himself who is present at every meal. On Sunday we went back for breakfast, because Mac serves an American breakfast every day between 7 and 8. That means pancakes, homemade syrup, french toast, banana bread, coffee, hot chocolate and more. The best thing about eating at Mac’s for us has been that he understood exactly what we meant when we said that Maria couldn’t eat wheat products and he made all the Asian food gluten free and even made corn-meal pancakes for her on Sunday! We will definitely be going back, maybe this week we will try Mexican Fiesta =)

Here is a picture of the boys in Fulani hats at Mac’s

50 years of independence (by Matthew)

Today (Wednesday, September 22) it has been exactly 50 years since Mali gained its independence. To celebrate pretty much everyone turned out to either be a part of a parade or watch one. We went to Mopti, the capital of the region we live in (about 10 miles/16 km away) to watch the big parade there. There were people everywhere, thousands of people wearing clothes made from the one of the fabrics that were commissioned for the holiday which meant that there were a lot of people with the same clothes on! We even had “local” clothes made for us from one of the fabrics (see the picture) our first locally made clothes.

Other than the hordes of people and the festive atmosphere what struck me was the fact that just about every ambulance in the whole area rode in the parade. I hope that there were no accidents while the parade was going on, because someone even said that the people in the ambulances were the doctors from the hospital! I have attached a picture of a mass of people watching the parade and some kids riding donkeys. Why not.

Oh, and for all the Virginians out there, they had a sort of a tractor pull as well. That is to say that every tractor in the county was in the parade too – loaded with people – their main goal seemed to be how far they could get their front wheels off the ground without the people in the back falling out.

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The sick boy

Poor little Petter litteraly stuck in bed with IV in his hand, good thing it didn’t take many days for him to recover!

Trip to the sand dune

Here we are on the giant sand dune about a 30 minute drive from Douentza. To get here we left the asphalt and drove through the bush, crossing dried-up rivers and streams, nearly getting stuck on at least one occasion. Didn’t make it all the way without a flat tire, but we made it back to Douentza before all the air had gone out of the tire. The sand at the bottom of the dune was covered in little plants with sticky seed pods that really hurt when they get stuck to your skin. No one told Matthew about them before he jumped out of the car ready to run up the dune. He’s a self-proclaimed wimp, so it won’t bother him to say that he didn’t make it far before he was sceaming in pain! Once he got all the pricklies off his shoes, pants, feet and legs, he made up to the top with the rest of us. The boys had fun rolling down parts of the steep dune, and Maria was scared that they would role all the way down over the cliff and never come back =). She was the first one down the dune and back to the car since she heard thunder rolling in the distance. The rest of us took our time.

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Nature

The nature is absolutely beautiful at this time of year. I was expecting brown sand everywhere, but we are expecting rain for at least another month.

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Picnic

Petter and Captain Sabeltann are having a good time picnicing. All the Norwegians gathered for the weekend.

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Finally an update! (by Maria)

FINALLY AN UPDATE

I just spent 45 minutes on the phone with my sister Line, it’s weird how much more exciting it is to talk to her on the phone when I’m in Africa than when I’m in Norway, I guess it is something about the familiar that becomes so much more important when almost everything around you is new and perhaps also a little bit scary. We have now been here for almost two weeks, has not been to easy to update the blog, either the internet has been down, or we have been busy with something else… MALARIA With less than a week in Africa Petter had a high fever that did not respond well to Tylenol (Paracet), so we got in touch with a doctor. The doctor said it was bizarre when they found quite a few malaria parasites in his blood, normally it should take about two weeks here before that is possible. He was put on an IV, luckily we got to do that in our house, not at the hospital. The doctor came back to check on him during the night, and after 12 hours his fever was gone, and after a few days with medication he is now healthy and happy again. And since our house and yard were just sprayed for bugs (yeah, it’s a wonderful way to get rid of unwanted insects) the only mosquitoes left are the dead ones. Hopefully that is going to help keep the mosquitoes at a distance for at least a week or two.

WEEKEND TRIP
We were invited to Doentza (two hours north-east of our town) this weekend, to visit some friends. They have been missionaries here for seven years, and I must say live a little bit more on the edge than what we have to… they live in a mud-hut, we’re in a perfectly fine house. Their toilet is just a hole in the ground under open sky, we have two full bathrooms. But I must say it was quite the charming place, where their boys kept turtles, one big one, and three babies (we might get one when they move back to Norway next year!), chickens, rabbits, they also had a dog and I’m not sure if the goats and donkeys that where hanging out in their driveway was their’s, but it sure felt like a zoo. Friday they took us to a Dogon village with real crocodiles. The Dogon people there believe that when the Fulani came and took their land, the crocodiles lead them to the village where they live now. So they see the crocodile as a protector, and if one of the crocodiles dies, they have to give it a proper funeral. Petter and Andreas wanted to go a little bit too close after my taste, so I felt like quite a nervous mom there for a while.

BUSY SCEDUALE
This week we have started our language training, next week will be busy with orientation and meetings for us and other new missionaries as there are a lot of things we need to know about. But what is going to be the real challenge for me is the two-day driving course where we have to drive off-road (The road is bad enough!), getting stuck in mud on purpose (and I assume getting out again too), driving in water, chancing the wheel all by myself…. yeah, seems like I have to toughen up a little!

OUR HOUSE
We are still waiting for our luggage to arrive, but there are no crises yet, another day and I might run out of shampoo, but how bad can that be? I am however exited to get our stuff, so I can start decorating and make this into our home. Our house is very convenient, and much bigger than anything we have lived in before. The whole building is made of cement, and all the walls and ceilings are white, freshly painted, there are nice tiles on all the floors, so I know that with a little bit of decorating skills this can turn out to be quite a nice home. Outside is a big porch, and the yard is paved with stones so that the mud which is everywhere during the rainy season stays outside the walls of our compound. Opening the gate can lead to a little bit of a culture shock, with donkeys, goats, mud, chickens, people… inside we can almost forget where we are.

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4 September 2010 (by Maria)

MOVING TO AFRICA

It’s Saturday evening, we left Norway on Monday, flew through Paris where we spent a night, continued to Bamako, the capital of Mali where we arrived late Tuesday evening. It was 23 degrees Celsius (73F) and raining when we came off the plane, almost like being in Bergen. We spent two nights in Bamako applying for visas and shopping for food and supplies that are not available where we live. That would be things like ham, cheese, salted butter, bacon, and tons of other things that cost us a fortune, closer to Norwegian prices actually. We also bought a food processor which already has come in handy twice for making smoothies! We were lucky to have our boss in MELM (mission evangelique lutherienne au Mali) Ole Harald, who is also Norwegian, take us around, guiding us to the perfect spot for dinner, where we could swim and eat at the same time, the boys loved it!

Thursday morning we went on to Sévaré, our new home town, a little delayed when our passports where not ready at 09:00 am as we hoped, but at noon. With only seven hours to do the 630 km trip before it gets pitch dark, there was no time for any stops except the necessary “daddy I need to pee” and the five minutes it took to change the tire that went flat when we hit one of the way to many holes in the road. Driving here is a true art, and again thanks to the brilliant Ole Harald for getting us safely here, you just never know whats gonna hit you, broken down buses, cows, crowds of people (sorry, but they are not that easy to spot when it’s dark)

OUR NEW HOME

we tried to put up some pictures but that didn’t work too well…so we will try again next time =)

SICKNESS

Yes, it’s Saturday evening, I have just been bitten by another mosquito, praying it’s not one of those that will give me malaria. Two whole days we have now spent in our new home, and already this morning Petter was sick with diarrhea and vomit, Mia and I just got the d part, and this evening Andreas has a high fever. The good part is that I have not yet smelled that certain Africa smell that people have been telling me about, with a heavy cold there’s hardly anything to smell. Even my voice has been more or less gone, so when people did not understand me I could blame it on something other than just bad french. Who would have thought that I would be force feeding Petter coke right before bedtime, just to get some liquid in him. And then there’s the dilemma, do you brush his teeth or not after coke when it’s bedtime?