Bienvenue à Bamako!

On the plane Dakar to Bamako, I looked at my passport to fill out a bit of paperwork for customs and realized that the official start-date of my visa was 6/17/10, and yet it was still the 16th! We landed a few short hours later, and I didn't even realize how hot it was because I was already sweating from stress. After my customs walk-through in Senegal I should've known not to worry, and I got my official stamp of entry in Mali with no problems.

Walking out of the airport lugging the extra 151 lbs., I saw someone holding up my name and when I flashed him the thumbs up he flashed me a big smile and said: "Claudia est sur la voiture"/"Claudia is in the car." And she certainly was, my new boss with her Mac computer on her lap in the middle of nowhere, Africa. She immediately started giving me the run-down on some of the issues that day had brought, what she had to do, what I could do, and immediately I knew I liked her. None of those let's-get-to-know-each-other-first/sugar-coating shenanigans, she gave me the quick and dirty of what was going on with the different projects of which I'd be a part.

Bamako, the capital, had been described on the internet as the "urban hub" of Mali, and yet during the short car trip to Claudia's house I didn't see anything urban about it besides a few paved roads. There were mud hut homes, mud walls with tarps hanging off as homes, tons of motorcyclists without helmets, and cars and taxis smoking from their leaded gas consumption.

We pulled up to a driveway across the street from the Niger River and a car repair shop, and the security guards opened the gates to Claudia's house. We walked on the mosaic tile steps into her kitchen where the cook, Melanie, was preparing French fries, and I could hear a very deep laugh in the next room. When we entered, a huge, muscly African man in a wife beater stood up and Claudia introduced me to Cherif, her husband from Côte d'Ivoire/Ivory Coast. He handed me a glass of wine and said "Bienvenue à Bamako!" Then she called her two beautiful boys into the room and they both gave me a quick handshake before delving into their plates of French fries.

A longer car ride later, we arrived at the security gate to my new living complex and pulled up to a gorgeous two-story home. I was shocked to see a skinny white boy open the door. Claudia had told me I was going to be living with Bremen, but from the name I had envisioned an African girl or woman. Nevertheless, after he fixed me a fresh salad and handed me my first mango, I liked the guy.

The place where I'll be living with Bremen the first few weeks is amazing,with a screened in porch,

a balcony, A.C. units in the bedrooms,

Caddy who cleans 5 times a week,

2 cats (pro/con to be determined), plus Bremen's even got a keyboard.

Apparently, living like kings and queens can help boost the economy -- living urban in not-so-urban Bamako is the way of the West here in dusty Bamako.