"We are the World"

Ernest invited Bremen and I to his house for lunch today, offering to pick us up at 12:15PM.

What you need to understand about Mali is that any car ride to your destination means at least one stop along the way.

We got into Ernest's impressive Mercedes with his daughter Do-Do, short for Dominique, and he informed us right away we'd be stopping at his friend's wife's house -- bien sûr! Of course! The friends had just had a new baby one week earlier, and were excited about celebrating Father's Day (another shoutout to you, Dad! Love you!). When we walked up, they had a BBQ going, 3 cooks were skinning buckets of fish, and they had a decent sized group in the T.V. room awaiting the big Côte d'Ivoire football game. Underneath a frilled mosquito net in a bright white crib was the new baby, and I couldn't help but think what contrasts in lifestyle we'd already been exposed to in Bamako.

Walking out, the BBQ pit was still burning and I asked what exactly they were cooking, thinking it was some sort of Malian un-pork sausage (remember, we're 90% Muslim over here). "Eviddement, c'est la queue de vache." "Obviously, it's cow's tail." And obviously, upon further inspection of the black clumps of hairs attached, it was.

While we had to take Bamako's notoriously bumpy, red dirt roads to get to Ernest's house, his home had beautiful marble floors and the large T.V. was already blasting the pre-game announcements, waiting for our arrival. Aicha showed up a few minutes later with her two boys, both wearing orange outfits.

A few minutes later, I noticed my own orange pants and Do-Do's matching top, we were all decked out in Côte d'Ivoire's colors without even realizing it! Perrrfect.

The food was très delicieux, with fish cooked 2 different ways, cous-cous, rice, a chicken dish, plaintains (my favorite), and Aicha said that she had made her Senegalese tapioca/peanut dish vegetarian just for me..."seulement un peu de la viande"/"only a little bit of meat"! I believe it's a little difficult for Africans to grasp the concept of not eating any chicken or beef when it's available.

Feasting plus "la chaleur"/"the heat" was not an ideal social situation for our gathering of friends, because we all started zoning out into the game and I'm pretty sure Bremen passed out for a few minutes on the couch with his eyes open.

But the real show was not the game...it was Do-Do's singing for us at half time. While a little cliché to point out, the song choice, "We are the World" by Michael Jackson could not have been more fitting. Two Americans, a Senegalese, a Côte d'Iviorian, and their Malian children, all sitting around watching the Coupe de Monde, the World Cup.