August 7th, a beautiful day!

Today was such a beautiful day!

I woke up early, feeling much better than yesterday, yet no improvement with my intestine still.

I was set on ignoring all the touts and guides without exception. All of them. I wanted peace and non commercial interaction.

My first task was to find bananas for breakfast and try to force myself to eat as much food per day as possible to not lose weight.

So I headed out to the Barbour to walk along the water. I didn't know the water side was so long. Silly me because the Niger river goes all the way to Nigeria. Duh! And so I kept walking and walking.

I found my bananas. Yesss! 1kg! Now I am set to walk all morning. And so I walked. I passed by a lot of neighborhoods, government buildings, army camps, police stations, boat docks, and so on...such a beautiful day and such a beautiful walk.

At some point I reached a little rock staircase. I walk up out of curiosity and see numerous animals in cages. It was like a mini private zoo/bar/restaurant overlooking the river. At first am not to upset. Geese, monkeys, boa...but then I see an eagle in a tiny cage where it can't even open its wings, and even worse, I see three pelicans in a small cage. Pelicans are huge birds! I am so upset and pissed. I cant believe what I see. I look around to see if anyone is here. The place seems empty. My intention is to open the cages of the birds and release them. But as I am about to do so, I see a dog and a man move in the back of the yard. Bummer! The owner. I retreat. What sucked is that he hasn't even seen me, so I could have released the animals and escape. An eagle and pelicans in a cage!? Really!? Who is so dumb and inhumane to dare doing this?! and worse, who is stupid enough to come here and enjoy this?! I can't believe this country.

I walk away, knowing that there is nothing I can do anyway as their brains are formated in a very dramatically different way than mine.

I get to a little village where bunch of boats are there and people going in and out. OK, I had thought of crossing the river to check out the other little villages on what seems to me an long island.

I get close to a boat, some fancy guy tells me $2, I dodge him and walk further. I tell a guy I want to cross for 40 cents. And off I go. Ends up the actual price is 10 cents. Oh well, now I know.

We cross that chocolaty Niger river. I get to the other side. It is so peaceful and beautiful here. No electricity. No automobile. No dist. No pollution. No touts. Just nature, traditional mud houses, beautifully genuine people, and village life.

And so I walk, wandering around as I usually do. Going with the flow.

Soon o reach this little plateau right by the water, filled with mango trees. I see the man sitting in a chair, just chilling and watching the river. He salutes me and tries to start a conversation. Bummer, a pseudo tout. As I am about to dodge that one as well, he tells me he is a teacher. The magic word. A guy with a brain (kind of), and educated who just wants to chat. Yay!

I shake his hand and we start chatting. He shows me his house, his family, his chicken and duck ponds he just built to try and make extra money from it. Him and his family are very nice and polite. I quickly like them.

He tells me he has malaria. I ask him if he vomits and has nausea. He says no. Only fever. I reassure him and tell him it is not malaria. Fever can be caused by many things but does not always mean malaria. Seems that all the malaria prevention campaigns done in west Africa for decades now have been done wrong. Not only do people (and even educated ones like teachers) think mosquitoes net is enough prevention, but they think that fever equals malaria. So I then I tell him about citronella. He had no idea. And once again I am in shock to see that not a single malaria campaign has ever been focus on the benefits of growing citronella in your backyard. This is purely shameful coming from western NGOs who have been pouring so much money into Africa, yet missing one of the key crucial elements for the help to be effective. Shame! Those NGOs should probably have sent people to come spend some time in Africa before designing their programs from Paris, Washington DC or any other capital.

For someone who says he has a fever and thinks he has malaria, he is more talkative than me when I am at the top of my health. Lol

Anyhow...it is not a secret I suppose. If the work of these NGOs were really effective, Africa would not be where it is today.

Soon after the teacher offers to walk with me to the Peul village a bit further behind. So we go. I was curious about this village as it was on the other side of the fully sun exposed field and looked very cute.

The Peul is an African ethnicity of nomads and travelers. Hence on some levels, they are much more world educated than the other ethnicities.

As we are walking through the village I am just in awe in from of every house, every little street, the mosque, and the market. Wow! A real jewel of a village...so far away from everything and all the superficial things that city people seem to be focused on. Magnificent village. I get introduced to the village Chief, Abdalah. A 31 year old extremely well Africa traveled young man. He even talks to me in Spanish at some point. He lived in Equatorial Guinea for several years, his favorite country in Africa. He is very nice and very motivated by making his village and his people progress. We tell him about citronella, he is happy about such info and says he will get on it ASAP.

We walk back to the mango tree area, lay a straw mat on the floor, and sit there, watching the river, the pirogues go by and the women of the surrounding villages come here to do their weekly laundry and cleaning. Beautifully relaxing. I quickly dosed off as the teacher kept talking. The combination of the antibiotics and the sun totally knocked me off.

He wakes me up soon after as his wife brings us lunch for him and I to eat, right there on the mat under the mango trees. Magical. The wind is blowing and keeping us cool the whole time. The food is rice with some veggies and sauce. Good for my stomach. Yay!

We eat. Him super duper fast as usual. And me, super duper slow, as usual. Hahaha!

I finish eating much after him. And when I finish, I doze off again. Seems he does too.

And so we spent the whole afternoon like that, half awake, half asleep. Chatting from time to time. Him doing his prayer when he has to. And the women are still washing and washing and washing...

I suggest to him that when he has the money to build one or two guest room in his house. Tourists would absolutely love to come stay here than be in polluted loud commercial Mopti. And tell him how much money he could make. He loves the idea.

The sun is now not facing us anymore but behind us, on its way down. It's 4pm. Time for me to get up and go. I still want to walk along the after and go check out this village he told me about far away.

A 17year old who is in the area on vacation and trying to be a walking medical supplies sales rep was hanging out with us and also has to hear out that way to cross over to Mopti, so we take off together.

I tell the teacher I will try and come back again tomorrow to spend some more relaxing time. I will bring bananas and they will grill fish. Hmmm...not sure I want to eat fish from this Ganga looking Niger river...

As we are walking along the water, we pass some more gorgeous little villages. We even get to a point where the whole village is house boats of people who very recently arrived here by boats and are just starting to build their houses on the land. Beautiful. While the men and boys are busy building the houses, the kids are dancing to the sound of some loud Tibetan sounding Mali music, and the women are weaving straw mats for the house. This place is really like a mini heaven.

Why do people even live in Mopti?!

After a bit, we finally get on board this long public pirogue and cross the river. A somewhat long and delightful ride. As we ride, some people wash their feet and face with the river water, other dip a plastic cup in the river and drink from it. The whole time am just thinking to myself, why do they do this when they all have access to filtered well water or even in Mopti, tap water? The core of the problem seems to be that they simply don't know the risks of bathing in and drinking such water. But the traditional laziness wants that they won't bother wait to get to a tap or a well. Why complicate things by having to take all these precautions? No comment.

I get to the other side, I finally buy some water (I was so dead thirsty), and buy some bread, and start walking along the whole harbor as the sun is setting.

The walk is unbelievable. Today was market day in Mopti. So that means a ton of people from all the surrounding villages came over by river or by road and turned the city upside down with activity and trade. Today was also the first day of the season when the public ferry boat took off to go to Timbuktu. So quite a busy and chaotic day in Mopti. A good thing I was out most of the day. But the evening seems to be just as entertaining. So many different activities are taking place around the harbor. I just can't seem to take my eyes away from the scenes.

I finally find a spot over looking both the harbor and the sun set.

I make myself a banana sandwich and watch the show.

Oh, I must specify, this harbor only has pirogues, no actual boats.

Women are carrying lots of tall baskets and vases on their heads, down to some boats. Old men are unloading huge bags of produce and coals. Families are loading their pirogue with goods of all sorts to get ready for a long trip back to their village. Some men are fixing their boat with fire tar and nails. Some other men are actually finishing up building the roof of a boat on the water. The place is just hyper vibrating with energy. No photos would do it justice. Silly me I should have shot a mini video. Didn't think of it.

And yet again I observed the same thing I have been observing since I got to west Africa and I can no longer postpone mentioning it in my blog. It is the first and only place I have seen in the world where men go pee in the street or in the bush and always rinse their penis with water right after. As if they were preoccupied by the hygiene of their manhood. Am not sure what kind of social marketing campaign triggered this behavior. And I would fully accept it as is if only they wouldn't use the Gang like river water to do so. Yet, I do wonder why they do this, and also why we, westerners don't. Isn't it strange to see Africans do something to improve their hygiene that we westerners don't even do? And another little funny detail about this is that contrary to westerners who just unzip standing and just pee, here they squat down and pee. But they will do it absolutely anywhere. No shame nor timidity. Between women who hang around bare chested and this, it makes me wonder why they even wear clothes.

As the sun is now almost in bed, I walk back home. Angelina calls me. Hearing her voice is a perfect final touch to make this day a perfect day.

I miss her...

The sun is now in bed. I go back yo my hotel room to rest a bit, cool down, and write about my day.

After a while, all of a sudden I hear a knock on my door. "Yes?"... No answer. I keep writing. Whatever. Minutes later, another knock on the door. I get up, almost naked just wearing my boxers, and I go open the door. I find the guy from yesterday who wanted me to go help me send/write an email. He sees am half naked and resting and yet tells me, without apology, that he brought his scooter so we can go now to the cyber cafe. Hell no! "Meet you downstairs in half an hour." Apparently he looked for me all over town today. Poor guy. It's for the good cause...or maybe not a cause other than helping him with his French.

Ha! That's a thing that really upsets me to the highest level here and in Senegal. The official language of education is French. Yet, not a single kid no matter how old, even tweens barely speak any French. And seeing the way they write is even more shameful.

So I met up with him later on. We went to the old part of town, passed the big mosque, to the cheapest cyber cafe in town. Before that we dropped by his house to pick up the email address he wanted to send his email to. So I met his whole family who even insisted I say for dinner. I was way to tired and a bit nauseous because of the medicine am taking. So no thank you.

He basically wanted me to write to one of his French friend a big time music producer, to ask if he could send some of his mom designed jewelry to the producers girlfriend in mexico so she could try to sell them for him. Hmmm...I told him mexico was no Europe. Purchasing power is not all that high, and African jewelry might not work so well if prices are to high. But who knows...

So tomorrow night we will take photos of the jewelry to send to the guy and give him some price ranges. We'll see.

Then he dropped me off at the food stall I ate last night, right near my hotel. I quietly ate the same dish as last night. Only slightly disturbed by the sadly crazy woman who spoke very good French and asked me where I had left my child. Hmmm...I felt bad for her because the kids around made fun of her after she left.

And off to sleep. A beautiful and delightful day is over...next!

(As I was writing this, a big spider jumped on my face and walked away. Yikes! Time to kill it and go to sleep. Darn useless mosquito net!)