returning to the internet

This evening we arrived in the village of Kadiolo. This is where we will be staying until the 28th of December. The village and surrounding area is roughly 30,000 people. What I mean by surrounding area would be like a county in the US. It has been 3 days since my last post, so I will start from the beginning of that period.

Monday (the 15th)-
In the morning Ernie and I took a walk down the street to the pump and generator store. We were researching how much it would cost for a pump that would pump out the mud from someone's well. Then on the way back we stopped at the insurance office because Ernie needed to see how much the vehicle insurance was going to cost. Once we did that, we returned back to the guest house we were staying at to get the amount of money that we were going to need (carrying a lot of extra money around isn't the best idea). Let me pause my story to explain a little of what its like to walk down the street in Bamako. Most streets are paved there. there may be large buildings in the middle of the blocks, but lining the streets are little shops and vendors. There are pedestrians everywhere, and lots of guys pushing little pushpush's (like 2 wheeled wheel-barrels) with various stuff in them. There are lots of cars and even more motorcycles on the roads and they are traveling very fast. as a pedestrian you basically have to walk on the road, there isn't much of a sidewalk due to the shops (you'll see what i mean in some pictures i may post). So ya have to watch out for the crazy drivers while you are walking.
back to the story of my day. We went back and bought the insurance and then the pump. This is a very "hurry up and wait" culture, so this simple process that i explained took from 8am to noon.
After lunch, Ernie and I took a taxi to the other side of town (my first time in a taxi... and he was a crazy driver) to have some phones worked on. There is cell phone service here and all you have to do is bring used phones over from the US and they will unlock them here (so they can be used on any network instead of just verizon or the like). Once their unlocked then you can buy an Orange phone card (orange is the phone company) and they will work until you run out of minutes. So anyway, we had these phones from the states and we needed to get them unlocked so we went to the place across town that did it. Again with the hurry up and wait thing, this process took about 4 hours. The whole side of the street we were on was lined with these shacks that worked on cell phones. I've never seen so many cell phones in one place in my life. It's truly bizarre.
In the evening we just packed and generally got really to leave the next day.


Tuesday 16th-
In the morning we got up at 5:30 so that we could eat, pack the car, and leave by about 6am. We started driving and soon we were out of the big city and in the desert. There are trees here and there and a lot of bushes, but its a lot of open land and very flat. Everything is very dry here, it is often around 10% humidity. It was about a 3 hour drive to our next stop. we passed lots and lots of small villages along the way and there were always children waving at us as we drove by. The villages (again, you should soon see pictures) have shack shops along the street and the people live in mud huts with thatch roofing. Just about every village we passed had an elementary school, but if you wanted a highschool you would have to move to a bigger town. Finally we got to saguo, which is a city east of Bamako. We stopped for gas and to use the restroom at a hotel. Then, we continued on to Kotiala, which is about 2 hours south of saguo. At about 1 or 2 o clock we arrived in Kotiala, which is where we spent the night. There is a guest house there where missionaries can stay for 5000 francs a night per person ($10). Rachel, Kaitlyn, and I went on a walk to find bread for dinner and any veggies we could find for a salad. We found the bread shop and bought some bread (its all french bread and better than french bread in the states.. and it's roughly 25 US cents per loaf), then we spotted a girl carrying tomatoes on her head across the street (the women carry everything on there heads, just like you see in pictures), so we crossed the street to buy some. Rachel used her limited french to try and purchase a few but then we realized we only had large bills and we didn't know how to ask her if she had change... so we crossed the street again and went back to the bread shop, bought another loaf using a bill and got change, went back across the street and bought the tomatoes, only to discover that she did in fact have change, haha. Then Kaitlyn dropped all of the tomatoes on the ground and some locals laughed at us. all in all, it was a good time.
In the evening we just relaxed a bit.

Today (wednesday the 17th)-
We ate breakfast at 8 and then Ernie and I had an appointment with someone at 9. One of the missionaries in Kotiala works with computer networks and solar panals (since Ernie also works with networks, we had some things to talk about), so we met at 9 and they discussed a lot of network things and I just soaked up all of the information. They have one signal coming in from the internet provider (Orange, the same as the phones) and they transmit the signal wirelessly to many people around town. their wireless transmitter can go up to 4 or 5 miles even. This is all basically what Ernie is doing in Kadiolo, so they were sharing ideas. There is an optic cable that runs from the capital, so there is broadband all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, I learned quite a bit about how the network works. Then we drove over to the bible school in kotiala (where they train pastors) to look at the solar panal set up he has built/is building. The entire school is run off of solar energy because the power company charges too much. The whole set up cost around 40,000 dollars, but would pay for itself in 7-8 years; but after that the panals will last another 30 years at least. So, I learned a lot about that too.
After lunch we got back on the road. If we had stayed any longer we would have had to stay the night again because you are not allowed to drive on the road after dark unless you have a military escort. I slept for awhile in the car and then after i had been awake for a bit we got a flat tire.. in the middle of the desert of course. We switched it out with the spare tire and headed on our way. The next village we went through we stopped to fix the flat tire (in case the spare went flat). The whole process of fixing the tire cost 500 francs (or $1). I bought a bottle of coke at a gas station (similar in size to a 20oz) for roughly 70 cents. Then we were off again, next stop, Kadiolo. The last 10 kilometers or so of the road was not paved and quite bumpy. We arrived here in Kadiolo just as the sun was setting.


Some thoughts:
What I have noticed so far is similar to what I expected: that there is hardly anything that is the same in the US as it is here.
The people are very nice, and very understanding of my inability to speak their language. I am slowly learning a little french. I can introduce myself, say Hi, say how are you (and it's response), I can ask how much something is (but I don't know my numbers so I can't understand their reply), and I can ask "do you have..." followed by an item or something. That's about the extent of it so far.

About 90% of the population is Muslim. they have a ritual where they pray every 4 hours or so. so at those intervals in the day you can here the call to prayer being broadcast out on a speaker or something.

Now that we are finally in the town where the missionaries live, we can see what sort of ministries are happening here. I am excited to see how God is moving in this very different culture. I hope that I will see things that I am not accustomed to, as I have in every other aspect of this trip so far.

oh, and there are termite hills over 20 feet tall! cool.