Tuesday 4 April.
Djenne is a furnace: 43 c. and it will get hotter. I have a fever and a heavy head- but at Pama’s my first Bogolan efforts are cooking and I am expected back there in twenty minutes, which means another trek across town in the blinding heat. We dipped the fabric I bought yesterday three times in a boiled broth made from special leaves, and let it dry in the sun on the roof- a procedure which took only twenty minutes all in all- the cotton dried more or less instantly in the searing heat.
Pama is the president of the women’s association of Djenne. She does bogolan and she is in charge of the market garden too, so I have arrived, as it were, at the very the bosom of Djenne, and an ample one it is, too. Pama is a smiling, motherly woman of uncertain age.
Talking of age.
It is now 2.30 and I am sitting on my veranda, accompanied by Passerou, another little friend of 15. He was Pia’s special friend when we were here in December. I showed him some pictures from that visit, including one of me and Andrew arriving on the Djenne transport. He looked at the picture, then looked at me, and suggested helpfully that I had aged a lot.