The hotel has been taken over by the world’s united mud architects for the last three days- Mali has been host to the international conference TERRA which takes place every three years or so in an appropriately muddy place- the last time was in a small town in Iran.
There were over eight hundred delegates who spent a few days in Bamako where learned specialists lectured on such topics as ‘termite saliva as binding agent in adobe structures of southern Kenya’.
Most delegates then took the opportunity to travel around the country. Already on Thursday came a van-guard of jolly Mexican architects who nearly drank the bar dry, followed on Friday by ten uncharacteristically enthusiastic Swedes who started dancing in the bar even before dinner had been served. Hans, their tour-leader, said that if anything happened to them at the hotel or en route back to Sweden the future of Swedish mud architecture would look grim, since they were the sum total of Swedish expertise on the subject. Hans has a Swedish building company that makes proper Swedish-looking houses out of Swedish mud bricks.
And last night the hotel was once more taken over by the mud-enthusiasts above, whose nationalities ranged from Spanish to Brazilian, Swiss, Italian and Japanese.