Hotel Djenné Djenno wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Life goes on, (or rather it limps on. The last blog post with its cryptic message of doom is still valid and the outcome of the present crisis is not clear. It all has to do with the difficulties created by polygamy, a tradition which I think is extremely cruel. Mai, Keita's first wife, is seemingly unable to accept what her mother and her grandmother have accepted, and what I too have had to accept, i.e that she has to share Keita with me, his second wife. Although it all seemed to be resolved in September, new difficulties has surfaced yet again, and she is doing everything she can to try and separate us, with some success, although Keita's visit here for a few days, ending yesterday, has brought us together once more.

But let's touch lightly on this heaviness and instead concentrate on the Glad Tidings!
This evening I put op the garlands of fairy lights around the bar whilst listening to Handel's Messiah. By coincidence it happened to be prayer time at the Mosque, and as usual the Muezzin's piercing call carried across the dusty plain to Djenne Djenno. Now a sort of duel ensued, with a contingent of Spanish tourist egging me on to turn up volume of the Messiah:

'The people that walked in darkness hath seen a great light'

'Allahu Akbar!'

'And they that dwell in the land of the Shadow of Death upon them hath the light shined'

'Allahu Akbar'!!

'Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called wonderful councillor, Almighty God; the everlasting Father the Prince of Peace!

'Allahu Akbar!'