Aftermath

Still in a spin after last week’s excitement in Bamako. Carin, the Swedish ambassador, just called me from Burkina Faso and we had a dissection of the fashion show and the evening and both felt it had been a success. She had opened a bottle of champagne in celebration on Thursday night after it was all finished and everyone had left except the ‘inner circle’ which included Sylvie and Jimmy of the Villa Soudan, Amede of La Maison Rouge and Keita down from Segou for the event.  Then Carin too went home because of pressing engagements the following morning. But we carried on opening more champagne. My last memory was of saying goodbye to Carin.  The rest of the evening had to be pieced back together the following morning with Keita’s help. He had never seen me in this state before, which is not surprising since I believe I was about 18 last time it happened. I jumped into the swimming pool twice with my Giraffe dress on. Otherwise I was apparently a happy drunk, just laughing a smiling and not doing anything too obnoxious at least...Keita was nevertheless very ashamed of me. He has now forgiven and forgotten Alhamdilullah, and what remains is that in the earlier and important  part of the evening he was  proud of me he says...

Because of total lack of pictures, I have felt unable to make a proper report. Next Monday the Australian TV crew is arriving in Djenne- I have high hopes of being able to extract some stills from their material. Life is not quite back to normal, because there has also been a sudden influx of hotel guests here, including the Swedish TV 4 channel who decided to do a detour from their planned trip which was to go to Timbuktu only to include their country woman in Djenne in their Mali reportage. Here they are, interviewing Baba about how it feels to have been switched from being a waiter to being a bogolan worker.

 My birthday was rather a jolly event on the 17^th since the Swedish film crew were here, as well as a lone American tourist who  joined us for dinner in the garden.  Karim played his Kamale Goni and sang for us in the warm Malian night under the bright stars...