Sometimes all things seem to converge: it is that way with the 8^th of April this year. We have Helen Skinner, a paper conservator from Sweden arriving, on a small grant given to MaliMali to investigate what is needed to begin conservation work at the library. She will work with a Garba Traoré, a Malian conservator from the Ahmed Baba institute.

At the same time we will have Eva Brozovski, also a conservator,  from the University of Hamburg, who will be here inshallah, and she will be working with Yelfa on the  new fascinating field of research that we identified last time she was here: the traditional inks of Djenné, mainly derived from the plants of the neighbourhood. Here is Yelfa, throwing out all the old Chinese ink that was left, and washing the pots, in order to put the new inks in- the inks that he is preparing according to the old nearly forgotten recipes- not all are from plants: he was also preparing a yellow ink from gun powder!

We had a James, an ecologist from Montpellier at the hotel a couple of weeks ago. He suggested that I extend the research to include the plants that are used for the traditional dyes- in fact the dye matter we use for the bogolan. He put me in contact with a collegue of his at the University of Bamako,  M. Fadiala Dembele , who is an expert on the plants of the Sahel. He will come and give an address on the plants of the area from a perspective of their ecological significance.