Boring Stuff

My little friend above is  the best way by far to express my present circumstances. There is nothing to do but either cry, laugh  or shrug one's heavily loaded shoulders. If I step outside myself I can find it all rather amusing and that is more fun than feeling sorry for myself...
Well, its like this:
As I believe I have expressed many times before, I had dreaded Djenné without Keita. But I had not quite understood the scale of the misery that awaited me. Yes, of course I know it is all co-incidences that really do not have anything to do with Keita's demise but nevertheless...
The day before yesterday I was finally starting to attack the vast backlog of book-keeping that had been mounting up in these  last months- year(!) of misfortune for the hotel, the library and MaliMali.  I had been told there was some problem with the EDM (Electricité du Mali) which had made them arrive here in May to take away one of our electricity meters. I was not too concerned because I have prided myself on paying the electricity bills within one week maximum of arrival even in the last five years of trouble and insecurity. I therefore decided confidently to go and see the head of the EDM with Ace  who has been in charge of the payments of the electricity bills ever since the beginning of the hotel. And once we arrived at the EDM office I was presented with a bill of 1 300 000 FCFA! That is around £2000, and it comes as something of a shock to someone who thinks they are up to date with payments.
I obviously decide to check all my records and it seems that I miss seven receipts since 2011. I can trace the other 65. Now the missing ones are exactly the ones that EDM claim have not been paid so it would seem they have a point!  Ace is the person whom I have entrusted with my electricity and water bills. I always give him the money and the bill once it arrives at the hotel and he goes and pays. Then, 65 out of approximately 72times he has come back and returned  the receipt. The remaining seven times he has not  and I have been too busy to notice.

 Keita's best friend Cissé the Djenné tax inspector and the treasurer of MaliMali has been my valiant champion in this untimely trial. We went to the EDM together this afternoon  through the rain and the muddy streets of Djenné. The Director of the EDM must be feeling sorry for me because he has come up with a way to pay the bill off slowly. The thing is, I either pay or I close the hotel... but  hell! I know I have already paid these bills! After reflection I cannot think of any other conclusion then that it must be Ace who has taken the money- I will have to get rid of him. But he has been here since the very beginning! He is someone I am very fond of. Oh, what to do?

My mind full of these thoughts I continued this afternoon to plow through the vast mountain of accountancy which has to be entered into the appropriate ledgers when Maman  knocked on the door and explained that there was a group of people from Mopti waiting for me at the hotel and they  wanted to speak to me. I followed him, heavy with unpleasant premonitions which proved wholly justified. It was a delegation from the Mopti INPS (the department of social security) who had come to give me a bill for 3 500 000 FCFA (more than four thousand pounds) for missing contributions for my work force!

Now, when the hotel was up and running with some people in it we did of course do the social security contributions. But for the last four years we are the only hotel in Djenné that has managed to pay their staff at all, although we have had to drop the INPS and the staff had been paid sometimes through the hotel and sometimes through MaliMali, depending on which one had some money handy. I explained to the delegation  that there was unfortunately no way I was ever going to be able to pay them and if they insisted on this money I would have to close the hotel down forthwith. To give them  credit they were very understanding and they too, like the EDM  came up with a plan to save me. I said I sympathized with them totally and that I realized that they had a job to do and that I pitied them for having to come to Djenné to try and get something out of the hoteliers here because this town, with Bandiagara, the portal to the Dogan country must surely be the two towns in Mali which have been the worst served by this Malian crisis. The hoteliers and restaurateurs in Bamako are growing rich on the UN staff and there are plenty of those in Mopti/Sevaré too. Even Timbuktu and Gao are full of crisis administrators who want to eat and drink and sleep. But there are absolutely none here and none in Bandiagara... we just have to contend with all the journalists of the world bleating on endlessly about the insecurity of the central region of Mali and the threat of the Front de Libération de Macina.
So what will happen? I don't know if I will last through this- there seems at the moment precious little to put in the side of the scales which represents staying here....