We've been in Mali for nearly a full day now, and I think we are taking our time to adjust. We spent several hours today talking to a lady from the embassy and our interpreter about what we can expect and ventured out to a grocery store for bottled water. We attempted this evening to leave the hotel for food (I am excited to try some fish porridge, which I understand is the national dish). However, our venture was rather unsuccessful. We walked down the dirt paths next to an extremely busy roadway filled with mopeds and bikes and cars and green taxi vans with no doors.
As we walked toward what we expected to be a rather nice dinner, we passed street vendor after street vendor with their neatly stacked fruits. It's almost as if they live next to the cardboard mats they stack their fruit on. It was the dinner hour and they had very pungent fires burning, which I guess were for food.
We never found the now infamous restaurant. We found the sign for the restaurant but it led us down a very dark path to the Niger River where we found a crumbling white building and a large brush fire. Two men came from the dark bushes as we were leaving, I think it left some members of our team a little spooked, but overall we were still just hungry. Then, we came back to the hotel for our second meal of the day.
Tomorrow, we will start our tours, and I am excited to see more of this amazing city. Oh, I forgot my title. This morning we saw a man picking mangoes outside our hotel room. The Malians eat mangoes like apples (peel and all). After having a mango at lunch, I understand why, they are delicious.
As we walked toward what we expected to be a rather nice dinner, we passed street vendor after street vendor with their neatly stacked fruits. It's almost as if they live next to the cardboard mats they stack their fruit on. It was the dinner hour and they had very pungent fires burning, which I guess were for food.
We never found the now infamous restaurant. We found the sign for the restaurant but it led us down a very dark path to the Niger River where we found a crumbling white building and a large brush fire. Two men came from the dark bushes as we were leaving, I think it left some members of our team a little spooked, but overall we were still just hungry. Then, we came back to the hotel for our second meal of the day.
Tomorrow, we will start our tours, and I am excited to see more of this amazing city. Oh, I forgot my title. This morning we saw a man picking mangoes outside our hotel room. The Malians eat mangoes like apples (peel and all). After having a mango at lunch, I understand why, they are delicious.
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