Traveling

The flight from Dulles to Paris was very nice. I was surprised when while we were standing in line waiting to board someone came up and hugged me. It took me a second, but I realized it was Jackie, at professor from Goucher and the woman that took some of us to Romania. She's going to spend the summer in Romania with her son and his wife.

We took off around 10pm EST. I was already pretty tired, so after we had been flying for awhile I took my pill and was about to go to sleep, however they began serving dinner. It was a pretty late dinner, probably after 11pm, but it was very good and afterwards I watched a movie while I dozed off. I slept for a few hours and woke up just before they served breakfast. We arrived in Paris at 10am (Paris time, which is 4am EST (apparently Paris is 6 hours ahead, not 5)), so needless to say Liz and I were both very tired. At first we weren't sure where to go, but eventually after a little wondering and a short tram ride we wound up in the right terminal. There were some fairly awesome lounge chairs, where several people were sleeping and eventually we found some chairs and just passed out for a while.

About a half hour before boarding we moved over to where our gate was. There were probably about 25 people waiting there so we figured it would be a fairly empty flight. We boarded and Liz was seated infront of me with a Canadian girl who is doing some research for her masters in Mali and Liz was able to get some good advice from her (she also helped us later trying to get our baggage). I had no one in the seat next to me and in fact the whole row was pretty much empty, which was ok with me. But about 5 minutes after we should have been taxing out we found out that we were waiting for all the people that were late including many children (it was pretty interesting, these little boys were all dressed up in these 3 piece suits for the flight). SO eventually the plane filled up and a man sat next to me (though we didn't really talk at all). We took off about an hour late. I watched Benjamin Button during the flight and tried to stay awake so I would be able to sleep that night. I did have a short, but very pleasant conversation with the older gentleman across the aisle from me. He told me that Mali was a very friendly place and that I would be very welcomed on my first visit.

At first I didn't find it to be very friendly. They only way to describe the events after landing would be chaos. We didn't get our form for customs until we got into the terminal. There was only one small door to come through and it was late and people were tired and wanted to get to wherever they were going so there was a lot of pushing. Then we had to try to figure out how to fill out the form for customs (which I'm pretty sure I didn't do right, but apparently that doesn' matter). Eventually we wound up in the correct line (though why we could go in the other one I'm not sure and of course we didn't find out till we had waited in line for a long time). At first I was a bit put off by the whole experience; I had been told before that people here are very polite and accomodating, but at the airport it seemed to be anything but. I started to think that it was a custom to push your way to the front of the line and let me tell you, it is very easy to cut in front of to meek american girls. When we made it through costums and had our passports stamped we then had to go and try to obtain our luggage, which made the prior shoving game look like 5 year olds on a playground. It was very difficult to maintain you position around the carosel and often we were pushed to far back to even be able to see what was going by, not that it matter as our luggage was some of the last to be unloaded. There was a very nice boy who jumped up on the conveyer belt and grabbed my bag for me after it passed out of my reach. So interestingly you have to xray your bag leaving the airport. But finally we made it through and found the nice gentleman Abi with a sign for us. He guided us back to the van, though not before some porters (who I had thought were with him) grabbed our bags for us. We got back to the van and the porters demanded a tip I gave one the only small Euros I had (2.50) and gave the other a $5 american bill, which he apparently didn't appreciate and stood next to my door as we were leaving telling me that money didn't have any value here and asking me for the 20 Euro note he saw in my wallet.

The drive to the guest house at the medical school was beautiful even in the dark. We crossed the rivier (which I believe Abi said was part of the Niger) and headed up a larger hill/small mountain. The House is very nice it has many rooms and a small courtyard, a common bathroom and dining room. We decided that we were to hot and sweaty and needed showers before we slept, which we took and then promptly passed out around 12:30am (Bamako time).