Last night the whole village lost power and as it turns out, our backup generator at the house was broken. At first it wasn’t too bad, but then I realized my flashlight is really not all that good, so washing in the dark was interesting. And then when we went to sleep it was unbearably hot. We had the windows open, but there’s a way right outside the wind so no air was moving. It was miserable and then a storm started so there was the lightning flashing on the walls of the room and some very loud thunder. I managed to get to sleep for a little bit, but sometime in the night one of my ear plugs (lifesavers honestly) fell out and I couldn’t find it, so I was woken up by the call for 5am prayer, by donkeys and that darn rooster.
When we got up I decided I needed a bath because I had gotten so hot during the night. It was great when we got to the clinic (it has 3 backup generators), though it wasn’t very hot outside today. There wasn’t much to do at the clinic this morning (it seemed the rain from the previous night was deterring people from coming), so we stayed in the office and continued to work on the translations. During the morning we also when to the Couturière where we picked out our clothing designs and were measured. The rest of the morning passed with little excitement.
While eating lunch we watched the news and saw the fighting in Nigeria between the Islamists and the government. It seems that there is a distinction here between Musulman (a Muslim) and Islamist. A Musulman is simply someone who follows the Islamic faith, whereas an Islamist is an extremist (and as Badry says someone who has Islam all wrong). Although I know there are Christians here in Bandiagara (simply by the presence of pigs), it’s difficult to tell who is who, they work together, live together and treat each other the same. The only times I can tell is when the name is obviously Christian (like one of the men that works at the house, who is named Paul). After lunch we continued with translations at the clinic.
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