Leaving Bamako Behind

I’m going to start with a sequential order of events then try to sort out my feelings. It’s been hard for me to sit down and write this post but it is something I want to get down before I forget everything.

The week before Thanksgiving there was a terrorist attack at a hotel in Bamako. The hotel is near our house there and the attack not only changed the dynamic in the neighborhood but the entire security profile in Mali.

On December 1, the State Department put an authorized departure order in place, which is a sort of voluntary evacuation for nonessential employees and family members of all State employees in Bamako. But if you leave the country for any other reason during that time, you are not allowed back in until the order lifts.

Mike and I decided we would stay in Bamako until school let out for the Christmas holiday, then, after a family vacation, Muffin and I would return to the U.S. while Mike returned to his job in Bamako.

We had a wonderful safari vacation in Kenya. Mike and I were happy that Muffin’s last memories of Africa were fun adventures with animals, not being stressed out over bad guys in Mali.

On New Year’s Eve, we separated in Nairobi airport. Muffin and I landed in Boston the next day; Mike landed in Bamako.

The authorized departure is ongoing but even when it ends, Muffin and I will not be returning to Bamako. We’ll be staying in the U.S. until Mike’s assignment ends later this year.

It’s hard. We arrived to shocking winter cold with just a couple of suitcases and had to figure out some logistics, like winter clothes for Muffin, right away. There are loads of good things, however. We have a house, and a car, and lots of support from family and friends. Muffin is back in the same class she was in before we left for Mali, which helped her transition. The dust allergies we’d been suffering from in Bamako cleared up within a couple day of leaving there, so our physical health improved greatly. We no longer have the stress of living in the security situation in Mali.

But it’s still hard. We left with so little time to really process it. We were so sick and stressed out in the last couple of weeks in Bamako that it became difficult to say proper good-byes to all our friends, especially with all the stress of Christmas parties and other seasonal social obligations. I broke down toward the end and couldn’t really leave the house. I was so sick I couldn’t hold a conversation without coughing uncontrollably, which made me anxious and self-conscious. Muffin was visibly worried about bad guys all the time and we felt horrible about our decision to move the whole family to Mali in the first place.

We arrived to a house we’d bought but never lived in. I’ve slowly been bringing it together, but there are still days where I just sit and stare instead of put shelving together and measure closet space. I always have culture shock when I return to the U.S. but it seems doubly difficult this time. Some days all I can do is the minimum to get Muffin to school and provide decent meals. I’m running as often as I can, which is something. It’s been almost impossible to write, though. The seven hundred words or so of this post are the most I’ve written in weeks.

Friends and family members would ask me about what it was really like in Bamako during and after the attack. Eventually I caught on to a sort of glazed-over, yet slightly horrified, look in their eyes. I'd forget that I'd lived with the Bamako story for so long that it wasn't shocking to me anymore, it had become the status quo. But events like that and living in conditions like that aren't normal for most people in the U.S.

Last week I felt like I started to wake up from a fog. I feel healthier, mentally and physically. Muffin and I miss Mike but we all know this was the best decision for our family and we'll be together again soon.

So that's where we are now. We're in this weird limbo. We're waiting for Mike to come home safely. We're guilty about being healthy and eating good food. Most of our belongings are in Bamako and we can't get it back until Mike's assignment is up. I'm already tired of the U.S. and want to go back to Africa. I'm trying to get by with what I've got.

"Sweaty, Gross, and Super Hungry"

That's what I said to Mike one morning when he leaned in for a hug and a kiss before he left for work. I was in the midst of my run streak and had just returned from the great outdoors. It was the peak of Malian summer, sometime in April or May. Every morning I was sweaty, gross, and super hungry. Mike laughed that morning and suggested it as the title of my memoir when I eventually wrote about the run streak.

I started on Thanksgiving last year and ran at least one mile every day for 199 days, ending in mid-June. I ran in Mali -- in Bamako and Segou. I ran in Paris. I ran in Salzburg. I ran on the pedestrian path between the hotels and the airport in Munich. (Or was it Frankfurt? I don't remember now where our twenty-four hour layover was.) I ran in West Palm Beach and South Beach. I ran along Ocean Road in Narragansett. I ran by myself most days but with sometimes with Mike or other friends.

I ran on treadmills sometimes. I'd brought one with us to Mali to get me through running during the worst weather here -- the dust storms of winter followed shortly by the intense heat of summer. The treadmill shorted out the electricity in the entire downstairs of the house every time I plugged it in, and by the time someone was able to fix that problem, I'd already run through the worst weather outdoors. The dust storm days when my lungs hurt after ten minutes outside. Long runs in the May heat that I broke up by running two miles to the gym, running on the treadmill under a full-blast air conditioner, and running two miles home.

I learned that I can run one mile under almost any conditions. Bad weather, minor injuries, mild fevers, after too much cider and chèvre-stuffed galette for lunch at a Breton café in Paris. I learned that eventually one mile wasn't enough unless I was extremely tired or pressed for time and most days I was going out for at least two.

I was always hungry. Even the low-mileage days left me ravenous and I ate like crazy. Yet, I started to fit into clothes that hadn't fit me in a few months (a few years, even, after my winter hibernation in Rhode Island).

Until one injury stopped me. We were back in the U.S. I was eating like crazy because so many foods were available that we don't have in Mali. I was running every day but pain was causing me to slow down and limit myself to less than two miles. I could have run slowly through the injury, limiting myself to one ten-minute mile each day. But I'd planned to run a half marathon with some friends, friends who I hadn't seen since we'd run a half marathon together the previous year. I ended the streak so I could get some real rest. A week later I ran with my friends and came within ten minutes of my half marathon PR, which I was thrilled with considering the horrible two-hour nonstop downpour we ran through combined with still nursing the injury.

I belonged to a handful of run streak groups online. Some people congratulated me on knowing when to end the streak and concentrate on having fun with my friends instead. Others sniffed at my decision, saying they would have chosen to keep the streak alive and forego the half marathon. Whatever. I made the right choice for me at the time. (And the people who supported my decision are people I'm still in touch with regularly even though I'm not streaking any more.)

Even though I kept running regularly, I did not go back to streaking. Yet I was still in the U.S. eating as if I were still streaking and training for a half marathon. By the end of our vacation, some of those favorite clothes no longer fit.

Several months later, some of those clothes still don't fit and I know that all I have to do is commit to running one mile every day again if I want them to. Without even really thinking about it I recently found myself running every day for several days in a row -- a week, maybe 8 or 9 days, I didn't really pay attention. I felt healthy and strong again. I also felt like there's not enough food in Mali to keep me fed through another streak and we don't have plans to get to Europe or the U.S. any time soon.

But aside from the health, strength, and fitting into of favorite clothes, I also found I was extremely productive when I started every morning with a run, regardless of it being ten minutes or ten miles. I wrote my novel during those run streak days along with a number of other projects. (I'm thinking I should try to write off Strava Premium on my taxes because of my productivity during the streak.)

I'm going to take it one day at a time. I ran yesterday. I ran today. I'll probably run tomorrow but I'll make that decision in the morning.

Bonjour, Mes Amis!

The Great Mosque (Mud Mosque) Djenne, Mali

Well, it's been a while. Life is going on as usual in Mali and I've been keeping busy with a very exciting project -- I'm writing a novel! And it will be published in November! It's called Mountains Never Meet and while it's fiction, I think regular readers might recognize a lot of the adventures of my main characters from the posts here. It's very much inspired by our life overseas.

Look for more details in the next few days. I'll be sharing the blurb, the first two chapters, and the cover very soon.

If I have any followers left, I'd love some feedback from you. Please drop me a comment or email to say "Hi!" If you can let me know about any sharing links that are or are not working, that would be awesome, too. And any general feedback about the site, especially if links are broken. I'm still tinkering with the sidebar, too, so if there's any information you'd like to see there, please let me know. Thank you so much! You all were among my first loyal readers and I do still appreciate you so much.

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I'll be back with more very soon!

It Really Is That Simple -- Just Go Run

From Runner Girl.

I had a couple good runs last week but on Saturday morning I didn't get up and out early, like I'd thought about doing. I made coffee. I tried uploading some photos (after twenty-four hours, they finally loaded!). I watched Muffin watch cartoons. Then as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed I came across this image on Runner Girl. I put on my shoes and went for a run. Mike and Muffin were riding bikes. It was cloudy, so not too hot, but the kind of cloudy that doesn't reveal what's happening next. Within an hour it was either going to be clear and too sunny to be outside or there was going to be torrential downpour and thus too dangerous (street flooding) to be outside. It turned out to be torrential downpour. It's a good thing we all got our outdoor activities in when we did.

I ran. My road isn't quite as scenic.

I ran three miles, picking my away along the road. Even with the trail conditions and stopping for traffic at busy intersections, I'm averaging about ten-minute miles, so I'm happy with my overall pace. I'm still getting confused  -- wait a minute, didn't I approach that statue from the other direction last time I ran? -- but recognizing enough landmarks to get me around.

Last week we made one of the best food investments ever. We bought a tortilla press. We've made fresh corn tortillas three times in the last week and I don't think we'll ever go back to store-bought, even once we're back in the States and can buy them easily. We don't have it down quite perfectly yet and I'll probably never be as good as an abuella. They are darn tasty, though, and with a big pot of beans plus the last of the seasonal mangos and avocados, soft tacos have been a great treat.

Happy running and eating this week!

Seeking Out Running Opportunities

Sunday morning we decided to stop at a cafe for breakfast before doing a little grocery shopping. Since I can't eat gluten and I don't like eggs, breakfast is one of the hardest meals of the day for me to eat out in Africa but most of the time I can get some fruit and yogurt, and if I'm lucky, a little bacon. This restaurant was out of fruit plate, however (despite a bustling fruit market just down the block), and bacon. As I drank my surprisingly good coffee and munched on half a stale Lara bar I'd had in my purse while watching Muffin eat waffles and Mike eat pancakes, I felt discouraged. 

Then the channel on the television changed from a nature show about whale pregnancies to a marathon and waitstaff who hadn't been interested in serving us materialized to watch. I got up to watch, too. I didn't know until later that it was the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. I couldn't hear most of the French commentary and there were no graphics on the screen informing me of anything other than distance and time. It didn't really matter, though. I watched and I felt happy. 

We visited the Parc National du Mali on Saturday for a short hike. There's a fitness trail with some crazy 1970s-like workout equipment, but it looks fairly new. I hopped onto a few machines and felt like I was in a Jack Lalane video, or the Ben Stiller Daniel Day Lewis treadmill sketch from Saturday Night Live. Muffin had a blast trying out all the equipment. I envision myself jumping into the car as soon as she gets on the school bus in the mornings to get to the parc early to run the trail up the mountain before the heat of the day sets in. I caught site of a track from our hike up the mountain, too. 

Mike thinks our neighborhood is fine for me to run in, I just need him to take me out a couple more times so I get the lay of the place. We have a treadmill coming in our household shipment. There's a gym at Mike's office. I can run laps around the field while the rest of the expat community plays ultimate frisbee on Sunday nights. There's a hash club here. There are ways to run. 

I didn't plan my gluten-free foods in advance of arrival in Bamako as well as I should have, so I'm hesitant to try too much running or working out quite yet. I'm making strides with grocery shopping and our housekeeper but everyday living and figuring things out in a new place is still taking up a lot of time and energy. One of the cookbooks I mailed to myself arrived last week, one that I'd already jotted down French translations for our housekeeper in Burundi, so I was able to ask our Malian housekeeper for the right ingredients without consulting the dictionary again. I hope some of my gluten-free mixes arrive this week so I can have crepes and make quick breads. I stocked up on local peanuts, popcorn, and honey to try making some kind of peanut-popcorn snack this week. The local yogurt is good and our housekeeper has a fresh, pasteurized milk source. Yesterday I found a good avocado at the fruit stand, which I overpaid for, but my housekeeper says it hasn't been good weather for them this year, so everyone is overpaying for the good ones. We are eating mangos like they're going out of style, because they might be soon. The rainy season has been unusual and we are eating produce while it's available.

Today is a "surprise" holiday -- you never know until the last minute which day will be the holiday for Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. Mike has the day off so we are contemplating getting outside for a bit, exploring a new place. I have enough bottled water and peanut packs for a day hike.

The Dull Roar of a Million Peep Toads

Is what I’m listening to right now. We had a night of heavy rain and around five o’clock this morning when I got up to use the bathroom I could hear them as I passed by the window. By the time I got up later for breakfast, they were so loud we could hear them in the living room above the sound of the air conditioner. If there weren’t so many mosquitoes right now we’d be outside poking around mud puddles looking for toads and tadpoles.

But we have to be extra careful of mosquitoes right now. Africa has thrown a few challenges at us in our first week here.

First thing Monday morning Muffin and I took our anti-malaria pills. We call it Malaria Monday and take the pills with breakfast. Later that day I found out that the pills the travel clinic in Rhode Island gave us are no good here. The local malaria strain is resistant to chloroquine so we have to get on mefloquine ASAP. Unfortunately we can’t overlap the two, so we have to wait a couple more days before we can start the mefloquine, which means we are on high alert for avoiding mosquito bites. We have Deet and bed nets so we’re doing the best we can. As tempting as it is to go outside in the relative coolness after the rain, I think we need to stay away from the bugs.

I was hit with some kind of stomach thing on Tuesday. On Wednesday I felt bad enough to see the nurse at Mike’s office. I wasn’t quite sick enough for her to think I had an infection and she didn’t think I’d been here long enough for a parasite to gestate so the best she could do was treat me for dehydration, which was definitely one of my symptoms and certainly something that could lead to the other symptoms I was suffering from. For twenty-four hours I drank a horrible-tasting rehydration solution, but it seems to have done the trick. I’m not 100%, but I feel much better today than I have any other day this week. The five pounds I gained during my winter hibernation have vanished.

I’ve had some ups and downs with the housekeeper. Mostly, she’s very good and is trying hard to be helpful, but due to the language barrier and my not feeling well it’s been difficult to give her accurate instructions. I did some successful grocery shopping yesterday and tutored her in soaking dried beans and making a vegetable soup that I found appetizing, so the good meal has improved my spirits as much as anything could. To be fair, she probably knew how to make this soup already, but my French wasn’t good enough to instruct her in what I wanted, so I needed to show her exactly which vegetables, herbs, and spices to put in. I did not find the Chinese market yesterday, which is rumored to have tofu, but I think I pinpointed the neighborhood it’s in so I should be able to find it next time.

I don’t know how much coverage the airline crash in Mali is receiving in the rest of the world (because due to all the rain, the satellite isn’t working so we have no generic international or American news, only what I choose to read online). I’m glad we flew last week, though, instead of this week. The flight between Paris and Bamako was turbulent enough without landing during the thunderstorms we’re having now.

I’ll end with a few photos from the week. You can follow my photos on Instagram: http://instagram.com/stephaniesdiamond

The fire finches like to hang out in our windows.

Storm clouds on Thursday afternoon.

The view from our balcony.
There's no filter on this; it really does look like the 1970s here.

Feeding our eight parrots.

Dateline Bamako

Muffin and I have arrived in Bamako, Mali, finally reuniting with Mike. He’s been here since April. He came home for a couple weeks in June, then returned, while we stayed back to do the pack-out and enjoy a little bit of Rhode Island summer vacation. We left Rhode Island last Thursday and about twenty-four hours later we landed in Bamako, tired and a little crabby but thrilled to be together as a family again.

Muffin is still adjusting, but she’s doing well. This time of year the time difference with the East Coast is only four hours and we’ve been able to manage our time well so far. I expect both of us to crash and burn any day now, though, as the excitement of travel wears off and the reality if living here sinks in, probably shortly after Mike leaves for work tomorrow and I’m faced with a full day on my own with Muffin. I feel pretty comfortable there, though, more so than I did in India. And after living in Burundi, Mali isn’t nearly as shocking. My French comprehension kicked in as soon as we got off the plane in Paris and I’ve understood just about everything that’s been said to me. I’ve even made a handful of successful transactions in stores and restaurants. We’ve walked around the neighborhood and I can find the homes of some other Americans with children about Muffin’s age, plus a snack shop and a pharmacy.

This is Africa, where the tonic water glows blue in the light of the bug zapper and the best meal at most restaurants is a brouchette with fries and a Fanta. I feel at home.

Ocean's Run and Running by the Ocean

Two days after my most recent half marathon -- the Ocean's Run from South Kingstown town beach -- I was still lurching around like Frankenstein's monster. But I knew Running While Mommy was planning to run today and while I couldn't join RWM in person I decided to join her in spirit. I hoped a short run would shake out my legs a bit and relieve some of the aching but it didn't really.


I ran fast (for me) in Sunday's half marathon and I'm proud of myself. My previous half was two hours and fifteen minutes; I was hoping to be faster than that and I was, in two hours and eight minutes. Mike and Muffin joined me early in the morning and my mom had joined them by the time I finished. After all the cold weather long runs RWM and I had done with some other friends, the weather on Sunday was almost shockingly warm once we got moving. It was still chilly, though, with the ocean breeze. While I ditched my mittens the first time I saw Mike and Muffin, I'm glad I kept my hat. Every time I warmed up a bit I'd turn a corner and the wind would hit me, freezing me again.

So, that's one more race behind me. I'm trying to decide which races to do next with my shrinking amount of time in the US. I'm shopping around for a treadmill to take with us to Mali. I signed up for the Spring Bootie Buster Challenge to keep me on track while the craziness of spring cleaning and summer packing gets under way.

We're Moving to Mali

The title about sums it up.

Our plans have changed from what we thought would be happening last year at this time. But we're happy with the change. I've been tired of the United States for a few months now. I'm certainly done with winter. Muffin asks every day if we're moving back to India. If we're going to Pakistan. If we're going to Chad. If we're going to Mali. She hasn't been in one place for so long without getting on a plane and traveling somewhere (although that changed las week when we went on vacation); she assumes every morning we are waking up early and going to the airport. My aunt told Muffin she has itchy feet and Muffin agreed, although in the sense that her feet are literally itchy because of her winter dry skin.

We haven't even unpacked all the boxes from India yet and my project for the next few months is to decide what goes to Mali and what doesn't. I've already got lists for consumables, for our suitcases, for the air shipment, and for the boat shipment, based on two overseas moves already and on the basic nonavailability of so much stuff in Africa (Mali may have slightly more to offer than Burundi, but I'm not taking any chances).

I've started speaking French to Muffin. We're hoping to enroll her in a preschool program that will prepare her for full-immersion French kindergarden. She doesn't seem to remember any Telegu or Hindi but she is taking to the French very well.

She is so certain that we still live in Hyderabad. I think there's a lot about Mali that will be familiar to her and make her feel at home.

Mike has been working in various African places the last few weeks. He said landing in Africa felt like being home again.

We all have itchy feet that are ready to be back in Africa.