One month shy of a year...

11 months old.  Wow we say around here.  New developments for Marshall are that he can let himself down off the bed by himself and he is really into communicating by pointing.  Oh, and I swear he's actually cuter if that is at all possible.

Sorry for my lack of posts as of late.  I've been on this nutrition research quest and have focused all of my time on line to that.  Emails are backing up too...its bad.  I'm in obsession mode...

None the less, I have thought about a lot of blog posts as of late, here are some of them:

1.  F#@king Coulibaly, or Abdolaye as you've known him, and his quest for greener pastures by overusing our phone and internet services that cost us money and bothering us with, well, just being him.

2.  Birth rituals, homebirths, etc.  I've been doing a lot of birth processing as of late.  No idea why, but think I'm finally over the insanity that was how Marshall entered this world.  So I haven't see it, but from what I understand it says a lot I would say in the post, go see "The Business of Being Born."  

3.  Getting ripped off.

4.  Made up sob stories.

5.  Eating local.  Yummy summer in Oregon.

6.  Last night's dinner(BBQ pork tenderloin with mango sweetened guacamole and pita chips.  mouth watering...).

7.  The strange things they sell outside the maternity hospital

8.  The maternity hospital and western birthing practices in Mali.

9.  Marshall's awesome new red shoes(thanks Graham!)

10.  Can our sidewalk weed cure breastcancer?

11.  Bad ass moms

12.  Long walk routes

13.  Dinner with the Fulbrighters

14.  US presence in Mali

There have been others, but thats what I can remember right now...A good smoothie recipe website summons.  Off to that.

Going home...

So by some fate of the gods, our previous flaky landlady amazingly stuck to her word and we found out we will be able to get our great place back in Eugene.  We can move in at the end of August and get back to whatever our lives are going to look like when we get back.

Kinda weird, really great.  Ian said we need to move things around a bunch so that it doesn't feel like we never left or none of this ever happened.  Oh silly boy, I don't think thats going to be a problem...

When the flowers fall from the flamboyants...

Is when the rain starts to come, according to Kara.  When we arrived at the fancy hotel for our getaway, I noticed some flowers on the ground from the flamboyants.  It was starting to cloud over.  The grey was setting in...

The sky then began to turn yellow. Besides in Mali, the only other place I've seen the sky so yellow is when the eye of Hurricane Alicia passed over Houston when I was 10. The color in these pictures is true...





We saw heat lightening as we ate dinner and awaited the downpour that never came, well, at least not while we were awake.

When we got back home, the humidity became more unbearable. We heard thundering one afternoon, lots of wind, and the sound of people running for shelter. A big storm was on its way. And then the sound of a giant faucet being turned on and the sky literally opened up. Our street became a river within minutes...

Ignore our silly family banter. I don't call Ian daddy, I promise. I was translating for Marshall who thought the splatter from the rain was the funniest thing he'd ever seen and was gesturing towards Ian as if to explain himself.

When I first opened the door to see the rain, three boys and one girl, all around 9 or 10 where hopping down the street and ran towards our open door as if they were looking for shelter. They asked me for mangos, which I thought was weird, because we don't have a mango tree and was sure that I must have misunderstood them. They were all in their undies and all freezing and confused wondering if they could seek shelter in our portico or not. They kept running in circles, kinda trying to come in, but stopping when they saw me. I stood there not quite sure what to do as they asked me for mangos and yelled to Ian in the most ridiculous way, "There are children coming inside and they are asking for mangos." The girl was shivering and I realized they would normally run inside an open door and was about to bring them in and give them all towels when Ian walked up. He smiled smugly and in a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kinda voice, he looked at the girl, specifically, and said, "You cold?"  I asked where her house was and it wasn't far, she could seek shelter there if she wanted to. The boys asked Ian for mangos and we realized they were referring to the mangos from our neighbor's tree that they thought was in our house. The girl looked at me pleadingly, Ian said something else smug and they left, the poor girl almost losing her flop along the way.  

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Apologies for the two week lag in posting!  

Life hasn't been particularly exciting or notable as of late.  I think as we cross that 6 month threshold of our time here, life begins to seem a bit normal and perhaps even a bit uninspired.  The excitement in our lives is having to turn to life back in the States and horribly tedious tasks such as plane tickets, housing, transportation, jobs...things that fill blogs with nothing but familiar ennui.

Marshall has reached a plateau in his walking, a good sign as with most stages of his, he gets to a point where we decide its never going to happen just to be surprised when it actually does.

Ian is a bit hot and burned out these days.  A true Karamogo now, he is having to work more than observe and the humidity really makes that more uncomfortable than usual.

As for me, I have to keep shifting my thoughts from what to do while here to what do do when back home.  I am keeping up with a wiggly and into everything child who makes it challenging to get the most basic tasks done and getting out of the house when I have so much that needs to be done here becomes near impossible some days.  But I love being a mom and I love this child, so I take it all in stride and do what I can when I can.

We've started a couple of new rituals around our house that albeit are a bit boring and mundane to some are things that make me all warm and fuzzy inside, all family love-ish.  We're listing to a weekly radio show together and we've started reading books to each other.  Its cozy, its cerebral and its entertaining.  I like that its something that Marshall is being exposed to.

As life has been feeling a bit mundane, Mother's Day and our stimulus check were good excuses for a bit of a get away.  We just returned yesterday from 3 days and 2 nights at the Hotel Amite, the super fancy hotel here in Bamako.  We had English TV, yummy French food room service and extra cold air conditioning.  I will try to post our spectacular view of the river sometime soon as it was one of my favorite things about the place.  Marshall had firsts of taking bubble baths in the big tub, eating dinner at a fancy restaurant(he made us proud), and going swimming.  It was a dreamy getaway and today, we are feeling a bit refreshed and ready to take on the next 3 months.