Prayer Call, or the never ending alarm clock

Ok, first, have you seen that sleep aid commercial, well theres a few of them, that highlight, "Sleep like you did before the..." There is one that is a couple on a farm and when offering her husband the sleep aid late at night, she says, "Sleep like you did before the rooster went blind." And you see this rooster crowing even though its nighttime.
Yeah...so we have one in our neighborhood. The first week we were here, I thought it was a normal rooster until I started looking at the clock and realized I was hearing it from 1:30am and all hours in between.
I say this as it is but one thing that interrupts my sleep (excuse my bitterness about sleeping the past two posts...I've had a couple of bad nights with the baby). There is obviously Marshall and Ian's snoring, but Mali offers the unique addition of more than just the blind rooster. Prayer call.
So again, this is something I remember differently from being here before. Maybe I just blacked some of it out. First, for those of you unfamiliar with what I am talking about, one of the pillars of Islam is to pray 5 times a day. One of the times is at sunrise. In Bamako, since its a big city and there is such a high population density, there are loud-speakered calls to prayer from the Mosques for each prayer time. Ok, so back to what I remember...I remember very clearly, when in Bamako at the Peace Corps house, seriously seeing the sun and hearing about 2 mosques do their call to prayer over, say, about 15 minutes. It was pleasant, peaceful, and something I really enjoyed.
Supposedly our neighborhood is very Muslim, and we live closer in town, so maybe that explains some of the fact that prayer call starts at about 4am and continues until about 6:30am. It seems that some of the calls are prerecorded(making me wonder if they are on some sort of timer that someone needs to fix) and some are real time. They come from at least 4 or 5 mosques. I think they actually start doing it when they see the sun in Mecca. Either that or its like 3 rounds each:
Round 1- If you want to be a REALLY good pray-er, get your butt up now!
Round 2- Ok, we know its early, but come on, its time to get up and pray.
Round 3- Slackers. You are lucky we don't turn you in to Allah, last chance, get up and pray already.
It seems to have not a thing to do with the rising of the sun. They must be seeing something I'm not. In fact, prayer call is over(its 6:15am), but according to the weather report, sunrise isn't until 6:55am. What the $#%^?
Ok, I've saved the best part for last. The part that always gets me out of bed in case I was still lounging about after all this excitement. There is some dude who wanders through the neighborhood(passing by our house at about 4:55am) who, honestly, I am not sure what he's doing. If its like a personal call to prayer or he's just being one of those Round 1-ers letting everyone else know that he's awake and the good one already praying, BUT, he wanders through singing/chanting, "Al-lah....Al-lah...Al-lah...Al-lah...Al-LAH(this last one twice as loud as the prior ones)" Again and again like that, sometimes stopping to say something else really fast. If it wasn't culturally inappropriate and flat out disrespectful of a major religion I'd go out there and find his snooze button. Muslim or not, I'm sure I'm not the only one on the block who wants to.

Happy New Year!

I hope it was well passed by all. New Year's Eve has always been a quiet night for us, being that its the anniversary of when we got together. A romantic evening...a bit different with a 6 month old. Now, romance is being able to get a bit of sleep regardless of the holiday. Ian made it until midnight. I got to about 11:07 and then conked out. Ian woke me with a quick kiss at midnight, I heard lots of fireworks go off and then, miraculously, about 30 minutes later, pure silence. It was odd, because most nights here, I dont even hear that until about 2:30am.
We did celebrate in typical Malian style, something that had slipped past us the last time around here. Basically, with the eating of chicken and french fries. There were chickens being sold everywhere! BIG chickens too...already cleaned chickens...and everyone was in such a great festive mood. We added the un-muslim piece of some banji, or palm wine. It was good banji, but I'm still not a huge fan. Ian loves it. I think it tastes like urine. Give me a millet beer anyday.
Honestly, I was, perhaps naively, surprised that it was such a big celebration. I remember coming back from my Peace Corps service and reading a blurb in the NY Times about a film collection of shorts of how people were ringing in the millenium around the world. One was of this village in Mali, a couple of old guys sitting around drinking tea, and listening to the radio. In otherwords, nothing out of the ordinary. But, despite the fact that this was a film, it took place in the village. This is Bamako, the party capital of West Africa. Basically, we didn't know how big it was because a. we didnt live here and b. New Years was a time for PC Volunteers to get together and celebrate Ameriki style...none of us were ever in our towns or villages to experience it.
New years day is not unlike the states. Everyone is tired. They greet their neighbors with tidings for a good year, but for the most part, relax, stay quiet and watch TV. We hung out with Abdolaye for a bit who came by to greet us.
So in getting settled and dealing with Marshall teething(those top two should be in ANY day now), I honestly have not had much of a chance to get to my list of things I want to do while here. Thats my sole New Year's resolution.

I hope all of you have a happy, healthy and successful year.