Nightmarish but I survived. Don't call the cops.

I am officially writing to you from Sikoro, ladies and gentlemen! I survived the flight(s) over and have lived to tell the tale. Mom and Dad, please do not send international police to look for me. :)

Well, remember how we were supposed to leave at 8pm and then got delayed until 1am? Well that actually turned out to be 5am by the time we left, including one girl-on-girl fist fight and screaming match between two Muslim women who couldn't stand the wait any longer. During the wait, I made friends with a fantastic man Birouk Larbi, who apparently happens to do quite a bit of work with microfinance in the Maghreb - I made sure to give him one of my brand new MHOP cards so he can get in touch with Julie eventually about her microfinance project.

I ended up sleeping most of the way over, but in the ten minutes before the plane landed, I met a wonderful young woman vising a Peace Corps friend in Burkina Faso and also gave her a card. Who knows? Maybe my homestay will be peppered with visits from guests from around the globe after all!

So the story of travel nightmares only gets better. When we landed in Casablanca, we were 9 hours behind schedule and I HAD NO LUGGAGE. I did my best to negotiate with baggage claims representatives in French, but I eventually had 13 Muslim women take me under their wing and scream at this poor man in the angriest Arabic I have ever heard in my life for half an hour until he would accept my passport to take down my information. Funnily enough, I later found out that the angriest yelling of all was these women screaming at this representative that he was ruining the American's first memories of glorious Morococo - I could only laugh, which actually served to diffuse the situation. Their help ended up not being of consequence since he was convinced my baggage would somehow just show up in Bamako magically. 

Cari and I, now alone in the Casa airport, contemplated a brief trip into town. After all, it was 3:30 in the afternoon and we had until 9 to be back. After ten minutes of tracking down the train and determining price and all of this type of information, we finally asked someone what we should see and if we could adequately take it in before 9. And this woman just LAUGHED at us. Apparently we forgot the basics of time travel and never reset our watches. It was 8:30pm, not 3:30pm. Oops. We all had a good laugh about that one.

We ended up meeting the rest of the crew (Katie, Caitlin, and Julie) in the terminal and we had quick catch-up, then straight onto the plane. Needless to say, we when we arrived, 7 of our 9 bags had magically disappeared. No better time than the present to dabble in naturalism, right? In the meantime, we came to crash at Rebecca's, Caitlin's friend in Sikoro. On the way, we had a fun discussion with the taxi driver about negotiating 5 people into one tiny taxi. Not to worry, though, we had TONS of time to talk about it while we changed our flat tire in the middle of the night in between Bamako and Sikoro. 

The moral of the story: I survived and am living in a house with 5+ lanky little cats - what could be better? I'm alive, well, and totally ready to explore and get acquainted with Sikoro!

Thanks to all for the good travel wishes - rest assured I did arrive safely, even if not on time or comfortably. :)

Talk soon.

X Ben X