"Chicago"

I just got back from the land of the midnight sun. I made the very long, very hot 13 hour bus ride to the northern city of Gao with two other girls from the San region. I can safely say it was my favorite excursion within Mali. Gao is so different from the rest of the country. More sand, less trees, more rock formations, more camels. And you get to wear a turban! In most of Mali you feel like you're in the Sahel, that band of semi-arid land that borders the Sahara. But in Gao, you truly get the impression you're on the edge of the desert. The highlight of the trip for me was the "Rose Dune", so named because it looks pink at sunset. I thought dunes like that only existed in Star Wars and Spaceballs (We ain't found $%*^!), but there it is, pictured above: a real, sure 'nuff mountain made of sand. We were able to spend about an hour and a half playing in said sand before impending darkness required us to scramble back to our boat and make it across the Niger before nightfall. On the way back home, I declared it to have been the coolest thing I've ever seen. And I've seen some cool things in my day.

The other highlight of the Gao trip was, of course, Election Night. 20 of us gathered at a bar/brothel owned by a Nigerian some Gao PCVs had made friends with. This was the only place we could find with 1) a television, 2) a television with CNN, and 3) a television with CNN in a place that serves beer. We spent the day napping and caffeinating to prepare for the inevitable all-nighter ahead of us. Some of us started to fade around 2 or 3 AM, but the announcements on Pennsylvania and Ohio naturally energized the PC crowd. By around 5 AM it was speech time, and we all summoned the energy to listen attentively to Senator McCain and sob like little girls for President-Elect Obama. I swanee, it was worse than Jesse Jackson and Oprah combined. Guys included. The rest of the day was spent receiving various displays of congratulations from elated Malians, ecstatic that "un noir" will be leader of the free world. No matter for whom you voted, I hope we can all agree that it was a day to be proud of our country and the democratic process. Now can we please cut it out with the "YES WE CAN"? It's driving me crazy...

We can cha yee yaaaange the world! Rearra yee yaaaaange the world!
It's dying to get better...