Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Borrowed Puppies and Inauguration


After hearing the stories about election night in Bamako, I think I was expecting inauguration to induce all out rioting and partying in the street. Luckily for Malians, the inauguration coincided with day of the Army - which represents the day the last French soldier left independent Mali. However, of course things were a bit mellower than I expected. Two former co-workers from Winrock (www.winrock.org) came to watch with Drissa, me, and our friend Derek - recently returned from a freezing vacation in Senegal. We went over to a local bar and waited for TV5 to start covering the inauguration. It was cool because we got to explain to the other 20 or so Malians in the bar - the who's who of the inauguration (Tipper Gore, etc). In the hour leading up to the oath - TV5 paraded a series of French "specialists on the United States" who gave color commentary. This was followed by some weak French translations of the speech, oaths etc which managed to block out the actual speech - this was very frustrating. We walked over to my host parents home (they have satellite) and were able to finally put on CNN live. My host parents were having their 26th anniversary party and there were about 30 of my host father’s friends over gathered around the TV as well as a group of Malian expats who live in the US.

In other news, we have borrowed one of my host family’s dogs. It is a three month old puppy. The dog had a rather tragic first couple of months. It was taken from its mom too young (it tries to nurse everything) and managed to fall three stories from the top of my host family’s house and broke its leg. Luckily, my host mom is a vet and managed to set it, however it still has a bit of a limp. The puppy used to be tied to a two foot chain, but now enjoys free roaming around our enclosed home. After a bit of stumbling – it is now flying around the front yard – destroying insects and chasing plastic bottles. It is a very smart dog and has already learned how to come and to stop at the entrance way of our house because it’s not allowed inside.

We are not sure what to name her. The dog resembles Benji a bit, but my puppy seems a lot tougher. I remember going to see Benji the Hunted with my dad, and even as an 8 year old I could tell that the menacing wolves were edited in and were nowhere near Benji. We are trying to choose between 2 names – Cab 3 and Rex. Cab was the name of my Granny’s dog; when Cab 1 died and she got a new puppy she was in her 80s. She couldn’t think of a good one syllable name – so she decided to name the new puppy cab, too. This dog – rather shaggy – resembles Cab 1, so we thought we might continue the Cab legacy. My friend Derek suggested Rex and I think the dog looks like a Rex. I have a habit of giving many of my friends pet names with dinosaur endings. ___________ saurus or __________dactyl. We thought it would be funny if I had a Rexasaurusrex. I am setting up a poll on the blog so people can vote (scroll to bottom of the page).

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