Hot Hot Hot

As Winter struck Ithaca early this year, there were many a snowy/freezing November day when I looked out my window and swore to myself that I would never EVER complain about the heat once I got to Bamako. I am proud of my heat tolerance= the way that some people are proud about "never burning" when they go to the beach. But as we all know - everything has its extremes. It's almost 10 pm in Bamako and its currently 91 degrees. It was about 105 today and will be about 100 for the rest of the week. I usually try to measure the heat by the number of showers it takes me to go to sleep. As I tried to take a nap yesterday afternoon at 3 pm I had already logged five showers in the first hour. The strategy is - you run into the bathroom - shower then run out of the bathroom wearing minimal clothes and lay in bed and try to fall asleep before you dry off and get hot again.

Lately, Drissa and I have moved to phase 2. When it gets really hot - you go sleep on the roof. I can tell my heat tolerance is way below most Malians, because no one else is on the roof yet. I also know its going to get much hotter because I know at some point - everyone does sleep on the roof. So its usually just us - sleeping on a bed of double sleeping bags - it usually cools off enough by midnight to put a sheet over us (which serves as protection from mosquitoes as well).

Today, my research team launched our first attack. We invaded the university campus with our questionnaire sheets and voice recorders. I sat back and supervised as 2 of my RAs went at a time talking to university students about their educational experience/opinion of the Malian state. They took turns interviewing and most students were pretty into it - speaking loudly into the voice recorders as if we were doing a BBC special on university systems in Africa. The University campus was reminiscent of an American campus with some Bamakoise touches. The grounds were dotted with old copying machines and black plastic bags, laundry was flying like flags from the balconies of the imposing concrete dorms, there were fashion photo stalls, food vendors, shoe vendors, and parking lots filled with 1000s of motos. Clearly the student population makes up a lucrative market. Student attire ranged from all out suits, to burqas, to traditional Malian garb, to straight outta brooklyn colored skinny jeans. Everything went pretty well - got almost 60 interviews done before the heat started to strangle us and we headed home.

Alright, I am going to go take my 4th shower and off to the roof!