Hey everyone Happy New Years. Things are pretty chilled out now, but yesterday I really just couldn’t be bothered to write anything, although we did get a lot done. We took the minibus from Douentza down to Sevaré in the morning. After dropping our stuff off at the Stagé house, where we’d decided to stay at instead of the hotel because it was virtually empty. Then we headed out to the cyber café and did some e-mailing. After that we stopped by probably the best tourist shop I’ve ever seen in Africa. I forget the real name, but everyone just calls the place Peace Corps Baba’s. He’s a Malian who reportedly got his shop started, or at least helped out through some sort of Peace Corps grant. Consequently he loves all Americans, they’ve made him rich. But the guy does know his stuff. His shop, and small museum are very nice and his staff didn’t pressure us at all. I understand why all the tourists go to him. He moderates the other local prices by giving a fair deal on everything, and he has a very extensive selection.

Anyhow, then we took a cab over to Mopti to find out about the boats going up to Timbuktoo, or as its written here Timboctou. We potentially had either 1 or 2 days here before we had to leave but we found a large Pinnasse (a kind of cargo boat) that was leaving on Thuraday (that’s today kids) so we decided to roll with it. The port in Mopti is not my favourite place to be though. Especially when we were trying to find a boat for a decent price it felt like just about everyone we met was trying to work us over in one way or another. What we eventually agreed upon was 10 000 CFA for a boat up to Tonka; from there we can catch another boat up to Timbuktoo for theoretically around 10 000 CFA more. Hopefully we won’t be screwed over.

We then picked up some supplies for the 3 day (or so) journey up the Niger river and headed back to Sevaré for an early evening. I know, I know an early evening on New Years Eve?! Well, yes. Dogon was pretty rough on all of us, and no one really felt we needed a huge New Years fete. Still I think its the first New Years in years that I haven’t been awake for midnight. Ah well, whatever. At least we got some good things accomplished today.

So far today’s been pretty good.We got up early and went to this amazing breakfast at one of the Sevaré hotels (Macs refuge) that was recommended to us. The food was pretty unbelievable. I can honestly say I haven’t had a breakfast that amazing ever in Africa. There were whole wheat pancakes with syrup, jam and honey, coffee, tea, fruit salad, musli, and sour milk (which is basically like yoghurt). I was very happy and ate a lot. Then we packed up our stuff and headed off to Mopti for the grandé voyage sur le batueau. We arrived here (at the boat) around 10:45 and are still waiting to leave (its around 2:00 now). But at least we have been pretty hooked up here. I’m pretty much positive that we paid more than some (well ok all actually) of the other passengers but at least we’re here and on our way... ok well we will be on our way. Any minute now... now... now... ok well it might still be a bit. I just hope we pull out sometime before the night En’challa everything will work out fine.

Its like 2:45 now and I think we’re about to go. Some activity seems to be taking place outside. I just wanted to mention one more thing. Yesterday night wee picked up a Bidong (basically a big yellow plastic gas, oil, whatever container) for drinking water. We filled it up and Joe wrote this on the side of it to identify it as ours:

He says it means "Four seas, one family." It’s his favourite Chinese expression, or proverb and refers to the unity of man. I really like that too.