Updates from a new apartment sans l'eau

We've now been here for almost two weeks, and over a week in our new apartment without water. This fact has thrown us into a holding pattern in terms of getting settled, but with any luck we'll soon have water to actually clean the place, wash our clothes, shower properly, etc... currently our only access to l'eau is via repurposed oil jugs which must be carried across a busy street, or alternatively filled by one of our many friends and carried to our apartment building via moto. The fact we are drinking out of old oil jugs rather sketches me out, but they are used to carry water for everything from drinking to making tea and so hopefully our relatively short six-month exposure won't have any permanent effects!

It feels like our attempts to regain running water have been the primary activity of this past week. (Not entirely true, as we've made some exciting progress toward construction for the project!) But in our search for water, the property manager (M. Toure) has been, shall we say, less than helpful. As far as we can tell, the water was shut off literally the day we moved in because the tenants downstairs hadn't paid their bill. Every day we are promised by M. Toure that "it will be back; be patient, by 15.00 o'clock you'll have water!" However, come 3pm the water never returns as promised, and we slowly uncover more clues in this clearly nefarious plot... such as the magnitude of the unpaid water bill (roughly 260K CFA, or almost 2 years worth of water by our estimates!) and the suspicious activity of M. Toure as he screens our calls. Sarah thinks M. Toure would act a little more quickly if he had to personally port water up to our third floor apartment. Alas, it is not clear why the water should remain shut off to the entire building, but we're managing with bucket showers and trying to keep the situation in perspective.

In other news, today is Mali's national independence day. Yesterday, we saw some military helicopters doing fly-over drills, and last night we saw a torch-carrying marching band walking down the road by our apartment. We've also made a few ex-pat friends; Kaylin/Mariatou from Barnard, who is studying abroad with SIT and living just down the road, and Youma, who we haven't met yet but lived with Sarah's host family last year and is now back in Bamako as a Princeton in Africa scholar. It's nice to speak english with other people occasionally, and come Thanksgiving we'll have a group to eat with!

Speaking of food, Malian cuisine is certainly a mixed bag. Some of the dishes are absolutely delicious; however, others are rather bland and gritty. The plat du toujour is pasta (ubiquitously called "macaroni" here) with oil and MSG, +/- a dish of seasoned black-eyed peas. When we first arrived, this meal was positively delectable. However, I may have been laboring under the "backpacking effect,"** and repeat exposure has worn on my otherwise five-star review. But there have been occasional surprises, such as the "surprise" (pronounced with a French accent) which looks like a meatball from the outside but is actually an egg! (Austin, you'd be proud... but probably insist on adding a layer of bacon!

Unfortunately we'll have no such thing here...) We've also been buying "gateaux" for breakfast from a woman across the street. They're really more like New Orleans beignets, but are a welcome start to the day as we sit on our balcony in the breeze and read until it's time to harass M. Toure again about the water.

** The backpacking effect, as described by my father, is the reason why crappy freeze-dried food tastes like a five-star meal after a day of hiking.