Just at the moment we are relighting the candles in our living area and hoping that they last long enough until we go to bed. It's 38 degrees, 9:15pm at night and there's been no power since around 7 pm. This is the third power cut for today.
And yet we actually have power in this part of Bamako. Not everyone can say that. Similarly, this morning we had the water company doing works outside our accommodation. As incovenient as it was... we actually have water much of the time and we can do down the street to buy bottled water to drink.
Experiences such as a few months in a country like Mali bring you back to earth.
This afternoon, among the many people I met in Niamana (south of Bamako at a Catholic retreat centre) were people from the Taureg tribes of the north, from places like Gao and Timbuktu. One had taken a bullet through the nose during the conflict. Others had sent their families away from the conflict on motorbikes or in the back of trucks while they walked the hundreds of miles from Timbuktu to Bamako. They are among the 500,000 people displaced by this conflict - 300,000 of them still in the country and just under 200,000 of whom have fled across the borders to Burkina Faso, Sengal or Niger.
I am a blessed person from a blessed country. I pray I never forget that.
No comments:
Post a Comment