Corned Mutton Helper... Mm-mmm good.

It's Sunday so guess what that means... market day in Niena. Yes, Michele and I made it back to Blendio in one piece after our little adventure in Sikasso-ville trying to get a car ride out. It really should not have been so difficult other than the fact that we had 2 very large pieces of furniture with us. The plan was to leave Sikasso this past Saturday by bus, jump on the van transport in Niena and ride up to Blendio. But, as I'm sure is true with most of Africa, plans often fall through. We agreed to pay a car to take us straight to Blendio on Saturday for 25,000 CFA, but the morning we showed up the price was raised to 35,000 CFA. We declined and planned to stay until Tuesday when we heard there was a large truck leaving Sikasso for the Blendio market.
Well, the day before the large truck left, we went to talk with Trinh's homologue in order to figure out exactly where to catch said bus. He and Trinh agreed that the truck was too dangerous (we would have had to ride in the back on top of the truck with our stuff) and so he would arrange for a car (his driver's son) to drive us for the previously agreed 25,000 CFA. Ok, sounds like a plan. But then West-Africa strikes again. Apparently, sometime in the night between us talking with Trinh's homologue and the morning, someone called the driver to schedule him for another route the next morning. So, Michele and I waited several hours (thankfully right outside our favorite steak restaurant) for no car to show up. (There was a bit of a scare with the boy carrying our furniture as well, but due to Trinh's quick thinking yet another crisis was adverted.)
No car showed up. We were preparing ourselves to have to spend another 4 nights in Sikasso - our money had run out as our bank was all the way over in Niena - all the produce we had bought on Friday was begining to go bad, etc... As we were leaving the restaurant, however, Trinh's homologue shows up with another car borrowed from a friends company that just didn't happen to need it that day. Fate had smiled on Michele and I this instant - it looked as if we would finally get to leave Sikasso. We paid the driver 25,000 of out 27,000 CFA left, loaded up the furniture, and headed out. We both breathed a sigh of relief.
I doubt our driver had much experience as we found out early on. The road between Sikasso and Niena is littered with the worst potholes I have ever seen. A good deal of them are a foot deep and force most cars, buses, and trucks to driver certain stretches on the non-existant shoulder. But these potholes that strike at the nerves of other drivers didn't worry our man. He plowed right into the potholes at high speeds. It was a very bumpy ride. Somewhere in the distance, I swore I heard the all too common sinister laughter of Fate mocking us...
About a half hour from Niena, we didn't just hit the tiger-trap of a pothole, we rammed it straight on. Our right front tire exploded and a brief moment later we were pulled to the side of the road comparing the flatness of that tire with the flatness of the spare. It looks like this pit stop is going to last a considerable bit longer than normal.
I have to hand it to our driver though; he was resourceful. He stopped a child passing by on bicyle and strapped the tire to the back. They then rode to the nearest town about 2-3 kilometers away. (For being in the near middle of nowhere, there were a surprising number of children that came out of the tall grass on the sides of the road to stare at the two of us in the broken down car). About 2 hours later the driver returned on a motorcycle with the fixed tire. It was attached unceremoniously to the car and we continued on our way, lesson not learned as we continued to hit every pothole in the road at high speeds. We arrived in Blendio around 4:30PM (we placed bets on when we would get back to Blendio, Michele won by guessing 5PM, I lost with 8PM).

Not many exciting things have happened in Blendio or Kassoumbougou since then. One day we had a freak late-season hail storm. Yes, a hail storm in the middle of Sahel Africa. We thought at some point that our house was going to collapse until I looked outside and realized we were being pelted with tiny ice pebbles - its odd how the sound of hail on a tin roof sounds so much like wood cracking.
We've been eating a lot of tuna and corned mutton that we bought in Sikasso and making my new favorite West African drink - lemonade. You can buy tiny lemons here 3 for 5 CFA (roughly 3 per penny) and squeeze them into liquid deliciousness.

Oh, and yesterday we got the package that the Scarbrough family send. The food and candy are wonderful - we cooked the package of macraroni and cheese nearly immediately. And thank you so much for the birthday presents and the magazines; they are wonderful.

Mom/Dad, if you get this before you send your package, could you please include a car adapter for an iPod. We do not have electricity at our site, but we do have ways of recharging things that have the plug in for the car outlet. Best wishes to everyone back in the States, things here in Africa are great - a bit crazy at times but still great.