Mali Water Pump Project

The day started with a meeting with Jean, the representative from the drilling company. Later the night before we found out the drilling would not begin on Saturday, so Jean came over a little after 9:00 a.m. to talk with us. He told us they could not begin the drilling because they were having a small mechanical problem that would be fixed later that day. However, this was not the main reason they would not start. The main reason was they had not received the money. We guaranteed him the money would be there and offered a cash advance in good faith. He said that he trusted us and we gave him 1,000,000 CFA (about $2,000). This guaranteed the drilling would start Monday, but maybe Sunday if we were lucky. The drilling would not have started until Tuesday otherwise because this Monday is an African holiday called Africa Day and banks are not open.
Since we were not going to travel to the village for drilling we decided to go the market instead. The market we were going to was the central market of the city of Bamako. The streets were packed wall to wall and getting a van down them is no easy task. When we arrived, we went to the part of the market where there were more people selling artsy souvenirs. The sellers would not leave us alone because they recognized we were tourists. After we were finished shopping we left, and we went on a small driving tour of the University of Bamako. Like all college campuses, a new building was being constructed there, too.
Once we returned to the mission house, we began to work on our solar ovens with the cardboard that Jean Pierre had provided for us. We finished 3 of them before we were called into a delicious spaghetti dinner. We will finish the rest today or Monday. We received a call late that night from the Jean, the driller, saying that the drilling would not start until Monday.