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Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 06:31:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Hannah Koenker <hannahkoenker@yahoo.com>
Subject: in bobo
hi mom and dad, merry christmas! we are in bobo dioulasso at the pc case here
i got money out of the atm in ouaga and got word that cherif and dante and brandon county are in bamako. awesome. the trip has been long, a lot of time in buses, but today we have a day to just relax a little and go biking around the city. bobo is really nice. northern togo was great too. we are trying to do too much but it will all work out, we're just tired. Say hi to gma and gpa, hopefully i will get to talk to them too.
it was kind of a shock to get back to dry and poor and dusty harmattan west africa but after a few days it's starting to make sense again and be comfortable. The pcvs here are really nice, esp the ones in northern togo, where erin brown is (i'll run into her on our way back through), where we went out for onion soup and cheeseburgers and really good german beer (former togo colonizers). it's fun to see how different and how similar we all are and how our posts and living conditions and countries shape us. togo and burkina volonteers mostly live in villages, but they have good roads and transport. i feel pretty spoiled compared to many of them. the hills in northern togo are beautiful but hard to see because of all the haze from the harmattan, and here in southern burkina it's just flat and dry and hot, but nice in the shade. they all talk about jimmie, the ambassador, like he's a buddy, and he is - he's always throwing parties for pcvs and americans, and generally providing a good time and good food. he's a carleton grad and if we have time we might try to just stop by the embassy and say hi. we're going to push on to bamako tomorrow, the 26, hopefully arrive in the late evening. on the 30th we need to go to mopti so there won't be too much time in bamako, but i really want to be in dogon country for new years and want jenny to see it too. we could spend infinte time doing this trip properly but we have the time we have and gotta work with that. travel times are insane, stopping in every village and going across the border and customs and waiting for cars to fill up, oy! it's authentic but tough and next time i'm going to figure out a better way. seems like it would be ideal to have your own car. duh.
love, hannah
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Hannah Koenker
hannahkoenker@yahoo.com
www.econ.uiuc.edu/~hanko/
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