Early the morning that Abner and I were to travel from Mopti, Mali, to Ouagadougou (love saying that!), Burkina Faso, we encountered two young peace corps volunteers who were returning back to Ghana after spending time in Mali. We hung out with them at the “bus station” waiting for our transport to be ready. Lara and Raphaela were in their early 20′s and were from Belgium and Germany. They would be on the same bus as us. Because of all their time in Ghana, they’d gone a bit “wild”. Raphaela had gone swimming in the Niger River (wow, a really bad idea) and was sporting a pretty “nice” case of impetigo (bacterial staph infection) on her face, neck, and torso. They ate with (exceptionally) dirty hands. I don’t know how wild I would go if I spent a year in a place like Ghana…but I think I would probably always eat with clean hands. :-) The girls were fun to be around for the next day and a half. Westerners were a rare thing to run into on our particular itinerary. It can be rather exhausting trying to communicate in a language (French) that you don’t speak well at all, and these girls were kind enough to speak with us in English.
Anyhow, while I cannot remember exactly what precipitated their sharing this lesson, I remember the lesson.
“Don’t buy a fish in the water” I was cautioned by one of the girls. This was something they had learned from the Ghanaians they were living with.
It’s an excellent warning on knowing what you are getting before you invest in it.
Two young buys fishing the Bani River in Mopti, Mali
Do you ever get lost in the links on the interwebs? I do. I woke up much too early this morning and in the process of trying to activate my Google AdSense account (I need someone’s help on doing that, it’s like a different world in there), I ended up at an article on Examimer.com.
The headline reads: “‘Strong possibility’ tornado deadly fungus, secret morgues links to Gulf Plague”.
Read the whole article HERE, but in a nutshell, Deborah Dupre (“Human Rights Examiner”) reports on the fungus which has killed a number of Joplin residents post tornado. IF we are to BELIEVE Ms. Dupre and her primary source, Ian Crane, (UKexoilmanwhistleblower), the fungus CAUSING the deaths was “evaporated” from the Gulf of Mexico and ended up being spread about in the tornadic winds of Joplin, MO. The fungus eVAPorated from the Gulf after it was PLACED there by BP (British Petroleum) to break down the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill there last year…the spill having NOT been an ACCIDENT at all, BUT a PURPOSEFUL “depopulation event” created in an evil plot by BP (and apparently a large host of other co-conspirators) specifically in order to plant GM (genetically modified) organisms IN the water with the ULTIMATE and SPECIFIC intent of killing hundreds of thousands of people with those very same organisms!!!
Really??? I mean, come on. Forgive my incredulousness. This is certainly a terribly ineffective and incredibly expensive way to go about creating a depopulation event if that’s what the goal was. Additionally, it is not a method that can be at all controlled nor is there any reasonable way to predict an outcome. I’m as big a conspiracy theorist as the next person, but this is a stretch. It just doesn’t make any sort of logical sense.
And it must be pointed out that there are simply some basic problems with the premise of evaporation as a microbiologic dispersing agent. First of all….this fungus (zygomycosis) is a terrestrial dweller. And secondly, I’m pretty sure that evaporation happens at the molecular level and doesn’t support the lifting of heavy cellular organism up into the wind. I could be wrong.
Lastly, it should be noted that infections from zygomycosis are common after natural disasters where dirt and decaying vegetative matter contaminate open wounds, especially after earthquakes and tornadoes.
I’m going to go out on a limb with this one and call it a CONSPIRACY FAIL.
So, I have my blog set up so that when I post here, it automatically posts to my facebook page. A nifty function!
I get some really great comments on some of my posts.
Only problem is, the comments are on my facebook page, and not on my blog. :-(
WordPress and facebook, I challenge you to come up with a way that people can post comments on a facebook wall, but have the option of easily posting on the blog site as well…
The people who are already having a hard time (or impossible time) stretching their budgets to absorb the current price of gasoline are NOT going to be able to go out and buy an expensive fuel efficient or electric car simply because the cost of gas goes up even more.
The people who CAN afford to buy a new fuel efficient or electric car probably already have done so and/OR THEY DON’T REALLY CARE ABOUT THE COST OF GASOLINE ANYWAY! What does it matter if gas goes up a buck a gallon? They can still pay the bills.
Doing something like this would only hurt those who are already hurting and you’re just, well, stupid, if you think this would actually be a positive move for Americans. I don’t generally call people stupid, but this qualifies you, DAN, for the title.
Just sayin’.
P.S. Where I live, electricity doesn’t just come from a nice clean outlet in my house, it comes from COAL, a carbon based energy source. What’s the difference between burning coal or burning gas? It’s a shell game, people. It’s aaaaalll an illusion that some are selling, some are buying, and most are having crammed down their throats.
P.P.S. The batteries in electric cars are lithium. Where does lithium come from? Well, there’s a single mine producing it in the United States, but the lithium extracted there is a small proprietary amount. The U.S. reserves are small, and in decline. Most lithium is found in Chile, Bolivia, China, and AFGHANISTAN (these Afghanistan deposits were fairly recently discovered and have not yet started to be mined). Sooooo, we are being told to give up our addiction to foreign oil. For what? We’re gonna trade it for an addiction to foreign lithium (only the part about the foreign lithium is a secret). It’s like the addict who gets off heroin by taking methadone, but then never gets off the methadone. Now, since Bush was accused of invading Iraq for its oil, then I am going to feel free to accuse Obama of invading Afghanistan for its lithium, since access to a source for it fits nicely into his energy policy. This may or may not be true. But it’s certainly something to think about. We are on the brink of jumping from the energy frying pan into the fire, and we’re doing it for no good reason at all. Even if we find a massive new source of lithium in our country, any attempts to mine it would probably be blocked by the EPA, unions, the ACLU, and a thousand environmental groups of one ilk or another. Come on, you know it’s true. We’ll be importing all the lithium we use, and we’ll be importing it from some unsavory sources.
Why on EARTH are we not exploiting the rich petroleum reserves we have in our own country instead of playing these games?????? In theory it would be really nice if we could derive all of our energy needs from the sun, and the wind, and the waves. But that is far in the future. In the meantime, before America ends up on the trash heap of history, we should use what God and the earth placed under our feet. At least we have oil here…what we DON’T have is a viable lithium reserve.
We’d originally planned on staying in Senegal for a few days, but because we were blowing our budget by the hour, we decided that once we had our Malian visas, we’d head for Mali where we knew the cost of things would be much less than in Senegal. We’d looked into finding cheaper accommodations than the Sun, but weren’t successful. Besides, the Sun was centrally located and pretty nice, all things considered! So we splurged and stayed there.
The hotel was located on a very narrow, very busy street in the inner city of Dakar. Doesn’t look like much from the outside, but upon entering, there is a peacefulness that is palpable. Very friendly front desk people. We initially had to wait in the courtyard for our room to be ready. The wait turned into a few hours long, but it was a pleasant few hours spent discussing our plan of action, talking about how we couldn’t believe we’d actually made it to Dakar and were starting our grand adventure, and updating facebook statuses, that sort of thing. I needed to check in with the young lady who was watching my cats to see if Mew Ling was taking her antibiotic pills okay. Mew Ling every once in a while develops a urinary tract infection, which she did apparently in the days leading up to my trip. The only time I could get her in to see the vet was the day before we left, so I was worried that she would give Lisa a problem taking her meds. Lisa got back to me…Mew was fine, and taking her pill hidden in treats.
And we started taking some of our first photos of the journey, of course. After shaving the next day, Abner decided he was giving up shaving for the remainder of the trip.
The rooms were upstairs and over looked the small open ceilinged courtyard. Downstairs was a bar, a restaurant, the lobby, and a couple of meeting rooms. We were in room three. To enter the room required opening two doors. The outer door was wooden slatted to provide privacy and allow in a small amount of light, the second was panes of glass. I struggled getting the keys to work. Why is it that African keys are always a problem??? Anyone else out there who has spent time in Africa find that keys and locks are a challenge for them?
The open courtyard was quiet despite the very busy city right outside the main entrance. There were birds, weaver birds maybe, building nests in the trees which provided light shade from the heat of the day. The walls were decorated with peeling but brightly colored murals.
This is the first of quite a few very interesting key chains. And check out the keys! They look very similar to each other, but there’s a different one for each of the doors.
The room was a bit small, but very clean and completely adequate for our needs. No evidence of bed bugs here! We turned on the AC immediately figuring we should probably enjoy a little bit of cool when we could. We had decided to come at the hottest time of the year because it: 1) worked well for both of our schedules, 2) would mean the least amount of mosquitoes as it was well into the dry season, and 3) would be the lowest time of the year for other travelers, so we wouldn’t be fighting as many people for the better hostel rooms, etc.
Our room was en suite…no shared bathroom facilities…not yet anyway!
We even had a closet and more wall art to enjoy!
If you ever get to Dakar, this is a good place to stay! The food at the restaurant was good. The beer (Flag was our choice) was COLD. You can walk to the docks to catch the ferry to Île de Gorée. The cost for taxi rides to the embassies for other African countries or to Le Monument de la Renaissance Africaine are reasonable. And you feel VERY much like you are in Africa!
I’m afraid of falling. It’s kind of like being afraid of heights, but not exactly the same. I am fine with being in planes. I love roller coasters. I’m fine up in REALLY tall buildings. As long as I am enclosed in some way I’m okay. No, it’s not really heights that bring me to near panic…I’m afraid of falling. There’s a couple of types of fear of falling. There’s basophobia, which is the fear of falling, but it leads people to not want to stand up at all. That’s not what I have. There’s climacophobia, which is the fear of falling down stairs. That’s incorporated into my phobia, but mine is bigger than that. There’s bathophobia, which sounds like the fear of taking a bath (that’s called ablutophobia), but it’s actually the fear of falling from a high place. THAT’S what I have.
I came by this fear rightly. There were two specific events that took place in my life that set me up for my fear. The first was when I was 16. I was on a mission trip to Haiti.
(Me, laying block in Haiti)
While standing on a rickety scaffolding and concentrating deeply to lay concrete blocks, one of the missionaries’ kids grabbed my ankles and shook me. The fear got a hold of me then and grew over the years. I eventually began to struggle with getting up on my stepladder to retrieve items from upper shelves in my kitchen. Ridiculous. I got tired of being that afraid, so I worked on desensitizing myself. I got over (mostly) the worst of it…I could climb my stepladder! :-) And then some years later, the second event took place. On a trip to Chicago with my big bro, his wife/my best friend, and one of my other good friends, we went to the top of Sears tower.
(Taken from the top of the Hancock Building, not the Sears Tower, but close enough!)
I was deep in thought and standing by a window looking down down down at the ground so very far away, and my brother came up behind me and shook my shoulders and made a “aHAHAHahahah” yell. The fear returned with a vengeance. Since then I have been challenging myself to get better, again. I am better with being high up, but still very fearful in certain circumstances, especially if there are people anywhere behind me. I just don’t trust them.
My high up place doesn’t even have to be very high. I don’t like looking over cliffs. I don’t like walking across bridges. I don’t like open ferris wheels (closed ones are just fine). I want to sky dive. I want to bungee jump. I want to walk over insanely high bridges. I want to not feel like I can’t breathe and that I’m going to die if I need to jump over an open ditch.
Abner also has a fear of heights/fear of falling thing. Which begs the question…”why on earth did the two of us decide to go on a canopy walk in the rain forest?”. Excellent question! Because we NEEEEEEEEDED to. And because I trust Abner with my life, I decided if I could walk across swinging rope and wood bridges high up in the trees with anyone, it would be with Abner. You’d have to ask him what his impetus was!
While we were in Cape Coast, Ghana, we were very close to the Kakum National Park…and they had a canopy walk there that we heard about. The walk was comprised of seven of these “bridges” hundreds of feet up in the air over wild jungle. We hiked up to where the walk started. It was rather hot and humid. I’m very sweaty, BUT I’m an official green card carrying NGA! A Non Ghanaian Adult. :-)
Since a major component of my fear is having someone behind me, we waited until the rest of the people in our group had set off across the first bridge. Abner went before me, and I went last. I was confident and walking without my legs shaking beneath me until I felt the bridge shaking behind me. Oh great. My biggest fear, and it was making ground behind me. There’s no place to pass on these 10″ wide bridges. And this guy ended up so close behind me that he was clipping my heels as I walked and he was stressing me to move faster. I called to Abner to make the guy back off before I freaked out. He did, and I collected myself. I let the guy pass me at the first opportunity, and once he did, I was able to actually enjoy myself.
We walked all those seven bridges. We didn’t see any wildlife, but we heard the birds in the trees. It was really a cool thing we got to do.
Five years ago I tried to walk across the Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge here in Colorado. I got out about 15 feet and I started to panic. I want to conquer that bridge! Abner and I will get around to trying sometime in the near future. Cuz we’re rock stars! And we can do it!
Two young buys fishing the Bani River in Mopti, Mali
Comments
So, I have my blog set up so that when I post here, it automatically posts to my facebook page. A nifty function!
I get some really great comments on some of my posts.
Only problem is, the comments are on my facebook page, and not on my blog. :-(
WordPress and facebook, I challenge you to come up with a way that people can post comments on a facebook wall, but have the option of easily posting on the blog site as well…
…
Share this:
Like this:
Leave a comment | tags: comments, facebook, wordpress | posted in Hmmmmm...