Syama Resort '08

Well folks it's only a few more short weeks before I hit Australian shores again, and I can tell you I am really really looking forward to seeing the ocean again - who would have thought that I would ever be able to endure 12 months of summer weather (brief interludes in the UK aside) and especially so without heading down the Great Ocean Road to my beloved Aireys.

It will be a bit of an adjustment for me I'm sure after spending the last few months on the highways of Afrique d'Ouest.


The road to Farkala

This is a fairly typical scene on the way in or out from Syama, and the music of Salif Keita or Ali Farka Touré is almost always gracing the airwaves. But nothing beats the international highway ...


... traffic jam!

And I'll have to re-adjust again to my old cappuccino lifestyle, but having said that, there's nothing wrong with my local ...


Café

... except that it is 5-hours' drive away in Bobo-Diaolasso!


Team Exploration, Mali

So I'm going to farewell the team again briefly ...


Ali the welder

... and down tools ...


Une bière de luxe, s'il vous plaît

... leave the boys behind with their friend Flag ... and hopefully not have to encounter too many of these again for a while!


Is it a puff adder or a python?

I dunno but it's pretty damn big and I'm damn glad I didn't see the animal it belonged to.


Look Marcus ...

... you can almost see Melbourne, it's just over there, just a little bit past Syama ...

My Festive Season

Yes darhlings I have quite the glamourous life these days! I left Bamako on the 22nd and arrived bright and early in Paris on the morning of the 23rd all primed for a spot of Christmas food shopping. I left my bags in the lockers at Gare du Nord and then stepped out into the frosty December morning to discover that Paris was essentially closed!

(So much for being the globetrotting sophisticate - I am so un-French I forgot that everything is shut on Sunday so that you can take your grand-mère out for lunch!)

As it turned out the Marché St Quentin, only 4 or so blocks away from the Gare du Nord down Boulevard de Magenta, was open extra hours so that people like moi could get hold of their last minute fromages, vins et paté du quoin - which I did!


Café floor

However, before tackling cheese-decisions, I felt it was necessary to stop in at my favourite café in the Marais again for lunch, a fortifying glass of Languedoc rouge and a coffee. I was then able to visit the magnificent chocolatier next door to select the world's most sublime macaroons for my kind hosts in London - and so I journeyed forth and made it to my comfy seat on Eurostar laden with French goodies and plenty of cheer for my arrival a couple of hours later at Kings Cross-St Pancras - nice!


Tower Bridge - London of course

Thus I walked into Chez Buchkins feeling relaxed and excited to be somewhere actually cold for a change, and then I discovered that there were ...


Christmas stockings

... waiting for me (in fact, a high-heeled Christmas boot for moi-même).

Cathryn and Mike and I spent the next day working on our bounty for Christmas lunch - a very much smaller gathering than the normal Raos-Chappell-O'Malley family do, but I managed to catch up with that event via the webcam, so saw all the kids running about and compared Christmas bellies with the rellies.


Christmas lunch

There is something deeply satisfying about the traditional Christmas lunch of roast turkey, baked leg ham, bread sauce, chestnut stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, roast potatoes and root vegetables and an assortment of steamed greens (including Brussel sprouts), followed by plum pudding (complete with pounds inside) with brandy sauce, cream and ice-cream, fruitcake, mince pies, shortbread, and Cathryn's special Christmas chocolates - and the correct climatic conditions!

We didn't however manage to eat the ham, turkey and stuffing sandwiches (traditional Raos-Chappell-O'Malley Christmas dinner) until the next day because in typical Christmas-day style our intentions to sit down at 2pm didn't match the reality of starting to dine at 4pm. In fact we had so much ham over the next few days Cathryn declared Saturday a ham free day.

I got many presents from santa, all along a theme of helping me survive back onsite - so luxury long-life foods were abundant in my Christmas boot. I really must have been good! And then, when Cathryn and I hit London's high streets in the post Christmas sales (mayhem - never again), I found a little present for myself.


Italian boots

How could I say no to those - they were calling to me?

With Christmas over, Art and Trude decided to host a glam dinner party for us on New Year's Eve in their newly purchased, newly renovated London townhouse - very special. So, for the first time in years all I had to do was show up, and enjoy some ...


Champagne - yes please!

... followed by a selection of Arthur's favourite 'things' ...


Luxury entrée

(Tapenade risotto topped with foie gras, accompanied by Art's pea-dominated vegetable 'thing'.)


Bangers - no mash though

(Traditional English sausages with angels and devils on horseback, accompanied by Art's pumpkin-dominated vegetable 'thing'.)


Poires belle Helène

(A traditional dessert 'thing' that was very well received - the prince of dessert fruit starring again.)

With me at New Year's were some high-quality companions, and we discovered that some of us were more talented than others with the pea-shooters - just one of the many cool items that exploded out of Art's table firecracker! (No I've never seen one before either - what a great gift - surely illegal in Oz.)


...after the firecracker!

From left to right in the film you can see Caroline, Mike, Iain, Rodney, Cathryn (who is torturing Mike) and Trudy ... the only ones missing are ...


Helène

... and of course you all know ...


Art!

For such an occasion it was impossible for me not to inaugurate the most amazing pair of shoes I will probably ever possess ...


My Dorothy dancing shoes

So I claimed the dancefloor - naturellement!


Got it going on

Pre-Christmas departures

So Christmas has come and gone already, but here in Mali - being in the centre of Muslim Africa - the Tabaski feast is obviously a much bigger deal. Tabaski fell on the 20th of December last year and things kind of wound down here at Syama, the Malians left for their Tabaski celebrations and the Aussies, Irishmen, Brits and South Africans headed out for Christmas festivities.


Leaving on a jet plane ...

Due to mass exodus from site, I finally got to leave by charter flight! A 45-minute journey by small plane certainly beats a 6-hour drive in the car on dusty, pothole infested roads - it also meant I got to spend a couple of extra days in Bamako getting a feel for city life here.

First thing to do? Take a tour of the ronds points ...


La tour Afrique


La tour du Monde


Another rond point, another tour!

I managed to miss the big hippo, and the hunters - will have to go back. But each trip into town from the airport allows for an action packed ...


Niger river crossing

And after a day of sightseeing, and being the festive season too, it's obligatoire to slip out for a drink at the Bla Bla bar with Adrian, Darren, Ron and Steve (most of our resident sparkies)!


Christmas G&Ts with the BEC boys

And no night is complete without a meal - Kalil joined us at Savanna for a great local band and some serious food. (I have since been informed by Mariam that they use undersized chickens - she's going to be an excellent guide if we ever manage to get to Bamako at the same time).


My first crêpe

I'd lined up Bintou to take me on a tour of the Bamako markets - something I'd wanted to do for ages and especially so after hearing Tammi's stories.


Following my guide!


The fetish stall

Of course, the first thing we ran into were the fetish stalls. And as luck would have it, a multi-lingual (English-French-Bambara-Senefou etc) American anthropology PhD student just happened to be on hand to fill us in on what exactly are the uses of dessicated hyena heads, monkey heads, and other assorted African animal body parts ... (no seriously, Darren was as spun out as I was!)


Beautiful Malian women (and one shabby tourist)

But I had been eyeing off the amazing chintzes that the Malians use for their more formal attire - and Bintou and her niece Aicha were wearing the best of the lot!


Bintou finds a bargain

I certainly had the right guide, Bintou really knows how to get the right price in any store. And we then wandered around the food section for a while, which of course kept me mightily entertained - especially seeing the large bags of shea butter, I think I may have to send for a crate!


Vegetables anyone?

After being overwhelmed with choice, colour, chatter, chaos, clamour we went to find a taxi to take us back to the guesthouse.


At the taxi rank