Friday, November 4, 2011

Segou, Mali


We drove from Bamako to Segou today. In Segou, we visited a small-scale millet beer production facility in someone's backyard. There were lots of locals around to taste the new batch. It was interesting to observe all steps of the process from sprouting the grain to the final product, millet beer. Some of the locals insisted that it was a non-alcoholic drink, despite the evidence of several inebriated guests.

Segou has lots of interesting French colonial architecture, but I liked the Bambara architecture best. The picture shows an example of Bambara architecture.

West Africa Project Fair - Dakar, Senegal

We attended the ((Rotary) West Africa Project Fair in Dakar, Senegal. It was a chance to meet up with old friends and male new ones. We participated in literacy programs, infant nutrition programs, polio vaccinations, school and health center visits, etc.
The traffic in Dakar is some of the worst I have seen anywhere in the world. It was great when we had police escort on some of our trips. Following a police motor cycle with sirens blazing made traveling through the terrible traffic quite pleasant.
Coming back from Gueoul to Dakar, our car thermometer read 41C (106F)