A Long Week and Preparing for the Cinquantenaire

This past week at school was long, long, long and exhausting. We had a series of guest lectures that .... well, some were better than others, I'll leave it at that. It's just frustrating to be in a lecture about malaria in Mali and have to hear about basic biology of disease: "the mosquito is the vector and can therefore transmit the disease when it bites a human being." We know! And when we asked how exactly the anti-malarials we take work in terms of prevention and efficacy, and we were told "you take the pills and they work." Frustrating, to say the least. They weren't all bad, however; we had a pretty interesting talk on traditional medicine by a practicioner that was realistic about the fact that in some cases, modern medecine is the better solution. It was a bit strange, however, when he was shocked that blind people exist in the United States. French class is pretty great. Our professor, Ousmane, is a really great resource. We can ask him about anything in Malian culture and he won't shy away, so it's almost like he makes up for what isn't said in the lectures. He is a very interesting man; we had to interview an "elderly" person in Mali (which is shockingly young, since life expectancy is 53), and I chose him. His father fought for the French army in WWII and was captured and lived in a Nazi concentration camp for five years until the Americans liberated him in 1945. Upon his release, he moved back to Mali and lived as a polygamist with four wives and seventeen children. Ousmane saw how polygamy did not work in his own family, and since then swore that he would only have one wife. He spent his life as a teacher, and now works at a large university in Bamako teaching English.
A few days this week, we went on excursions after school. We visited the National Library, which was nice but surprisingly small in its number of books, the National Museum, also small but well-kept with a beautiful garden and wonderful cafe, and the French Cultural Center, which has its own library and venue for musical performances.
Bamako is currently gearing up for Mali's 50th anniversary on Wednesday. There has been a ton of new construction: a new roundabout in downtown, a gigantic new governmental building that opens tomorrow and will hold all of the ministries, and a very strange-looking garden at the bottom of a cliff, perched under the president's house. There is also just a lot of painting and sprucing up of the city. I'm looking forward to seeing what the actual celebration entails on Wednesday!