Bamako

We’re in Bamako, about to leave on our tour — we just met our guide Kone and our driver Mehmet.  Ideally, we’d copy and paste several pages of text that we’ve been accumulating, but we’ve been stymied.  Putting files on the digital camera flash card hasn’t worked, and a little USB flash drive we bought in Paris mounted once on a PC in the shop, once on our Powerbook, and not again since anywhere.

Bamako is a big crowded spread-out city.  The downtown area is just one big marketplace with cars and pedestrians and carts in a huge traffic jam.  The book said everyone tries to get out as quickly as possible, and now’s our chance.

There is a nice modern museum with creative textile displays, and some amazing statues, but mostly we’ve been hanging out at the hotel.  I even did some work by the side of the pool yesterday.

At some point we’ll give up on transferring files and copy from the Powerbook word by word using the science of Retyping.  This is a useful editing exercise because you leave stuff out.  Remember always the remark attributed to Mark Twain that he could have thirty pages ready for his editor in two days, but for two pages, it would take thirty days.

The sun is beaming down upon the Niger and it’s time to depart.  People on astronomical expeditions like it when the sun beams down.