A Busy Week

I started off the week by getting some Henna done by a woman who came to our school. It was pretty cool, and weirdly enough, she just used black hair dye to draw on our skin. I was sort of hoping for something slightly more mystical (and something that wouldn't leave the hair on my arms permanently black), but it still looks pretty sweet. It should last for about two weeks.

With my newly henna-ed hands, I went to the zoo the next day. It wasn't really what you would expect when you think of a fun day at the zoo in the U.S., mostly because the words "developing country" and "zoo" probably just shouldn't be put together. When I walked in, the first thing I saw was a sign that said giving cigarettes to the animals was not allowed. Apparently visitors used to give the monkeys cigarettes all the time, but they started to get sick so they had to put an end to it. We were also pretty surprised to find out that the animals' living conditions are pretty poor. Most of them live in small concrete enclosures. A couple of the animals looked pretty sick, as well. There was a hyena that had both of its front legs broken, and it was just hobbling around. Needless to say, the zoo was a little depressing, but it definitely gave us some new perspective on things.

My next stop on the tour of depressing city institutions was on Wednesday. We no longer have classes on Wednesdays, so we're supposed to use the days to prepare for our Independent Study Projects. I think I want to do something involving children, so I spent the day with two other girls from my program at the Pouponnière. The Pouponnière is a government-run home for abandoned children. At any given time, there are between 75 and 125 children under the age of three, as well as about 20 mentally or physically and handicapped children that are slightly older. The director took the three of us on a tour of the building and after, we stayed for three hours and helped take care of babies. The building itself is fairly nice and the caretakers do the best they can, but they are severly understaffed. Children will go for hours without any attention either laying in their cribs or on the floor, and they are frequently left in puddles of urine for hours at a time. The three of us did the best we could to help, and we all left exhausted and covered in really smelly stuff. Hopefully, we'll get to go back and help again next week.

So, this week was pretty interesting. It was a little depressing at times, but it was good to see the city and learn more about Mali. Hopefully my next post will be a little more of an upper!