Sylvia's Journal

It was another one of those ‘retrouvailles’ like I had in Niger some months ago. Here in Bamako I met up with a woman who played big in the family planning league in Mali, all those years back. She is also retired, in the way I plan to ‘retire.’ We hadn’t seen each other in 24 years and when we looked at each other we both decided we have aged well and actually hadn’t changed all that much. My white hairs are visible but hers were under a scarf so there is no telling. We sat in the shade by the pool and talked and talked until we had exhausted all topics which ranged far and wide.

She had lost her husband about 8 years ago – he had two warnings that he needed to change his life style – she had given up long before (“he never listened to me”) but then he also didn’t listen to the doctors; and so when the third heart attack came on there was no one to save him. I couldn’t quite gauge whether his departure was upsetting and traumatic or not and I decided not to ask. How would one ask anyways? (Did you mind?)

The rest of the day I prepared for the workshop on governance that starts on Monday. I am working a bit in a vacuum because my colleagues are on a long holiday weekend, something I only found out on Thursday – we did agree on the design for the four days but a lot of the detail work, such as preparing the facilitation notes, slides, handouts and whatnot fell to me.

I had to educate myself on the language of governance in French, like finding out what the difference is between ‘statut’ and ‘reglement interieur,’ sometimes squished together as ‘SRI.’ Google and a reliable internet connection turned out to be invaluable. Thanks to the good internet Axel and I chatted for a bit – I won’t be there to put in the geraniums at the ancestral graves and drop some thanksgiving vodka on the graves of my in-laws – they were quite fond of the liquid – as well as the grave of my grand in-laws who were not, as they were teetotalers.

For exercise I did my 30 minutes on the treadmill and 20 minutes in the pool, offset by eating a few ‘palets Bretons (“pur beurre”),’ those very buttery cookies that Air France hands out in its salon, and that are quite addictive.

I tried watching the news for a while and was heartened by the Irish popular vote to start disassembling Ireland’s long male hegemony regarding the role and place of women. While some people may believe that we are in a downturn when it comes to liberal values and civility, this showed to me (as well as Weinstein in shackles) that we are in an upward move and that the antics of some of our world leaders are just blips on the screen, temporary disturbances – the line that connects the dots is going up and up.