Yesterday afternoon at 1:30 I received a call from Rebecca informing me that the only two bridges to cross the Niger would be closing at 2 p.m. Her school had just received word of this from the U.S. embassy and she knew I was planning to cross. Her school was hastily sending students home to beat the closing. There were rumors was that it was for some sort of inauguration or ceremony related to the 50th anniversary celebration of independence from France. There was also a rumor of an air show at 5pm, which we could watch from the closed bridge. Well, as far as I can tell the bridge never closed and I can confirm that the airshow never happened. (Edit: I've been told that the bridge closed a time or two for 20 minutes to allow dignitaries to cross.)
There is also speculation that the government will announce late Wednesday (which is a holiday for Independence Day) that Thursday is a also holiday, and that since Friday is just one little day, everyone should take Friday off as well. But as you can see, in Mali one never knows.
So in anticipation of the airshow which never happened we went for an evening walk, stopping first to pick up our friends Callie and Ross. We ended up spending about 30 minutes on their street (which is similar to ours) playing with their 22 month old child and the neighbors children of 5 and 8. When their ball ended up in what looked like a sewer hole to me, Ross fished it out and gave it back to the children to play with. I was a little surprised, but I guess I shouldn't have been since earlier that day I saw the local kids playing soccer on our street climb into the sewer to get their lost ball.
I should probably clarify that if you look in the sewer, it is more of a concrete drainage ditch that usually looks pretty clean (since it's been raining a lot lately I suppose), but the occasional smell gives away it's purpose.
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