Archive for September, 2011

Sep
27
Filed Under (General, Malian culture) by Rob on 27-09-2011

Yes, after two and a half years’ work, the New, New Bridge is finally open, just to the east of Bamako city!

Woohoo! Here’s hoping it will ease up the traffic in town, which is often quite bad during rush hour (see this post for an example). It was a gift from China to Mali and, apparently, cost over 60,000,000 US Dollars!

For photos of the construction work in action, click here or here.

It was officially opened last Thursday (22nd September), the day of Mali’s 51st anniversary of independance. Click here and here to see the inauguration ceremony.

Here’s a picture I took of the 1.6 kilometre long structure a couple of months ago. Impressive (but it does have a bit of a bend to it!)

Finally, enjoy this YouTube video I made of our first ever crossing of the bridge (NB to save time/bandwidth, I sped up most of the video – I didn’t actually drive at that speed!)

Thanks for reading/watching!



Sep
20
Filed Under (Random Photo of the Week) by Rob on 20-09-2011

Well, this made me laugh:

Can you imagine this being popular in the West?!? Oh such fun. I took this in Kampala, Uganda, a few months ago.



Sep
16
Filed Under (Ethnomusicology) by Rob on 16-09-2011

First off, sorry for the lack of postings in the past few weeks; I’ve been in the UK and can never find much interesting to blog about there :-).

Meanwhile, have a look at this amazing guy with his home made drums (including a bass drum with foot pedal) and harmonica. I saw him a few years ago half way between Cotonou and Djougou on the coach route north. To top it all, he’s also blind! What an increadible bloke! Anyone seen him lately??

This really is a testimony to African resourcefulness and ability to triumph even in adversity. This guy is incredible. Makes me think of the Staff Benda Bilili story (click here and here to find out more).

Enjoy!