Friday 29 August 2008

Wash Day!

One of the impressions that I’ve brought away with me from my trip to Mali was that every day in Bamako seemed to be wash day. I’ve already mentioned the ladies walking back from the river with basins of laundry on their heads, and the photograph wasn’t of a goat eating bowls of food set out by the road for it, but rather helping itself to water from sufurias (big metal pans) and bowls used for washing (hopefully not to the clothes as well!)! No matter where I went, laundry was laid or hanging out to dry, whether hanging (conventionally perhaps?!) from lines across the street or inbetween trees, draped over rocks and bushes giving them a splash of colour, or even laid out on the concrete buttresses at either end of a major road bridge over the River Niger, heading towards downtown Bamako. Every potential drying opportunity was utilised to the full.

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