Belfast/Bangor to Bamako.
Finally uploaded a few videos from my Mali trip. Only 12% of rural Mali villages have electricity which puts my frustration at terrible crippling internet connections into perspective…
We’ve been visiting villages in the south of Mali which are going to benefit from a charity-gov initiative to electrify rural areas. Using bio-fuels from the Jatropha plant, alongside solar power, communities will have the ability to create self-sustaining, independent power sources.
Its hard to describe the sheer scale of opportunities a mere power-plug gives to a remote western African village… but that’s what I’ll be writing about when I return…
Anyway for now, watch these short videos.
The first is the road to a village on the outskirts of Didieni. Over the last week we’ve enjoyed our fair share of terrible roads. From 4ft deep potholes, melting tarmac to dust storms on clay single lane tracks I thought I’d seen it all…
And the reception we received at the end of that dusty forty mile-long track…
Tomorrow we head to Mopti, close to Timbuktu to see Malnutrition centres and a women’s market on the Dogon Plateau. For now, sleeps.
Comments ( 1 Comment )
redsloan added these insightful comments on Mar 15 10 at 7:02 pmMy man, how much of it all are you able to compute!?
I’ve just checked up on your vids & tweets. I’m sure it’s like sensory overload – sounds, smells, tastes and sights – few familiar and all at stupid degrees C. The people you meet and smiles you get from them while they have so much hardship; but they have a way with them that society here is almost void of.
I fell in love with the poorest people and places I saw on my travels. They seemed like 24hr electricity, a refrigerator and a broadband connection away from paradise.
The girl I met in Phnom Penh earned $35 a month but would regularly buy chocolate, fruit or water to give to the kids on the street – I can’t even remember the last time I bought a Big Issue – that shit humbles – I’d do well to think of it more often.
Stay safe for the rest!
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