Christmas Day!!!

I can tell you, I’ve never had a Christmas Day quite like this one before. Instead of the usual Christmas Craziness at my houses, I hiked 7 ½ miles across the middle of nowhere in Mali. Talk about making memories!

It was a really nice morning. We woke up in our MegaBed and wished each other a Merry Christmas! and then did our Secret Santa gift exchange that we’d planned back at Thanksgiving. We’d hauled our presents for each other throughout the hike for this moment and it was totally worth it. (Not surprisingly, I’d lost one of Christina’s presents back in San – I’d hidden it somewhere in the house when she arrived, forgot where I hid it, and found it over a month later in the freezer). My presents were whiskey and chocolate. Chrissy’s were butter and fireworks. I’d say we all know each other pretty well, and did a damn good job buying for each other on a small budget and limited options! :D

Merry Christmas!

At breakfast, we celebrated with hot chocolate (real, Amεriki hot chocolate!) that Christina had brought, and cookies that she and Michaela had picked up at the toubab store in Bamako. Michaela’s mom had sent her sparkly snowflake garland, so we decorated our Santa hats – even Ibrahim’s! We also decided that as a Christmas present from us to ourselves, we were going to hire porters to carry our bags for the day. Also an excellent gift. So we loaded up all the important things (cameras, iPods, my speakers, etc) in my small, drawstring backpack and headed out to explore the village of Begnetouro.

The Escarpment

Ibrahim took us out to the edge of the village where we again walked across the Moon for awhile before coming to the edge of the escarpment cliff. We could look down the horizon and see the Bandiagara Escarpment as far as the eye could see. Always my father’s daughter, I made to climb up an incline to a raised spot on the very edge of the cliff, and was quickly scolded by everyone else in the group, including Ibrahim. Apparently it was too windy and I was being stupid. (Sorry, Mama. Proud, Daddy? :D) Totally worth the view, though.

We hung out for awhile and enjoyed the view and the breeze. Then we headed back the way we came. About 5 minutes later, I suddenly realized for the first time in 3 days I was carrying…nothing. Not even the small bag we’d all shared. Uh oh. I’d left the bag with all of our electronics on the Moon. Crap. Apparently I’d taken the bag off to take this picture, and to try and show off the back of the awesome Christmas shirt my besties in Boston had sent me:

Great picture, right?

Needless to say, no one was pleased with me, and I’m sure Chrissy was (once again) regretting her role as my caretaker, so I headed back alone to find the bag, followed by the calls of my 5 moms not to run on the rocks. Luckily I found the bag right where I left it and rejoined my friends. We crossed the rest of the Moon, passed a pig, and went back into town for one last souvenir opportunity (Daddy, get excited for your Christmas 2013 gift!) before continuing out of village for the next portion of our hike, 7km to the village of Dourou.

It was a nice, easy hike, especially without our bags, and we reached Dourou fairly quickly. It was hot, though. Definitely my first hot Christmas! (But it didn’t stop us all from wearing our Santa hats!). Ibrahim had us take a nice long rest at Dourou, and we also repacked our bags. According to Ibrahim we couldn’t take our big bags with us for the next part of our hike, so we had to prioritize and consolidate what we needed for the night and the following morning. In other words, do what we should’ve done before we ever left San. At first we were going to share one backpack, but we realized it would be an even better idea for each of us to wrap what we needed for the night in a tafe (wrap skirt about 1½ meters long) and tie it to our backs like an African baby. A perfect solution!

We were able to bounce all over the place as we hiked, and the lack of heavy bags certainly made it easier on all of us, especially poor Christina, who, as I may remind you, was suffering from amoebas but still plowing on along with the rest of us. We passed some cool and different scenery: “wasteland” looking rock plains on the edge of a cliff overlooking the bush, and eventually even into some green areas. We stopped for a short break at this bridge.

The last part of the day’s hike was 5km that once again went back down the escarpment, this time on a steeper, more direct path. It took a lot of concentration (in between singing Christmas carols, of course) to pick our way, and Ibrahim’s assistance was appreciated on more than one occasion. But it was a truly awesome portion of the hike! At one point we went down a wooden ladder that had been set against the rocks, all one piece of wood with steps notched into the wood. This hike was tougher than the flat plains, and we stopped to rest often. When we finally got to the bottom, we were soo tired.

Our destination village, Nombori was so close – within eyesight – and yet seemed so far away. We passed many village gardens on the way in, and a few people but not many. That’s because they were all at the Christmas party. That’s right – Christmas party! Ibrahim had planned it so we’d be in a Christian village for Christmas Day. I kid you not, we walked straight into the village, straight over to the party (which was a huge dance circle), and without bothering to empty the sand from our shoes or even untie our packs, we joined right into the dance circle, all 5 of us with our white skin and our Santa hats bobbing along. And everyone was so excited to see us, no ulterior motives included! We were welcomed right into the fold and people clapped and cheered for us and kids grabbed our hands and danced with us. We’d gotten separated from each other in the circle so I didn’t think anything of it when I didn’t see any other toubabs, but suddenly I realized mine was the only Santa hat still bouncing along in the circle – time to go!

We made our weary way through the village, back up a fairly steep, rocky incline yet again, to the campemant where we would be spending the night. As usual, we took our turns with showers and resting while waiting for dinner, but tonight had a special addition – we got to talk to our families in Amεriki to wish each other a Merry Christmas! It was amazing that we even had cell reception – I can’t begin to describe just how remote and off-the-map I felt there in Nombori, but there I was, on the roof of the campemant, under a million stars, 5,000 miles away from the first Christmas I’d ever spent away from home, wishing my family a Merry Christmas. A Christmas Miracle indeed.