A day trip to New York, New York

 Let me tell you something - I am one lucky lady.  Never has it been more apparent than coming home to America last week.  

After arriving in NY tired and with a heavy heart after leaving my sweet love - Annette, a friend I met in Mali, not only welcomed me into her home but also treated me to a delicious Indian dinner.  What a sweetheart!

Before

After

The next morning I woke up after a few hours of sleep to catch the train down to SoHo for my free haircut with Eli, a stylist in training at the Sam Brocato salon on Wooster Street.  What a treat!

Lunch with the beautiful and talented Claire

Then I met up with Claire, an RPCV from Cameroon, for lunch at Hampton Chutney which I found from perusing this blog.  So lovely to catch up on our lives over naan and pumpkin chutney!

Dinner with treasures of friends I met at Monica's wedding in Lebanon

 I worked up an appetite walking around SoHo looking for warmer clothes before meeting the four smiling faces seen above.  Aren't they cute??  Michelle, Yamil, Brian and Aneesa all came to Monica and Samer's wedding in Lebanon this past summer and we hit it off instantly.  I was so thrilled when they could meet for dinner at Le Zie (thanks for scouting the location Michelle)!

Drinks at Yamil's restaurant in SoHo

 After dinner Michelle, Yamil and I headed over to Kittichai for some drinks and Bambara (many of the staff and bartenders are Malian!).  It was fun to speak Bambara and have a few drinks in a fancy SoHo bar and pretend to be a grown-up!

Rabayah, another RPCV from Mali, welcomed me into her apartment after drinks.  I loved getting the chance to catch up even if I was barely functioning at that point since I was so exhausted.  You always have one more battery bar left in you when it comes to sweet friends, don't you??

Annette helped me pack up and kept me company until my metro left at 1:30 a.m. Thursday morning when I headed out for Richmond.  So many sweet friends I am so thankful to have - thank you to you all!

DIY Bamako Thrifting Dress Transformation

Before

There are a lot of treasures to be had in Mali in the clothes department.  Wax prints. Hand woven fabrics dyed with mud and indigo.  Outfits tailored just for your body in any style you can imagine...  But sometimes you just want to wear synthetic materials, you know?  And, while the fabric is truly gorgeous, it can get pricey and be somewhat of a pain to buy all the material, truck it to the tailor's, discuss a plan for the-outfit-that-will-trump-all-outfits and then get home to find one armhole two sizes too big or a hemline that didn't quite get hemmed.  Talk with Alys some more about that.  Or any girl that's lived here :)

And so I often make my way to Sugu Kura, the new market, in Bamako to go thrifting.  Piles upon piles of thrift-store clothes sent from a Salvation Army near you lie in plastic bundles on low-lying wooden tables in a cloistered section of the market.  Women sit on their piles of wares and shout out 'bi-naani, bi-naani!' 200CFA, 200CFA to attract passing shoppers with their seductively low prices.  The thrift business here is run much like that in the States.  The articles are divided by type - women's pants, women's tops, dresses, children's clothes etc. so all you have to do is either 1) know the name of what you're looking for and ask or 2) bring a similar article of clothing you are looking to purchase and wordlessly show it someone while nodding thereby indicating your urgent interest in possessing another article of clothing similar to the one in your hands.

Which is how I found myself in market a few weekends ago with a friend looking for some thrift treasures.  Would I tag along, she asked, and show her my favorite spots?  How could I say no?!  Especially when I found the treasure pictured above for only 500 CFA (~$1USD).  A floor length, baby-blue, lace-y and long-sleeved number that I knew I would wear all the time...  Well, flash-forward to a few weekends later and I still hadn't worn it (not a unique experience to America in case you were wondering!).  And then the dress spoke to me.  "Cut off my sleeves and make me shorter - it's too hot for floor-length synthetic dresses here!" it said.  Wow, I thought to myself.  My dress speaks really good English.  Must have been all the time it spent in the Salvation Army in America before coming to Mali.  And so I took a pair of scissors and got to cutting.  Here's the after:

After.  I found the belt at a belt-seller nearby for 200CFA

Voilà!  A wearable dress!


*Great talk of the town tuesday coming up next week!*