Tidying up

This week, having finished my floor canvas for the David Parr ‘museum-to-be’ in Cambridge I am behaving like those women of a certain age that appear in several Ingmar Bergman’s films- Fanny and Alexander for one- seen looking through the pictures from their life, arranging photo albums. I am having a long-needed sort out of drawings, pictures and mementoes that have been lying in a heap for a year and a half, since my return from Mali. 

                                                        

I wish I had done more drawings- these are some of the very few I managed to do one day at the Monday market in front of the Great Mosque- I was just too busy doing everything else…

And photo albums from Mali- there simply are none : no album from my life with Keita. There seemed to be enough documentation through the Djenne Djenno blog, but now I think I must make an album for us…

                                                                                

In my rummaging I found Keita’s vaccination certificate. I have one too. It was done at the hospital in Kayes, when we were on our way to Senegal in Keita’s beloved old Mercedes. It was our last holiday together in February 2015. We had suddenly been given the information that it was absolutely essential to organize vaccination certificates in order to be able to enter Senegal. At the hospital they affirmed that they would be able to do them for us, so we waited for a moment, then we were given the certificates, stamped and finished and told to pay something- I believe it was 5000FCFA.  ‘So where do we go now , to have the actual vaccinations ?’ I asked, naively. Keita looked at me with some irritation, as did the medical officer in charge. ‘What ? You have the certificate, don’t you ? We haven’t had any of these vaccines for months.’ …