The Day before

yes, tomorrow a taxi will pick me up at 4.15 and take me to Terminal 4 at Heathrow. I will change planes at Paris and continue to Bamako, arriving into the height of the Great Heat about 2pm. April and May are the hottest months- I don't mind.

 Bring on the heat, I say.

Today I had a lovely , lingering, wine soaked Sunday lunch party with dear old friends Clare,  Cressida (above)  with Paul in the background. Cressida must have had a premonition that I had recovered my old sofa with MaliMali Forgeron fabric, because she was dressed perfectly to blend in with the design...

People have tried to dissuade me from going to Mali , saying the situation is getting increasingly dangerous and difficult. There were big demonstrations in Bamako a couple of days ago, and the centre continues to be volatile, especially after the recent massacre of over a hundred people in a Fulani village a week ago.

I have too much to do to worry about it.  Timbuktu is becoming more and more difficult to handle day by day, but I cannot really talk about our problems, since I do not want to compromise our project.  On the way to Timbuktu I will go to Djenne. I will be present at the opening ceremony of this year's cataract surgery by the team of Dr. Faira, who will once more operate on about a hundred village patients, this time  also spondored by my cousin Pelle and his wife Nanni. I will pick up fabrics from Dembele, who has worked to fulfil a fabric order from Holland. I will also spend time at the library- today I had a meeting with Mark Saade, the Malian honorary consul here in London. We are setting up our charity called 'Les Amis des Manuscrits de Djenne' which will hopefully be able to raise enough money to keep the library going. I remember that some years ago I had a conversation with the Prefect of Djenne, who was very sensitive about the fact that the library was receiving sponsorship- from abroad. I told him that all libraries worldwide receive sponsorship in order to be able to continue. Maybe it comes from the state, and maybe from private donors. It is in the nature of a library to need sponsorship-  for once it actually has nothing to do with Mali being poor. UK museums, galleries and libraries are also always chasing sponsorship. This was a new idea to the Prefect.

Much, much more is happening of course...hoping to be able to write soon from Mali...