So at New Year's, we still had several Stories that hadn't even been recorded for the first time yet. And we had even more Stories that hadn't been tested. One of our major issues was that every time we would identify a group of women who were willing to test our Stories with us, something would happen and it would fall apart. Then we found one woman who was willing...and she went out of the country for an indefinite amount of time. So before New Year's, Abby and I knew that we were going to have to do something drastic in order to test our Stories with Sunny women.
We had a conversation about pleading with Nafi to allow us to go back up to our village and test Stories there. We already knew the women, we had "earned our voice" there, we knew exactly where we could sleep, where we could eat, where we could shower, and most importantly, who we could meet with. The day after this conversation, we went over to Nafi's house where we learned that some concerning things were going on in the news that would prevent us from going up there. That was as discouraged as I'd ever been. That means we were pretty much down to Plan B (actually we were way past B at this point).
We knew that there were some Sunny villages close to the village where some of our co-workers lived. We had been involved with lining up these co-workers' housing and other needs and had gone with them to move in when they first arrived in Mali, so we had a pretty strong relationship with their host family. Abby and I figured we could just ask their host, I'll call him Max, to point us in the direction of a Sunny village and we'd roll up in there with our Stories and see if anybody would help us out. Nafi said she'd give Max a call and see what he said.
In the meantime, we're desperately trying to meet with Nick so that we can record the rest of the Stories.
We find out that Max is willing to help us out and that he has spoken with a neighboring Sunny village about allowing us to come in and test our Stories. We had offered to compensate the women for their time since we had no relationship whatsoever with them and we really needed to ensure their availability. We make arrangement with Max for a few days later so that we can meet with Nick and record some more Stories. We want to have all of our Stories recorded before we go so that we can knock out all the testing at once.
We hear from Nick that afternoon that he will not be able to meet with us that day after all...and maybe not the next day either.
That's when things went absolutely INSANE!! Abby and I looked at each other, looked at our list of what all needs to happen before we get on a plane 3.5 weeks later, looked at the calendar, and then back at each other. We literally did not have a day to spare...we didn't even have a few hours to spare, honestly. We couldn't wait for Nick. We both knew it...pretty much in unison, we yelled, "LET'S GO!" We absolutely HAD to get on the road immediately because you are absolutely, completely, totally not supposed to be on the road after dark. It is forbidden. We knew we had about a 10 minute window to pack our bags, pack our Story stuff, fill out our "on the road" paperwork, call Max, call Nafi, pack our truck and get on the road before we entered the no-leave window. And we did!
We arrived in Max's village right after the sun had set and got settled into our little "guest hut." Then we got scolded for not remembering to call Nafi and tell her we'd arrived.
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