So it's been a while since I've written anything. I've been busy trying to figure out my plans and waiting for things to get settled around here. On Tuesday March 27, the military/national committee that is currently in power in Mali opened the airports (which had been closed since Thursday, March 22, the day of the coup d’état) as they had said they would. The curfew that was in place, which prohibited people from leaving their homes from 6PM until 6AM, was also lifted. The program that I've been studying abroad with in Mali, SIT, decided on that Tuesday that, since the airports were open, they were going to cancel the rest of our program and evacuate all of the students. I could write a lot about how poorly SIT handled the situation logistically and otherwise, but that would be much less interesting than talking about what's actually going on in Mali right now. The one detail I will add, because it's relevant to my situation, is that, though SIT decided evacuation was necessary on March 27th, the last student who's being evacuated isn't leaving Mali until April 9. Though SIT ended the program because of concerns about students' security and safety, clearly these concerns weren't serious enough to justify paying for students to switch airlines, even if that meant some students would remain here nearly 2 weeks after the situation had been declared unsafe by SIT. (Since 11 of us had booked AirFrance tickets and most people who are trying to leave Mali are booking on Air France all of the flights were either full or nearly full. Though other flights were available with different airlines, this switch would have been incredibly expensive for SIT). It's my opinion that if SIT actually thought that students here were in serious danger they would have paid to change the tickets, rather than allowing students to remain here for nearly two weeks. From my own experiences, I can say that at least in Bamako and the Southern part of Mali daily life is more or less the same since the coup, though the recently implemented embargo might change that. For the time being, there is very little risk of violence where I am in Bamako right now (Kalaban Coura ACI), though that may be difficult for people reading the Western news sources to believe right now.

Given the fact that I'm actually very safe where I'm living right now with my host family, I decided to stay in Mali independently of SIT. I'll try my best to keep writing about the situation here, explaining what the Western media is getting wrong etc. at least according to what I know from being here. From reading the headlines about Mali in most of the major U.S. news sources, it sounds as if all of Mali is in chaos right now, which is just not the case. In the North, it's a different story, but where I am in Bamako and throughout all of Southern Mali you'd hardly even know about the coup or the rebellion in the North from looking around. The only tangible difference is the slightly increased presence of military personnel who don't really do anything but sit on the corner and drink tea, as far as I can tell. My brother Alpha is friends with a few of the soldiers and we have tea with them some nights and talk about the situation. One of them was stationed in the North in 2007 and was taken prisoner by the MNLA for 8 months. He talks some about his experience there and where he sees the situation going next.

For the first few days after the coup, the vast majority of Malians supported the soldiers because they felt that their grievances were legitimate. As I've written about previously, the president who was removed (known as ATT) is believed by most of the population to have grossly mismanaged the rebellion in the North. The massacre of 90 something soldiers after they ran out of ammunition because the government hadn't provided them with enough arms to fight off the MNLA forces is a prime example of this. The military was understandably angry that they were being sent to fight without adequate resources to defend themselves against the heavily armed MNLA and the civilian population sympathized. However, in the days and weeks following the coup I began to hear more and more Malians expressing frustration with the way the national committee, specifically Sanogo, were managing the situation. Malians were incredibly angry with what they perceive as unjustified interference by ECOWAS, but many were also angry that Sanogo didn't make a greater effort to cooperate with ECOWAS' demands for the good of the country. For those who don't know, ECOWAS has demanded a return to constitutional rule, and threatened to impose an embargo on Mali if these demands were not met within 72 hours, despite the fact that Sanogo and the national committee have stated that democratic elections will be held sometime within the next 9 months, which was, in fact, what happened in the 90s the last time there was a military coup in Mali. The 72 hours passed and the committee didn't comply, so at the moment Mali's land borders are completely closed and its bank accounts frozen. These measures are intended to put pressure on the regime and, some argue, the population to pressure the national committee to give in to ECOWAS demands. However their real effect will be to make life even harder for the majority of people already struggling to make ends meet.

As I was writing this, a friend of Alpha's called us to tell us that Sanogo had agreed to hand over power and that the embargo is ending. However, we got a call like that before, which turned out not to be true, so we'll have to wait and see what ends up happening.

From the cyber cafe: turns out what Alpha's friend said was true, Sanogo is handing over power. Sorry all my news is so late here, but we don't have electricity very often so it's hard to keep the stuff I post up to date.