Did I say I was going to post every day? Sorry. Already breaking promises. But two posts in one year and now two posts in three days? I’ll take it.

And it’s the weekend. There are children. On Friday night, Liza was grippé and slept terribly. By the time I got back from my later than normal morning walk/bird admiring session, Andre was at the top of the stairs ready to play.

It is now 6:43 AM on Sunday morning. I will write until a child appears. Weekend posts will face this constraint.

That was a poor headline in my last post. More than a few people read it without reading the words below it. The thing is, I posted it on my facebook page. Normally facebook would show that post to 3 or 4 people, possibly less since my page has been dormant for so long.

But I think because I used words like “leaving” and “starting a new life,” facebook decided to let some more people see it. The only other time Facebook showed one of my links to that many people was my wedding post in 2015. I think the next post title will be “Moving Back to Bamako and Taking a Second Wife.”

In any case, for the record, we do not know if this move is permanent. It is very much a trial.

I also realized that in my last post I didn’t say where we were. If you ventured further back to my post in December, you knew that Senegal was the likely candidate.

And that’s where we are, in a town called Somone, on the Petite-Côte. Senegal has two coasts north of the Casamance. The sparsely populated Grande-Côte runs from Dakar up to the border of Mauritania. The smaller, busier Petite-Côte sits in between Dakar and The Gambia.

I had been here before as a vagrant – in the ​​ornithological sense – so the area was somewhat familiar. There are one too many leathery frenchmen riding quad bikes for my liking, but it’s nice to breathe fresh salty air instead of a dusty diesel-filled haze.

For most people, the main attraction of the Petite-Côte is the beach. I am not an aquatic person, but I have come to appreciate the beach. And for the kids there may not be anything better. You do have to keep your eye on this endlessly powerful and primal thing called the ocean but otherwise it is instant, endless entertainment. They can run and swim and absolutely test the limits of their vocal chords. There are no rules, there is no one to bother. And it’s free.

We have not needed to be particularly budget oriented the past several years. And despite having two children and a small army living in our house in Bamako, we have been able to save some small small money. Cheap rent, no car (thinking about it now, I haven’t owned a car since 2007), and very few big purchases. Our biggest expense was our annual trip to the states.

But at the moment, we are paying two rents and living in a place where most things are 20-30% more expensive. A free children’s activity that provides so reliably is a godsend.

Considering the cost of things, we haven’t been dining out much, not that we did this particularly often in Bamako either. But last night we went on a little adventure and ate at a restaurant in a neighboring town.

I had been to this restaurant before, when visiting a friend and her family, and I knew that the food was good and the chef was Malian. Le Balafon, as it’s called, is also perched above the sea, with a view of the Popenguine cliffs and Somone further down the coast. Also, the sunset.

The food was once again delicious and there was pre-dinner entertainment provided by a trio of green monkeys dancing on the powerlines nearby. But I really wrote all this to share one particular moment and I do need to get on with it because I am up against the clock and a child is going to appear at the top of the stairs any moment now.

Our daughter, Liza (leeza), or LooLoo as she is known to me, could presumably survive on bread and ketchup. She knows this nutritionally vapid combo bothers us so of course she doubles down and rejects everything else remotely wholesome. Feedback loops are a real thing. Now, you’d think we’d know better than to show our cards, having already raised one child through the toddler years, but it turns out it is remarkably easy to make the same mistake twice!

We do know better than to try and get Liza to release that piece of bread from her deathgrip. As she taunts us with another mouthful and her face full of ketchup, we try to at least get her to add a piece of fish to the mix.

Bintou and I take a bite of fish and squeal with delight. “Ohhh my goodness how delicious is this fish!!!” Nothing. We try to bribe her. Nope. We tell her there is a monkey behind her and hide the bread basket. None of this works.

And then Andre stands up. He cracks his knuckles. I shit you not. He cracked his knuckles. In a very “it’s the last shot, give me the ball, you guys are hopeless” kind of way. And then he says, “Liza jege di yan.” In Bambara: Liza, give me the fish. Liza picks up a piece of fish. Looks at the fish. Looks at Andre. And then stuffs it into her mouth.

And I gotta run because there is a child at the top of the stairs and there already was when I was writing that last paragraph. Helpful because that child was Andre and he confirmed the preceding events which at the time blew our minds. See you tomorrow.