Toubab Paul in the cooking pot

One of the best moments I've had in Mali occured yesterday at the bus station in Segou, on our way back to Bamako...there was a TV screen in the (outdoor) waiting area, showing a Malian soap. Malian soaps are as awesome as Nigerian and Ghanaian ones- that is to say, downright amazing. Low budget, ridiculous, and completely hilarious. The soap yesterday centred on the sotry of Paul, a toubab (white guy) who had lost his fiancee somewhere in Mali, and was going through all sorts of cacicatured 'African' situations in order to find her, including being captured by 'savages' and put into a cooking pot! The absurdity of the plotline, mixed with the hilarity to the local people of watching it with two white ladies, topped off by everyone's falling into hysterics every two seconds at how funny it was, made for what was basically a waiting room full of people exchanging no words, but laughing their asses off together to the point of crying for a good 45 minutes. Good times.