A whistle stop visit to Stockholm and other fun

 The winter sun sets early in the North. Flying in to Stockholm across the frozen tundra of my home land, maybe 15.30 pm  last week.

I visited Eva, my dear friend,  the Swedish Ambassador to Mali, who was there as her last posting when I spent my last years there. 

Here she is at 'Svenskt Tenn' a chic Swedish shop featuring all things expensive and highly desirable, a point of pilgrimage on a Saturday afternoon for the well-to .do Stockholm denizens and something of an institution. Eva always thinks it is her duty to 'Swedify' me again, since she thinks I am slipping away from my roots. When I was staying with her at the embassy residence in Bamako she used to show me appropriate Swedish films, such as a biopic of our assassinated prime minister Olof Palme. She also made me Biff A la Lindstrom' and other dishes  which were intended to  help in the Swedification process. 

 Although here below of course it is those splendid Italian Fornisetti plates that are the star of this dining table at Svenst Tenn:

 I also met my brother Anders, whom I see very rarely. His wife Hanna is a Mezzo Soprano and sang the role of Carmen with her little group of very talented  amateur opera singers. The Habanera is always a crowd pleaser of course.                                        

The performance was held in a lovely late nineteenth century 'palace' just outside Stockholm, a pleasure villa built by a wealthy tobacco baron: the Ljunglofska Slottet.

                                                                                

Back in Siena winter has caught up with us too. and the large Christmas tree on Piazza Salimbeni arrived yesterday morning:                                         

            Jeremiah and David will be here again this Christmas, there will be other friends too, as we celebrate Swedish Jul on Christmas Eve and proper English Christmas on the 25th, with the only Turkey in town I believe, ordered soon through the local butcher who always thinks that  is fun. I try and get him to find a smallish Turkey, but that is wishful thinking. He always supplies one which has to be squeezed into the oven with force...                                                                  

Mali Crisis

I knew that things were looking increasingly bad in Mali over the last few weeks, and tonight I was rather shaken by the fact that CNN ran a feature on it, suggesting that Bamako was under a virtual siege by the Jihadists, and that the capital might fall. If Bamako falls, it is more or less the end of the Malian state.  I had already written a little appraisal of the situation in an email to my cousin:

There have been many jihadis groups established in northern Mali since the fall of Gaddafi. Now all Western assistance which was able to maintain an uneasy peace,  has been excluded by the Malian junta when they more or less expelled the UN and the French army,  and they are left to fend for themselves with some help of Russian mercenaries. The Malian army is too weak and cannot withstand the jihadist threat. 
The very effective means  used by the  Jihadists is a form of economic warfare:  the fuel transports that arrive in tankers on the road from mainly Senegal to this land locked country are attacked and blown up. In this way they  break down the Malian state in order to launch a devastating attack on Bamako. 

Now  these fuel transports can only take place with army escort, but this is untenable, and most of the time there is no electricity, as it is provided by diesel generators. This means that transport for the local population is becoming incredibly expensive, and people cannot get to work. Even the big taxi buses that used to cost just a few cents cost a fortune, and the price of gasoline for people's small mopeds, which used to be 775 FCFA per liter, is now 4,000 FCFA per liter, making life impossible.

But this is a more precise account of the crisis, and I recommend watching it: 

                                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeRPw9qPuoE

I am so sad for my beloved Mali, and fear that if the situation deteriorates we may not be able to continue doing the small trading that has continued with Malimali, with the bogolan fabrics and  some jewellery from Djenne, which gave some much needed income for Dembele, who taught me the bogolan technique and worked with me all those years in Djenne...