Buses and Running

I had a fight with Malian transportation yesterday.  I tried to catch the good bus line to Bamako, but missed the bus so I went to a different company where they over-charged me for my ticket.  I had a sneaking suspicion I was over charged, so I asked a Malian how much he paid for his ticket, and found he had paid 1,000 cfa (about $2) less.  So, I talked to the people who seemed to be in charge of the bus, and asked why I was charged more.  They said because I am white.  This made me pretty mad, and so I argued with one of the guys until he ignored me, making it very clear I would not get my money back.  So, I decided to take two seats.  I recognized then and do now that this was not the high road, and sucking up the blatant racism would have been the high road, but I was frustrated so decided to be a stubborn American.  People were sitting in the aisle, and the bus operators, (there are many: a driver, and several helpers who collect tickets, strap luggage to the roof, and yell out stop names), to move.  I said, "Give me my money and I will, but right now I can't." Of course, these people didn't take my money, the guy at the ticket counter did.  And the people in the aisle didn't take my money either, but I was not going to give in.  And I didn't, I had two seats the whole way, and really enjoyed the lounging and ability to spread out.  When we got to Bamako I got a taxi, and loaded my stuff into the trunk.  Then some fellow volunteers in a different cab spotted me, and I said I wanted to go with them (in order to split cab fair).  And the driver closed the trunk, and held it down and said, "Nope, you're my friend." Which was weird, but I was tired and didn't want to argue...Until he took another passanger and we had to drive all the way to the other side of town to drop her off. So when we got to my destination I said I wasn't going to pay him the price we agreed on because he didn't listen to me when I said I wanted to go with my friends, and then we went to the other side of town.  I knew that this was causing more trouble for me, but by now I was SO frustrated, and I wanted to cause him some frustration.  So we got in a shouting match, which involved him saying stuff I didn't understand and me shouting random Bambara words over him, and gesturing wildly, and making faces.  The guard in the Peace Corps house came out, and the driver told some version of the story which I couldn't understand, so I decided to give him the rest of the money as I was now confident I had caused him ample strife for my frustration.  But, now we had to revert to the Malian "3rd Party System" because we had a conflict.  This just means I had to give the guard the money first, and the guard would give it to the driver.  Was I immature? Yes. I don't care.  I was too annoyed to be reasonable.

Then I had a lovely spaghetti dinner, and got up really early to run our half-marathon.

I didn't win.  I got second, and a respectable one.  The kid who won was running under seven minute miles, as he was a good runner and ran cross country for Johns Hopkins.  He lost me around mile 3.  I ran it in an hour and 45 minutes, and felt pretty good about that.  I had taken a break from training due to the malaria, and still did great!  So, I'm proud of myself.  Now, I'm sore and thinking that the marathon I'm signed up for in September is gonna give me a whoopin'.