At the mattress place today ("AllFoam" brand, the store nothing more than a dusty room in the side of a building, a dirty wooden desk on the left, mattresses stacked on the right) the man with the triangle scarring between his eyes would not leave us alone. Luckily, while he'd been showing the others around a store across the street, I'd been able to talk with the patron. "Monsieur, ca c'est combien?" A two-place mattress, foamy, soft enough to drop an egg on, hard enough to last two years. "Quarante-cinq mille." 45,000 FCFA. I don't bother doing the conversion anymore; just because something's cheap in American dollars doesn't mean it's a 'bon prix.' "C'est cher," I said, "Diminuez le prix, s'il vous plait." He said maybe he could work it down to 40,000. A GEE volunteer had told us yesterday at the beach party that a good mattress would run about 37,000. "Je peux payer trente-cinq mille," I told him, 35,000. "Probablement les autres acheteront aussi, pour le meme prix." I got the okay before triangle-head returned.

Mensah, our driver, said the price was good, if I liked the mattress. I told the others, and twenty-minutes and much confusion later, five of us bought. L tried to diminuer the prix to 30,000 but the vendor wasn't having it. Triangle-head, who we're pretty sure worked for nobody, and was just trying to skim a tip out of the silly Yovos, kept interjecting the discussion, saying he'd give us the mattresses for just 40 mille. The patron, a tired-looking young man well over six feet, stayed faithful to ourprice, though he did nothing to throw triangle-head out.

When we got back to the hotel, we saw that the mattress guys (the legit ones wearing yellow t-shirts with "AllFoam" written in red across the left breast) had done a poor job of tying our purchases to the roof. Any more bumps and the two on top, which were now just barely beneath the ropes, would have been lost. Most everybody, after unloading the mattresses, hopped back into the cars to go to the grand market. Too tired to care about plastic buckets or straw mats, I headed to the bureau.

These past two days since swearing-in have been decadent. Instead of fufu or pate, I've eaten Lebanese, Chinese, and Italian cuisine. Move-in money, which others are spending on cutting boards and wall-mats, goes toward my stomach's pleasure. The furniture I will have made at my post, and pots and pans are readily available at the markets in the neighboring villages. While others have slept, I've spent hours at the bar, or here at the bureau, writing these posts. Every time I sit down to write those mass emails, my will fails me, and I end up here instead. So I apologize.