pwned?

The day of the exposition has come. We've hyped this thing pretty hard, and now we'll see if we can pull it off. Our tests yesterday gave us some information about how the heating of the oven was uneven, so I had to make some final adjustments:
Normally, we'd have another day of tests to verify that the heat distribution is good, but we're out of time... the sound crews and cameras start setting up (the man with the camera is a Frenchman who lives in Bamako, and who lives nearby the workshop and offered his services and his high definition camera to film the exposition):Everything is in place.
The sky is blue.
The oven is hot (+250C).
All we need now are some guests:
Here they come! And in style no less.
The minister of the promotion of the woman, child and family and the minister of the environment, along with representants of 4 other ministers settle in:
At this point I hand off my camera to Yusuf so that he can take pictures while I'm shaking hands, giving a speech, and participating in the event. Unfortunately, he mistook the zoom function for the shutter button and I have no photos of the rest of the event. :(

RV managed to take a pic of me speaking:
And the attentive audience:


Don't despair! We've got high definition footage of the whole ceremony, so Olivier and I are going to put together a little montage which I'll post as soon as I have it.

Regardless of that unfortunate mixup, it went superbly. The bread was baked to perfection, the guests were impressed, the ministers pledged their support and afterwards amid all the handshaking and networking I was told about several workshops that could be put at my disposition.

The minister of the woman, child and family put the facilities of the Kid City at the service of the Solar Fire Project. I'll be moving in soon, and any project-mates who join me can do the same.

Tomorrow, I have been invited to check out the workshop run by Amader, which stands for Malian Agency for the Development of Renewable Energy.

Before Karim leaves this Friday the two ministers will receive us to flesh out the plan.

The plan being create a research and development facility which will develop a number of low tech, low cost, high effectiveness solar technologies which we will then attempt to diffuse as broadly as possible.