I know I haven't posted in a while, but I've been busy writing passionate letters to the editors of the Washington Post about ... butter knives. If I had any dignity I would not broadcast this, but hey! I'm famous! A famous dork, but still.

Background: Christopher Reardon wrote an article for the Post about travelling overland to Timbuktu. At one point he scrapes sand off the engine block of his vehicle, stalled in the middle of the Sahara, with a butter knife pilfered from Oumou Sangare's Bamako hotel. Mike Gaffen wrote a letter to the Post editors claiming the knife could not have been a butter knife because "the climate, lack of refrigeration facilities and associated dietary customs would preclude butter as a normal part of meals in Mali," and that the knife in question was more likely used to spread other foods like baba ganoush and hummous.

Having been to Mali and seen lots of butter (an effect, no doubt, of 77 years of French colonialism) but not an ounce of hummous or baba ganoush, I felt compelled to weigh in.

I must respond to Mike Gaffen's letter in the July 13 Message Center about Christopher Reardon's now-infamous butter knife.

Gaffen states that "the climate, lack of refrigeration facilities and associated dietary customs would preclude butter as a normal part of meals in Mali." For the majority of Malians who can't afford a refrigerator, yes. But any traveler to Mali who stays in the nicer hotels will be served butter at least once a day. When I visited in May, I ate a breakfast of bread and butter at every hotel between Bamako and Bandiagara. Dinner, if it was not African style, was often accompanied by rolls and butter. So, on the contrary, it's quite likely that the utensil in question was a butter knife.

I'm a bit sheepish to find myself writing my first letter to the editor about an ill-used butter knife, so while I have your ear, I'll second the compliments to Malian hospitality!