Tension and traffic built up last week as dignitaries from Saharan and Sahelian nations began pouring into town. Police sirens -- something I’d only heard once before in Bamako, when someone got run over on the new bridge -- became a regular part of the daily commute as official envoys whisked ministers around town.

Everyone was talking about the inconveniences: The old bridge would close. No, the new bridge would close. I don’t know if either ever did, but the roads I take along the river on the way to and from work were blocked off. The airport closed to us regular folks, leaving one friend stranded in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and another stuck here.

Whatever actually happened, chaos was certain, so the government declared Friday a holiday and hoped everyone would stay home. Coincidentally, it was also my husband’s birthday. We celebrated by eating pancakes at noon and sitting around the house, sweating. I gave him a shirt that I’d had a tailor copy from one he already owns. Later, we drove to a shop I’d heard of in Niarela to pick out his other present: custom-made leather sandals. I decided to get a pair too, so Sylla the maroquinier traced our feet on the same sheet, to conserve paper. When we got home we had Fla-Vor-Ice popsicles for lunch and sweated some more.

That night we went out with some friends to the Piano Bar, the Chinese restaurant/brothel nearest our house. I have mentioned before that Bamako’s disappointing restaurant scene changed the way we think about dining out; almost anything that’s not an omelet or pizza or grilled fish seems really, really good. So perhaps it was the lowered expectations, but dinner was really, really good: Dumplings fragrant with cilantro, homemade tofu, sautéed cabbage, noodles and mushrooms in lots of sesame oil.

Our friends had been watching the arrival of the dignitaries on TV and the first hour of conversation revolved around Cen-sad. The most tasty gossip surrounded our Libyan neighbor and summit host Muammar Gaddafi. First of all, it is rumored that he funded the two-year renovations of the Hotel l’Amitie that just finished, and now he rents the joint out to Sofitel-Accor. It is also rumored that that Mr. Gaddafi preferred not to stay with his conference guests at the l’Amitie or the Salaam (which hung a huge portrait of him on its outside wall) but pitched a tent on the grounds of the Palais de Congres instead. Due to the aforementioned closing of roads, we can neither confirm nor deny that rumor, nor should we speculate whether his “crack team of female bodyguards” joined him in the tent, or rented their own rooms.

All I saw of our local celeb was a faint image of him, almost totally obscured by static, on the ancient TV in the video club. In his speech he called Cote d’Ivoire’s President Gbagbo a “victim” of outside interference, and defended Sudan’s president al-Bashir on the same grounds (referring to the crisis in Darfur). The EU might be patting Gaddafi on the back for some very recent improvements, but he’s got a long way to go.

Then again, so do we.