A former Bambara student talks about her trip to Mali:

I feel... like it’s already getting easier for me to talk to people, and that I understand a little more, too. And it’s definitely fun to speak the language, because you can have conversations in a completely different way than in French (or as it was with English in Ghana)—many people are also much more open when you speak to them in Bambara ...

Another person reports:

And I speak a lot of Bambara here, too! Every day I learn a few more words, ....and try to make myself understood in Bambara somehow. I like the language! It’s really striking to see that the language is hardly ever written down anywhere, and most people have no idea how the words are spelled when you ask them—even though they’re educated people! It really is a spoken language.

Later, the same student took a trip to neighboring Burkina Faso. From Bobo-Dioulasso, she wrote:

...And you can actually speak Bambara with the people there—I thought Dyula was different after all.

Another student, who had studied Bambara in Bayreuth, wrote—also from southwestern Burkina Faso: