Mopti 8:00. As expected we were not woken by the sun, but by the creeping activity developing around our camp in Mali’s biggest river port town. I woke to a couple of boys peering through the mesh of my tent. I pretended to sleep until they moved on.
Mopti seems big, especially compared to the little villages we had been accustomed to and relaxed Segou that we had spent five weeks in. It is not that big in reality, but it is the only place in Mali outside of Bamako that has a bit of a gritty edge to it. Being a port town, it has its fair share of hustlers and ruffians that put you back on your guard. Being, Mali, however, it was nothing to be too alarmed by. The whole town crowds tightly against the port area, creating a dirty and crowded little slice of rough at the confluence of the Niger and Banni Rivers.
As we sluggishly made our way out of our tents and prepared coffee and breakfast, the children fearlessly hung around gawking. Eventually the word had gotten out that there were some fresh toubabs in town and the touts and hustlers started to trickle. They ranged from wannabe guides, asking us if we were heading to Dogon Country, a popular trekking area for tourists to see traditional African life (with our boat?), to immaculately dressed Tuaregs trying to sell us handicrafts. No, we were not needing any guides for Mopti and beyond, nor did we need silver jewelry or “traditional” looking letter openers. They didn’t seem to notice that we were pretty independent and self-sufficient, and they had nothing better to do, so they hung around and persisted to push their goods and services on us. I quickly forgot about the big city luxuries of street food and cold beer, and yearned for the calm river life where people treated you like guests rather than an ATM. We were careful not to mention that we were selling our boat, knowing this would only attract more of the same people we didn’t want to deal with. We knew we would have to be clever about how we would go about this sale.
My breakfast skills. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
By ten, we were surrounded by women washing clothes in the river and men washing their trucks. It was high time to move out. We paddled to the only place in town that we knew: Bozo Bar. We slipped our boat into a tiny crack between boats in the buzzing port area. There was barely enough space for us, but we managed.
We spent most of our few days in Mopti watching over the port from the terrace of the Bozo bar, keeping more than one eye on our boat. The hustlers and trinket sellers would wander through, occasionally, performing an array of shticks all with the goal of, in some way or another, extracting money from us. It became comical eventually. One of the guys was fortunate to speak English (very poorly) and we would just respond to him in our equally poor French. He tried to appeal to Blai (who has dreadlocks) by saying that he too was a Rasta man, even though he didn’t have dreadlocks. He tossed out all the phrases he thought would be impressive to Blai: “One Love man”, “We are all brothers”, “Jha is great, and we are all one, and we are all Jha”…or something to this effect. We egged him on until he got annoying, then just ignored him. Like most of the people that had approached us, he hung around, just kind of watching us, as I watched the wheels slowly turning in his head, trying to think of his next move. These guys were not slick, but apparently previous tourists had not been so challenging. I eventually felt like some sort of vending machine. All these hustlers were looking at us, knowing that we had some sort of candy or chips that they wanted to get from us, but they didn’t have the coins or keys to the machine. So they watched us, talking, devising plans, eventually shaking us, rocking us back and forth, reaching their hand up through the slot, and eventually just angrily banged at the window, hoping something would fall into their hands. It never did. They simply repeatedly made fools of themselves.
By the end of our second full day at the bar, we had obviously gained the affection of the young, forward-thinking owner. Unlike the hustlers stalking us, he was socially agreeable, intelligent and had a sophisticated style. When we were at the bar alone, we asked him if we could pop our memory card into his stereo system to play some music. He was delighted and liked our music so much that he asked if he could leave it in the sound system all day. We felt a little cocky for sure, as we had established ourselves as the kings of this bar. Fura roamed around as she pleased, and we brought our own food to eat, while the occasional tourists would pay western prices for crappy spaghetti dishes. They looked at us like the trash we were, and we wore that label proudly as the beer bottles eventually filled our table.
Outside the bar at Mopti's port. Photo Credit: Jordan
Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
But it wasn’t all pleasure; there was also business to take care of. We were looking to sell our vessel and for good money too. One of the hustlers had found out about this, and brought a few fishermen to our table to offer us obscenely low prices. When we bought the boat we knew we would not be able to recuperate much of the money, however, we had recently learned that boats are going for much higher prices here in Mopti than in Koulikoro where we had started. We had bought the boat for around $600 (including repairs and some materials), and we were thinking that we could potentially even make money on the transaction. Seeing as I was leaving very soon, I would not be part of the transaction and had little say in the matter. The first offers were around $200, which we didn’t even consider accepting. Jonathan and Blai went to the boat builders to see where they were charging for a brand new 12-meter pirogue. It didn’t look good. I was shocked to hear that they were getting estimates of $500 for a brand new boat. I was suspicious that the boat builders were in cahoots with some fishermen that wanted to buy our boat for cheap, but Jonathan and Blai assured me that this couldn’t be the case.
Boat builder, not GOAT builder! Photo credit: Jonathan Diarra
That's better. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
And a bed shop. Photo credit: Blai Coulibaly
On our second night, we decided not to stay on the Mopti side of the river, but paddle across and stay on the gravelly beach near the Bozo camps. We were much more at home here and it was far more peaceful. We could also have more trust in the people.
This is what it looks like when we sleep. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
Nobody knows where Jonathan got that cut across his forehead.
Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
Kids at the camp. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
In the morning we went to talk to some boat builders near our camp. We said we were interested in selling our boat and they should let us know if they know anyone who would like to buy ours. They quickly summoned an older man who lived nearby. He came to take a look at our boat. He seemed unimpressed, which I took as a simple bargaining tactic. He said the wood was old and poor quality and the nails were the cheap Chinese kind, not the hand made local ones. Of course, back in Koulikoro we were easily convinced that the boat had very good wood and nobody mentioned origin of nails. I claimed ignorance at that point, but didn’t want to buy into what he was telling us. Jonathan and Blai were pretty quick to give in and admit that maybe our boat really wasn’t worth that much. Regardless of what our boat was worth though, we all knew that some toubabs like us would never get a great deal on the boat. It was just impossible.
The next morning we had a meeting with the man. He had an old fisherman who was interested in our boat, so we went to his house to talk business. It was an extremely slow process involving a few rounds of tea, some peanut munching, casual chit-chat and the occasional mention of a price. Again, I was leaving, so it was basically out of my hands, but they were at the pint that they were willing to part with it for $500. After a few hours of negotiating, and the old fisherman taking walks to contemplate, he would only come up to $400.
The man that had introduced us to this fisherman had mentioned that if we were not happy with the price, boats sell for even more in Timbuktu, 400 km up river. Of course, nobody was in the mood to keep paddling, but the man said he knew someone who could tow the boat to Timbuktu, for a fee of course. I was skeptical, but again, it was out of my hands.
Although it may seem like I have been down on Mopti, I actually truly enjoyed all of its gritty charms. It was a busy place, and it was the most fast-paced place I had seen since Bamako. Dozens of blacksmiths worked in a huge shop near the bar, pounding out nails, knives and tools all day.
Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly
Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly
Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly
Rows of tailors in the market toiled away at their foot-pedaled sewing machines. Boats continuously arrived with massive cargos of dried fish from Lac Debo on the Niger’s inland delta. Traders would stand around making deals on the 100 kilo boxes of fish. Most of all, though, there was food everywhere. Sure, Mali is low on my list of favorite food countries (still beats Mauritania), but they had a decent mix of quick eats to be bought from dirty stalls or women with bowls on their heads. And you were never more than an arms reach away from a pre-pubescent girl selling a variety of sweet frozen drinks in bags. I spent a good portion of my free time wandering the market, haggling over cloths and other gifts for family. I had a great pair of pants made as well. Three pairs, actually, one of which made from cloth featuring Mali’s lovable president Amadou Toumani Toure (better known simply as “ATT”).
Dried fish. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
At the market. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra
On March 31st, my time had run out. I had delayed my return to Bamako as long as I could, and now needed to finally part with the crew. They spent the morning deciding what to do about the boat, while I sat by, hoping that they would get a decent price whatever happened. They finally decided that they would get the boat towed up to Timbuktu for about $140, being assured that they would at least make that much more on the sale of the boat compared to in Mopti. I had doubts.
The Guidron Queen, right, ready to get attached to the mighty pinasse for the trip to Timbuktu
Regardless, I was packed. My bag was bulging. Having spent most of the last few months either stationary or on a boat where I wasn’t carrying my pack on my back, it had somehow grown as I had accumulated various items and failed to get rid of books that I had finished. We paddled our boat to where the boys would be leaving from the next day. The men showed them the big pinasse that they would be riding in for the next five days. It looked like a fun, relaxing trip, and I was a little disappointed to be missing out. On the other hand, though, this was the right time to leave and I knew it. They still tried to pressure me to stay, but I was strong, and was ready to get on that flight in a couple days.
On the way to the bus lot, we had one last encounter with one of Mopti’s finest. Some guy with dreadlocks confidently strolled up to us, picking out Blai in particular to blurt some Rastaman brotherly love BS. He seemed drunk, or just generally off, and before I knew it, he was picking a fight with Jonathan. Just before it got violent (and they almost got run over by a bus) a tall man stepped in and separated them. I was shocked with how quickly things had turned bad, in fact, it just didn’t make any sense. As we fled the scene, Jonathan admitted that he had actually started it by hitting the guy with the long cardboard tube that was holding our large river charts. Yep, it was my time to go, and take the river charts with me.
The goodbye was fun, but sure, a little sad. It was a lot easier this time, though, than the last one, and it made me realize I was making a good decision. The van slowly filled and before I knew it, I was on my way out of town, away from the boat, away from the river, away from my friends, but towards something else, which I knew would still be as unpredictable and interesting as what I had been doing for the last six months.
No comments:
Post a Comment