Bamako Visa Run Part 2

That night I met Susan, and went to her place, which was actually a five-minute walk from the Catholic Mission that I was staying in. She was incredibly busy and in a way was living the dream. When we parted ways, I think we all (including her) would be lost. She had very little money, very little French vocabulary, very little experience being alone in Africa, and a mix of idealism and ambition that seemed dangerous. However, I had seen her do things before that seemed impossible. Usually if she had an idealistic plan, Jonathan and I would try to tell her she was wrong, and she would always come out on top.

And this is how it was for her in Bamako, though she had been put through the wringer for about a month before things finally started to turn in her favor. She told me about all of her difficulties looking for work in the city and how many false leads she had followed directly into marriage proposals. Her impression of the Malian male was that they all simply wanted to marry a white woman. And that is why so many people had falsely promised that they could find her a job. But now she had two jobs and a free place to stay. And not just any place to stay; she was living in a damn tree house! Somehow she had met a couple of young French people who live in Bamako that had a tree house in their living space and said she could stay in it as long as she liked. And it was nice. It was in a mango tree and made entirely of bamboo. Very comfortable and had a great view. Down below, she had access to a kitchen and clean bathrooms. The French people had bought the two-bedroom house for under a thousand dollars, and Susan had chipped in something like $60, giving her free reign on the tree house.

Her first job was teaching English. She worked full time, and made a very modest wage, but her cost of living was probably $2/day. The real money came with her bartending job in the upscale Hippodrome neighborhood across town. She would work some nights from 7 PM to 4 AM. The best part was that she got commission on the drinks that people bought for her. So when somebody would ask her what she was drinking, she would pick the most expensive drink, champagne and collect $3. Then the men, having bought her a drink, would expect some conversation in exchange. She would then pull out her notebook and insist that they teach her Bambara vocabulary. She had managed a situation in which she would get free champagne, earn commission off of it, and avoid compromising situations by insisting on free Bambara lessons. It was genius.

And how did she recover my guidebook a month after it went missing? She was in the massive central market with a local friend. She was looking for books on learning Bambara and French, when she stumbled upon the book. She and her friend decided to do a little bit of truth-bending, since none of us were not entirely sure what had really happened to the book. They told the book vendor that the book, which had a $40 price tag on it, was stolen. The man obviously knew he could be in trouble, so he immediately lowered the price to $4. They said they wanted the book now, for free or they would call the police. He said it was given to him by his brother and he didn’t know where he had gotten it. And he eventually handed it over for free. Very impressive, and even more kind of Susan to save it for me, when that book could have been indispensable for herself as she didn’t have one.

It felt great to reconnect with Susan in her new situation. It was inspiring and I was feeling bad with how we had left each other. Tensions between her and our whole group had been high, and there weren’t even goodbyes exchanged when we left. But she was a real friend. It is impossible to travel on donkeys, work in the desert shoveling sand, hitchhike, trainhop with someone and not be lifelong friends. Those kinds of experiences just kind of solidify that.

Susan re-created peppermint patties by mixing nutella with hot water and peppermint schnapps. We drank and chatted for hours. I shared with her all of the wisdom I had accumulated from the Niger river trip, as she was still planning on making this trip herself. When we had left her, she was going to do it alone, which would not have been impossible, but probably incredibly difficult and lonely. Now she had word from some friends from back home that were coming down in hopes of doing the boat trip. I encouraged her, saying it was far easier than traveling with donkeys.

When it got dangerously close to curfew at my guesthouse (I didn’t want to have to climb the walls) we went and got an egg sandwich and I headed home. We tried to make a plan to see each other again before leaving, but we never did. In fact, I still have not heard from her and do not know where she is or what she has been up to since I left

Nothing went well the next day. It was a constant battle of Joey v. Bamako. The deciding factor would be whether the sotramas (public mini-van busses) would be my friend or foe. Getting to the visa office early was a failure as I got on the wrong sotrama for for about twenty minutes. In all it took me a couple hours to get to the office, but I still made it in time.

My next mission was to get to the Lebanese-owned import grocery store to pick up coffee. To me, coffee was a luxury that I didn’t give a damn about, but it is essential for Jonathan and Blai to function. I hitched with a guy on a motorbike, since there were no busses near this office. He dropped me off on a busy street next to a bus that was about to take off. He asked the driver where he was going, then told me to get in. Well, this bus was NOT going where I wanted to go. When I got off at the last stop I was completely disoriented and didn’t recognize anything. So I asked around and after a lot of walking, made it to one of the central stations. I asked around for the bus going to the Hippodrome, a well-known neighborhood where the grocery store was. I was pointed in all sorts of directions until people asked if I was going to Hippodrome side 1 or Hippodrome side 2. Although I had been to the neighborhood many times, I had never heard of there being two sides. Nobody would take me with my uncertainty about which side. I kept saying it didn’t matter. I tried hitching there, but that didn’t work either. So I finally just got on the first Sotrama that would take me. They were going to Side 2. Of course, Side 2 was definitely not the side I wanted, and I was shocked to find how far away from Side 1 it was. I finally told the driver I wanted off when we got to some really out there neighborhoods with no sign of stopping. He asked where I was going, and I just said I didn’t know.

I was completely lost, so I just turned around and went back the way we came, trying to hitchhike to speed things up. After twenty minutes of walking along the rutted dirt roads, a young guy picked me up. I explained that I was lost and was trying to get to the Hippodrome Side 1. Luckily, he was going there (or he was going there to help me out). He dropped me off a twenty minutes walk away from the grocery store, but at least I knew where I was. Then I got to the grocery store, only to find that it was closed until 3:30. It was only 2:00, so what could I do? All the other grocery stores were closed as well. So I sat around and waited as hustlers and beggar children wasted their time on me. This was an upscale neighborhood where lots of tourists and expats stay, clinging to the upscale nightlife, western restaurants and abundance of import grocery stores. It’s like a food chain. Lebanese immigrants consume low-cost land away from the city center to open bars and grocery stores, expats and tourists consume alcohol and expensive food, and poor kids and trinket sellers consume tourists’ money.

The next day would be another rush, in which I could only accomplish what I needed to if the sotramas cooperated. Normally you can’t pick up your passports from the office until 3:00 PM, but I went early, hoping it would be ready. It wasn’t, and I waited until 3:30 until I got them. Now I needed to figure out how to hitch a ride out of Bamako in the direction of Segou. I went to the nearest bus stop and after waiting for twenty minutes I got an a bus that people told me was going to a neighborhood in the direction I wanted to go. This was my best luck so far. It not only went there, but continued for miles on the road out of town. I told the driver I wanted to go as far as possible. Then we stopped, and I got on a connecting bus, which took me even farther. It is incredible how far Bamako stretches. We finally arrived at the formal exit of town where there is a police checkpoint and buses stop to fill any leftover crannies with people like me. I got off the bus and was immediately confronted by people that wanted to take my bag and load it onto their bus. I ignored them and pretended not to speak French. They followed me for a while, asking me where I was going, and eventually started speaking in English. I stayed silent though, and after passing the police checkpoint, they left me alone. A police woman told me this wasn’t a place to get a ride, so I took yet another sotrama farther out of town. I took me about thirty km before turning off the main highway. By this time, there was precious little daylight with which to hitch. I was standing in a tiny village, getting curious looks from people, but they left me alone for the most part.

Three hours later I was still waiting, and traffic was minimal, when a guy came up and started chatting with me. He told me he was also a foreigner, from Gabon. He spoke a little bit of English, since he had spent some time in Nigeria. After a long conversation, he told me that he is a money counterfeiter. Dollars, Euros, Francs, etc. That explained why he had worked in Nigeria for a few years.

An hour later, he showed up again to chat me up. This time he was offering me an opportunity to get in on business with him. He wanted me to come to Bamako with him to see the operation. That actually sounded like a great idea. I mean, not to get involved with the business, but to actually go and see where they were counterfeiting money would be terribly interesting. We exchanged numbers, in case I wanted to check it out later. He seemed a little too earnest, though which led me to mistrust him. He then offered a place for me to stay if I couldn’t get a ride. It was kind of him, but I wasn’t about to stay at his place. I had started to get a bad feeling from him, and decided I would not be staying in this village any longer than I had to. The next bus that passed was a crowded van with a single open place. I bargained for the price, had them cut it in half ($4), and was on my way just before midnight.

It was a horribly uncomfortable ride, but at least I was on my way. We stopped frequently and moved slowly. At four in the morning, I finally made it back to the house, exhausted, but successful in obtaining our visa extensions, coffee and my guidebook.

The next day I was informed that I had forgotten the soy sauce. SOY SAUCE!

Bamako Visa Run Part 1

In December, when we were still traveling with Susan, my Lonely Planet West Africa guidebook had gone missing. Accusations about who had had it last could be thrown around, but there would be no point in that. Somebody had left it somewhere, and it was gone for good.

Then in the middle of February, I got a text from Susan, that she had found my guidebook and if I came back to Bamako I could get it. Although we loved traveling in Morocco without a guidebook, this thing was like gold in West Africa, where information was sparse. Obtaining one locally would be nearly impossible without stealing it from another traveler (which had crossed my mind on a ferry in Djenne). We had not heard from Susan since we had parted ways in early January, so we had no idea what she was up to.

It was settled that I would be going on a mission to Bamako, to retrieve my book and to obtain visa extensions for all three of us, as well as pick up some specialty items such as coffee and soy sauce.

I wanted to do it quick, so I would only have to spend one night in Bamako. This would be tough, and it would require me getting to the visa office before noon to get our visa extensions processed. On Monday morning I left home with a nearly empty backpack at six am trying to hitch a ride to Bamako. Taking the bus was too slow and unreliable if I really wanted to get to Bamako in time before the visa office closed. Right after getting to the main highway, though, several other locals, including a couple soldiers had assembled to try and get rides. This ruined my chances, so at 8, I went back home to try the next day.

Again, at six am I hit the road, this time getting the first passing car to pick me up. It was in a beat-up old Mercedes, driven by an even older man with the last name Kone. He was in Segou to visit family, but was going back to Bamako where he lives and works. He was a sweet man, and I liked his presence. I was glad because we were making good time and I was sure to make it to Bamako in time to hit the visa office.

After an hour, though, the car broke down in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t understand the problem, but he seemed to. He said there was a town a few km away where we could go to for help. So we started walking. When a motorbike came, Kone started waving and flagged him down. He explained to the man, who happened to be a photographer, what was going on, and told me to get on the bike, and he would take me to the town. Halfway to the town, though, the bike got a flat tire, and we had to walk it to a nearby village, where he could get it fixed. I hung out with the guy as they fixed his tire, while the curious kids began to amass around me. It was taking a long time, and I was getting worried as I had left my backpack in the man’s car. Eventually, though, I saw Kone pass on a motorbike, and I waved to him to let me know where he was. Thirty minutes later, he came back in another man’s car, picked me up and we headed back to his car.

We made it to the mechanic in the next time, but we had lost at least an hour. This is travel in Africa, though, and none of this felt bizarre, or even like an out of the ordinary inconvenience. Kone told me it might take a while so if I was in a hurry I should go look for another ride. I should have done this the moment the car broke down, actually.

So I walked through the long town bustling town that hugged the highway tightly. It was surprisingly crowded for a town that probably existed mostly because of the highway and was conveniently halfway between Segou and Bamako. I walked the entire length of the town with my thumb out, and just as it was starting to peter out and cars started to resume highway speed, a car with dark tinted windows stopped for me.

I hopped in the front seat as the man’s two kids moved to the back seat. This man, whose name I regret forgetting, was extremely warm. I could tell that he had a kind soul simply through the way he interacted with his two sons. Like Kone, he was coming back from Segou where he was visiting family. His name, however, was not Bambara, and his origins were actually in northern Mali. He was a devout Muslim, which probably explained his wonderful hospitality and generosity to everyone he came in contact with.

At my feet were a few black plastic bags. Every time we passed somebody walking along the road, who looked poor or hungry, he would pull over, grab one of the bags and hand it over to them. He did it with little fanfare, and I had to ask him. He just explained that the bags were full of food, and it was his duty to help those traveling. This man, who worked in the government’s department of agriculture, had a comfortable life, but he truly loved to share it and he was not showy about it.

Since he knew that I was trying to get to the visa office before noon, he drove extremely fast. When we hit traffic, he would turn on a siren (not sure of the legality of this, but as a government worker, I am sure he had some leeway) and cruise past everyone else on the road.

Even though he lived in a neighborhood about 8 km away from the visa office, he insisted on taking me all the way there so I was sure to make it in time. We arrived at the visa office at 11:50. I asked him if there were buses to Balkasambougou, the neighborhood I would be heading to after visiting the visa office to meet with Susan. He told me to take a taxi and handed me 10,000 francs ($20). I tried to refuse, but he shoved it in my hand, and jumped in his car before I could even thank him for his generosity.

I ran into the office, which was empty by now, and the grumbling woman in charge coldly told me it was closed. I pointed out that it was only 11:54 and I needed to submit my forms now. I knew she wouldn’t budge. I had dealt with her before, and she does not move a finger for anyone if she doesn’t have to. I asked if I could at least get the paperwork so I could prepare it for the next day. No dice. She said they were out of them.

So now I needed to get in touch with Susan. She had told me to meet her at some school near the gendarmerie station in Balkasambougou, a neighborhood I was unfamiliar with. There were no buses in this part of town; not that I would know which one to take anyway. All I knew was that I needed to get to the other side of the river. So I put my index finger out in hopes of getting a ride to the other side of the bridge. After fifteen minutes, a man in an old burly SUV (the kinds that are actually meant for rough terrain) stopped for me. He was a Tuareg man, from the Timbuktu region, dressed in a long robe and turban. His name was Intazoume Moussa and he seemed extremely skeptical of me. He didn’t understand why I would be hitchhiking (which was completely reasonable), but he said he was heading to his office in the neighborhood I was going to and that he would drop me off near the gendarmerie station.

He grilled me about why I would be hitchhiking when I obviously had the money for a taxi. I gave him the usual responses about how I find the experience riding with random locals was an important learning experience different to going with a taxi driver who simply wanted to charge you as much as possible to get from A to B. I also had to explain that all my money would eventually be spent in Mali, and the less I spent on transportation, the longer I could stay in Mali, and simply inject my capital into other aspects of the local economy. Anyway, he proved my first point completely. He revealed that he was the grandfather of a prominent Tuarage rebel leader (who he was surprised I hadn’t heard of). The Tuareg rebellion has been an on and off conflict in the north of the country for over twenty years. Moussa told me about an NGO that he ran to help the Tuaregs in the conflicted region. He had a tough exterior, but by the end of our ride, I could tell he was a truly compassionate man underneath, who had probably been through a lot of hard times in his life. He invited me to his office, which I would have liked to have seen, but I was still in mission mode and did not want to spend a moment in Bamako that I didn’t have to.

It is crazy how much I loved this city when I first arrived, and how little I wanted to be in it now. The peace of Segou had really grown on me, even though there was very little to do. The crowds, traffic, pollution and speed of the city that I had originally found so exhilarating, was just obnoxious at this point.

I walked around Balkasambougou for a couple hours looking for the gendarmerie station being pointed in different directions by everybody. When I finally found it, I realized I was actually in Magnambougou, a neighborhood I had stayed in for four days in December.

I found the school that Susan had mentioned and gave her a call. I still had no idea what she was doing here, but started to piece it together as I waited. When she met me, she said she didn’t have much time to explain, but we arranged to meet up later that night. She handed me the guidebook, which was still a miraculous recovery that she said she would explain later.

Building the Sail Boat

Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

A huge portion of our time in Segou was spent building the sail for the boat. Jonathan worked endlessly designing, sewing, building, stressing and barely sleeping to fulfill his dream of owning his own sail boat.

The reason was that we had been troubled by the harmattan winds, which have the potential to stop our boat in its wake, or even reverse the direction of the river. Jonathan figured if he built a sail, we would be able to tack down river against the wind. Although we had never seen any sailing pirogues do anything except go down wind, Jonathan pointed out that Polynesians could sail long distances in small canoes against winds using false keels, which basically meant lots of weight right in the middle of the boat. We would also have two sails, instead of a single spinnaker, like everyone here. I didn’t know a thing about sailing or how sailing boats even work, so I was open. Blai wasn’t sure, and figured we would need some sort of keel under our boat.

The first step consisted of sewing together a whole bunch of grain sacks to make the two sails. We had to find the strongest sacks, which turned out to be the sacks from sugar imported from Brazil. Jonathan didn’t stop sewing for several days, and Blai and I helped out as much as we could.

Sewing the sails at home. Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

The next challenge would be to build the mast. Most boats used the trunk of a certain kind of tree, which looked pretty shoddy, and none were very tall. Jonathan wanted a 5-meter mast, so we ended up using a beam of high quality (and expensive) red wood, the same type that tour boat is constructed from.

Quality rope was impossible to find, so our lines were made from a 1 cm thick nylon rope. We spent hours “whipping” the ends, which consists of melting the tips, then sewing it up tightly to ensure it would never fray.

Jonathan and Blai set up the rigging on the top of the mast before we installed it on the boat. We nailed a board across the boat, parallel to one of the benches, then two more smaller boards across to make a square the size of the mast. Next we nailed a wooden square on the floor, for the mast to drop into. This was good because it made our mast just pop in and out. The whole rig would be easily removable and not nailed in. Putting it in the first time was difficult and scary, since it was so tall and heavy, but we managed to not drop it or crush anyone’s head. Just to have the mast up after nearly three weeks in Segou was an exciting moment. We just stared around and looked at the new addition to our boat. Jonathan was beaming.

Blai and I after setting up the mast for the first time. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

Our vessel awaits.

As soon as we got the front sail up, the jib, Jonathan announced, we’re going sailing! We knew we wouldn’t be able to go up wind, but he wanted to feel us move by wind’s power. I didn’t even get a chance to put my things away in the house, so I just hopped in the boat. I was on the bow of the boat with a paddle, while Blai was in the middle to control the sail and Jonathan was in the back to steer us with a paddle. With the 5 meter mast, our boat was now completely wobbly, and any little move would send the whole boat rocking back and forth. When we got in the middle of the river, for some reason, I needed to move from the bow, to the middle, but there was a line in my way. As I tried to curl my body around it, the boat started moving back and forth. I tried to recover, but I over-corrected, and went flying off the boat. As I resurfaced, the guys were laughing, and Blai asked if I had my phone on me. Oh, I forgot, yes, I did. And my money belt for some reason. I swam back to the boat, handing Blai my sensitive items. My phone looked finished, and my passport was pretty wet. My Mali visa (the best visa I have ever seen) was pretty ruined, but the rest was ok. After taking apart my phone and letting it dry for a couple days, it made an impressive recovery.

Balancing act. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

A few days later, we had the whole rig more or less complete. A mast, a main sail, a jib, a boom (made of bamboo) plenty of lines, cleats, etc. For a sailing rig built from scratch with local materials, I have to say it was very impressive.

The first time we took it out, however, we were unable to move forward. The best we could do into the wind was go sideways, and cross the river without advancing an inch. This led to a long succession of new and fairly crazy ideas.

The first thing that Blai and Jonathan came up with was to make a huge paddle to use as a rudder in the back. We had seen some of the local sailing pirogues using this to keep them straight so we gave it a shot. We needed materials, though, and didn’t want to make investments into things that we did not know would even work. This is the point where I would say that we got controversially resourceful.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

There was a broken down donkey cart in front of our house, and at night Jonathan and Blai tore off one of the metal walls of it. It was 3x1 foot piece of metal that would become the paddle. They wrapped the paddle in grain sacks so nobody would know we had confiscated a piece from the donkey cart wall.

Our testing of the paddle was unsuccessful. We could only get a slight forward motion, and the amount of effort it took did not make it worth it. We needed a keel.

Jonathan with the wrapped up paddle and lines and tools hanging off his belt. Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

Jonathan toiled the next couple days on the keel. He grabbed the other wall off the donkey cart, and nailed it into a frame with the other wall and some boards from Blai’s bed frame. He then wrapped the metal pieces in bags to conceal them from sight. When we hauled the keel down to the boat for testing, we saw that the women in their gardens immediately recognized what we were doing. One of them started yelling to the other women, while pointing at the unused donkey cart that was mysteriously missing its walls. They never confronted us, but everyone knew. The thing is, we weren’t really going to steal anything, we just needed to see if this would actually work, and then we would go and buy materials to replicate our experiments.

So we lashed the new keel under the boat and set out with high hopes. This was not an ideal thing to do, as many parts of the river are extremely shallow and this would reduce our clearance by at least a foot.

It didn’t work. We tried the placing the keel different places on the boat, but we still couldn’t do more than just cross the river without advancing against the wind. Back to the drawing board.

The keel, lashed underneath our boat. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

There was constant brainstorming, and our next big idea came when we were just sitting around looking at materials at our disposal. Half jokingly, I suggested using the huge metal shutters on our windows for the keel frame. We ended up deciding that it was worth a shot, so Jonathan started planning it out. He also decided that instead of a big paddle in the back, we really needed a big rudder. He built it out of the large wooden seat from the stern of the boat and used extra bamboo and bed frame boards to attach it to the boat.

I was scared that this would actually work, as it made our boat incredibly complicated. Not only would we need to set up the sails every day, but we would need to get our boat into deep enough water to attach the huge keel and rudder. We would only be able to sail in depths of at least three or four feet, which frankly was frequently impossible.

The new extra large keel, made from window shutters from our house. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

At the last minute, we decided to just go all out and use our other keel at the same time. Two keels, and a rudder. It was as far as we were willing to go and we knew it. Setting it up was a headache and we would need to start with the larger keel inside the boat, then put it in place when we got to deep enough water. Jonathan would dive under the boat to tie it up underneath. When we dipped it into the water, we heard a squeak then a splash. I saw a bat in the water. It had been sleeping inside the shutter the whole time, including the entire time that Jonathan had been banging at it with a hammer.

Jonathan dives under the boat to secure the keel with rope and bamboo.

It seemed to work at first. We were moving, and the rudder had a lot of power to keep our boat in the right direction. But within a few minutes, we saw that we were still not moving forward. We had to throw in the towel. Jonathan was extremely dejected. He had put his heart and soul into this project and it seemed obvious now that we wouldn’t be going anywhere with it. We took down the sails, took off the keel and pulled out a bag of wine sachets to drown our sorrows. In a way, though, I was relieved. I was never interested in over-complicating this journey, although moving on the windy days would have been nice. Still, I had been a part of this for the entire month, and it felt disappointing to see all that hard work wasted. I learned a lot, though, and at least understand how sail boats work (and don’t work).

On our last days in Segou, we put the bed back together, returned the donkey cart walls and shutters. The whole community must have thought we were insane this whole time, especially for the fact that we were trying to do something that they already knew as impossible.

Scenes from Segou Part 3

Market Day

Without many shops or produce in our part of town, we relied heavily on the Monday market. At first it was an exhilarating headache. There were so many different things to buy to supply us until the next week in an unfamiliar sea of commerce with unforgiving crowds. It was beautiful, though. At first, the endeavor would take at least a couple hours with two people. By our fourth week, I was navigating the maze of stalls and women on mats alone and finishing in under thirty minutes. I would have to take Jonathan’s backpack with me, and fill it nearly to the brim with about 50 pounds of food and produce. Onions, tomatoes, rice, groundnut paste (peanut butter), oil, oranges, mangoes, bananas, pasta, sugar, salt, spices, tea, garlic, etc. We weren’t paddling every day anymore, but we kept the same appetite.

Blai always loved going to the market because it was like a fashion show. Not for him, I mean; he still wore the same flower print shorts torn blue shirt as almost every other day. But the women get dressed to go shopping at the market like they get dressed up to go out on Friday night back home. Not the same styles, but it is the best opportunity to show off how good you look. And they looked beautiful in their colorful tailored clothes with their endless array of new creative hairstyles. Blai would walk around, forgetting about tomatoes and onions, eyes wide open, mouth agape, whispering to me, “Toma ya! Did you see that girl? She was beauuutiful!”

Pork

During our search for honey wine in the Christian part of town, we happened upon the other luxury that only Christians can offer in a Muslim country: pork. We visited the pig farmers and it was pretty obvious why so many religions forbid eating these animals. They were disgusting. They smelled awful and ate a slop made from the leftover mash from millet beer production. On the other, hand, we knew they would be delicious.

We returned the following Saturday, when they would slaughter a few pigs and sell them to the local Christians and Animists that like to indulge. We were happy to find that it was the cheapest form of protein available at $2/kilo. We each bought a kilo to fulfill each of our own dreams. This was a big deal for us, as we hadn’t eaten anything pig-related in months.

At the pork vendor, we met a guy who thought he was talking smooth, but quickly revealed himself as a two-bit hustler. I didn’t respond to him at all, but Blai has no problem engaging these guys. He asked what neighborhood we were living in, and instead of saying “Sebougou” Blai quickly responded, “Sex beaucoup”, which in French sounds like Sebougou, but actually means “much sex”. The guy never caught the joke, as Blai frequently mentioned “much sex” throughout the conversation as Jonathan and I tried to contain our laughter behind him.

Buying the pork. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

Blai made a wonderful pork stew the first night, while I marinated pork in lime juice, chilies and cumin overnight. The next day, I made a version of puerco pibil, a slow-roasted pork, my favorite Mexican dish. Jonathan packed his pork in salt, then smoked it. He was successful in preserving the pork so we didn’t need to refrigerate it, but one small piece of it could salt a meal for all three of us.

Jonathan's pork-smoking setup. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

Puppies

Somewhere in the middle of February Blai’s dog, Fura, finally gave birth two twelve little bundles of half Spanish half Moroccan joy. I am not much for dogs and cats, but jeez, they were cute. For the sake of Fura, though, Blai decided it would be best to “put some of them away”.

I wasn’t paying much attention, but had an idea of what was going on. It seemed wrong to me, but it wasn’t my dog or puppies. I watched as Jonathan and Blai walked out the door with a big squirming grain sack.

Later, when swimming or bathing in front of the gardens near our house, I would occasionally almost step on the sack, submerged in just a few feet of water. They hadn’t thrown it out nearly far enough.

Puppie Portraits are going to make me famous. And there is a lot more where these came from.

Salad

I am not much for salad, but when it is staring at you from your front porch all day, it seems silly not to eat it. We would regularly go to the women that tended the gardens near our house to buy salad. 100 francs for a huge mess of lettuce, 100 more for carrots, 100 more for little onions, etc. We could also get some lemongrass, mint and ginger for tea or cooking. For under a dollar we could have a huge salad, picked fresh that day. Sometimes Sebougou seemed too perfect.

The gardens in front of our house.

Water-Getting’

Getting drinking water was a necessary evil. The nearest water pump was at least half a km away, which by African standards is not bad, and we only used the well water for flushing our toilets. For us, though, it was something new to walk that far for such a basic necessity. Jonathan and I got used to it quickly, but Blai, always quick to work smarter not harder decided after a couple weeks that this was not for us. He would always keep an eye out for the local kids and their donkey cart, then run out and see if they could go get our water for us. He would pay them the 100 francs to pay at the pump (a franc per liter) and give them 100 francs for their time.

As much as we were living simply by our western standards, it was moments like this that would knock me back into the reality of Africa and how much richer we really were. Another one of these moments was realizing that our bags of garbage on the porch would always disappear when we weren’t looking. It quickly became apparent that the local kids were nabbing them and searching them for recyclables. We later came across a pile of our garbage, to find that we actually produced little of use to them beyond the plastic bag. But that bag was always taken.

Swimming

There was a broken down pirogue not far from ours. It had been slightly torn apart, either from weather, or for use as scrap wood. We heard that a couple years ago, the boat had capsized in the river, spilling all nine passengers into the water. Every one of them died. I know it sounds unbelievable, as the Niger is no raging river. And even if it is not true, it wouldn’t shock me. Africans have a reputation for not being keen on swimming. This is more based on anecdotal evidence in both Mali and Ghana, and from others who have traveled Africa, rather than anything scientific.

We always noticed that nobody was ever in the river past their waist or maybe shoulders. Other than the few guys who dive to the bottom of the river to retrieve sand, we never saw Africans swim.

So one day when we were working on the boat, and we had a big crowd of kids watching, I tried to get some of them in the water to swim. This was either to see if they could, or to teach them. They were intimidated, but I wasn’t sure if it was by me, or the water. They slowly crept closer as I summoned them into the water. They spoke no French, but they understood what I was playing at. None of them wanted to be the first to jump in. Finally a brave young boy, one of the bigger ones, stepped forward. I brought him to an edge, where the depth dropped from knee depth to eight feet, and took his hand and jumped over the edge. He panicked a little, but was able to doggy paddle back to where he could touch. Then, I grabbed him, as he gave me an approving look, and threw him in, and he swam back again. He looked excited, but I couldn’t tell if it was because he was swimming for the first time, or just to be playing with the strange foreigner he had been watching for so long.

Some of the other kids started swimming around in the shallow area, giving a pretty good effort at doing what I had shown them about how to move arms and legs. Eventually I got all the kids trust, and it turned into a giant hoist fest, in which the kids would just get in line and I would throw them about 8 feet into the air and they would plunge into the deep water, and paddle back to the safety of shallow water. Blai came around, and we teamed up to throw the kids extra high, letting them do flips into the water. The girls stayed on shore, and I tried to get them involved, but even at that age they had submitted to their place in society as passive observers of male tomfoolery.

Scenes from Segou Part 2

Greetings

The most interesting thing about Sebougou, our neighborhood in Segou, was how much it didn’t feel like a city. For being part of the second biggest city in Mali, it felt like a little village. Most homes were made of mud, the people spoke very little French, nobody had electricity and we would see the same people in the same places every single day. Greetings were exchanged with every person you passed and every group of men or women hanging out beside the road. This was the best part of Sebougou. When I was in a bad mood, I would hate to walk around the neighborhood because of the friendliness. Inevitably, though, within a few minutes of walking down the street and having people shout greetings to me, I would be torn out of my sorry state, and wonder why I had been so angry or sad in the first place.

Studying

One night I walked home along the main highway that ran through Sebougou. It was dark, but since it was the road connecting the city with the other major cities of Mali, it was well-lit.

I noticed a couple of teenage boys reading near one of the streetlamps on the median. Then I saw a young girl reading near the ditch on the side of the road. By the time I got to my turnoff, I had noticed a couple dozen people, from children to young adults, reading or writing near the road. It took a while before it dawned on me that since our neighborhood was basically off the power grid, this is where students would come to study. Dozens of neighborhood kids, walking out to the highway after dark so they had light to read under.

Cooking with Kadi’s family

We became friends with Kadi, after she had come with us on our boat to the Amadou and Mariam concert. She was easygoing and friendly, and enjoyed having us over to hang out with her family. After inquiring about how to make Toe, the millet porridge, Kadi said she would have her mother show me. So we came over the next day and got to see the whole process, from sifting the millet grains, to taking it to the mill to grind it, to sifting it again, to boiling it, stirring it, then making the sauce. We had a great time eating with her and her family, and we promised to have the whole family over to our house to share a meal soon.

Kadi styles the hair in this household. Photo credit: Blai Coulibaly.

Kadi's mom shows me how to stir...

...so I stirred!

DJ Bako’s Party

Our good friend DJ Bako had recently opened his barbershop just down the street from us in Sebougou. We had first met him when he picked us up in his moto-taxi, and then when he picked up all four of us on his motorcycle. Now he was closer to us with his new business venture.

DJ Bako in his barbershop.

One of Bako's girlfriends puts some corn rows in this other girl's hair.

To kick things off, and attract attention to his barbershop, he decided to DJ a big party outside of it. Of course we promised to attend. Jonathan was still recovering from malaria, so Blai and I went without him. When we arrived, there was already a surprisingly big crowd taking up the whole space of dirt between the barbershop and the main road. As most of these street side type of parties go, there crowd formed a big circle centered around an empty dance floor for the coolest young men, and occasionally ladies to show off their moves. Bako stood behind his DJ equipment, watching over, surrounded by chairs occupied by the prettiest girls in the neighborhood and his closest friends. One of the girls had the responsibility of crowd control, which consisted of walking around the edge of the crowd, menacingly, with a stick, smacking any kid that got a little too close, or danced out of turn.

As soon as Bako saw us, he fished us out of the crowd, announced our presence on the microphone and insisted that we danced. Although I have been in this situation many times before, this time was different. I was living here, for the moment at least, and knew many of the people around. I wanted to just fit in and hang out like normal people, without being the center of attention at the local dance party. But it was pointless to resist, so Blai and let loose as the crowd erupted. I grabbed a random young boy out of the crowd to have a dance showdown with me. Of course I got schooled, but it was great to see him show off his moves. I knew that letting him show off beside me had made his night, and gave him a good story for his friends for a long time coming.

“Bambara Beer”

One night, just as I was heading home from town, a young man approached me. His friendliness seemed fishy, but I had no honest reason to blow him off. Then he asked if I had ever tried “Bambara beer”. I should have known at that moment to tell him to get lost, as nobody calls it “Bambara beer”, except, I can only assume, tourists that don’t know the local name for the millet beer. “Nya?” I asked. “Yes, Nya!” Sure, I know it. And actually, we had been wondering where in town we could get hooked up with honey wine, or “idromiel”. That is what I was after. He said he knew where to get it, and would take me along.

I was still suspicious, but I also needed this information. I quickly picked up on the fact that he was drunk, and saw that he would probably try to use me to buy him his next drink. On the walk we stopped at some house that seemed to be a brothel. I don’t know we he stopped in there for a couple minutes, but the staff didn’t seem happy with him. I was glad this was not the destination.

Twenty minutes later we arrived at the bar that served, as he was still calling it, “Bambara beer”. I reminded him that I didn’t want Nya, and that I was looking for idromiel. This bar had gone dry on both he said, but we picked up a middle-aged woman with a motorbike. She told me to hop on and she would take me to the other bar.

Ten minutes later, and we were all sitting together in a dark little mud compound with the likely array of characters. We were in the Christian part of town, which meant that people were much more open to alcohol and it showed. They were all friendly enough, and I liked the atmosphere. Somebody brought the three of us a 2 liter jug of millet beer and handed us calabashes to drink from. I was careful not to drink much, and remind them that I was simply looking for the honey wine. They basically ignored me and I had to assume there was no chance of honey wine. When I finished my calabash, I said I needed to go. The young man and middle-aged woman reminded me that I had to pay the 300 francs ($.60) for the millet beer. I handed them 100 francs for my third of the jug (though I hadn’t even drank that much) and started to walk. Then things got heated. Both of them started yelling at me, saying that I didn’t understand the culture and had to pay, since I was the guest. However, after experiencing just one minute of honest Malian hospitality, anybody would know that it was quite the opposite, and I would not have been expected to pay anything. They acted like they had no money (and maybe they didn’t) and I didn’t care. I was glad to leave the swindlers with the bill.

House Party with Kadi

As promised, we invited Kadi’s family over to our house one day. The parents/grandparents didn’t come, seven of the younger generation, along with an aunt, did. They brought large cooking pots and a few things to make yassa, a lemon and onion dish with rice. We had a couple of chickens to make our usual feast with roasted potatoes and aioli.

The chicken roasts while everyone hangs out.

Kadi makes the Yassa.

It was a lovely afternoon and everyone took part in the cooking. Jonathan and I weren’t efficient at plucking the chickens, so Esperance, Kadi’s aunt, took them from us and finished the job quickly, then gutted them herself, showing none of the squeamishness that the younger girls had.

The chicken was a special treat for the kids, as they get little meat in their diets beside the occasional scrap of fish. The aioli, however, was less popular.

Blai and Kadi's baby, Saba.

Porch Fire

I had some down times in Segou. I have painted a fairly happy go lucky portrait of my life there, but at times I was really in a funk. Nothing heavy, just feeling lost in idleness, maybe loneliness, maybe I’d been around the same personalities for too long.

I had just bought a bag of charcoal to do the cooking on the front porch, but I was having trouble getting it lit. Normally, when camping, we had no problem lighting it with some paper and sticks, but in the house we would usually use a dribble of gas to get things going. After five minutes of struggling with increasing amounts of gas and intense fanning to light the coals, I heard Jonathan yell to me, “Hey, I see a lot of fanning, but not a lot of cooking.” For some reason this rubbed me the wrong way, and briefly inhibited my common sense as I angrily poured a big glug of gas onto the coals. Immediately the flames shot up five feet, and there were little fires all around the stove. Then I looked at the plastic gas bottle in my hand and saw the rim was on fire. I tried to blow it out, but it was useless and I dropped it on the ground, causing another huge eruption of flame as gas spilled out of the bottle. I knew I had only a couple seconds before that bottle exploded, so I quickly grabbed it off the ground and threw it in the grass in front of our house, where it erupted into a giant ball of fire, nearly setting the mango tree on fire next to it. Huge fires were still roaring from the ground where the gas had spilled and the other tall flame from the stove was going strong. I knew we had buckets of water nearby, but figured that’s not the best thing for a gas fire. Jonathan was going mad yelling at me, though he didn’t seem to know what to do either. I thought I had burnt the house down, knowing full well it was made almost entirely of concrete. The house was filling with smoke, so Blai ran around to open all the windows. All we could do was wait for all the gas to burn off.

It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes before everything was back to normal, save for the blackened floor, railings and ceiling of our porch. I felt like a complete idiot. I had this constant nagging feeling that I was always incapable of performing simple tasks, and this seemed to prove it. That is, until Jonathan and Blai each took their turn at trying to light the coals and failed as well. Something about the bag of charcoal I had bought was faulty, and was impossible to light. Therefore, my incompetence began at the point of buying bad charcoal, rather than nearly burning down the house because I couldn’t light the fire.

The day before we moved out, I spent several hours scrubbing all the char off of the burnt areas of our porch.

This is our cooking area after I cleaned it. The right half is where most of the burning took place.

Scenes from Segou Part 1

Scenes from Segou

After the festival, Blai, Jonathan and I stayed in Segou for over a month. Blai needed to stick around as Fura was about to have puppies, and he didn’t want to deal with this on the river. Jonathan had decided to build a sailing rig for the boat, a process that was dragged out slowly. I had no choice but to hang out, relax, and help with the sail construction.

Roommates.

We lived in Sebougou, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Segou, that felt more like a tiny village than one of Mali’s biggest cities. There is no running water, just a well, and although there are power lines along the road, almost nobody has access to it. We made friends with many of our neighbors and by the end of it we felt a sense of belonging in the little community.

I will not write about everything that happened during the month, just provide short vignettes or anecdotes of what we experienced during our time there.

Millet Sacks

We had no furniture in our house, but we had learned to be resourceful. The rats had torn into the huge sacks of millet, so we simply tied them back up, arranged them around our yellow mat, and we had couches. In fact, by this point on the trip, laying on the mat, leaning on the sacks had become far more comfortable than a chair.

Chief

The chief seemed to be the caretaker of our house. In fact, we really had no idea who owned it. We assumed it belonged to some foreigner, and the chief simply had the key and wanted to make a few bucks off of it until whoever owned it came back. $20 covered it for the month.

Chief was a tall man with style. He always wore long robes a skullcap and sunglasses, although these were not for style, but because he was missing an eye. He didn’t speak a damn word of French, but he would come by our house for conversation at least every couple of days. He and his little brown dog would walk up, he would announce his presence, and we would come out to greet him. His huge smile would reveal a mostly toothless mouth as he went through the long list of Bambara greetings, refusing to let go of my hand until I had replied “Nba” to every last phrase. It would climax with both of us yelling “Nba!” simultaneously. Then he would move on to Jonathan and Blai. Then he would look around, and we would all realize that was about as far as our conversation would go, so immediately transitioned to goodbyes and more handshakes.

Chief must have had many wives, as everyone who lived in our vicinity seemed to be his child or some other close relation. When a couple of his sons that lived next door came to take two of the grain sacks that we were using as furniture, we complained to chief. He made it right by bringing us a few chairs to replace them. I assume that the problems he usually has to mediate as chief are simple, but from what we saw, he was a fair and understanding leader.

Blai and Chief became peanut buddies. Every once in a while the chief would call for Blai, waving a key. They would walk to a nearby concrete building used for storage. Chief would discreetly unlock the door and open a big sack of raw peanuts. He would take a few handfuls and give half to Blai, putting a finger to his lips, telling him to keep quiet about the gift.

Malaria

After a couple of days of intense fever, Jonathan finally gave in to go to the hospital, admitting it might be malaria. He was looking awful at this point, so Blai ran out to the road, flagged down a guy on a motorbike, and made him come to our house and take Jonathan to the hospital. Blai hitched in next, then me.

At a hospital in Mali (probably in Africa, maybe the whole developing world?) it is very DIY. After they checked Jonathan into one of the only private rooms (without asking if he preferred the cheaper communal rooms) we were told we needed to go get a malaria test. Blai ran to the in-hospital pharmacy to buy the test kit. Then we had to find the doctor again. He took the blood sample, then handed it to me and told me to get it processed. I found the lab, and paid for the test, being told to come back later…how long was not specified. When it was ready, it turned out positive of course. We had to find the doctor again, who wrote us a prescription for all the medical tools necessary, and Blai went back to the pharmacy. He came back with an assortment of pills, tubes, needles, bottles of IV fluid and bags.

Jonathan was in and out of delirium. We were (fairly) certain he would be fine, so his nonsensical babble was mostly entertaining. The nurse eventually arrived to hook up his IV, and give him some pills. Blai left soon after, but I stuck around to make sure he was ok, and to take advantage of the oulets in his room. I had brought my laptop, and phone, and was getting everything charged. When the first IV bag was finished, Jonathan insisted on putting the second bag in, as he wanted to check out before night, so he wouldn’t have to pay for a second day. I told him it was a bad idea, but he insisted. When the nurse came back, and saw the second bag already hooked in, she seemed annoyed and disconnected it. She said he would have to stay the night.

The next day he was in much better shape, but now we had to face the bill. The private room was $30/day, which seemed pretty outrageous. Blai went and spoke directly with the doctor and explained that we had not asked for a private room and we would only pay $2/day. Blai had expected to bargain a price somewhere in between, but the doctor didn’t put up much of a fight, and just accepted the money directly. Interpret that as you wish.

It took Jonathan about five days to regain his strength. It took Blai and I about five minutes to start taking malaria a little more seriously. I started sleeping in my tent and Blai rigged up my mosquito net. I finally broke out the mosquito repellent that Lise had given me a month earlier that I had been saving in my bag.

Free Fish

We were living the highlife. Actually, we were living the high life for a few bums that had been hitchhiking and living in tents or a truck for most of the last few months. We had a house, without power or water, and we had a boat, also without power. It didn’t stop us from having sundowners in our “yacht”.

During one of our evening paddles, the fish were jumping around us. Within minutes, one of them hopped right into our boat. It flopped around and a panic ensued, as we rushed to stop it from jumping back out.

It was no feast, but a hard-earned appetizer.

Blai also found pants on the far bank that night. They made him look like a pirate/cowboy.

Bamboo trek

After the festival, traffic in Segou was modest, and getting rides to and from town were more difficult than normal. I had been in town to run some errands, such as pick up some bamboo. We had figured that having one bamboo was good, but if all three of us could use it on the boat we would really fly.

After using internet for a little longer than I had expected, I was stuck just before sunset trying to hitch a ride back with the bamboo. I had seen it done before on motorbikes, so I didn’t worry much. Unfortunately, though, the sun was almost down and people could not see me very well.

Suddenly I felt a jolt from behind, and the bamboo scraped across my neck as a motorbike nearly lost control in the dirt next to me. The driver had hit my bamboo poles with his shoulder, sending them flying forward. I was disoriented, and annoyed that he hadn’t been more careful. He felt the same about me. We silently walked towards each other, and he picked up a piece of discarded cloth on the ground and tied the ends of the poles together, so it was both easier for me to carry, and one of them wouldn’t stick out in the road. He got back on his bike and went on his way.

One of my sandals broke en route. I still had six km to go if I couldn’t get a ride.

My other sandal broke. I still had 3 km to go if I couldn’t get a ride.

The bamboo was digging into my shoulders, and switching sides was no longer helping.

At nearly 11:00 PM I finally hobbled barefoot into the house. It was the first time that somebody had had to come all the way home without getting a single ride. But at least I had that bamboo thing taken care of.

The next day, Blai, inspected the bamboo, with great disappointment. He said it was too thin, and not straight enough. I said it was the best he could find. He said he wouldn’t share the cost of this bamboo, and I would need to take them to the shop and get my money back or an exchange.

Showers

For the first week, we enjoyed our private bathrooms with shower. We would happily carry buckets of water in from the well behind our house to wash ourselves. This charade quickly died out when carrying water got boring, and we would just walk down to the river with our soap. The women would get a kick out of it as they washed their dishes and bathed beside us.