Djenne Part 2 and Segou

The view from the honey wine bar

On our second day in Djenne, Lise and I went on a walk out of town to see some of the surrounding villages. We took a pirogue across the river, and found ourselves suddenly in an empty expanse of grass and dirt, a stark contrast to the dense mud brick forest behind us.

The Djenne skyline

We wandered toward the nearest village. We were looking for something by the name of Welingara, but when we arrived, the people there just pointed off into the distance. We couldn’t even see a village in the distance, but we just wandered anyway. Eventually some gray shapes appeared on the horizon, and as we drew closer they turned into a tiny, compact village. In fact, it appeared more as an extremely large familial compound than a village, the way it was walled off on the edges. We approached a young woman, drawing water from the well outside the wall. These were Fulani people, so our Bambara greetings were not even acknowledged. We engaged in a mutual staring/smiling awkwardly contest. Without the ability to communicate in French or at least break the ice in Bambara, I had no idea how to convey what we were there for. This led to an even weirder realization: what was I there for? Sure, we wanted to wander around the village, see how they lived, maybe have some tea, but what was this really? Gawking? Ignorant tourism? What did I know and not know? What did I want to know? I don’t know. I do know that the Fulani are a unique nomadic people with origins in Ethiopia, whose people stretch across the Sahel from Senegal to Sudan. I know a lot more than this, but I have never come face to face in their own homes, and I felt at a loss.
We motioned that we would like to go in and see, and she waved us in. Sure enough, when we entered, we felt like we had just walked into someone’s home, where daily life was just carrying on. The children were friendly and curious, which helped ease the mood, but within a minute, with little to communicate, we left. We walked to the other side, which took just a few minutes, and tried entering from a different entrance. This seemed to resemble more of a village than a home, with a path between partitioned living spaces. Kids followed, and eventually an elderly woman spotted us and started yelling and shaking her finger. At first I thought that she was telling the kids to leave us alone, but it became quickly clear that we were not welcome in her space.
We walked out and headed back to Djenne, feeling like we had half-failed in our quest. We hadn’t even figured out if that was indeed Welingara.

Our pirogue on the way back was run by a gaggle of small boys in a watery boat.

Back in town we had a new quest, and it was to find lunch. We could not seem to find any street food (mid-afternoon is the pits for eating in Mali, as everyone is having a siesta), or any restaurants that catered to locals. We asked around, looking for tion-tion, a supposed local specialty, and eventually ran into a young guy who invited us to his home for lunch. It was not tion-tion, but instead peanut sauce with rice, Mali’s best dish in my opinion. The young man was hospitable, having no problem bringing us right into his family’s home, giving us some of the already prepared food. Afterword, we headed back to his own place, down the road, for tea. He eventually told us he was a guide. It surprised me that this was brought up so late in our conversation. However, he never once seemed interested in getting us to hire his services. I was surprised to find out that he was among the same group of people that pounce on tourists and follow them around incessantly as soon as they get into town He asked us, out of curiosity, why we didn’t use a guide. It turned into a similar conversation as we had had the night before with the guides at the bar. Interestingly, we had been proven wrong that very day. If we had had a Fula speaking guide to take us out to that village, we might have actually learned a lot and had a richer experience than awkward staring showdowns. It can still be difficult, though, for someone who has never taken (and never really needed) guides, to finally decide that this is finally the perfect situation for one.

The mosque by night

The mosque by morning

In the morning it was time to leave Djenne. We went to the collective taxi stand, and waited for all ten seats (yes, ten). And then we waited. And then? We waited. It seems that all the other tourists here had their own vehicles. I am always surprised that for how many foreigners in Mali, very few of them are independent travelers/backpackers. Djenne is not a huge town, so outside of market day, there are very few locals trying come or go. Finally, at about 1:30 we were on our way. Halfway to the ferry, we got stuck in a puddle (lake?) and we all had to get out and push. A huge truck was already stuck in it when we tried to go. I figured it was a silly idea for our small Peugeot to try to make it through when a huge truck was already stuck, but the driver thought otherwise. It only took about 20 minutes before we were on our way again. After crossing with the ferry and arriving at the main road, Lise and I felt that we were done paying for transport, and decided to hitchhike back to Bamako.

The Ferry Port

Of course, when we got out of the taxi there were several people trying to hustle us into the nearest bus or van. We resisted, saying we weren’t going anywhere, and casually went for some fried fish and rotisserie sheep. Every time a bus would arrive, the same man would come to us, insisting that we get on this bus, as whatever company it happened to be was “the best quality”. We kept saying “the next one.”
We started to walk down the road in the direction of Bamako. The man ran after us, confused why we were leaving. Explaining that you want to hitchhike is difficult with most people in Mali, but impossible to the guy that gets tips from bus drivers for getting you onto the bus. We waited for a couple hours, and there was a scary lack of traffic. I asked Lise if she preferred to take a bus, or camp and try again the next day. She said she wanted to camp, but minutes later a white SUV pulled over. The moment I open the door to air conditioning and pristine leather interior is the moment that I finally realize how dirty I am, and I get self-conscious.
It was a typical NGO vehicle, complete with chauffeur. The man worked for the NGO running environmental programs near Mopti. Conservation, sustainable farming techniques, planting mango trees and the like. I had worked with similar projects during my internship in Ghana. He was heading to Bamako to catch a flight to Paris. We wondered if he would be on the same flight as Lise, as they were leaving the same day.
We decided to stop in Segou. When we arrived to the outskirts of town, our new friend treated us to a dinner of fried chicken (!) and toe, a millet cake with a savory sauce. He then insisted on taking us all the way to our impossible to find little guesthouse. Nobody in town had ever heard of it, because it is simply a family’s home with a few extra rooms.
Later that night we went to Alphabet, an artsy little café with live music. It had a relaxed and unique atmosphere and was a bit sophisticated for my taste. The music was more folksy than most Malian music and everything about it made me feel more like I was in Seattle than Segou. It also felt like the kind of place that a hippy foreigner would have set up to appeal to other foreigners in town. I usually hate these kinds of places and avoid them at all costs. But for some reason I did not mind this place much. On this night we were the only whites in the place, but we could still hear the Malians speaking to each other in French. The owner, Oumar, eventually made it to our table to introduce us and have a chat. Oumar was indeed Malian. He was very flamboyant and charming. He told us about how he had lived in Paris for 20 years and had worked as a model. He was an interesting character, and I think his presence in the Segou music and arts scene is important as someone who can relate to both Malians and foreigners.
Segou has a great reputation, but as we wandered around the second day, we didn’t really get the big deal. There are plenty of expats and NGO workers here, as well as a wealth of elderly tourists with fanny packs (sorry Mama). I assume, for the people that want to live here, that it is more relaxing than Bamako, but they still have plenty of decent restaurants and expat bars. It does carry quite a bit of significance as the homeland of the Bambara people, Mali’s largest ethnic group, comprising a third of the population. What we saw were things we couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) afford, Tuareg trinket sellers, and a less welcoming attitude to foreigners than I had seen in other places. Of course, this comes from a tourist town, but in reality, there is no landmark or famous thing that would draw tourists. It is sprawling, and not unlike a lot of nomal mid-sized towns, except for the expensive hotels and restaurants. I really don’t like people try to rip me off in a place that, to me, shouldn’t be interesting to foreigners.
We wanted to get out of town to Segou Koro, or “Old Segou”, nine kilometers out of town, but there didn’t seem to be any public transport there. Taxis wanted something $10, so we decided to hitchhike. Because Segou is focused on the Niger river, it is long and skinny, hugging the banks for miles, and miles. We did not realize this at the time, though, so we figured we could walk to the edge of town. This would have taken us nearly two hours, but fortunately a guy stopped for us in his car. He said he was not going to Segou Koro, but if we gave him $2 for gas, he could take us there. I did some quick math, and decided that he was actually being very generous with that fare, so we hopped in.
Segou Koro was far more interesting than Segou. It was completely mud brick, and had a few great mud mosques. And unlike Djenne, this was more out of choice than bowing down to tourism. The guide book said it is customary to visit the chief and pay him $5 to visit the town, but we didn’t seek him out, as this would be a huge amount of money. It is normal in Africa to pay tribute to chiefs when passing through small villages, but I will never pay when it is extortion of tourists. Also, I would normally give kola nuts, or tea, instead of cash. The only trouble in the town was a few kids that asked us for cadeaux. They followed us around out of curiosity after realizing we were not going to pass them out candies or money. The town was interestingly traditional (some would say underdeveloped) for how close it is to Mali’s third biggest town.
We managed to hitch a ride back from there with an SUV of wealthy well-dressed (traditionally) Malians from Bamako coming back to Segou to visit family. When we got back, we still had enough time to try to visit a fishing village across the river. So we went down to the port to look for one of the public pirogues. We went right to the boat that was loading up and asked the driver...uhh, captain, if we could get in. He looked at us blankly, but not because he didn’t understand us, but because he didn’t know what to do. The guidebook had said that this boat would be about $.50, so we expected to pay this. All of a sudden, though, a guy speaking French and wearing some semi-official tag around his neck came up. He said we had to pay 1000 Francs ($2). We said the fare is 200. He said it was 1000 for us. Lise accused it of being a racist or anti-foreigner policy. He explained that the locals from across the river come here for commerce every day and pay 200 Francs, but since we are just tourists (which he said would include even Malian tourists), we must pay 1000. Lise said, “But I live over there.” The man paused, probably thinking, oh, maybe she is with the Peace Corps or some NGO. I told her to keep distracting him, while I went to speak directly to a different pirogue captain. Again, on a different pirogue loading up passengers, the captain just stared at me blankly until another one of these “officials” from the tourist office came to me and explained the same thing. And in the end, Lise and I decided to take a stand against this policy and refused to pay an extra $1.75 “tourist tax”. They claimed that the money would go to the local fishermen, which, even if it did (which I doubt), they are probably better off than a lot of people in Segou that don’t have a profession at all.
Later that night, we were eating at in an egg sandwich stall, and we ran into somebody from the tourist office who had seen us at the port. Lise tore into him. She had collected her thoughts, and let them simmer, and she yelled at him in front of everyone. It was awesome. Within five minutes she had him apologizing profusely and promising to give us the local’s fare the next day. When she said we had to leave the next day (putting the guilt trip on) and that we would never get to see this fishing village, he got on his phone, saying he was going to call the people in charge right then and talk to them about changing the rules. I don’t know if this would ever happen, but he promised he would give the powers that be her input.
The next day we had to get back to Bamako for Lise’s flight. She preferred to hitchhike than take the bus, so again we started trudging down the long boulevard out of town. We got picked up quickly by two young Tuareg guys, Mohamed and his brother. They were from Goa, in the north, near the border of Niger, but were in Segou for university. They weren’t going to Bamako, or the edge of town, but they said they would take us to the roundabout on the edge of town that met with the road to Bamako. When we got there, they insisted on helping us get a ride. I wasn’t sure of this, because I thought the drivers would think they would have to give a ride to four instead of two. They were aggressive, though, and stood on the road and flagged down the first car, a large white SUV. They spoke with the large man, who also happened to be from Gao, a Songhai, and insisted that he take us. Lise went to the window and said, “We’re going to Bamako”. He said, “And?” She paused, “and can you take us?” He said, “And?” She said, “Please?” “Ok, get in.”
He was an awkward man and I felt uncomfortable the entire ride, but in hindsight it was still an interesting experience, and that is what counts in the end. He was the CEO of a gold company (Mali is the third biggest gold exporter in Africa), and he acted as I would expect. He was rich, but unfriendly. He had a Belgian wife, and spoke with an accent closer to Lise’s than to a Malian (as I understood it). He insisted that I sit in the front. He never smiled, just spoke to us condescendingly. He took us as low class, which we are I guess compared to him, but I was not being used to being treated like this hear. He also seemed to have a weird paranoia about him. If I said something to him in English, he would ask what we had said. I looked back at Lise a couple times, and he asked why I was looking at her. I didn’t know what to say. I was relieved when we arrived in Bamako and we exchanged cold goodbyes.
That night we arrived at the airport exceptionally early as her flight was late at night and taxis are more expensive then. We said goodbye, not sure when we would see each other again. She had to go back to Paris for her last semester of grad school, and I would still be here, wandering around Mali or West Africa for a while.