New Year's in Bamako

A Sotrama crossing the Niger river in Bamako

Beautiful Bamako

Lise arrived on the 29th and would stay for about ten days. We would be traveling in a more typical backpacking style, but we still had plenty of adventure. The first of which came in less than 24 hours of her arrival. We were shoving our way through that dreaded central market area, which I came to learn is unfortunately the most direct path between the two bus stations I usually used. A book caught Lise’s eye. “Mamadou et Bineta”. It was a series of books that the French put out during colonial times to teach French to Africans. It used drawings and topics related to African village life, and if not to learn French, looked like an interesting historical souvenir. On top of that, Lise was beginning to teach French to West African immigrants back in Paris, so she thought it might be interesting to look over. The price, unfortunately, was $8, which seemed a little steep. As she was haggling over the price, a man emerged, saying he had a shop with many more of these books at a cheaper price. I was a bit wary of most people that approached me in this market by now, but Lise decided to follow him. Of course, this wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, I had just had bad experiences with people trying to hustle me in this market. No harm in looking. The guy refused to speak to me in French, and made bits of conversation in his smattering of English. In fact, he barely wanted to speak to me at all, but kept the conversation going with Lise in French. When we arrived at “his” shop, as expected, it was not his shop, just some other shop where he hoped to make a commission. Of course, he told us to wait outside, while he went and discussed the percentage with the shop owner. I refused, and followed him in, which annoyed him, even though I could not understand their discussion in Bambara. Lise did the haggling, which she is good at, and got the book for 3000 Francs ($6). Since she had mostly big bills, which are very hard to break up here, I suggested that she pay with a 10,000 Franc note. I will admit that in this particular circumstance it was not a good idea, but usually there is nothing to worry about. The worst thing is trying to pay for your 300 Franc plate of rice and sauce and realizing that you only have a 10,000 Franc note.
So I stood outside as she made the exchange, and the guy that had brought us there, quickly walked out and away from us. Lise said he was going to get our change. I did not like this, and I did not like this guy, so I said we needed to follow him. Usually in this scenario, the shop owner will grab the nearest small boy and send him off to get the change. This, however, was not common, so we followed him, which apparently he didn’t expect. He walked faster, ignoring us. When Lise stopped him and asked where he was going to get the change, he said he gave the money to a small boy. We never saw this small boy, but then again, it was not impossible. We kept following, he kept ignoring, and getting defensive. Then he said that the boy went to buy some weed for him, and that he would need to sell it to get our change. I was sure that he was just saying this to scare us away. Lise started getting angry with him, just really telling him off. I was very glad for this, because he continued to ignore me in French, and gave me short answers in English. She had much more ability than me at this point. We followed him through some dodgy neighborhoods, and I was waiting for somebody to reach out to us as it was obvious that there was a conflict going on. Then he told us to wait. He said he was going down this other street to get the money, but we couldn’t come with him. Of course, I told him no, and he yelled at me when I tried to follow. I let him get some distance on us, then followed him. He ducked inside a doorway, and I waited where I could see the front and side entrances. Surprisingly he came out, and even more surprisingly he gave us money…but only 2,000 Francs. He still owed us 5,000. And for about half an hour this continued, and we slowly got our money back. A thousand here, 500 there. He thought we would give up. I kept looking out for police (there are many in Bamako) but he knew where they were already and kept far away. When he only owed us 2,000, Lise said we should cut our losses and move on. I said it’s not about the money; that we can’t let him think that he can get away with this with the next foreigner he comes across. This wasn’t for us, it was for the next people. She agreed, and started yelling at him again. At one point, we were nearly alone, hidden from view behind a large truck. He used the opportunity to intimidate, and gave me a shove, telling us to stop following. I held my cool, but wondered why the one person that actually could see us watched silently. Eventually I realized that he was indeed known in the neighborhood as a pusher, and that everyone watching us probably thought this guy had ripped us off on some weed, and therefore would not come to our aid. We managed to get all but a thousand back, and he even offered me a few coins amounting to 500 Francs. I refused them, saying I wanted the whole thousand back. At this point we were near the bus station, and he tried to jump onto one of the buses. He was kicked off almost immediately, though, and I was glad to see that he was panicking a bit. I told Lise that we needed to use our last line of defense, and draw attention to him as a thief. The word alone is deadly in Africa, and I have heard of many stories from across the continent about mob justice severely injuring or killing thieves in crowded areas. I even the tail end of a mob chasing a thief through a market in Ghana. So as soon as I knew there were at least a few people within earshot, I started yelling, “thief, thief!” and Lise joined in. Quickly the man panicked, and swept his foot around and kicked Lise in the calf. It was not even strong enough to hurt, but I still couldn’t let him do this. I lunged at him, and shoved him almost knocking him down. But then he came back and punched me square in the nose. At that moment, a very tall, middle-aged man grabbed him, and broke up the fight. The thief went off running safely into the crowd. The tall man said that he was a disgrace to Mali, before walking away. I looked around and everyone was shocked at what they had seen, but still, nobody wanted to help us. Unless he is that well-known as a dealer, I am still confused by this. Mali is one of, if not the most, friendly and helpful countries I have traveled in. Everyone is willing to help you in any situation, however something was different here and it disappointed me.
Even though that man got away with $2 of Lise’s and I got punched in the face, we felt like we had won. All I really wanted to do was make him think twice about ripping people off that simply want to buy educational literature. Then again, we learned our own lesson about market transactions (although I have never had something like this happen) and it is something that all travelers need to learn the hard way at some point.

For New Year’s, Lise and I looked for where the live music would be found. We heard of my favorite Malian musician, Salif Keita, doing a performance at his night club, though it cost about $60, so it was out of the question. We asked around, but the only music that would be free was at Independence Square. I was into this idea, so at 10:00 we walked through one of the main boulevards in town and arrived where there was a huge crowd. We explored the edge of the crowd, trying to find a spot where the stage was visible. Unfortunately, the whole center of the square was roped off and filled with seats reserved for some sort of people far more important than us.
We decided it wasn’t quite worth it, and left before it began at 11. We took a taxi to the Hippodrome, the area of town with the most upscale nightlife. We considered splurging on a cover charge if there was some live music. I ran into a hustler that I had met on more than one occasion in the market using the old, “hey, my friend, remember me?” Then if you don’t say yes, he will say he met you at some touristy place that you have probably been to. When I spotted him, out of curiosity, I went up to him and asked if he remembered me. “Oh, yes, from the artisan shop.” I told him that I have never been to an artisan shop, which is true. Then he forgot about this detail and tried to hustle me into a taxi that he said would surely take me to a live music venue with no cover. Lise and I didn’t buy it and we were running out of time before midnight. So we ditched the Hippodrome and wandered into a nearby neighborhood to see what the average Bamako resident was up to.
A ten-minute walk from the Hippodrome, and we felt more like we were in a small town or village than Bamako. People were wandering the streets, some music was playing here and there and a few firecrackers were exploding. Nothing grand. We asked if there was a local bar, and we were pointed towards what they referred to as a “Cabaret”. This sounded good to us, but when we got there it seemed that calling this kind of place a Cabaret would be a little like referring to MD 20/20 as a fine handcrafted wine. Upon entering, we saw rows of benches and tables, in the kind of cramped, drinking-focused setup the way I would expect a decrepit pirate bar to look. The seats were filled with middle-aged and older men, hunched over a variety cups of millet beer, honey wine and cheap Malian red wine. Lise and I were welcomed instantly, and the men laughed and shouted as they squeezed together to make space for us.
We struck up conversations with the various men of various drunkenness. They poured unknown liquids into our cups, and we drank happily. We passed around our party hats (yes! we had bought party hats which were being sold in the streets all over Bamako and had been wearing them all day) and each old man delighted in putting the shiny cone on their head and taking a hearty drink. One exceptionally drunk man, Andre, saw that I had firecrackers. I had wanted to take them out behind the bar, but he decided it was better for everyone to enjoy them, so he grabbed a couple and lit them right there in the bar. This didn’t alarm anybody, and some got a good laugh at it. I wondered if this bar was packed every night, or if this was specifically because of the New Year. It was not festive, but it was exactly where I wanted to be as I entered the New Year.
After midnight, we decided it was time to move on, and we didn’t walk far before finding another party. It was a neighborhood party, mostly populated by teenagers and children. The speakers were turned up to ten and they crackled to a point making the music barely distinguishable as music, but there was rhythm. The dance floor was divided between the young adults on an elevated slab of concrete under an awning, and the children off to the side. Lise and I waded into the children’s dance floor and busted moves. We wanted to dance with the children, but as soon as we moved, the kids would stop and watch us. So we grabbed the hands of individual kids and danced with them. Once our presence was known by the masses, though, we were dragged off to the other part of the dance floor. We attracted plenty of attention, but were left to dance in the crowd for a while. Eventually, though, the DJ was initiating some sort of dance showcase in which he called some of the better dancers into the middle to show off their moves. Of course, we were forced into the middle and we got plenty of cheers as we strutted our stuff. Lise is a very good dancer, but she is modest. I, on the other hand, have only the ability to put out the most ridiculous and obnoxious moves, which in this scenario gets the best reaction from the crowd. And we got plenty of cheers. Soon after we finished in the limelight, we had to duck out unnoticed, as the attention was getting to be too much.
On our way back home we passed by the flashy night clubs and laughed about all the money the people were spending in them, knowing that we had had a far better, and more interesting New Year’s than most of them. We somehow managed to find a Sotrama to take us home. We reached the transit point, then walked through the market. It was eerie to see this normally crowded and sweaty place in the dead of night, empty, save for the vendors that have no place to go. Makeshift shelters and the occasional mosquito net lined the edge of the road, concealing the people whose entire lives are spent surviving in and off the market hustle.