I arrived in Koulikoro, 50 km outside of Bamako, to find Jonathan and Blai in a seedy bar in a goofy care-free stupor. They yelled emphatically to every bar maid (bar wench? It seemed like a pirate bar, but friendlier) and passerby in a weird mix of mispronounced Bambara and French with grammar that would make any person actually from France cringe. The locals loved it, and the more they laughed, the more it encouraged the two ruffians to take the greetings further and make incomprehensible small talk. A lot seemed to have changed in the ten days I had been with Lise. Or was it just me who had changed? Either way, I was away from the city, away from a tourist attraction, and away from most cares in the world, so I settled in, grabbed a beer and got briefed on the new plan for the next leg of the trip.
In July, 2010, Jonathan rampaged into Seattle for a weeklong visit. During this visit, he ruined my life for a second or third time...or at least had a huge hand in influencing my foreseeable future. The most significant aspect of this, to the reader, is that he scrapped my original plan to head off to India and surrounding countries, and ordered a new trip to West Africa. Of course, it took a lot of convincing, but I had been studying French and wholeheartedly felt like West Africa was the most intriguing region to me at the time. My excuses to go to India (a country he hates) were flimsy to him. During his visit we went on a camping/river tubing trip on some branch of the Green River south of Seattle. We enjoyed it so much that I suggested that we tube the length of the Niger river. Of course it was an unrealistic pipe dream, but he thought it was a great idea, and thus the thought sat in our brains for months, just fermenting, until we actually arrived in Mali, where it was distilled into a liquorous reality of adventure.
This brings us to Koulikoro nearly six months later. Jonathan and Blai had already spent nearly a week there looking at wooden pirogues (fishing canoes) to buy. The plan was basically to paddle as far as we could on the Niger, Africa’s third biggest river. The main goal was Timbuktu, but in reality, the river stretches all the way to Niger, and Nigeria before emptying into the Atlantic. Over a few days before, I had expressed my commitment to the trip, however I didn’t understand why they would want to start in Koulikoro. I wanted to start the trip in Mopti, just 400 km from Timbuktu, while Koulikoro is over a thousand km from the supposedly fictitious, but all too real ancient city. It seemed that their logic was that they were in Koulikoro now, and there were lots of boats. They had river fever. I had no choice, but to go along.
The Dream
They had been camping on a river barge that was parked during the dry season, as the water levels were too low to move. They had become friends with the caretakers of the barge, but had since seemed to wear out their welcome. So when I arrived, we were camping next to the river, not far from town. For a few days they showed me around to the boats that they were considering. Not many were actually for sale, and the most promising one leaked lots of water, was barely big enough for a three-person trip and leaked more than enough water. The owner was firm on her $400 price tag, which seemed steep.Koulikoro is a river town. All life is centered on the river, which makes it beautiful, yet annoyingly long. It is not a huge town by any means but it must stretch along the river for about 10 km. There are many fisherman, but it seems that the main job opportunity is sand mining. Men and children spend all day on boats in the middle of the river, diving down, filling buckets with sand and depositing them onto the boats until they sit an inch or two above the water. On the beach, the sand is shoveled onto shore, sometimes filtered for gravel, and transported away on donkey cart or truck.
Sandmining in Koulikoro
After a few days of searching for other boats, we finally laid eyes on a real beauty. She was longer and wider than we really needed, but it had this high stern that just grabbed us. We sought out the owner, and ended up having a discussion with a group of middle-aged fishermen and boat builders on a mat under a shoddy shade shelter. They explained that the boat was not for sale, as the owner needed it for work. The man who had actually built the boat was there said that he could build us a brand new one for $500. They also offered us this exact boat at the same price, which would basically just fund the construction of a new boat for the fisherman. They said the new boat could be ready in a week, but we actually decided to simply buy the boat that was already built for two reasons. First, the quote of a week building time could have easily doubled or tripled for whatever reason, not to mention the chance that some unforeseen building cost could arise that would force us to shell out more money halfway through the process. Secondly, we had seen the wood that was being used to construct the boats here, and it was far worse than the wood that the boats were being built with just a few years ago. I can only imagine what the forests look like where this wood comes from. The pieces were smaller, which meant more seams, which meant more potential for leaking. We also arranged for some repairs to be made on the boat that would reduce the amount of water in the boat. We had asked the men if it was possible, after repairs, for the boat to have no leaks (something we had not seen any boat so far). We were skeptical, but they assured us that after re-sealing the boat it would be “dry like a desert”.
Jonathan and Blai take a first look at what would become our pirogue.
The boat comes out of the water.
The beach on which we would camp during the boat-repairing process.
Backpack lives.
Fura stalks women as they wash their clothes and dishes in the river.
Local kids, always curious, never hostile, sometimes helpful.
Walking through Bamako's Grand Marche with our loot.
There is at least one street gang in Bamako that I will not be messing with.
We made some great friends in Koulikoro, one of which was Fufu, a man from Togo. This is his son Max, hanging with Fura.
Rad boat. You're making me restless.
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