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!
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