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.