African Locks

March 12, 2011

Morning came in Markala and I packed my bag, making sure not to forget important items like my machete or radio. I couldn’t decide if I would leave right then, or accompany the crew to the locks. The river is dammed in Markala, and the only way to get to the other side is to go through the locks. We didn’t know much about it, but we were told that we had to go back and paddle into a narrow canal, which would take us to the locks.

In town, Blai met this woman that he found so enchanting, he needed to take a picture with her.

This sounded like a good final adventure, plus I wanted to see what the other side of the river looked like beyond the damn.

Back the way we came, we paddled until me met with the narrow canal, with a rusty dredger sitting idly at the mouth. We had thought the river’s current was dead before, but in this canal, we could feel just how still it was. I was in the front poling, but was mostly ineffective, as the bottom was pure mud that would grab the bamboo right out of my hands.

It was a unique situation moving down this canal, as the banks had never been so close to us. We were faced with a constant barrage of friendly people on the banks waving and greeting us. Jordan, bypassed learning much French, and quickly caught on to the Bambara greetings that we were constantly shouting out to everyone we passed.

After an hour or so, we decided to stop and run into town (the canal arched around the back edge of town, effectively making it an island with the Niger to the north, and the canal to the south) to get some lunch and some last minute produce. Jordan stayed behind with the boat. He was lucky, as the weather in the last few days had become torturingly hot. I have a high tolerance, for heat, but it had gotten ridiculous. Jumping in the river was essential about every fifteen minutes. This is where Jordan was not so lucky. Because the canal was so stagnant, it smelled like sewage, had a layer of algae on top, and the occasional floater was not surprising. He was still adjusting to the weather, though, and did his duty of plunging in every few minutes while we were gone.

The canal seemed to stretch on forever. I had assumed that this would be a little 2 km detour. But we seemed to go farther and farther away from the river before, after several hours, and probably 7 km, we could see what looked like the end of the canal. By this time, we were paddling through a thick matt of seaweed that had accumulated in the final hundred meters of the canal.

Parked in front of the locks.

Lock doors

We approached the giant doors of the lock, and parked our boat. It had been months since these doors had opened, but it looked like it could have been years. A few loitering kids watched us, but other than this, it was pretty deserted. One of our friends from Koulikoro, who drives barges along the Niger, had given us the number for the keeper of the locks. He knew that nobody would be around in the dry season when the barges can’t navigate the river.

The gate keeper wanted $10 to operate the locks, but because we had been able to name drop our friend in Koulikoro and bartered a little, he agreed to do it for $4. Apparently the barges pay something like $50, so I felt we were getting a decent deal.

The other side, looking unbelievably promising.

During the phone conversation with our boat friend in Koulikoro, Blai mentioned that he wanted to give him his last puppy. He had been very kind to us in Koulikoro and had taken a liking to Fura. It seemed like the perfect plan. Blai would leave the last puppy, who he had named Furo (the masculine form of Fura) with the gate keeper, and he would be picked up in August, when the barges start running again.

The gates opened opened halfway, and we we paddled our way into the large chamber. It would be one of the weirdest experiences in all of my travels thus far. The fact that we were in a fairly remote place on the Niger River, and had come to pass through locks that had probably been built during the colonial era, in our little pirogue felt incredibly bizarre and surreal.

The doors closed. We started to descend as the water was drained from the chamber. We descended about seven meters, sinking lower and lower, as the echoes filled the space and we found ourselves in an eerie darkness. Everything seemed so powerful, yet at the same time, rusty and barely operable, that we were silently fearing the walls giving away or one of the doors bursting open at the wrong moment, sending us hurtling down a waterfall, or facing a wall of water from behind.

Note the high water mark.

This didn’t happen though, and the sun blasted through at us, as the door started to creak its way open. The opened it just enough for us to get through, and all the spectators waved at us as we passed through to the other side of the river. We were met by a fresh, clean river with a renewed current and long, sandy banks ripe for camping.

Could I really be leaving this adventure now? With this new crew, a refreshed river, just waiting to carry us hundreds km further? With landscapes and cultures that changed almost imperceptibly as we inched our way north. I wouldn’t be leaving at this moment, as the sun was already setting, but by the next morning, I would surely be on my way to solitude. It was the last stop.