Mali

Wednesday 1/14/2009 - Bamako City Tour, Departure

After a refreshing night's sleep in a very comfortable bed, we got up at 7 am. We got everything packed and ready to go. we took showers, even though we had taken them right before bed, and would most probably be able to take another before catching tonight's flight. We had the room until 7:30 tonight, which was a real convenience. We could leave our bags in the the room for the entire day, and we would have our own lovely bathroom for freshening up before heading to the airport.

At 9 o'clock, we went downstairs and met our group for the buffet breakfast. This was a great hotel to bookend the trip - it had very comfortable rooms and very yummy complimentary breakfasts. Craig had a ham, cheese, and onion omelette made to order. We had bisap juice (sweet juice made of hibiscus blossoms), coffee, watermelon, cheese, crepes, and sausage. It seemed like a feast after days of just baguettes and Nescafe for breakfast.

We still had three postcards to mail, and we were running short on time. The small book and magazine shop in the lobby was open, and it sold stamps. However, they only had a single postcard stamp. I bought it, and hoped that we would be able to find two more somewhere during our travels today. We went back to the room and grabbed what we would need for a day tour of town, and then met Bouba at the car.

He drove us to the area of town where the markets are, and then parked. On the way, we passed a train whose engine was painted the colors of the Malian flag. Bahini told us that this train went to Senegal, and we were pretty sure that this was the train that Michael Palin had ridden into town in his "Sahara" series. We walked a couple of blocks through crowded streets and sidewalks. We saw a very nice old brick clock tower. Everyone in the crowd was trying to get our attention, to sell us CD's, try to shine our shoes, or just shoot the breeze. "You from America? Ba-rack-o-ba-ma!!" they would yell in a singsong voice. Merchandise was piled up on the sidewalks in front of shops. Soccer balls and baby walkers hung from the ceilings. Boxes of cheap toys leaned against the walls. Bahini pointed out the oldest hotel in Bamako, on the second floor of one of the shops.

We went into to the Grande Marche, also know as the Pink Market. The original structure had burned down in 1993 but was subsequently rebuilt on the same spot. There were dozens of mopeds and scooters jam-packed in a parking area near the entrance to the indoor market. I took a photo of them and some guy started to scold me. We weren't sure whether he was serious or not. The market had stalls selling everything from veggies and fruit to spices, dry goods, knockoff designer handbags and sunglasses, cooking utensils, and shoes with the toes sliced through (second quality items that were marked for destruction by the manufacturers, but which somehow made their way to this urban African market). Despite the fact that these shoes are considered ruined in the west, they are still infinitely better than bare feet, and they are prized here in Mali.

On our walk through the market we got separated from the rest of the group. We would have spent additional time looking around, but we felt we must keep up with them, so we kept moving. Bahini led us through the labyrinth of stalls, outside the main pink building, and into a neighboring building. He led us to an area that featured handicrafts. We walked through several rooms of very impressive looking mudcloth, some of which depicted the African continent as a whole or Mali in particular. They were beautiful, but we had bought a lot of souvenirs by now, and we didn't really intend to purchase anything further.

On our way out, Craig spotted a small kora. This is a Malian stringed instrument with basically three necks. The strings are attached to one, and the other two control the tautness of the leather hide stretched across the gourd which makes up the body. It looked dusty and weathered and we considered buying it, but also worried about getting it home safely. The group was continuing on without us and we were about to pass when the seller asked us to give him our best price right off the bat. Alright, we'd bite. 10,000 CFA's, take it or leave it. Astoundingly, he took it. That didn't stop him from asking for a tip afterwards, but the process wasn't as painful as it could have been.

As we wandered around, locals noticed my Essakane Festival t-shirt and asked us about the Festival. One man told us that he had planned to go, but didn't because the weather was too cold. The whole marketplace area was very crowded. We felt that no matter where we were, we were always in someone else's way. We weren't looking for anything in particular; we were just browsing. But we had to be conscious not to look at anything too closely, or the sellers would descend upon us and try to sell it to us. We got the feeling that just about anything could be purchased here, if you knew where to look. Tables of bras were set up next to tables of soccer balls and flip-flops. The hustle and bustle started to take its toll, and the atmosphere was hot and claustrophobic.

Bahini tried to lead us into another market building, but he got yelled at by a couple of locals and then turned around and led us away. We weren't sure what that was all about. We walked down a street and we cut through a building which had stacks and stacks of dry goods such as pasta and canned tomatoes. We went through a section which was obviously the butchery. Stall after stall had various bloody body parts, ground up with hand cranked meat grinders. The air was thick with the smell of blood. The rest of our group seemed really grossed out at the whole scene. Craig and I were a bit more used to it, being no stranger to the meat stalls at the Guatemalan market in Panajachel.

After ducking out of this building, Bahini led us down the street to an artisan's market (Artisanat). We could see the towering minarets of the Grande Mosque in the distance as we entered this marketplace. This market was for handicrafts - everything here was hand-made. Tina's sister plays djembe drums, and she was looking to buy one for her. She found a stall which had many types of brand new hand-made drums on display. Tina tried a few out, and she and Pam decided to buy some. This same stall also had some koras for sale. We were happy that we had purchased the other one earlier. As we do not know how to play, ours will be strictly decorative. As such, the weathered nature was half of its charm. If we had been looking for one to play, this market would have been the place to pick one up.

We rounded a corner after the stalls and found the area where the actual handiwork is done. We saw goat hide in various stages of the tanning process. Some skins were stretched and nailed in place on planks of wood. The tanning area smelled rather foul. We passed artisans who were shaping and engraving silver jewelry. Metalworkers created small metal sculptures. A man pedaled a bicycle to pump air onto a fire with bellows. Woodworkers carved intricate patterns. All of the crafts that we saw for sale all over the country had come from someplace like this. Craig was very interested in this and wanted to linger here a while to watch the process. But the group's shopping mission was accomplished, and Bahini was gathering us all up to go. It was very interesting and deserved a little more of our time, but I was feeling hot and tired, and Bahini and the group were continuing on. I was starting to mentally check out, not something I usually do while still on a trip. It usually doesn't happen until the plane home. But after the last couple of days of very long car rides with Craig's illness and all of the emotional wear that put me through, I was done with the crowds and the people harrassing me to try to get me to buy things.

On our walk to the parking lot where Bouba had left the car, We passed the stall of a marabout (witch doctor). Monkey and cougar skulls, snakeskins, and all kinds of animal fetishes adorned his table. All of these were ingedients for various spells to curse and/or cure. Tina went over to have a closer look, and the others joined her. All of these items looked strange enough on their own, but displayed in the middle of a parking lot, they looked even more surreal. The sun was very warm and I waited in the shade of the parking lot. Pam wanted to take a picture of the fetish stall, but the marabout wanted a tip. Tina purchased a writing tablet of the type used by Muslim students for copying verses from the Quran. Because we made a purchase, Bahini indicated that Pam could take a photo. Other tourists saw this and took this as an opportunity for them to take photos of this curiosity as well. The marabout was not pleased, and our group took our leave before he had time to gather any ingredients for curses. Just kidding. But because of this, Pam was the only one in our group to get a photo of the marabout.

Pam suggested a "Fanta break", and Bouba said he would drive us to a restaurant. We piled into the car, which was packed in so tightly with other cars that we didn't think Bouba would be able to exit. But somehow Bouba managed to manouver a turn and we were able to exit the parking area. Bouba drove us to the Bistro & Restaurant le Bafing. The streets were all abuzz with activity, people selling, eating, shopping...we passed an unassuming building which turned out to be an internet cafe. We ducked into the dark restuarant and emerged in a little walled courtyard with pleasant murals of Malian sites. There were TV's and a bar, and a wall full of pirated-looking looking CD's for sale. Craig and I had Fantas and we all just relaxed and chatted for a little while, enjoying the cool shade of the trees in the courtyard. We used the restroom and then got back in the car.

As we were stuck in traffic, a rather surreal scene unfolded before us. There had apparently been a minor motorcycle accident ahead of us, right in front of a police station. The police were trying to recreate the accident scene, and the motorcycle was laying flat in the road. Unrelated to these facts, there was a guy in traffic in front of us on a motorcycle of his own, wearing a bright orange shirt emblazoned with "County Jail" in a black stenciled font. We hope that noone had been hurt, but we couldn't help finding humor in the situation.

We passed a store called the "New-York Shop" which had a smiling poster of Obama taped onto its glass door. We passed a section of stalls which had lengths of lumber out front. Furniture stores displayed their wares (nicely carved beds, etc.) on the sidewalk.

Bouba drove us to the Village des Antiquairs, a very low-key artisan's market which had organized alleyways of shops underneath a kind of pergola of tree branches and tarps to shade shoppers from the hot sun. There were very few people shopping here, and overall a much more relaxing atmosphere than the other markets had been. Some shopkeepers would beg us to go into their shops, while others would just nonchalantly go about their crafts. We entered one shop where an artist was in the process of cutting apart discarded metal aerosol cans to make sculptures. He had made some little angels that would be perfect Christmas ornaments. They were very cute but also funny in a dark way because they had been made with insecticide cans. We tried to bargain with this guy, but he would have none of it.

Even though we were willing to buy 5 of them, he only came down a tiny amount off of his first price. He wasn't willing to "discuss" any further, so we walked away. It was very unlike any other bargaining situation we had seen in Mali thus far. We were a bit bummed out, because we had actually wanted them. And, this being post-Christmas, we would have thought that he would have wanted to unload them. But it was not to be. We wandered up and down the alleys of stalls and saw some really nice examples of carved Dogon doors, wooden furniture, mudcloth, etc. But since we weren't really looking to buy anything else, we just wandered around browsing. Tina bought some wooden beads, and then we all walked back to the car.

Next, Bouba drove us to the Chausee de Sotuba (Sotuba Causeway), the oldest bridge in Bamako at 100 years. It crosses a tributary of the Niger, and is underwater for a good portion of the year when the water level rises. Bouba pulled over and we got out to take some pictures. The rocks around the river were incredibly weathered. They looked almost like rocks you see along the ocean, beaten down by years of waves, with pits and holes scarring their otherwise smooth surface. We walked along the rocks and looked down into the river. Women were doing their laundry in its waters.

We then got back into the car. There were many fields in the fertile soil near the river, and we saw various little roadside stands selling produce. We saw several women walking with bundles of bright orange carrots balanced atop their heads. We passed a hydroelectric facility. We drove by the Institut Geographique du Mali, and thought back to that map that Craig had wanted to buy in Djenne. We had not seen another since.

Bahini told us that we would be eating at the nicest restaurant on the river: Patisserie Amandine. We would be meeting Assou from Saga Tours there for lunch. When we arrived, we were seated out on the patio (on the side of the building overlooking the parking lot rather than the river). There were paper placemats with the menu printed on them. "No-stress" the menu advertised, in big black letters. This was so typically African, to adopt a foreign phrase but to use it in a slightly "off" way. The menu was quite extensive, and I chose the four cheese pizza while Craig got the tomato, sausage, ham, and cheese calzone with a Castel beer. The food was absolutely delicious. I was sad that I could only finish half of my pizza. The Arabic Al Jazeera news channel was on the TV above our table. Assou arrived and we chatted about the trip. Tina and Pam plan on offering the same trip next year, so they talked to him about possible options.

Assou said that we still had time to go to the Musee National du Mali before it closed at 6 o'clock. Since it was 4 o'clock now, we said our goodbyes and thanks to Assou and took our leave from the restaurant. It was coming up on rush hour and we noticed just how many motorcycles were being used by commuters. It seemed like an ideal form of transportation on these crowded streets. The late afternoon light was beautiful as we passed into a more wooded part of town. Bouba turned into a parking lot and Bahini bought our tickets for the museum. Noticing the gift shop, Craig and I immediately went in to try to buy stamps. I was able to get my two final stamps, and would be able to mail the remainder of my postcards from the hotel this evening, just before leaving for home. Of course the stamps were a different denomination than than the one I had bought this morning, so who knew if any of them would reach their destination.

The grounds of the museum were quite nice. There were some replicas of mosques just inside the gates, and there was a sculpture which was easy to mistake for the real thing. It depicted a brightly painted van with papier mache people inside. The roof was piled high with sleeping mats, parcels, lanterns, pillows, etc. and the whole thing looked impossibly topheavy. We laughed, as we had seen many similarly burdened cars in real life on the roads of Mali.

First we went into a gallery of contemporary African art. It was mostly paintings, but there were several sculptures as well. The paintings were very interesting and represented a variety of countries and styles. Next we went into a gallery which housed a textile exhibit. All of the textiles were displayed in a very interesting way, many hanging from the ceiling like an art installation. The employees acted as both guards and guides and were eager to point out various aspects of the cloths and even encouraged us to touch them. To distinguish the wool from the cotton, the non-English speaking employee pointed at one and said "Baa!" This got all of us (including him) giggling. We saw a small-scale replica of the Djenne Mosque under glass, and once again marveled at the fact that we had been allowed inside. Finally, we went into a room of artifacts which contained stelae, terra cotta statues, wooden statues, masks, bits of colored glass, beads, arrowheads, etc. All of the placards were in French, and therefore were of no use to us. That was probably for the better, or we would have tried to read them all and we were on a tight schedule. Craig and I are usually very thorough at museums, and we wished we had more time to do a proper job of taking it all in here. But it was already late, and we found out that we still had another stop to make. The trip was drawing to a close, and we all felt compelled to fit one more thing into our itinerary. We worked our way back out to the car.

We had a couple of minutes alone with Bouba and took the opportunity to thank him for everything he had done for us. He would still be driving us to the airport tonight, but those kind of aiport goodbyes are always too rushed. When everyone else returned to the car, we got in and Bouba drove us past the neighboring zoo. We took winding rows up a large hill, and noticed lots of joggers running this route. We arrived at the top of the hill, known as Point G. It is the site of the largest hospital in Bamako and its associated medical school. It had a very dramatic panoramic view of the city, and was obviously a popular place for the medical students to study while watching the sunset. We noticed many of them poring over books and notebooks, reciting formulas. Between dust and smoke from fires around the city, the view looked rather smoggy, and there was also a lot of trash on the ground. But it was very nice to see an overview of the sprawling city, with the Niger bisecting it. The sky grew orange and pink as the sun approached the horizon. As the sun set on Bamako, it also set on our trip.

We had lost our bearings during the ride, and hadn't realized how close Point G actually was to our hotel. We arrived back at 6:30, took a final shower, and carefully packed our carry-ons with the souvenirs we had bought. We checked out at 7:30, and dropped my final three postcards into the mail at the front desk. I went out the front door of the lobby and into the adjacent handicraft shop on the off chance that they might have a doll that we could buy for Craig's grandmother (she collects them, and we try to buy her one on each of our trips). I didn't have any luck, so I went back into the hotel. We exchanged almost all of our CFA's back to U.S. dollars at the front desk. We kept enough CFA's to buy Fantas at the bar, and we took a seat in the lounge area. There were other guests congregating as well, and we were obviously all on the same 11:45 pm Air France flight.

Tina, Pam, and Susan joined us in the lounge. Shortly after 8:30, we piled into the Bouba Car for one final time. When we arrived at the airport, we said our goodbyes and thank yous to Bahini and Bouba. We had enjoyed both of their company and appreciated all they had done for us. It was sad to say goodbye after so many days together, and as we had feared, we had little time to do them real justice. Assou then appeared and whisked us into the building. He accompanied us through the check-in process, which was helpful, especially since Susan had a problem with her reservation. We checked our duffel bags and kept the souvenirs in carry-ons. After everyone was checked in, Pam and Tina headed upstairs to the bar to have a drink. By this point, we just wanted to find a seat and not move until it was time to board the flight, so we entered the air conditioned departure lounge. As we looked around the room, we saw many familiar faces from various portions of our trip. We ran into the Welsh doctor who had helped us in Timbuktu, and he was quite pleased to see that Craig had recovered. Once again we thanked him very much for his help in Timbuktu. We also saw other people whom we recognized from the Festival. Craig and I used the ultra-convenient rest rooms as boarding time approached.

They called our flight, and we got into a massive line which led out the exterior doors of the departure lounge toward the tarmac. As soon as we got outside, our carry-ons were taken from us, hand-searched, and tossed nonchalantly into a pile. I was a bit worried because we had been very carefully carrying the Dogon door and the kora, and now they were in a pile on the ground. We were patted down and then could collect our bags. We gave the Dogon door and kora a quick once-pver, and were happy to find that they were still intact. Next we were ushered onto a very crowded bus. The bus would not move until every inch of space was full. We were thankful that it was at least air conditioned. When the bus finally started, it drove about 100 yards toward the plane, and then everyone was let off. As luck would have it, we were the last ones off. We now had to get into a queue at the front of the plane. It slowly moved as people boarded the plane. Was this much process really needed? It had been a long day, and this would be a long flight...could we just get on with it??

We finally got settled into our seats, and the flight took off on time at 11:45 p.m. We sure had made the most of our last day in Bamako, with only 15 minutes to spare! We ate a nice Air France meal (they really do have surprisingly good food). I was so tired at that point that I never even wrote down what we had for dinner. We wasted no time going to sleep once the food trays had been cleared.