My money comes in four days after I move to Amadou’s bedroom, ending my stay in Senegal. I use my last Friday to pick up my Malian visa, book my train ticket to Bamako and go on a joyride around the city. The only person at Via Via when I show up to pay is Mustafa, dressed as always in loose-fitting navy-blue pants. When I thank him for helping me, he tells me to remember that I’m home, where I’ll never be alone or want for anything.
At Chez Amadou, I hang out for the last time with Amadou and his friends. When it’s time for me to leave, they lay hands on my head and pray for me. Amadou gives me a necklace: A wooden pendant hanging on a shoelace. It’s 4am when he walks me back home. Watching me pack, he beams when I thank him for helping me out.
‘You owe me 50 000 francs,’ he says. ‘And the necklace is 20 000.’
Over my dead body, I think. Not when he spent four days warning me about Africa’s scams, not after wanting to march to Cissé’s house when I tell him how Cissé, who has seen me on Rue Lafayette, where he lives with his family, walks me to the main road to get a taxi, jumps in with me and follows me around Dakar and to Ngor Island, saying that we happen to be running the same errands, only to claim that I owe him for services rendered as my guide. Amadou, it turns out, is just another conman running circles around me. Our fight is bitter; we hiss at each other. I throw 15 000 francs on the bed and give him back the necklace.
We are both losers when he walks out of his bedroom.
II
TRAIN TO BAMAKO
July 2008
THE MALI EXPRESS IS THE EASIEST way to get to Bamako from Dakar: Get a ticket a day or two before departure and catch the weekly train at Gare de Haan. The bare-minimum station, about three kilometres outside Dakar, isn’t so much a station as it is a small office next to the rails. The platform is the ground outside the office. The train is infamous for never arriving at the scheduled time of 1.50pm. The waiting passengers sit on plastic mats brought for the journey while the area grows more domesticated with every hour the train is late. Some people fire up braziers to make tea or warm food. Kids chase a ball around the rails, their clean road-trip outfits – Barbie doll dresses for girls and shiny grey suits or mini boubous for boys – getting dirty. A mother gets up to bathe her child on the tracks.
The knackered train shows up ten hours later. To get on, I throw my bag into the train, then try to hoist myself up two rickety steps that sway when I move. There’s a huge gap between the steps; someone pulls me up while I crawl in on all fours. I dust myself off and find my cabin. I’m in a first-class cabin with Yusuf and his big brother Solou who were on holiday; Adama and his young daughters, Aicha and Aminata, who are in yellow chiffon dresses, back from visiting family. Our instant family is led by Khadija, whose ample size is in a black chiffon robe with a matching scarf covering her head. Her finger tips are stained with reddish blots of henna. The brothers are light travellers, with one duffel bag. Adama and his daughters have one large suitcase. I have my backpack and a duffel bag with books. Khadija has two extra-large suitcases. Our cabin is so small that our toes touch when we stretch our legs. The walls, handles, windows, torn green leather seats, bulbs – every surface – is covered in a thick layer of dust. We use twigs to keep the windows open. The previously white porcelain toilet at the end of the corridor is caked with dust and grime. It tilts away from its position when I use it. I make a note to only drink a few drops of water and eat the bare minimum to avoid using it again.
The Senegal leg of the journey passes through fields of baobab trees and small villages. In many of them, old women and children till the family farms behind their homesteads; the women digging with picks and hoes and the children gathering weeds. They stop to wave at us and sometimes the children run after the train. We stop for around ten minutes in some villages and close to an hour in towns. In Senegal, we stop in the town of Thiès; which until now is a place I know only through Sembene Ousmane’s seminal novel, God’s Bits of Wood.
We empty out of the cabins to look for food and drinks when the train stops in towns. Women stock up on cloth and groceries while the men make a beeline to the bush, where they kneel to pee. This gives them, and us, privacy. Food is baguettes, chips, fried chicken, grilled sheep – called mouton – and rice with stew. I stick to my decision to only eat one banana whenever I get hungry and, even though I starve, I also manage to avoid having to use the toilet for number two until I get to Bamako.
The longer the journey grows, the more Khadija piles the compartment with stuff, buying a sack of rice, three large smoked fish, a case each of Fanta Orange, Coke and water. When my cabin mates tire of stringing sentences together in broken English, we communicate by pointing at what we are talking about. This is how I discover that my feet are three times their usual size; swelled up by the heat and from sitting in the train for a day and half.
The villages in Mali are also built with mud and set along low, green hills. Khadija’s trip ends in Kayes. As we get closer to Bamako, the number of mopeds that double as public transport increases. In one town, a shiny, significant-looking SUV is surrounded by mopeds like it’s an official motorcade. It’s just another ordinary traffic scene here, and a reminder that three weeks ago Mali was a dot on the map. I’m proud of myself but, right now, the heat that is spreading around my belly and up my chest to my temples is from nerves.
A swarm of men jump into the train when we reach Bamako. One of them gets into our carriage and takes our bags without talking to us. He works fast and silently, taking luggage from the cabins to the platform. I don’t feel like having to figure out my way around a new place again; I almost ask Solou to take me to their house. He only leaves my side when I join my bags on the platform.
‘Taxi, taxi?’ several men shout at me at the same time. I’m going to Bamako-Coura. The first person who takes my bags to his taxi puts me in the backseat with two other people and takes me across a city that makes a strange first impression. Wide boulevards turn into muddy streets, roofs are held down by bricks, some windows are made with zinc, and cars share streets with grazing sheep. The taxis and buses are beat-up. There are no towering monuments celebrating independence from France or shiny, modern skyscrapers; no visible construction in progress. The city is on the banks of the Niger River, but Bamako acts like it doesn’t know. There are no waterfront cafés, sunset cruises or floating restaurants.
My guidebook says Mission Catholique is one of the best places to find a bed in Bamako. It’s cheap, located close to the city centre and a favourite with backpackers. They haven’t answered the emails I sent to book my bed in the dormitory, but I go there anyway, and find it fully booked. A local guy who overhears my conversation with one of the nuns offers to take me to another cheap place.
Hotel Lafia is a regular house that’s been turned into a mixed dormitory with two single beds and four bunk beds, and a clean shared toilet that flushes. A group of guys is sitting under a mango tree with a small pot of tea boiling on a compact brazier. There’s a tray with shot glasses, a packet of sugar, and mint leaves. ‘Thé?’ one of them asks. Tea? Maybe later. I need a shower and to walk until I’m no longer shocked by how beat down Bamako looks.
Bamako-Coura is a business centre. The Grande Marché spills out of a building into the streets around it. Every inch of space is taken up by people, mopeds and kiosks selling books, car and moped parts, soccer balls and soccer jerseys, stationery; name it, and they sell it at the market. Some streets are lined with women selling second-hand clothes, even bras, and others who sell bold and colourful wax-print cloth, called pagne. Young boys weave between the traffic, selling airtime vouchers. The hustling philosophy seems to be if you have something to sell, best you start working the city’s streets. There are people with more pagne and airtime on sale. Others sell peanuts, bananas and oranges. One man has a metal basin with oranges on his head, long metal spoons used to stir big pots hang from his arm, and pairs of flip flops in his hands.
I keep walking, dodging cabs and mopeds, go
ing sight-seeing, stumbling into a fetish market with monkey skulls and bound snake carcasses next to a mosque. I follow strangers to see the city through their daily life and end up at the riverside. An old man in matching blue-and-orange wax-print pants and a knee-length tunic plays griot melodies on a handheld radio. Griots are a caste of musicians and poets and the only people who entertained royal courts when West Africa was still made up of empires. Some musicians, like Toumani Diabaté, Habib Koité and Mory Kanté, inherited music from their griot families.
Looking at the afternoon sun heading towards the horizon, Bamako starts feeling comfortable as I marvel at the strangeness of places that called my name.
In the morning, a woman turns the area in front of the beauty shop around the corner from Lafia into a food stall. A wide pan bubbles with oil and thick chips she turns with a metal spoon that has holes so the oil drains. A line of people waits their turn as she stuffs a sliced baguette with cubes of meat and chips, adding a splash of oil before wrapping the parcel with white paper.
I cross the street to a table with glasses and kettles. Its owner’s kinky coils look like salt and pepper. His shirt is unbuttoned to reveal his navel. There’s a tub of margarine, Nutella, a tin of Nescafé, cans of condensed milk, and teaspoons soaked in water that’s gone cloudy from the milky syrup. Fat green flies cover the lace tablecloth he uses to shield the baguette.
He puts a teaspoon of coffee in the glass, which he fills halfway with the condensed milk. Blobs of margarine spread out on my bread when I bite into it.
‘You’re from South Africa? Tell me something: Why did you kill Lucky Deebee?’ Lucky Dube is one of his icons. He doesn’t believe that he was killed in a car hijacking gone wrong; someone wanted him dead. ‘He was a big man with a big message for unity,’ he says. His lament follows me around West Africa.
I enjoy Bamako for its people. They routinely walk across the street to greet me, offer me tea or lunch. I’m at a cybercafé when the boy next to me taps me on the shoulder. His screen is on Google Translate to help us connect beyond our language barrier. He takes me out for drinks in Hippodromo to welcome me to Bamako. Malians reach out to others as easily as the rest of us breathe. Take Oumou and Djeneba. I’m sitting at a corner table in an empty restaurant when they walk in. Djeneba comes over to invite me to their table. They want to share their meal with me. Even though she can tell by the empty plate in front of me that I’ve had lunch, she refuses to eat without me. As I discover, ‘eat’ is not a suggestion in Mali. It’s an instruction. I move to their table for more chips, fried chicken and Castel, the favourite local beer. Oumou is from Bamako and Djeneba’s family is originally from Niamey, Niger. She’s visiting them from Chicago, where she works as a nurse. Djeneba wants me to stay with her family but I’m leaving Bamako tomorrow morning.
‘Let’s meet here at 10pm then,’ Oumou suggests.
Bamako is home to Salif Keita, Habib Koité, Toumani Diabaté, Vieux Farka Touré, Oumou Sangaré, Amadou and Mariam and a galaxy of other internationally celebrated music stars who routinely perform in clubs around the city. A taste of this music is what I want. Instead, I join Djeneba and Oumou for a cab ride across town to the bar where they hang out on Friday nights. After wearing lipstick, girls’ nights out are my favourite thing about being a woman. When we arrive at their spot, the barman brings out plastic chairs, a table and three Castel beers before hiding out at the bar. Djeneba peels open a box of cigarettes and Oumou takes one. They may be my mom’s age, but they certainly aren’t Dikeledi Mogoatlhe. We go through the pack and round after round of beer, snacking on the boiled eggs and peanuts we buy from a boy who walks into the yard. Our conversation gets raunchier with every puff and sip. They want to know about my love life.
‘Sex life, honey. I have booty calls,’ I reveal. We laugh at the one who wants to join me in Accra. ‘As if I’d bring an old shag to a new region,’ I add.
Oumou raises her glass, saying she only keeps her men around for sex. ‘I have no other use for them,’ she says.
We gossip and laugh some more before Djeneba asks me another question. This time, her mood is dark. ‘Why did you kill Lucky Dube?’ she says, repeating a question I will come to hear often around the continent. ‘I cried for a week.’
She rummages in her bag and pulls out a Best of Lucky Dube CD, ordering the barman to play it. It’s on repeat for the rest of the evening. It’s a simple but perfect night out under the stars. We stumble out of the bar drunk on Castels and happiness. I almost change my mind about leaving for Djenné in the morning. Visiting the ancient trading city and former centre of Muslim scholarship has been keeping my hope alive on days when my new life gets overwhelming. In these moments – and there are many of them every day – I remind myself that all roads are leading to me Djenné.
III
MAGIC TOWN
ON NIGHTS WHEN the pitch-black sky is lit by a million stars, and a full moon hangs so low on the horizon that it looks like you can walk to it, you have to hang out on a rooftop in Djenné. ‘Then you will know why this is the most magical place in Mali,’ Philip says. Malian tour guides will say anything to make you stay a while and spend more francs in their town. Philip is no different, but when it comes to full-moon nights in Djenné he’s not lying. We’re on the rooftop at my hotel, Chez Ali Baba, bonding over sweet mint tea. As Oumou Sangaré’s song ‘Ko Sira’ fades from my laptop speaker, the sound of villagers chanting rises from below us, where a small group of men and women in traditional Islamic robes walk around the town’s square singing blessings to Djenné.
Djenné was founded around 250 AD, rising to prominence in the sixteenth century when it became the centre of gold and salt trade and Islamic scholarship in the region. Take away the Land Cruisers and mopeds, and time seems to have stood still. People still mostly use wooden boats, called pirogues, to move in and out of the city. Houses are still built with banco mud and, to beautify themselves, women still stain their feet, fingertips and mouths with henna. They still wear gold rings in their septums.
Donkeys still carry goods around the town, and even though the square at the Grand Mosque has a broken bus and station wagons, the dial is set to ancient, with old men in pastel-coloured grand boubous herding flocks of sheep. And as they have been doing since the thirteenth century, the town’s people come together after the rainy season to plaster the Grand Mosque with new layers of mud. Of all the mud houses and buildings that make Djenné a World Heritage Site, the Grand Mosque is the most awe inspiring, lording over the town with wooden marionettes that can be seen even before you enter it. The first mosque on the site was built around the thirteenth century, and the current one in 1907. It seats three thousand people and remains the heart and soul of Djenné.
For about a week after the rainy season, people organise themselves into groups of women and children who bring buckets of water for the men to turn soil into mud. Afterwards, men and boys climb over the mosque using the sticks that jut out of the walls as a ladder. This ritual is as much about loving their heritage as it is about social responsibility: Djenné has to maintain its look to remain a heritage site. For families whose houses are part of its ancient legacy, this means keeping them exactly as they were one hundred and fifty or more years ago.
The further I get from Bamako, the more broken the English gets. Like every fourth guy in Mali, Philip claims to be a tour guide. It’s a lie, but he understands English. For 15 000 francs, he takes me on a ‘historic tour’ of Djenné. Thus goes our tour: ‘This is mud house, very historic’, ‘this is bogolan cloth, it’s made with mud.’ Bogolan, the ochre, russet, mahogany and amber coloured cloth isn’t made with mud, it’s dyed in mud. ‘This is school for Islam,’ he says when we walk past a madrasa, where pairs of plastic shoes have been left outside the door. Inside, young boys read Quranic verses on wood slates.
He rents a Land Cruiser for a trip about three kilometres out of town, to Djenné-Djenno, for more walking and pointing out of the obvious. Djenné-Djenno, h
e says, means ‘little Djenné’. Like its big sister, it has mud houses. Old women and young girls pound millet in knee-high wooden mortars and pestles. He takes me to his grandmother’s house and puts a franc note in her hands. She wears a doek and Fulani earrings to pose for me. We stumble on a stream of blood running through one of the streets. ‘It’s from the butchery,’ he points at the obvious yet again to show me severed pieces of meat on the ground.
Our tour is saved by a public wedding with several couples saying I do at the same time. Brides are in lacy white wedding dresses and kitten heels covered with rainbow-coloured rhinestones. Their hair has been ironed and curled and their faces plastered with foundation that’s two shades lighter than their real complexion. Earlobes sag from the weight of gold chandelier earrings that fall to their shoulders and twisted gold Fulani earrings the size of a large fist. They travel on mopeds. The women in the crowd wear multicoloured grand boubous and long white skirts and tops. Their hair is slicked with gel, eyebrows thickened with kohl, and hands and feet painted with henna, including on their fingertips and toes, making them look like they were dipped in black paint. As is standard, earlobes, wrists and necks are heavy with gold jewellery.
Orange mobile network takes over the square in the afternoon to throw a promo party. The crowd is buzzing at first. Fists pump the air whenever the MC hypes by greeting them with ‘Salaam Alaikum’, instead of asking, ‘can you feel it?’ or asking them to say yeah. The crowd roars in reply with ‘Alaikum Salaam’. Even when they’re partying, West Africans remain true to themselves. The party is hot until three bikers rev into town, performing tricks that include high-speed chases, wheelies and driving in circles around each other. They’re here to announce a free show at the sports ground, killing Orange’s soirée. Philip and I follow the action to the sports ground. A few people watch from the wall around the pitch, in groups, or from the rooftops of nearby houses. There are about a hundred people, most of them young. Girls are hip in tight jeans and slogan T-shirts. Ears and wrists shine with gold, but this is not a special occasion, so the earrings, bangles and necklaces are low-key. The boys are in oversized T-shirts and baggy jeans that hang off their butts. All tricks involve driving from one end of the grounds to the other and spinning around the crowd.
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