Vagabond

by Mogoatlhe, Lerato

  I saw him on stage in South Africa in 2004, where he floated to the stage on angel wings to receive his Kora All-Africa Music Lifetime Achievement Awards. His performance is short, but even among many other stars from around the continent, Salif Keita shines brighter than all of them; every performance of his an affirmation that he is a gift from the gods. What makes tonight special, I realise, is that Salif is at home, and there’s a difference between being with your people and strangers, no matter how welcoming they may be. Your people know you beyond face value.

  The crowd walks towards the stage in a single file to leave notes of francs, some of them in wads, at his feet. He leans towards those who want to pin their money on him so they can do so. When more people stand on the steps leading to the stage, he signals the bouncers to let them through. He gives over his body to them. They kiss his hands and fall to his feet. This is why I know he means it whenever he stops singing to tell us, ‘Je t’aime, I love you’, his voice softening; the soaring voice that’s taken him around the world several times over turning into an intimate whisper.

  Salif turns the last part of his show into a heart to heart sermon on love. He asks us to take a seat. He scrutinises the crowd until he finds who he is looking for, starting with the small girl he calls to the stage. In this moment, the only person who matters is the little girl. ‘Good evening my darling, what is your name?’ he asks. He gives her time to answer him between each question, so she knows that this is a conversation of equals. He turns his whole body to face her and speaks to her away from the microphone. They cling on to each other afterwards. Salif does this with every person in the audience who has albinism. Satisfied that he hasn’t missed anyone, he turns his attention back to the crowd and tells us, ‘We are one. We are all human. We must love and respect one another.’ People with albinism are still killed around Africa in the cruel belief that their bodies make powerful magic potions.

  The show ends and Salif goes back to his dressing room. He spends an hour entertaining the growing crowd that’s followed him there. I follow them and wait for my turn to meet him. Once again, people fall at his feet instead of shaking his hands, which they kiss. He clasps their hands into his when they get up, offering long embraces and kisses on their cheeks. He spends about five minutes with each person. When my turn comes I imitate everyone by falling to his feet and kissing his hands, hoping for an on-the-spot interview.

  ‘There’s no time,’ he says softly.

  ‘Tell me one thing: Why would you defy your lineage?’

  West Africans are deeply traditional and still hold on to the ways of their ancestors. As a Keita and descendent of the founder of the Mali empire, king Sundiata Keita, Salif shouldn’t be a singer. That’s the role of the griots, like Habib Koité, who still inherit music from their forefathers.

  ‘I would have gone crazy if I didn’t become a musician,’ he says, and excuses himself to talk to a woman who has just walked in with her child. Salif’s attention never returns to me.

  I find Setou hanging out with his band outside their bus. ‘We’re waiting for you, hop in,’ she says. What starts out as a lift back to our hotel ends two days later. The show is moving to Bouaké, and we are invited to tag along. Bouaké is one hundred kilometres from Yamoussoukro. It’s Ivory Coast’s largest city after Abidjan. Salif travels here in a private car, and even though I never get my moment to interview him, Bouaké helps me to know him better. We arrive on Sunday afternoon with hours to spare before showtime. Salif has already settled in at the lounge when I arrive at the hotel the band is staying at. Groups of fans wait their turn to speak to him; some have albinism, others, like Coulibay, Cissé and Idrissa, are legless and armless from polio. The legless crawl with flip flops on their arm stumps, their bodies swinging them to their hero.

  ‘I love him because he makes me feel important,’ Idrissa tells me after meeting his hero. ‘I can feel his love.’

  Tonight’s show is held in a field. It’s free, and it looks like the whole town is here. Some watch the event from rooftops and walls. The band tunes instruments, and the vocalists sing until the quality sounds like an album after a final mix – perfect. The only seating available is several hundred metres from the stage, where plastic chairs are lined up behind couches reserved for VIPs, who are dressed in their finest bazin ensembles. Aïcha’s set is followed by a duet of ‘Mbife’, with Salif. He doesn’t kneel this time. Instead, his hand on his heart, he greets and thanks the people of Bouaké for coming. ‘Are you ready?’ he asks before raising his fist in the air. He’s a party animal tonight, bouncing and strutting around the stage. He’s on fire and we’re feeling the heat. The VIPs get on their feet and slow-step to the front of the stage. The power goes off. Salif keeps singing and his band performing, their sound as perfect as ever. The power cut lasts for several songs. When the lights come back on, people throw money at his feet and over his head. We leave with the band on Monday morning for Abidjan.

  Back in Abidjan, the Kevin episode refuses to remain buried in the dark corner of my mind, and I still have to chase after payments. My emotions refuse to be anything but dark, making me wish I could get back on Prozac after flushing them instead of fully engaging with the clinical depression I was diagnosed with at sixteen. I hit rock bottom once again and think about running back to Jozi – a decision that makes me spend the evening crying in the dark in my room. I roll off my mattress to start packing, picking clothes up from the floor, putting leftover food in the bin, and cleaning the bathroom.

  As I do every day, I sit down to listen to Habib Koité’s album, Afriki. The Malian is my favourite artist. His music feeds my soul. When ‘Nteri’ plays, it feels like my soul is making a transcendent prayer. I close my eyes when ‘Fimani’ plays so I can feel maestro Kélétigui Diabaté on the balafon; it feels like sitting at God’s feet. ‘N’tesse’ has me up and swinging back and forth. My movements become robotic and comical for ‘Massake’, which makes me playful. I picture myself in a bellowing boubou, dancing with a group of women in equally big dresses, when ‘Namania’ plays. I’m in the desert when ‘N’ba’ plays – it makes me want to go to places that are far away. I listen to Afriki until I find my answer. I need to start over.

  My sister, Lesego, has been calling me an ocean of emotion all my life. I have to feel deeply or experiences don’t carry any value. I don’t want my stay in West Africa to only end at me being here and ticking off a list of tourist attractions. I want to start over because I want this to be the story of my life and not just an adventure I go on. I want West Africa to recreate me so that when I return home, I will tell the story of my life in two chapters: Before and after West Africa.

  Habib Koité is headlining the Festival of the Desert in two weeks; I’m going back to Mali. When I apply for a two-month visa at the Malian embassy, the woman handling my application offers to add four months, on the house. The catch is I have to spend the first half of 2009 in Mali. ‘You never know what will happen,’ Madame Diarra says. It’s the best gift I have ever received.

  VI

  TIMBUKTU

  4 January 2009

  I’M SCURRYING AROUND the bus station in Sogoniko, Bamako, looking for a bus to Timbuktu. Darting between battered taxis and overenthusiastic touts peddling tickets to Accra, Lagos, Nouakchott and Niamey, I meet a tout who tells me the truth: There are no buses to Timbuktu. I tell myself not to panic. Sure, not even people around me have a faint idea of where I’m going, but how hard can it be? As it turns out, getting to Timbuktu is not a world-famous joke for nothing. I finally find what I’m looking for with a bus company that I’m told is not among the most reliable at the station, but it’s the only one leaving Bamako for Northern Mali this afternoon.

  It’s always a slow trip in Mali. This Sunday is no different. The bus fills up after two hours. The waiting lounge is a rusty, three-sided shack with wooden benches and a TV showing R. Kelly, Celine Dion and Luther Vandross videos. Young boys walk in and out selling airtime, soda, juice, dolls,
toy cars, batteries and handheld radios. When I refuse to buy fake Chanel and Gucci sunglasses or a palm-sized green Quran, one boy shakes his head. I’m buying something whether I like it or not. I give him 700 francs for white plastic prayer beads. The bus arrives at 3pm. Four men pile the roof with luggage, carefully stacking suitcases with sacks of potatoes, onions, rice, chairs, tables and chickens bound at the feet, before tying ropes around everything so it doesn’t fall off.

  The bus driver looks at his clipboard.

  ‘Diarra, Diop, Keita, Kouyate,’ he says, calling out surnames one at a time, ticking them off as he goes. ‘Coulibaly, Diallo, Cissé, Mog, Moku – no, no, no,’ he stumbles, scratching his head with the pen.

  ‘Mo-go-a-tlhe,’ I say, laughing at his confusion and effort.

  He laughs with me and goes back to calling out surnames that roll off his tongue – Ba, Keita, Samake. I tiptoe over suitcases, worn white sacks filled with more rice and produce, and luggage packed into plastic bags with pictures of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the Statue of Liberty – Paris, London and New York written across them – to get to my seat. Mali is hot and dusty, and public transport is always overloaded with people and goods. Even so, children get dressed up for trips. A boy in a shiny silver suit clambers over the seats with two girls in chiffon and lace dresses.

  We leave on time, at 4pm, only stopping to pick up and drop off people. We stop twice for prayers, when the bus gets off the road to park next to four others and two cars. Some passengers wash their faces, arms and feet, and roll out their mats to face Mecca for Maghrib and Isha, the sunset and night prayers. Those who are not praying stock up on water, oranges, cookies, pieces of grilled goat, bananas, papaya, pineapple and groundnuts. Back in the bus, the driver plays Wassoulou music, named after the region of its origin in Southern Mali, along the borders of Guinea Conakry and Ivory Coast. Someone cranks up the volume for a Bambara talk show, another radio plays griot melodies and the guy on my seat plays Akon on his cellphone.

  Travelling around Mali is connecting with the meaning of isolated destinations. The country is a series of vast, empty spaces, punctuated by small towns and even smaller villages, dimly lit by small kerosene lamps shining on small tables with fire wood, smoked fish, sweet potatoes and cassava for sale. It’s dawn when I’m told to transfer into a bush taxi. We’re in Mopti, the transport hub that connects other regions in the country to Gao and other parts of Northern Mali. This is where you catch boats to Timbuktu and Djenné. I move to a previously white, fifteen-seater bush taxi that looks like it hasn’t been roadworthy in decades. The door bears multiple scars from being welded too many times. Seats made for three hold five bodies. We keep wiggling around to make room for more passengers and their luggage.

  The engine doesn’t so much start as it coughs like a TB patient to take us to Douentza. We travel on a potholed road, through long stretches of fields with sunburnt shrubs. Occasionally, the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere is interrupted by a herd of camels, cattle at a watering hole or a shepherd sleeping under a shrub, secure in the knowledge that his flock is too beat down by the sun to stray. A phone rings. A wrinkled Tuareg man dips a hand into the pocket of his light blue boubou, and out comes a maroon Samsung still shiny with newness.

  Everything in Douentza is dusty: There’s dust on the children who sell water in two hundred and fifty millilitre plastic packets, on two boys who walk over to me asking for pens, on the oranges and bananas sold at the roadside, and on the tables and chairs at the restaurant where I leave my bags to keep looking for a car to Timbuktu. Clouds of dust rise whenever a car or bus goes by, settling on our bodies, bags and food, and on the flock of sheep on top of a bus. I walk to a group of Europeans hanging out in three SUVs parked under a tree. The SUVs are taxis to Timbuktu. A driver says my seat will be US$70 but I think he’s charging me like I’m a European. I accept that West Africans will always inflate their price tags for travellers but I refuse to pay like I earn in dollars and euros; I am, after all, ‘at home’. I go back to the restaurant, where my bags are being watched over by Amadou and Modibo, whom I meet in the bush taxi. They’re going to sell CDs and paintings at the festival. I ask them to buy my ticket for me, which they pay 15 000 francs for.

  ‘We’ll leave soon, Inshallah,’ our driver says, even though our car is full. Inshallah is Arabic for God willing. It’s also the biggest cop-out in Islamic countries, in my opinion. Instead of committing to anything people say it will happen if God wills. I’ve been on the road for two days since leaving Abidjan: We are not leaving when Allah wills. I nag the driver until he says we’ll leave in thirty minutes.

  Amadou sits with the driver, Modibo is at the back with another tour guide and everyone’s luggage. An old couple in safari khakis is on the seat behind the driver. I’m behind them with a Swedish woman who is ‘sorry’ to announce that Africans are liars. She didn’t pay US$100 to share the ride with people who aren’t the old couple. ‘Is it because the people are poor? That’s not an excuse to lie,’ she hisses in a tirade that lasts more than an hour. There are one hundred and seventy kilometres between Douentza and Timbuktu. I bite my tongue and will her to shut up. This trip will end if my tempter explodes.

  The closer we get to Timbuktu, the more barren the landscape becomes. We’re in a convoy of seven SUVs. We stop for drinks in Bambara Maoudé, a village with one street. People climb out of the cars wearing wide smiles; Nikon and Canon cameras pointing at mud houses with no doors. There’s a nameless restaurant with a plat du jour of mushy rice and a thumb-sized piece of meat served with the water it was boiled in and a fine layer of dust. Across the road is a kiosk that sells warm sodas and cold Nescafé.

  In the car, I keep asking the driver when we’ll get to Timbuktu. ‘Soon,’ he says.

  ‘When exactly is soon, my friend?’ I demand.

  ‘In about two hours, if the car doesn’t breakdown,’ chimes in a tour guide.

  ‘Why would it breakdown?’ the Swede asks.

  ‘You just never know,’ Amadou pipes in, making her renew her tirade. We fall silent again. The car finally stops on the banks of the Bani River. Even here, the West African entrepreneurial spirit reigns. A woman sits next to a brazier frying cassava chips and fish. Small kids dressed in dirty, torn T-shirts sell water and sodas. They run up to us offering to pose for a gift of money or pens. Across from us, two boys push a cow into a pirogue. We buy peanuts in paper cones and take pictures until our cars can get onto a ferry.

  The sun sets on the flat horizon, turning the river and the villages on its bank gold. A young boy pushes a pirogue with a stick that’s longer than the boat. A woman sits in the middle with her baby on her back. It’s a beautiful moment worth the self-torture of going to Timbuktu by land. We get back into the SUVs and convoy on to Timbuktu, where the river fades into the sand of the Sahara Desert. The darkness blacks out my arrival, which starts with following Amadou, Modibo and Abu, a tour guide we meet next to the market, where the SUV drops us, to a hostel. Abu’s friend owns it; he’ll negotiate a cheaper rate for me. Time goes by with no sign of the tenant who has the only key to the dormitory. Plan B becomes sleeping at Abdoulaye’s house. He’s Modibo’s friend. Abdoulaye’s blue-black complexion is lit up by his cellphone, Akon’s ‘Mama Africa’ squeaking from it. Abdul and I go home on his red and blue chrome moped while Amadou and Modibo walk there. The moped barely holds its own against the desert streets. I lock my hands around Abdul’s body; afraid of being the fat girl who falls off a moped.

  For tour guides like Abdul, Timbuktu’s lack of budget accommodation is another way to earn cash; letting out rooms, beds and camping space. His other tenants are an American student studying in Accra called David, who is also attending the festival, and a French couple. Abdul’s place has one bedroom and a lounge that turns into our dormitory at bedtime, when the three settees turn into beds. The couple sleeps on the floor. David, Amadou and I are on the settees, Modibo’s in the bedroom with Abdul and his friend Abdi.

>   The room goes back to being a lounge in the morning. The settees are joined by a TV stand with two shelves with laminated brown finishing. The top shelf holds a small black TV that shows grainy pictures. There’s a French-English dictionary on the bottom shelf, a dog-eared copy of Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and the Autobiography of Malcolm X. Abdul also keeps a copy of the Holy Bible, even though he’s Muslim. Abdul should be making money to buy more bricks to extend the house but he refuses to charge me and lets David pay what he can afford. He acts like a butler, serving a breakfast of coffee with sugar and powdered milk and a flat round bread called takoula that’s baked in dome-shaped mud ovens built in the front of some yards. The takoula crunches with sand.

  David offers to show me around town. We start at Sankore quarter, walking slowly through the sand, past donkeys and old men in flowing robes. All houses are built with mud bricks. Children loiter around, like the little boy in maroon sweatpants covered in dust, a trail of dry snot tracking down this ashen face. Occasionally, a young boy or girl walks up to us to say hello. Everything is the same colour as the desert it rises from. Flat roofs are dangerously close to dangling electric lines that look like they can spark at any time. Donkeys trudge through sand with high loads on their backs, and mopeds and cars hoot when approaching intersections, alleyways and street corners. The streets are a jumble of weird angles. Compounds are littered with jerry cans, firewood and pairs of women minding children or cooking, or groups of students reading the Quran. Houses still have traditional gates of heavy wood, with metal decorations and handles.