I leave Timbuktu a week later with Abdul to go to the town of Savare, where we meet friends who are also on their way to Ségou for the Festival sur le Niger. Held on the banks of the Niger River for five days at the end of January and the beginning of February, the festival attracts thousands of people from around the region and the world. Every hotel room in town is booked; family compounds and the flat rooftops of houses close to the river’s banks turn into camping grounds. Street corners turn into jam sessions, drummers and musicians put on impromptu shows, and offer lessons that end with a sales pitch to buy djembe drums, kamale ngoni – a stringed harp made by stretching goat skin over a calabash – and a twenty-seven-key xylophone called balafon, which dates back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Craft shops around town turn into artsy spaces with exhibitions and more music lessons. Restaurants turn into pop-up nightclubs or host traditional dancers and dance shows. It doesn’t matter whether I’m front row at the main stage or on a random walk around the town, it’s impossible to disconnect from the festival. Walking around town one afternoon looking for food, I’m swept up by a crowd gathered around a masquerade with stilt dancers and spirits wearing masks that have sculptures on their crowns.
Another time, on my way to Hotel Joliba for a daytime party, I end up following a group of marionettes. Here they are not toy-shop-sized puppets with painted outfits, they are real-life, giant human caricatures, controlled not by pulling strings but by walking on stilts. When the dust of the marionettes settles, the air explodes with gun fire from a street parade put on by the Donsow. The Donsow is a brotherhood of hunters that has existed since the seventh century. They’re re-enacting a hunting dance, walking in slow leaps and occasionally bouncing towards the crowd with guns pointed at the sky. Trailing the Donsow are griots humming in a trance-like state. This year’s bill has artists from Senegal, Niger, Guinea, Mexico and Portugal. The line-up includes Coumba Gawlo, Mamar Kass, Les Amazones, desert queen Haira Harry, Oumar Koita, Bassékou Kouyaté and the town’s icons, Super Biton de Ségou. The star of the show is Oumou Sangaré, who arrives like the superstar she is in a Hummer that’s surrounded by a motorcade. She drives it slowly so her adoring fans and the hands they stretch out to touch her car can have their moment.
Later when she strides on stage, her actions say, ‘Show me how much you adore me and I will give you the time of your life’. She smiles and giggles and pouts her lips playfully. Everyone dances and sings along. The most beautiful moment for me is when she starts greeting the audience by name. At first I think it’s a new song with many names until I realise that she gets hysterical screams every time she demands love from Mohammed, Amina, Amadou, Oumou, Aminata, Ibrahim and other Muslim names that are as common as Lerato and Vusi in South Africa. Other than the music, happy hangovers and glimpses of ancient Bambara culture, the festival introduces me to Olga, Abbas and his lover Miriam. Abbas and Olga’s friendship turns Bamako into home.
VII
NUMBER 227
February 2009
I’M WALKING DOWN A street in Bamako-Coura when Cissé waves me over to sit with him and his friend Prince outside his kiosk. The brazier is glowing with red coals and a bubbling pot of mint tea. By the time we get to the third cup, I know that Cissé’s favourite politician is George W Bush and that Prince has a room to rent at his apartment. The building has four floors, each with a bathroom-cum-toilet that I have to hold my stomach in to use. It’s five footsteps wide and smells like crap and disinfectant. Prince’s corner unit on the second floor has a wrap-around balcony decorated with the flags of Mali and his homeland of Senegal. The only time Prince talks to me is when he offers me tea. The only time he shows some personality is when his country’s tennis team visits for a game against Mali.
Bamako hasn’t changed since my visit in 2008, but I’m different. I have a life now. It starts with Olga, and the happy hours on the bamboo couch under a mango tree at the back of her house listening to French love songs and Angélique Kidjo. Olga introduces me to Peter, an artist from Ouagadougou. Through him and our nights at Bla Bla Bar, I meet a Danish NGO worker whose circle includes a Senegalese dancer who introduces me to Jacque, originally from Paris. Jacque’s four-bedroom house in Hippodromo has a pool, and housemates who include Ngozi from Lagos. I sleep over whenever I miss a double bed, fresh linen and fluffy pillows.
When Abbas calls to say Miriam is in hospital with malaria, I visit her because they’re the kind of people who would do the same for me. It is during one of these visits that Abbas invites me over for lunch at their new place in Djicoroni Para, where my first impression of Bamako being a beat-down city comes back as his moped dodges big mud paddles and kids washing in bathtubs in the middle of the street. The open drains on the streets bubble with black goo and plastic bags. We stop at house number 227. It’s a large four-bedroom flat with two kitchens, a lounge, two typically un-inviting bathrooms and a lounge. Abbas leads me in through a room that’s divided into two using a wooden screen. In the foyer, we walk past a very bony guy lying face-up on a thin single mattress. Samba’s right knee and hands are in bandages. His long, yellowish teeth protrude. He looks like breathing hurts him, let alone talking.
There’s also Jilly, with a head of thick dreadlocks and a body he has to bend to walk through the door. Mbaye looks like a healthier version of Samba. The Sene brothers live with their female cousin Astou. I sit next to a bow-legged boy called Champion, whose sixteen-year-old skin is scarred by the zits he can’t help but pop. We’re joined at the balcony by a couple from Paris. Doreen is an art student in her last semester of study in Bamako. Her man Pierre blushes when Abbas says he’s in Bamako to babysit his relationship lest a local take his place in Doreen’s bed. Another tall man bends his body through the door. Charles is a guide from Senegal. By the time Astou empties the contents of her pot into two large metal dishes, there are ten of us; five at the table and five others on stools to eat their lunch on the floor. We dig into the food, eating together in every sense of the word. The five hands in our plate turn into three, then two. Mine keeps going until all that remains are specks of rice. I’ve had thieboudienne many times; Astou’s turns me into the lunch guest that never leaves.
Jilly is another reason I move in. It’s April, when temperatures soar to 40° Celsius. Sleeping in has become impossible and the rooftop of Prince’s building is overcrowded. There’s always room on Jilly’s rooftop of one more person. The roof has two sections with a small wall between them. Each side is about twenty steps long, and six lunges wide as I discover in a few weeks. I find a spot for my sponge among those belonging to Jilly, Charles, Mbaye and Samba and their neighbour Omar, who sleeps here every night during the hot season. Abbas and Miriam sleep on the other side of the roof even though, like Astou, the French couple, Jilly and Mbaye, they have a bedroom to themselves. At any given moment, there are no less than ten people who call number 227 home.
You call it overcrowding, we call it ‘social living’. Your first obligation is to your community, not just your family and friends. It’s the reason Jilly has an open-door policy. I move in at the same time Astou’s sister, Oumou, visits from Dakar.
Everyone has a connection of some sort. The French couple know Samba, Charles and Jilly know each other from Dakar, Abbas and Jilly met in Lomé, Togo’s hard-partying capital. Mohammed from Guinea Conakry, another broken body looking for a place to mend, is friends with Abbas. The stream of visitors includes Doc, a male nurse with a broad, flat nose that overshadows his other facial features, even the broad smile and thick lips. He comes over every evening to hang out on the rooftop while Champion brews mint tea and Jilly lords over the remote control from his traditional stool. The TV is always on the Euro soccer league, CSI New York or 24, his favourite show and the inspiration behind his mongrel’s name Bauer, which everyone pronounces ‘Bo-u-er’.
There’s also light-skinned Mohammed, who only dresses in grand boubous; Harouna, who wears regular pants with wax tunics; Seray and Mustafa. Moham
med the herbalist loves showing off a picture taken at a field somewhere in Banjul, with a crowd watching him charm a puff adder. Adama from Benin sells shoes from door to door and is a regular lunch guest. Adama the drummer and dancer is introduced with the warning that he is a bit of a clown. He comes over to sleep on the roof. There’s also King from Freetown. He has lived in Accra and Dakar, where he first crossed paths with Jilly. King is obsessed with God, custard and Brenda Fassie. He’s in the habit of dropping weird one-liners like ‘your best servant is your hand’ when I ask him where he gets his laundry done. Moussa comes back from Kankan, where he’s been working. He’s dating Fana, who helps to clean the house in exchange for food for Ibrahima, her son. She’s a skeleton when we meet. There are other guests who stay for a few days in between. They include Aisha and Fatima, who are in the business of buying bazin in Bamako and selling it in Dakar. They sleep in the lounge; a room Jilly only unlocks for special guests. Even then, we aren’t allowed in. A family of three takes their place for several weeks.
With this many people under one roof, everyone imitates each other. Astou and Oumou do like Adama from Benin and throw cowries to tell fortunes. Abbas starts running when Moussa does. Seray and several others start praying in keeping with Moussa’s devotion to prayer times. Doreen goes wild with bazin and pagne clothing; Miriam and I follow suit.
It’s fun until Miriam takes up music. ‘I can’t live without music’ is her catch phrase. It’s followed by the clearing of her throat, the soft humming of a melody and then a full throttle song. Her favourite question is ‘you want I play something?’ followed by strumming. She clears her throat, then howls: ‘All we need is love. And peace. Love. Love. Yeah.’ She passes her weapon to her man and asks him to strum ‘No Woman, No Cry’. This is her cue to freestyle, yelping ‘don’t cry mama Afrika. Farafina. Yes, Mr Bob Marley. Afrika. Mali. Fara-fina.’ Miriam turns the roof of our communal home into something close to hell. One night, she takes out her djembe and starts to wail as loud as ever. We cringe. She bangs the drum harder. ‘Music takes me to a deep place,’ she says. That place is painful. I peek at the note pad she always has in case she gets inspiration for lyrics:
‘Every time best way is the truth. Sometimes it’s hard but always is the best because no real feelings. When we talk about love can broke many things. Feeling me good in spirit is the first thing. After feeling me good with my brothers. Time is going and I want to enjoying all the way. Free your mind and don’t confuse yourself. Love is love.’
‘I prefer my own lyrics,’ she says.
Her depth makes enemies of us and of instruments alike: A drum, a flute, a guitar and the kamale ngoni. The ngoni sounds like heaven in the hands of a maestro. Miriam makes it sound like a crime against humanity. Even worse, Samba, Abbas, Mohammed from Conakry and Seray tune in. They are just as bad; it’s the Sahel Horror Show.
One day, Abbas comes back from town with Dave, who is seething from a gold deal that’s turned sour. The dealer wants money before handing over the goods. Dave and his photograph with Prince Charles wants the gold before handing over the cash. ‘Haven’t you heard of recession? The white man has no more money my friends,’ he keeps saying, calling Africans liars and scammers. Astou asks me to follow her to the kitchen when I narrow my eyes at Dave and get ready to let my temper loose. This silly man strikes a deal on wishful thinking instead of sense, Abbas offers him the refuge of our home and family, and he is calling us scammers and liars before he eats the chicken yassa Astou and I cook? Astou has seen flashes of my temper from a confrontation I had with Abbas when he walks in demanding instead of asking for food; reducing me to a servant that a man will never have in me. King’s eyes glint with mischief, Jilly’s lips curl into a smile and Abbas raises his eyebrows at her; everyone knows what’s going to happen to Dave if I don’t leave the room.
As the temperature rises, my legs and ankles become twice their increasingly fat size. I get bouts of nausea sparked by most things that touch my lips, mint tea being the chief instigator. As a result, I spend a lot of time with my head inside our toilet bowl, which always has a piece of crap floating in it. The heat also traps me at home.
The soundtrack at our house is one hundred per cent African, be it Tiken Jah Fakoly and Alpha Blondy on reggae, Ochestra Baobab and Bembeya Jazz National for our jazz sessions or up-and-coming stars like Vieux Farka Toure, Fode Baro and Titi. From Fodé Baro’s ‘Commissariat’ I learn how to say tell me something in French: Dis moi quelque chose. To put up with my new-found obsession with ‘Cameroon’ by Alpha Blondy, Mbaye turns it into a French lesson. This is how I discover that the French word for heart is cœur and that swimming pool is piscine. By the time I leave Bamako for good, Samba complains that I’m a chatterbox and cab drivers moan that I drive a hard bargain.
We play Oumou Sangaré, Amadou & Mariam, Ali Farka Touré, Mory Kanté, Habib Koité and Salif Keita several times a day; going through almost all their discography and adding Bambara words to my vocabulary. One day while listening to Salif Keita’s ‘Africa’, I ask my housemates to translate words I have been mumbling since I was a teenager. Astou says he’s essentially singing out the joy we find in our countless dance forms and the variety of the food we have, like attiéké, ndole, fufu, alloko, thiéb, yassa and mafé.
Attiéké is fermented and granulated cassava popular in Ivory Coast and Mali, ndole is a Cameroonian dish made with peanuts, bitter leaves and beef or prawns. Fufu is soft, pounded cassava you swallow without chewing, alloko is fried plantain. It’s called kelewele in Ghana. Thiéboudienne – or thiéb, as it is commonly known – is the national dish of Senegal. Yassa is an onion sauce served with fish or chicken. Mafé is the meat and peanut butter stew loved in Mali and Senegal, and cooked in different ways around the region.
‘Any dish that’s worth being a Salif Keita lyric is worth my time in the kitchen,’ I announce to Astou.
I become her kitchen skivvy.
The way to gastronomic heaven is paved with about two kilograms of rice, a kilo or more of fish, six medium red onions, two green peppers, one packet of tomato paste, one small cabbage, three large sweet potatoes, a bunch of small carrots, celery leaves, tamarind paste and salt and pepper. This is thiéboudienne. It’s the superstar of rice dishes. We buy our food from meal to meal, starting with a trip to the market. When we get back to the house, Astou washes and guts the fish while I tend to the fire, starting by shaking coal into place around the medium-sized brazier. I pour kerosene, light my fire and blow air into it using a square bamboo fan until the coals are orange. Astou takes over the fire with a silver pot she fills with a litre of cooking oil bought at the kiosk on our street, where the owner closes shop at prayer times.
While the oil heats up, Astou tears a handful of small celery leaves into the wooden mortar with black peppercorns, dried chilli and garlic cloves. I grind them into a paste she stuffs the fish with. Starting with the carrots, I scrub the vegetables until the dried mud they’re always covered in melts in the water. I give them a final rinse in clean water. After deep frying the fish and removing it from the pot, Astou adds finely chopped tomatoes, a cube of chicken stock and a litre of water to the pot and lets it simmer into a sauce. Satisfied with the consistency, she adds peeled carrots, cabbage wedges and quartered sweet potatoes. She turns her energy to the rice while the sauce simmers. She spreads the rice on a flat bamboo sieve and tosses it in the air to remove the chaff before rinsing it on a metal dish with holes at the bottom, like a strainer, until the water is no longer milky white. The dish goes on top of the pot and the space between it and the pot sealed by wrapping a thin strip of cloth around it. She closes the dish with a lid and leaves the rice there until it’s half cooked before transferring it to the sauce. She leaves it on the fire until the liquid has been absorbed. The dish cooked, the pot comes off the fire.
The smell brings everyone in the house to the balcony. Abbas is always the first person to start circling around us. Miriam, who is now his wife, keeps herself
occupied by stringing beads into earrings and necklaces she’ll sell in Madrid when she goes back home in a few weeks. Mohammed from Conakry, whom we call Papi Two, is helping her. Mbaye is on a chair under the tree outside the compound. Adama from Benin takes a seat next to Mohammed the herbalist.
Astou removes boiled cassava leaves from the fire and watches over me as I grind them in the mortar with chilli flakes before frying them with tomato paste. Lunch is ready, but first, Astou indulges in her favourite pastime. She walks over to Adama, who has already pulled out the small leather pouch that contains the cowrie shells he uses to read fortunes. It’s always the same predictions – business is going to thrive, single people will get married to a good partner and those who are already in relationships will make healthy babies. We are all going to have a long life. A wide smile fills Astou’s face when Adama tells her that she’s going to give birth to twins. So will I, apparently, never mind that I have no interest in becoming a parent. Satisfied with her fortune, Astou walks back to the kitchenette to rinse the two dishes she’ll serve lunch in. This afternoon’s meal is prepared for Jilly, Mbaye, Samba, Astou, Oumou, King, Charles, Abbas, Miriam, Champion, the two Mohammeds, Doc, Oumou’s son Omar, a new French visitor Emmanuel, Mustafa, Fana – who has gained weight – her son Ibrahima and myself.
On days when we cook yassa, Astou’s favourite meal, she asks Abbas to read her fortunes before we go to the market; we’re going to buy chickens, we might as well find out if ancestors want a sacrifice or not. For this meal, we take a ride in a sotrama to a market about six kilometres from Djicoroni Para, driving past sections of the road with stalls that sell clothes, pots, plates and other kitchen utensils. This market has a poultry section. Our chickens are not sacrificial. If they were, the ancestors would have specified what the colour of our protein needs to be. Astou ‘weighs’ a chicken in her hand before deciding whether it’s going back to the cage or if it’s headed for the butcher’s machete. It’s plucked and gutted here and brought back to us in pieces.
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