To Timbuktu for a Haircut

by Rick Antonson

  “Zak, about the car.”

  “Yes, Rick. What?”

  “Where is it?”

  “A be na sonni,”he told me. And then in English he clarified what I learned to be their answer for everything. “It will be here soon.”

  Mamadou was always loud, always talking, his face glistening as though the conversation were a physical workout. When he arrived with the vehicle, he immediately threw his arm over my shoulder and then pushed the back of my head in jest. He wore a baseball cap, and an aerosol can of lubricant stuck out of the pocket of his blue shirt. He mimicked our first clumsy handshake, letting it again deteriorate into attempts to batter one another’s hands. He restarted it, slowed it down, guided our closed fists to a butt, opened my palm and his, curling all our fingers together. He thought his creation was the funniest thing imaginable. He added a back-hand to back-hand slap, twisted my fingers, and initiated a ritual that would signify our greeting many times in the coming weeks.

  Nema, not needed for cooking that day, would be sent along in the car at the behest of Mohammed, through whom I would pay for her cooking in Dogon. Zak and Mamadou boarded the tattered Peugeot with Nema and me sitting in the back.

  I was surprised by the trees through which the road was hewn. “Balanzan,” Zak called them. They bore fatty fruit. “We call it shea butter. They are shea trees.” We passed by the picturesque village of Sanankoroba, giving us a small sense of what to expect en route as villages large and small drew close, then faded away from the roadway.

  Afro-funk music pierced the car as Mamadou fiddled with the volume. His audio tape cassette was stuck. He pounded the dash, then found the proper pull, sprung it and pushed it back to load the deck. Eventually, a soothing sound emerged, but loudly. “Afel Bocoum,” Zak said, with Malian pride.

  Mamadou had zero English except for my name, and his conversation with me was in Bambara. As I mispronounced the tree name, he entered the fray, self-appointed teacher of Bambara.

  “I ni sogoma,” he said.

  I searched his face for meaning. He repeated. I re-searched.

  Villages like Sanankoroba stretch beside and away from the roadway between Bamako and Ségou.

  Zak helped, “Hello. Means ‘hello.’”

  I spoke the word clumsily.

  Mamadou said it slowly, flicking his lips.

  I attempted it again.

  “I nice,” Mamadou said, chuckling, his success apparent, my gratitude expected.

  “Thank you,” interpreted Zak. “I write for you.” Then, “Say owo. Is word you need.”

  “And it means?”

  “Yes.”

  I could imagine only trouble with this.

  Nema reached across the back seat and removed my broadrimmed hat from my lap, claiming it as hers. “Mon chapeau,” she postured with a dimpled grin, and pulled it taut over her bunned hair.

  “Owo,” I kidded. Here began my weeks of struggling to reassert ownership of my hat.

  Nema’s black hair was streaked orange. Not everywhere, but with enough of a tinge to harmonize the unfathomable brown of her skin. She cast a mesh over this to hold the hair away from the fire and food while cooking. A gold earring dangled from her left lobe. That beady smile consistently pushed her face to round, making her eyes skimpy and her nose larger, and taking her lips to the brink of a pout. Her perturbed look (such as when she was tugging for control of my hat) pulled it all in. She could not but look beautiful. We travelled many miles together, starting with our misunderstanding in the back seat of that car. Malians are a casually, politely touching people. When Nema’s hand landed on my arm or if she sat with her leg touching mine, it was nothing. Nothing but trust.

  Zak, at his core, was avuncular. He voiced constant encouragement, unsolicited advice followed, and, in a mentoring manner, he repeated himself. I was not sure which one of us he was reassuring. His height barely crested my shoulders. But in most everything he did, he stood taller. In T-shirt, shorts, and the flipfloppiest of sandals, his lithe body could move anywhere, move anything. His calves and haunch and arms were all muscle. His training gym was the Dogon.

  Zakarie, the guide; Rick, the author; Nema, the cook; and Mamadou, the driver.

  Mamadou cranked the music up to hear it above the talk, which was in turn loud in order to be heard over the music, which he spun louder in a circus of sequences. The singer strained in a plaintive way, her voice more powerful than her words, as I didn’t comprehend them.

  Every day a traveller could see the things I saw for a first time: a donkey-fest of nine carts, each laden with market goods, firewood, and blackened pots; three Malian grandfathers making their own caravan on bicycles, with a high sack of trade wares on their backs, vegetable shoots springing from each pack’s wrapping. Beyond the ensemble, a single man in brown clothing flowed from a village, a long pole slung over his shoulder in the fashion of an American hobo, a symbol for the ages. He approached a camel, its legs cracked at the knees, and touched the pole to the camel’s thigh and backside. It rose desert true.

  We were in a land vulnerable to drought and poor crops, and the road was not well travelled. The harmattan, which flogs this land during the rainy season, had left to recover from its own effects. Vegetation had died in its path. Structures strong on history were whittled by its breeze. Water supplies were blown to vapours or covered with sand.

  Mamadou was an expert at driving on this Third World threelane road. It was really two lanes which, when there was other traffic, had three active lanes: us, a passing vehicle, and the target. Bâchés belched along, local passengers, oblivious to the smells and the occasional Caucasian visibly choking in the transport’s smoke.

  Nearing Ségou, Nema insisted on “Salif Keita.” Mamadou, who controlled the tape deck, declined. “Salif,” Nema demanded. Her teeth were large, and it was impossible for her mouth to be angry without also looking like a smile. Mamadou responded sharply, refusing, saying “Super Khoumaissa.” Nema let forth a tirade of Bambara streaked with vulgar terms, or so it seemed to me. Mamadou was adamant in his choice of music. Soon we were listening to Salif. Thus I learned that Mamadou, Zak, and I, even when we argued aggressively, deferred to Nema whenever she had a want.

  In the distant Sahelian lands, a regal man appeared, his blue robe streaming with his gentle movements. He walked purposefully out of a cluster of trees, a staff in his right hand, crossed the road, and entered the desert that stretched over the horizon. From where? To where?

  A donkey caravan trod the earth beside the pavement. Eleven carts in all, with cargos of rope and millet, and children with mothers in purple and red and green. More colours: a lighter red, an orange, two distinct greens and white in the clothing.

  We arrived in the ancient Bambara dynasty’s capital, Ségou. This is one quarter of the length of the River Niger. We eased off the blacktop onto dirt, around the potholes, and stopped in front of a home where there was a room for the night. This was one of the “hotel” charges on Mohammed’s listing.

  It was good to stretch our legs and not hear car sounds. A walk toward the river with Zak eased my morning’s disillusion. Nothing troubled this young man, and his readiness to please was Malian to the core. We strolled through gardens tilled by happy people. Patches of vegetables covered a hundred acres. A Mali firefinch fluttered, disappeared and came back with a friend. It was my first night of dusk and bush, with mosquitoes at my ankles.

  Zak commiserated with me about my itinerary woes. In Mali, one needs a great sense of the practical. Last night’s missed sleep hadn’t bothered me during the drive. What had worn on me was being taken advantage of by Mohammed. I had wished for distinct challenges in getting to Timbuktu. Patience seemed my only test thus far.

  Around a bend and past a grove of trees was the River Niger, my first sighting of the majestic waters. The river was wider than I had imagined from reading Mungo Park. I squinted to filter out the sights and sounds of farmers as I watched the pirogue (a small boat traditionally use
d in West Africa) being poled along the river by a solitary man. It had been like this for his ancestors, for generations, and I thought: Mungo Park stood here.

  We meandered along the shore, past the working farmers, and talked in French. As we walked, I noticed that everywhere was packaging and junk, acres of bags, the plastic planted and growing. Flapping wrappers substituted for flowers.

  “Un problème pour Mali,” I raised, “est le litter.”

  “Liter?” Zak asked, recognizing my poor French. His tolerance for my sloppy linguistic skills was notable.

  “Non. ‘Liter’” — I mimicked drinking from a container and shook my head. And then showed two fingers for two T’s. “Litter. Garbage.”

  “Yes, Rick. We know.”

  Amid the garbage and the garden, the clouds slowed to grey, the sun did a purple bow and was gone. A donkey trotted past us, his breathing making a nose-whistle; a cyclist passed us in the dusk, and two ladies joined our trail, noticed the foreigner, and laughed pleasantries that I simultaneously didn’t understand and did. No lights. No fear. Trust and confidence grew in the village garden.

  I reaffirmed to Zak, “You are my guide for Dogon.”

  “You wish?”

  A decision needed to be made. “And we will trek for ten days.” It was significant. Mohammed had kept pressuring for Gao, less time for Dogon. Pricing drove his interests. I would tell him my decision. My heart wanted what I believed was needed: a long walk.

  “Inshallah,” Zak said. It is their word. “If God be willing.”

  I’d originally thought to approach Timbuktu from the west, by river, earning my way with endurance as Mungo Park had. Then, returning to the city on camel from a night in the desert, as Gordon Laing had, I’d leave on four-by-four southward (unlike Laing). Now, I approached going north, closer to the last leg of René Caillié’s route. This was not the journey I wanted, but it was the journey I had. How like life it was becoming.

  On the porch, where we stayed that night, café at my elbow, I heard that the house was actually used for Mohammed’s office, with a bedroom as a part of it. I felt my independence usurped again as Mohammed’s charge for a hotel room did not reconcile. I unfolded the Mali map across a table, and turned my mind to other matters. Zak pinned two corners of the map with rocks, and we plotted the next day’s drive.

  “We leave Ségou at seven,” said Zak, “Mopti for lunch.”Mopti’s market was famous. “And then to Douentza. Overnight there.” Timbuktu awaited us the day after.

  Zak hunched over the unfurled map and used my guidebook and compass to pin the other corners of the sprawled geography. He quizzed me about place names in French, and his face furrowed around my mispronunciations. His vocabulary was extensive, as was his patience with my lack of it. I aborted and abridged. I pointed to Le Pays Dogon and said to Zak, “When we leave the Dogon, I wish to speak French much better. We will speak French there all the time.”

  “Is good,” he said, with a teacher’s nod of approval.

  Nema arrived with a boyfriend on his motorcycle. She wore my wide-brimmed hat and strode defiantly from the bike to the porch. “Mon chapeau,” she preened. It looked so fetching on her that I couldn’t ask for it back. I resigned myself to wearing my baseball cap.

  Nema, spirits high, said we needed to buy food for dinner and signalled me to sit behind her on the bike. She revved the engine, swerved precariously, and propelled us down the road, bouncing energetically. We rode: she carefree, I worried, her dress billowing, her beautiful brown breasts open to the air through the broad sleeves of her shirt. I gingerly clasped her hips for balance as we dodged potholes.

  At the roadside, merchants squatted beside their treasures. Their open shutters displayed skimpy selections. Nema told me to pay for what we picked up — juice and lettuce, tomatoes, chunks of meat, and two cups of rice, which she poured into a plastic bag. She stuffed the other foods into the bag as well, and I carried it under one arm as I sat on the back of the motorcycle, the other arm holding on to my biker friend.

  When we arrived back at the house, Nema’s boyfriend had left, and she went to a neighbour’s house to cook. Zak and Mamadou had gone their separate ways. I was alone. I welcomed the evening’s coolness. Across the road a bent man scraped his feet along the ground, chickens at his toes. He spilt feed from a bag. I joined him and tossed handfuls in all directions. Followed by chickens, I sprinkled.

  Shortly afterward, Nema produced plates of rice, veggies, and boiled goat parts. After Mamadou, Zak, and I had eaten, I hinted for my hat as Nema walked across the porch, vamped Malian style, and disappeared. I gathered up the dishes — mine the only one with leftovers — and stacked them on a side chair.

  Inside, Mohammed’s office was spacious, containing two desks, three makeshift posters, a computer, a couch, and two chairs. Across a hall, I found my bedroom. It was not intended for the discriminating traveller. It hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, the sheets were filthy, the air was dank. I thought of trips I had made with Janice. In restaurants we had visited around the world, Janice moved from table to table until she was satisfied; at hotels in countless cities she moved from room to room until happy. Here, she wouldn’t have changed rooms, she’d have changed countries.

  At 7 a.m. I was up and anxious for the day’s travels. The street was empty. No car. No one at all, in fact. Eventually I scrounged Nescafé, milk, and some boiling water from the man who had let me feed his chickens. He now shared his freshly risen bread.

  Near eight, Zak rounded the corner. He was looking for Mamadou, who thought to drop by about nine, on a motorcycle. No car. Two chickens hung upside down from his handlebars, squawking, shitting on their own faces.

  Ten-ish, in the rusting Peugeot, gear loaded, we headed for Mopti. My intended solo journey continued with three people. We set our compass for the traveller’s holy grail. “I am on the road to Timbuktu,” I whispered to myself, echoing Laing’s words.

  William Makepeace Thackeray’s poem “Timbuctoo” also came to mind.

  In Africa (a quarter of the world)

  Men’s skins are black, their hair is crisp and curled

  And somewhere there, unknown to public view

  A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.

  Now, as sand swirled behind us, I wondered: How mighty will it be? Will I have the good fortune to make it there and return safely? Mungo Park died without seeing Timbuktu. Robert Adams, brought as a slave, didn’t know where he’d been until he had left. Laing was killed after leaving. René Caillié’s achievement brought him only derision when he first returned to Europe. Heinrich Barth spent over five years on his journey in West Africa, and reaching Timbuktu was the emotional centrepiece of his travels. There were so many possible outcomes.

  At midday we stopped where a row of shacks sat in dirt a metre from the pavement. One shed stepped into another, all ingesting sand, their only common decor. This was Mali’s version of a strip mall. Car parts rested beside bowls of fruit, adjacent to a stand tended by a lady offering bread. Next was a cupboard on a table, its shelves holding old liquor bottles filled with petrol, their glass a dull green. The shop fronts were not aligned. Dirt mixed with food. The long body of a cow hung over a fire to cook. Garbage blew among the wares.

  Nema did not know the wise ways of a Western woman. She was wiser. At the roadside market, in the store, or standing against the open door of our car, men drifted by her, close. They touched her slender back and gazed at her bare legs. Graced with her smile, they stopped and waited for more. She ignored them. Instead, she went to a stall and returned with black ginger. She popped two of the candies in her mouth and tossed one each to Zak, Mamadou, and me.

  Two hours down the road, Nema noticed a fire pit and commanded Mamadou to drive off the road, proceed down the potted slope, and stop at the butcher’s kitchen. It was the only shack for miles, a dibieterie, Zak said. Barely a metre square, it had posts that angled against one another for mutual support to hold up a low, woven roof on wh
ich I hit my head. Wood branches stoked a fire draped with gutted goat. Nema selected and pointed and ordered and argued in Bambara. As the butcher hacked, Nema indicated yes, no, no, yes. At my suggestion, portions of the animal were tossed back on the coals.

  A five-year-old girl in a yellow dress, streaked with grease and sand, held a metal pan for her father and stared at me. I gave her a pin with my country’s red maple leaf flag on it. She turned and happily gave it to another youngster and then looked back to me, asking for one more, which I handed to her.

  To avoid more gift giving, I wandered off toward the car and heard “Reek” close behind. I turned around and Nema shoved a piece of partially cooked meat into my mouth. I bit too quickly, catching two of her fingers in my teeth. “Like? Chew.” Nema commanded. Easy, my stomach said. I relaxed my jaw and she forced the meat farther into my mouth. I held it with clenched teeth and Nema twisted a chunk loose. She put the torn-off piece in her own mouth and walked away. I ground and swallowed my portion. The cooked part of the meat was warm from the fire; the uncooked part seemed still warm from the animal’s recent death.

  The little girl trailed behind me. She’d given away the second pin and asked for yet another. She slowly drained my supply with her cleverness.

  We motored past settlements too small to be villages. The people seemed permanently paused, their melon patches neglected. Zak said, “The places are deserted today. Some people go to burn bushes, some collect firewood.” I considered the irony.

  An adult goat and kid head-butted, playing at the lessons of life, and I wondered if I’d done enough of that with my children.

  The Bani River was beside us on its way to meet the Niger at Mopti. We stopped and drank coffee with powdered milk at a shack and I delayed taking my daily malaria pills, remembering that they bind to dairy products and thus are less effective. Back in the car, I scratched my swollen eye where a mosquito had bitten me, the welting worried away. Finally, in spite of the coffee, I fell asleep to the road’s rumble.