“Rick, the captain asked me to get you,” Zak announced as he appeared from a stairway.
“Later is fine,” I suggested, and kept walking.
“He wants to give you money.”
“Now works,” I said. And I turned to go with him.
“Is that Dutch women gave him money to go on boat. You paid most. He will give you some,” Zak told me as we tramped over to see the pinasse captain.
Captain Nanaga was attired in jeans and a fresh T-shirt and he sat with Nema, the hotel’s night clerk, and the neighbourhood layabouts. His youth showed in his enthusiasm to share money. I thought, wait till Mohammed hears of this. “Don’t tell Mohammed,” I said to Zak.
The captain held out a handful of crumpled U. S. dollars, two hundred in all. He was untainted by malice, without any ulterior motive. Before Zak could translate his willingness to share, Nema bolted into the conversation: “You get fifty. He gets the rest.”
Zak proposed, “One hundred each is fair.”
“Too much,” Nema barked. Her prettiness was rapidly fading.
“What does the captain think?” I asked.
“He keeps one hundred and fifty dollars,” Nema said, her words a pounce from a sitting position.
“Nema,” I said sternly. “Back off. This is not your deal.”
I was to blame for what happened next.
Recalling what I thought was a friendship, I smiled and walked to Nema’s plastic chair, pulling on the arm to demonstrate her removal. All in whimsy. She only needed a pause button and she’d be welcome to stay. The arm cracked off the chair.
“Ten dollars at market,” said the night clerk, dismayed at the split chair.
I wanted a cold beer and patio conversation with the Comanav guy, not this.
“Ten dollars at market,” echoed the ever-helpful Nema.
“It’d be nice if you’d shut up,” I told her.
“Rick,” said Zak anxiously, “the captain. What to do?”
“I’ll tell you what, Captain.” Zak conveyed my words in Bambara as my eyes silenced Nema. “A hundred each. Found money for both of us.” The captain watched as I shuffled the bills in his hand, and smiled with what I left him. We shook hands. It was the first time I felt I’d got the best of a deal in this country. I gave five to the clerk for the broken chair. (I will forfeit money, but not pride.) “Good night,” I bid the gathering, and almost tripped over Nema’s frown as I left.
The night was now mine, all alone. In the sparse room I repacked my bags for the Dogon trek, trimming my load to the traveller’s necessities of health and protection. In the first mirror I’d looked at in two weeks, I noticed my chubby cheeks had disappeared. I made a successful search for the missing toilet seat. Even cracked and broken, it would do — I knew it was the last one I’d see for ten days. I twisted the shower knob and was about to jump under the slow drizzle when there was a knock at the door. I figured it must be Zak. I flung it open, wearing nothing but three-day-old dusty underwear. And there stood the beautiful Anke.
“Come on over, we’ve got cold beer. Robert ordered chicken.”
Following her, I stumbled near-naked down the hallway, trying to pull on my pants. We rounded the veranda. Robert was waiting for food and talking with a slim Australian whose face narrowed from the top of his shoulders toward short brown hair that probably curled when it hadn’t been in the desert forever.
“Alistair,” he said, his hand extended, his smile conveying a wistful confidence.
Robert’s food arrived, and he announced: “Alistair rode a camel to Taoudenni.”
Alistair acknowledged the accomplishment. “And back.”
That place name stands alone. Taoudenni. If Timbuktu describes out-of-the-way, Taoudenni was beyond such definition.
“How many weeks?” I asked in disbelief.
“Thirty-five days in all.”
I parroted to Alistair what I’d heard from two Britons I’d met in Leningrad, decades ago, after they had stepped off a train on the Trans Siberian Railway: “You’d be a fool not to do that once in your life, I guess.” Smiling into Alistair’s calm disposition, I added their admonition: “And a bloody fool to do it twice.”
He nodded, absorbing my unsolicited evaluation. “It was the third time I’d made the trip.”
This was travel at its hardest. I had to ask. “What if your guide died?”
“Right,” he said, acknowledging that I’d asked a worthy question.
The sailor and slave Robert Adams visited what he called “Taudeny,” and his 1814 narrative provided one of the earliest European descriptions of these mines, which were created around 1600. Until then, Westerners were uncertain where the salt that came from North Africa was mined. René Caillié travelled there with the caravan that he’d chased from Timbuktu and then travelled northward as he made his secretive journey’s last stretch. Today, the caravans that cover this vastness consist of thirty camels, not the thousands of earlier times, loaded with salt slabs coming south.
There are no trading routes in the desert that compare to travelling from Timbuktu to Taoudenni in the north. It is a dangerous trek, and few attempt it. If there’s a “season” to travel, it is from September to April. Each way is a meandering 750 kilometres.
Anke took four beers from the waiter and twisted open the bottle caps as she handed each of us our refreshment. We gulped the welcome brew and settled back with a “tell us” look.
Alistair continued his account. “Taoudenni is set on a plain where a lake that dried out long ago left alternating layers of silt and salt. It’s surrounded by volcanic cones and rocky outcrops. There is no town, not even a shop. Taoudenni is not a fixed place; it creeps across the dry lake bed as the salt is successively exhausted. Ragged shacks, made of mine waste and corrugated iron, move with the mine. The water available near Taoudenni is only suitable for camels. Potable water for the miners is a three-day camel ride away.”
It seemed like a place and activity without benefit, even when he added, “Oh, and the miners have first dibs at the camel dung supply, as there is no other fuel available.” Fewer than a hundred and fifty people at the mines scrape together an income.
Alistair’s experience made his knowledge encyclopedic: each mine is operated by two to four people, is the size of a large room in a house, and ends up being three to four metres deep. Only picks, shovels, baskets, and bare hands are used to remove the rubble and reach the layers of salt, the first of which is about a metre below the surface. A slab of salt is ten to fifteen centimetres thick, one-anda-half metres long and three quarters of a metre wide. The salt is trimmed of the exterior dry clay and dirt by pick, leaving a fourcentimetre thick slab weighing thirty-five kilograms or more. This is now ready for the caravan.
Anke-the-direct asked, “What did you wear?”
“A bou-bou, the traditional sky-blue robe, and a houli, the length of cloth for a turban. I was assured that the camels preferred me to dress this way.”
During the desert story, Anke and Robert left, preoccupied with an early morning departure. We hugged our parting thoughts instead of saying them.
Alistair had had a lot of time to think while travelling in the “vast nothingness” of the Sahara. He continued: there are two grades of salt, one for human consumption, the other animal grade. The blocks are worth about three U. S. dollars, perhaps four, per slab in Taoudenni, but their value increases to about twelve dollars in Timbuktu. The trip takes longer going south because the heavy salt must be reloaded onto the camels each morning.
I became tired as the story went on for two hours. It was clearly also a drain on Alistair, who’d had little conversation for so long.
“On the last night of the journey south we could finally see a blinking red light on the transmission mast in Timbuktu. Ahmed and I rose after the rest of the caravan had departed at the usual 2:30 a.m. We loaded the salt onto his five camels for the last time, and the two of us moved off toward the red light. As we made our way along the
sandy tracks, I practised the few words of Arabic I’d learnt and Ahmed practised his English. At dawn we pulled to the edge of town, where the salt was unloaded and the rhythm of caravan life came to an end. As soon as the town’s markets and shops opened, the camels were gone. I went to a hotel, had my first shower and shave in five weeks. Then I visited a café and had coffee, baguette, and a cheese omelette. Heaven.”
Mopti’s morning began early as market sellers and traders clanged their way to work. My waking thoughts focused on those travellers I’ve seen along the way who had packed carelessly. Maybe a duffel bag or loose packs, as though packing were an afterthought. Some carried tents at their side, boots dangling, sleeping gear flopping.
My own large pack was now restuffed. I jettisoned oncethought-to-be-necessities to lighten my trek in the Dogon. Camera, first aid kit, sleeping bag, sandals, and my last granola bars were stuffed into a pillow bag and empty tent case. It was all I needed, no more. I fixed a thick metal cable around the orange backpack, wrapped the zippers with duct tape, and prepared to leave it behind for ten days. I felt refreshed by the whispering shower, the sense of adventure, and the invigorating start to the day.
Anke had sliced a baguette and was spreading red jelly across it as I walked onto the balcony for breakfast. I was surprised to see her and Robert still there. Robert smiled nervously and raised his milky drink to me, tilting the glass with the angle of his head, and I realized something was amiss. Silence had decended on the veranda. Slowly, Anke voiced her frustration. Mohammed had not arranged the promised ride to Bamako. She fumed: “He promised. And again, he broke his promise.”
As if on cue, Mohammed pulled up in a car with a driver. We heard him climb the stairs to the veranda with harder stepping sounds than his light weight would normally have made. He landed with a heavy step onto our deck, overlooking Mopti’s low-rising skyline. He ignored Anke’s scorn as he leaned against the balcony railing. “This not look good,” Robert mumbled so that only I could hear.
As Mohammed stretched a muscle, Robert tried a light opening to conversation. “Bad bed?” he asked.
“I drove all night. Bamako to Ségou to Mopti,” Mohammed whined. The villain’s overture.
Anke did not offer the sympathy he sought. “Where is our car to Bamako?”
“There is a bus,” he replied.
“Our plane leaves today.”
“You’ll make it by bus,” Mohammed stated.
“You screwed us,” Anke spit.
“Don’t say I screwed you.”
“That is true. You screwed us.” It’s been said that the first person to hurl an insult instead of a spear was the founder of modern civilization. Anke was in their lineage.
Mohammed spurned her. “You changed your plans.”
“Bullshit. We bought Bamako to Essakane to Bamako,” she said.
Mohammed sulked as he did when proved wrong. He sulked often.
Anke strode across the balcony and down the stairs like a mad butterfly. Robert built a verbal bridge: “That’s her mood.” I saw in him the peacemaker that was in me. Also a middle child? Over the railing we watched a Peugeot pull up; it was their ride to the bus.
“You paid the airline, not me, for the ride,” Mohammed said to the ground below, where Anke walked away.
She shunned him. Nothing could be done. She closed their relationship. “I say no more.”
Robert shouldered his pack, and we walked down the stairs. Anke was in the distance. “Now we have also to pay for the hotel,” he sighed. Exasperation, Mohammed-style. Robert and I clasped hands and shook. It had been good.
Anke slipped through the door into the car. Last words: “Rick, goodbye. Sorry. We’ll e-mail.” And then she was gone.
Robert let go of my hand, shifted his backpack to settle it on his shoulders, and walked away.
Mohammed, standing near me, groaned as the Peugeot disappeared. “They changed their plans,” he asserted when they were no longer within earshot. He had a tone of voice that could ask you to pass the salt and make you feel like he questioned your parentage.
What to say, if anything? “Mohammed, I can’t even sort out my own plans with you. I won’t try to fix another’s.”
He shaped his mouth but not his heart into a smile. “You sent me a note.”
He owed me money and he knew it. “Yes,” I confirmed. The note recapped our Timbuktu talk. “I have to trust you, Mohammed. Prepare the list of actual costs that you promised. If I did not advance enough money, I’ll pay you more.” We both knew this was not the case. “If I advanced you too much, you reimburse me.”
“I will.”
“Don’t screw this up, Mohammed.”
Anke’s anger was still reflected in his eyes. Two wrongs in a morning. It was his style; he lived here and would outlast our comings and goings. It’s been noted that every successful company needs three personalities: a visionary, a people person, and an SOB about the money. He lacked the cunning for the first and the disposition for the second; but Mohammed was his company’s SOB.
Back on the dirt road, after Anke’s dust had settled, we shifted and reshifted packs and people as though in morning prayers. Only four of us were going in the vehicle, so the work seemed without purpose. The garrulous Mamadou would drive; it was good to see him again. His effusive hand-batting renewed our camaraderie. Others laughed their happiness at the Mali rap greeting.
Mohammed, still in need of a friend, unnecessarily asked, “To the Dogon?”
I repeated, knowing his promised recalculations, “For ten days.”
He pumped my hand and my hopes dimmed. I said: “See you in Ségou on the twenty-sixth. For an hour.”
Mamadou and I drove in the dust to the hovel where Zak and Nema had stayed the night. Looking groggy, they sauntered toward the vehicle, tossed their packs into the trunk, and settled into the backseat. We stopped at a market stall for canned peas and bottled water, and pushed slowly through the busy street traffic, mostly people on errands.
Drive-through banking was invented in Mali. In need of seffe, I made arrangements through Zak as we motored across town. The car crept into a shop fronted with sacks of millet, stacked cooking pots, and a long row of spatulas. The low roof gave shade, but the air felt crusty. A hundred U.S. dollars from my money belt rested on the counter as the wizened merchant flipped open several wooden drawers. From each, he removed handfuls of bills. A quick count. He shuffled them my way. A fair exchange, and we drove on through.
Out of town, Mamadou drove along the Bani River until it ended, beside Sahel fields where women sifted grain. Mali is a nation of powerful shoulders, made strong by pounding millet, grinding cereal, hacking baobab trees.
EIGHT
African Lanterns
THE ROAD WE DROVE TO BANDIAGARA WAS PAVED. It wound gently and had only one hill, a 7 percent incline. I felt optimistic about my future. At that stage of the trip, as though it were mid-life, I saw my preparations and quest in context: the river had changed me and my travels. Ahead, without a problem in sight, lay the future. I couldn’t wait.
We did not make the hill.
The vehicle’s clutch gave, and, nurse it as he might, Mamadou could not crest the hill’s summit, which was visible a half kilometre away. It was high noon. We were sixty kilometres from Mopti, still thirty-five from Bandiagara.
I abandoned our vehicle and traipsed alone over the hill as the others debated our dilemma in Bambara. In the next hour, one vehicle passed in each direction. The plateau had extraordinary rock formations, house-sized boulders that were tapered at their base so they appeared to be precariously balanced. One massive stone had been carved out by wind and water, creating a cave that a train could have passed through.
I returned to our vehicle, and as I neared it the traffic increased: a man pushed his bicycle, two grain sacks strapped to its fender, up the hill to its crest, where he could pedal again; five carts, two of which sported the luxury of double donkeys, made the hill laden with sacks of co
al, a petrol can, firewood, and pots for sale. Then the traffic jam was over.
As Malians seemed to do in periods of transit uncertainty, they had unloaded the packs from my vehicle on the roadside, perhaps to mark the calamity.
“Wrick,”said Mamadou, offering a defeated smile in greeting, and keeping his hands in the trouser pockets.
“Rick,” said Zak, laughing despite his concern about my wellbeing.
“C’est la vie,” I replied.
Remarkably, Mamadou’s cellphone worked. He had purchased a time card for the two minutes needed, no more. It was another hour before a second car arrived and three men got out, a frustrated Mohammed among them. They had parked on the roadside, not far from where I lay against a rock. Mohammed, who may have thought he’d seen the last of me, looked disturbed at having to acknowledge my presence. “Rick,” he smirked.
I tipped what I could of the broad hat brim from where I reposed, the back of my head pinning the hat to the rock. “Afternoon, Mohammed.” We were now formally estranged. He walked out of my sight and out of mind.
There were six Malians, enough for a solution. It was in this other vehicle that we left an hour later, eventually arriving in bustling Bandiagara. There, we provisioned more cans of peas, hard-capped water bottles, sleeves of pasta, and soon-to-be-stale bread from the market.
We pressed on through countryside with bush bordering much of the dirt road. This was the preferred route into Dogon, even for travellers from Burkina Faso, from where Dogon trekkers often arrived. We sped past a woman on foot, undoubtedly walking at her regular speed, and I wondered what she made of our progress. She moved slowly; we passed quickly — did she envy us?
A group of boys, a dozen strong and aged perhaps ten to thirteen, waved from the roadside. They chanted to the slapped beat of hand-held calabash. The bowls were gouged from dried gourds, used or broken and no longer filled with wooden pieces as noisemakers.
“Why?” I asked.
“They are in second season, you know?” replied Zak.
“School?”
To Timbuktu for a Haircut Page 21