To Timbuktu for a Haircut

by Rick Antonson

  “Forty years,” replied the man who walked me here, with great reluctance. His eyes shifted to the other man as if to say, “It is not so.”

  I accepted his answer too willingly. It couldn’t be true, but I wanted these things. I was no better than those I chastised.

  The other man moved to close the sale (it was not his heirloom). “His family has agreed to sell this from their ancestors.” This tinged the arbitrary date more than I liked, but I bought. Locals always know the travellers better than the travellers know the locals. From the mission came beautiful songs. It was Sunday. Oumar saw my inquisitiveness as we walked away from the place where I’d purchased the weapons. In Bambara he said what I understood in English: that it was okay, even good, for me to enter the Christian church. I sat down on the first bench by the door, where I figured it would be easiest to leave when the music stopped and the preaching began. Oumar leaned over a woman and tapped my shoulder, winked at me, and we moved across to the right side of the church, where all the men sat. During the following hymns, the worshippers kept arriving one by one until the initial two dozen had increased to more than a hundred. Song after song began with a child tapping on drums at the front of the church and an elder shaking a baobab tree rattle. The preacher sang confidently, his baritone persuasive. The women clapped, their voices joyous. Little children came through the door, all clad in the brightest cloth. Men and boys entered and sat silently, feigning the odd clap in the thunder of women singing. But each time a song ended I feared a lengthy sermon would start. I wished to avoid being either trapped or rude.

  When I finally bolted, seven songs after my arrival, the drums were hit and another song began. More people arrived as I exited. It was now half an hour since I had first sat down. If there is a Second Coming, Christ might want to allow a little extra time for the Malians to show up.

  Already I missed sleeping on rooftops. I missed the openness of the night sky in all its inexplicability. Missed being humbled by the insignificance of my preoccupations. Missed, too, lying awake at midnight in Africa, jogging away my childhood images of being there.

  I left Le Pays Dogon, as they call it, not Dogon Country as we would, wanting more. That was not how I felt about the train journey, about Timbuktu, about the River Niger. What could be better than travels that leave one wanting more?

  NINE

  A Good Night for West Africa

  FROGS DARTED ACROSS THE DARK ROAD, THE meagre light of our car giving little warning to them or us. The crunch count was high. This reminded me to resolve financial matters with Mohammed. No one I’d met had yet come out on top of a deal with him. In Mopti we’d set the date to meet in Ségou, and that was now a day away. It skewed my travels, but Mohammed had promised to be there when I arrived and to make amends for my complaint. First, though, Nema, Mamadou, Zak, and I prayed to our respective gods that the car would make the night crossing and deliver us to Djenné.

  The tires squealed suddenly and the brakes hissed. They did not grab securely or uniformly. Donkey-driven carts appeared only when we were almost on top of them, so deep was the darkness and so poor were our headlights. Honking did as little to warn them as it did to help the frogs, so we veered often.

  The narrow road became even tighter for one-lane bridges. A stop sign popped out from nowhere; we lurched through it and over an embankment, where a lantern shone. The Bani River ferry crossing. We slid to a halt beside a lorry, got out and joined other Malians waiting beside their truck on the barely discernible shore, one we could have easily driven over and into the river.

  Two men used pirogue poles to force the small ferry to the embankment, using flashlights to guide them. Bats flew among us, and one dove at me. The lorry was called for. Its lights flickered on as it rambled forward with big baskets dangling two metres over its backside. A dozen people clung to the wooden posts on the piled flatbed. The truck lumbered over metal guides to mount the small ferry. Once it had boarded the ferry, a throng of people jumped from the lorry to the deck to stand as passengers for the half-hour crossing. A Dutch voice came from the only other waiting vehicle and spoke into the dark: “Lonely Planet says this ferry should already have sunk.”

  “Stay out of vehicle,” Zak suggested, unwilling to board while we were in ours. “Walk on.” The truck’s lights were all we had to discern water from land and determine direction. Once we were on the river, they were turned off. What little light we had came from the tiny flashlights held in the mouths of the pole men.

  Darkness returned to the launch site as we heaved away. We crossed the water powered only by the pole men. The farther shore appeared when we were only metres away from it. I was leaning on the Land Cruiser when the ferry’s metal prongs speared shore and jolted the boat and all those on board. The land lit up when the truck’s ignition sparked. Exhaust pummeled the air and the vehicle’s passengers scrambled back on top, clinging to it for their lives as it bounced off the ferry and swerved in the slippery ground.

  Our landing was less choreographed. We climbed in. A waiting motorcyclist was told to park on shore and to aim his light at the place where the crew fastened a rope. Mamadou gunned the engine, and we pumped forward into the mud. Our wheels spun, the treads grabbed, and we catapulted up to the harder surface. Then we were in the dark, all alone.

  Mali’s most photographed image lies in the heart of the Niger inland delta. The Djenné Mosque symbolizes history, architecture, religion, and discovery, as the world’s largest building of claymud construction. Since 1280 it has been repeatedly repaired. Having lasted this long, patched and smoothed by masons over the centuries, it has earned a place on the United Nation’s list of World Heritage Sites.

  Djenné has been Timbuktu’s sister city, albeit a sibling rival, for centuries because of each city’s reliance on trade. Each is as much a living archeological site as a community of traders and residents. It was to Djenné that the salt of Timbuktu and other trade goods moved for broader distribution centuries ago. Djenné both preceded Timbuktu and endured economically after Timbuktu’s decline. Today, it has ceded primacy to Mopti, where the River Niger now has a thriving transport economy, away from the Djenné marshes.

  My stay was contrasted not by a disappointing return to sheltered accommodation, but by a return to eating fish, a taste I’d nearly forgotten in Dogon. The morning market enthralled as much for its array of products and personalities as for its humble presence beneath the imposing mosque. That morning at the market I saw Mamadou open the car’s trunk, where my bags were stashed. He pushed two live chickens into the small hollow between the canvas and the metal siding. The birds squawked until he closed the lid and darkened their lives, whereupon they shat all over my backpack.

  The day’s drive from Djenné to Ségou was marked by car breakdowns, all mysterious. At the first, I hung around the little village where our vehicle gasped and shuddered and stopped. After thirty minutes it was coaxed to resume its journey. An hour later it spluttered again, as engines do, and halted, in the middle of West Africa, with nothing to be seen in any direction except desert, stunted trees, and more desert. I walked away, knowing the others would catch up to me on the only road, assuming it started again. An hour later, while I was strolling down the lonely byway and loving my walk, Mamadou slowed the car — afraid to actually stop — and flung the passenger door open to me. I had to run alongside and hop in.

  Eventually, hours later, we came upon a town with shops that would be of interest to a mechanically challenged vehicle. As was Mamadou’s way, the car was brought to a rest where it suited him — this time, in the middle of the road. He got out, we all got out, and repairs began with seriousness. Parts were offered, parts were rejected. It was not just any road that Mamadou chose to park on, this was a main thoroughfare within Mali, and the cars, trucks, and tractors that wished to pass our vehicle veered around it while Mamadou shouted beneath our raised hood. I found a chair, sat by the roadside, and breathed dust, to the amusement of the children. I would not
give up the thoughts and sights that came — certainly not for efficient travel.

  When we pulled in front of the office-cum-bedroom-at-hotelcost back in Ségou, Mohammed was not there. “Mohammed is coming,” was the mantra spoken upon my arrival — and the last thing I heard that night.

  Upon rising early the next morning, I heard that “Mohammed is coming,” as though he were the messiah. However, no one knew when he was actually coming. The office lady told me she should come to Canada with me each time I used her phone to leave Mohammed a voice message or used her computer to e-mail him.

  He was unresponsive.

  When I returned from my morning walk and a successful search for a breakfast of hot bread and cold Coca-Cola, the office lady said Mohammed would be there. “Today, at four.” Hours away.

  “Does he know I want to see him?” I asked, to reinforce what she already knew.

  “You want to see him?” she asked.

  This was my fourth Tuesday in Mali. Why in the world would I have expected Monday’s plan to still exist?

  While waiting for Mohammed, I found myself walking along a dry road in a silent setting. A wounded building sat at the dead-end of the road. Its stairs led to a verandah reminiscent of distant days, of times when students gathered here, when the colony had wealth and the decisions were made in Paris. The colonnade posts begged for paint that perhaps would never come.

  I walked over fields and roads strewn with litter. In Ségou, garbage ruled, shards of bright-coloured plastic poked through everywhere. But even my few weeks in this country forced me to accept the shabbiness, the torn living-room furniture the homeowner overlooks but guests notice. It was as though Mali had become the world’s rubbish bin. Malians were as likely to talk about the never-changing weather as about the never-changing mess. I should be no more appalled at the litter there than they would be at the plentiful table scraps we Westerners put in our garburators.

  I returned to the office and was told by the woman who wanted to come with me that Mohammed would not be there that evening. He had phoned her, she recounted, about “car problems.” He had promised to meet me the next evening in Bamako, at the Hotel Wawa. “Maybe you’ll have dinner together,” she proposed.

  Zak, who was standing nearby, saw my frustration. “Rick,” he said, “we should walk.” So we returned to the garden where I’d first smelled the mighty River Niger weeks ago and thought of Mungo Park’s sighting of his nemesis. This was also where I had forgotten about Mohammed and had started trusting Zak.

  A timed shutter might have captured that day’s close, such was the momentary composition of sun, cloud, sky, and refraction. Everything, then nothing. An orange wick trimmed out. There was the cinder smell of an old fire. Zak said, “Sunrise, promise; sunset, memory.”

  We left the gardens, left the river, and knew that we would not have much more time together. Still, our emotions remained unspoken as we walked side by side in the dark until the trail narrowed. Then Zak stepped aside to let me pass, to let me take the lead as had become our pattern. It was dark and the route was uncertain, and I deferred to my teacher. “You lead,” I said.

  At our partings, I was feeling misty about both Nema and Zak. She was practical and appreciated the utensils and food I left with her; she even thanked me for the used clothes I would no longer need. Mostly, she liked the money. She kissed my cheek with quivering lips and walked away, looking over her shoulder only once. Then she was quickly in front of me again and hugged me with her strong brown arms. In the momentary calm, Nema reached over me like a poem, took my hat, and that was when I last saw her.

  I hugged Zak as a son, wanting to give him what was of value to me — my compass, the flashlight, a medical kit, and safety supplies, which we went through piece by piece. He accepted money but did not fuss; it was the knife that he held longest. I have not often had a more memorable handshake — not for business or friendship or family. Maybe that’s how one says goodbye to one’s teacher.

  “Amadgugou,” Zak said, using my Dogon name, which I’d taken to mean “dearly good to know.”

  “Gana,” I replied, in Zak’s dialect — “Exceptional thankyou.”

  The road rumbled beneath me all the next day. I was returning to Bamako, roller-coastering on the heat-heaved pavement. The desert routes, once charted by stars but now paved, still suffer the vagaries of sand dunes and shifting landmarks. Into this comes a plan for the Trans-Saharan Highway.

  Mali is again at the heart of an African dream. It is here that the Sahara must be crossed if the route from Lagos, Nigeria, on the Atlantic Ocean, is to run north to Morocco. René Caillié would be astounded. Asphalt. Four Wheel Drive. “Just follow the signs, René.”

  There will always be more desert than road, fortunately. The proposed highway is mapped, and much of it has been surveyed. From Nigeria to Benin, through Burkina Faso. Mali, of central importance, connects the south of Africa with the west and from there, the north. Mali’s linking of these regions is being done in tandem with its neighbour, Mauritania, where the real work is already underway.

  An International Herald Tribune article quoted Mauritanian official Sid’Ahmed, calling the nameless highway “The Road of Challenge.” In a land of prophets, this man prophesied, “When it is realized, the whole world will be connected.”

  Indeed, we would be. All that is good and bad about the convenient flow of peoples north, south, east, and west would become increasingly apparent. But only if the crushed-stone base topped with asphalt can withstand the desert’s will. Only if the sand-defending trees lining the highway survive and the protective nylon tarps defy the drifting grains. Only if the desert wishes it to be so.

  I took dinner alone in Bamako at a restaurant that had earlier proven to be a prize. Brazier chicken, french fries, vinegar, salt, sliced tomato, cold Coke with lime, and no onions. Burkina Faso and Mali were playing in the Africa Cup of Nations game, and I caught portions of the match as it was the thing to do: a black-andwhite television set was brought to me, the restaurant’s only patron.

  The restaurant was family-run, a young woman and an old woman doing the cooking and serving. When a gruff man entered, their chatter went silent. He looked about the counter and rummaged below it. I heard the spilling of roasted beans onto metal. His right shoulder arched, and his arm drove a hand grinder. Immediately the room smelled of coffee. I sniffed loudly at the aroma to get his attention. His eyebrows tweaked together. I tilted my head in request and his lips pushed a smirk toward his nose. Minutes later my first cup of authentic Malian coffee steamed before me. Rich, thick, and dark.

  The sun outside my window was gone in a sip.

  A coffee brand had once sported the name Klekolo, in tribute to a Bambara word for “rules to live in peace and harmony.” With that recollection, I left for my rumoured meeting with Mohammed. As I neared the Wawa Hotel, I was happy to see a vehicle parked in front. Finally, justice would be done.

  “Mohammed is in Ségou,” the desk clerk informed me. “I just talked on phone.” I mulled over this predicament while watching CNN break news that was no longer news. Earlier in the day I had e-mailed Mohammed and left a phone message. Both communications emphasized my trust that he’d do right by me, meaning cash back. I decided to call him one last time, as he was obviously in an accessible district if he’d just spoken with the adamant clerk. Taking the hotel’s cellphone, I walked into the dark, star-covered courtyard. And I called Mohammed who, against the odds, answered.

  “Rick, did you get my e-mail today?”

  “No, when?”

  “I replied to you. We’ll send you the money. I’m working out the costs right now.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that, Mohammed.”

  “It is not a problem, Rick. You’ve had a good trip to Mali, and nothing should spoil it.”

  “Mohammed, the best advice I got was to take ten days in the Dogon.” (I was sucking up to close the deal, giving credit where it wasn’t due.) “When I come back, I’ll spend
two weeks there.”

  “That is good. And good that you’ll come back.”

  I inadvertently shrugged. There was no quarrel in me, nothing I wanted to prove. We agreed to meet in Berlin two months later as we both planned to be at ITB, the mother of all travel trade shows.

  “Rick, e-mail me the details for where you want the money, and I will send to you.”

  “Thank you, Mohammed. We both know roughly what it’ll be, so please send five hundred Euros to start and we’ll come to a final agreement soon.”

  “Good.”

  “Good,” I replied.

  “Bye, Rick.”

  “Bye, Mohammed,” and I turned from the darkened compound to the low lights of the two-storey hotel and passed the cellphone back across the desk.

  Then I took my last walk under a Malian night sky. All the dirt roads near the hotel were couched in dark except where a lone cooking fire burned, a bent-over woman scrubbed dishes, and a TV glowed. Clusters of people sat by the side of the road, most without speaking, others laughing quietly.

  A grey-walled store made of recycled wood rested under a tin roof that reflected a warming fire. A refrigerator stood in the store’s doorway. I bought a Fanta and sat outside with the children. A mother strapped her baby to her back and the men watched a fuzzy image of the football game on the store’s TV set. Giggles, many a “bonsoir” and stares. When I finished the soda, I left. Then, a few metres away, I paused to treasure the sight of these people so enjoying each other’s company.

  In all my travels in Mali, I never found despair. Hardship, disappointment, poverty, indifference, and resignation were always evident, more so than hope. But never despair. The people have one another. “Westerners don’t understand Africa,” I was told. “They say everyone’s poor. That is not it. Africans are very happy in the good countries. Poor, yes, but what is that? They are happy.” The visitor’s reward is to witness the resilience, the wealth, of the human spirit.