On the last day I worked before my vacations a colleague asked me where I was going.
- Mali, I said.
- Really? I hear they have gorgeous beaches there, he replied.
- Um... that's Mmm-ali, not Bali. In Africa.
- Oh... Are you going on a safari?
Not an untypical response really. For many people, Africa is still some distant exotic continent that conjures up images of safaris, AIDS, famine and war and not much else. It's often talked about as if it is a single country. Of course, news of Somali pirates, Darfur refugees or Mugabe's thugs does indeed reflect the sad reality of several of the continents failed and corrupt states. However, the recent World Cup held in South Africa or the economic boom of say Angola has shed some light on the rapid development and success stories of some countries. Some friends and colleagues are starting to wonder why I have been returning there year after year. In a few words, Africa, with all its afflictions, is a montage of vibrant peoples and cultures in a multitude of geographic settings and its humanity has a profound appeal.
From my days at university, when I hung out with some Senegalese students, to the stellar music of artists such as Ali Farka Touré, Salif Keita or Baaba Maal... West Africa has always been a place of interest for me. It's strange in a way that I had not traveled to the region earlier. To speak French as well was a big draw, as so many countries in West Africa are Francophone.
My experience of black Africa began in Paris, in 'le 18ième arrondissement', where I stayed at my good friend Yann's flat for a few days. You might as well be in Congo or Togo as you walk the streets of that neighbourhood, with its markets, food stalls and hair salons. Of course, it was great to be back in Paris, in late October, walking along the Seine, leaves falling in the crisp autumn air. A café here, an art museum there. I particularly enjoyed "Velib", their public bicycle rental system that enables you to cycle all over the city for all of a euro a day.
The Air France flight took me to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Once I left what is perhaps the shoddiest international airport I have ever seen (exit through a biffy-like plywood door into a dimly lit hall that looked like a car garage), I found a hotel in the city centre. The downtown looked more like a spread out village, then the capital of the country. It was a hot dry evening so I went out to an outdoor restaurant recommended in the Rough Guide book. There, I met Aida, Solange and Patricia, three lovely young women that are studying tourism at college. In all honesty, before they invited me over to their table they were sharing with an older Frenchman, I thought they were prostitutes and that there would certainly be a catch to me hanging out with them. Not an uncommon scene at establishments where tourists and ex-pats spend time. I was pleasantly mistaken. There happened to be the bi-annual SIAO (Salon International d'Artisanat d'Ouagadougou) a huge convention of West African art and crafts that draws people from the entire region, with many cultural activities. After some pasta and beer, they invited me to go out to a club, dancing. A couple of hours after landing, I was riding on the back of a mobilette, zipping through the dusty streets of Ouaga on a warm Saturday night.
The next few days I just hung out with these people I met, saw some spectacular jimbe drumming and dancing. Evenings were spent at the "Jardin de la musique" and outdoor restaurant-bar that had excellent live music in a leafy outdoor courtyard. The mosquitoes too were enjoying the show and the fresh meat on my ankles. I had brought some repellent but kept forgetting it my hotel room.
I then traveled south-west to the city of Bobo-Dialousso, Burkina's second city. A few days there exploring the old town, the mosque, and enjoying fresh made yogurt for breakfast. Once again, more drumming and live music in the evenings at several bars near my hotel. I found the Burkinabé people to be very friendly and most spoke an excellent French. However, I did get my share of guys that would approach me with some sort of ulterior motive, to either be a guide or to sell me something, or simply to get free beer for their company. It's a typical thing when in a poor country and I've experienced it many times before. Still, it takes a bit of time getting used to it though and it can get irritating when it happens a lot.
My next journey was to Mopti, in the southern central region of Mali, a city at the confluence of the Niger and Bani rivers. What was supposed to be a nine hour bus ride turned into sixteen. It took about three hours just to go through the border. Lots of negotiating and bribes from the driver to the customs officer. Who knows what was in those large bags piled high on the roof. I had an i-pod with me however I did not use it as there was always some excellent Malian music playing on the speakers. The bus was packed, but for a few francs more, I was able to get the passenger window seat in the front. I had a feeling of being a neo-colonialist for all of about one minute, until I looked at amount of people and their bags crammed onto the bench and fold-out seats in the back.
Arriving before dawn at 3 am, myself and several other passengers stayed in the parked bus for a few more hours of sleep. The first thing I noticed while walking along the river in Mopti were the elegant, long, brightly painted canoes. Some were small, mostly for fishing or transporting people to small village islands. Others were enormous, over 100 feet long, for cargo and passenger trips up and down the Niger. Once I got a room and left my bag at the popular "Y'a pas de Problème" Hotel, I set out to explore the town. It wasn't long before Oussa Traoré found me and offered me a tour with his "pirogue". So nice to be on the water and watch daily life... women washing clothes, fishermen poling or paddling their canoes, dock workers loading up bags of millet and rice onto boats.
There are several ethnic groups in Mopti; Bambara, Bozo, Fula, Songhai, Dogon and Tuareg. Although the majority are Muslim, there are different traditional styles in dress, hair ornaments or tattoos. With my guided pirogue tour, we visited a few different ethnic villages on small islands in the flooded delta.
The following morning was market day at Djenne, the ancient town with the world famous "Grande Mosquée". I got very early to get a 'bush taxi' for the 120km trip. Bush taxis are common all over West Africa and they are essentially collective mini-buses or cars that only leave to a destination when they get enough passengers. The ancient beat up Peugeot that I took looked like it could accommodate 7 adults. Wrong, we crammed in 11 including two French tourists that got a kick out of the old French cars on the roads. It wasn't long before we heard a bang and flap, flap, flap. A massive strip of rubber peeled off one tire. Stop, an inspection and the driver decides to keep going with the flapping sounding like a very fast and loud tam-tam drum. When it finally blew, we got out to change the tire.
The market was indeed impressive as was the mosque. Many stalls selling everything under the sun. The Frenchmen knew an Ismaili man from Paris who was there working on the restoration of the mosque, funded by the Agha Khan. After a phone call, it was organized that we could get a tour inside the mosque, which is normally forbidden for tourists or non-Muslims. It was quiet and cool inside, with a bit of a damp smell, shafts of light coming through small openings in the ceiling. The Great Mosque is the largest mud brick building in the world and is considered by many architects to be the greatest achievement of the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style. Every year, after the rainy season, the walls must be re-coated by hand with a mixture of mud, straw and a tree bark butter.
Another major attraction to this region of Mali is "le pays Dogon". The Dogon people are mostly an animist tribe that was left alone when other groups were establishing empires and dominance throughout the last 500 years in Mali. There are around 700 villages spread out along a 200km arid escarpment. They are renown for their dwellings in and around the cliffs, as well as their art, particularly their wooden sculptures, masks and reliefs on wooden doors. To see these villages one must organize a visit with a guide. After having met a young British couple, Max and Laura, that were also staying at the same hotel, as well as Jainie an ex-pat Brit living in Côte d'Ivoire, we left for a 4 day trek with Seydou, a 30 year old Dogon man who spoke some English (as my new found friends did not speak French).
A bush taxi brought us close to the first village then we walked in the late afternoon to another village on the edge of the escarpment. There we slept under the stars on the roof of a small mud hut. Tourists have been coming to this extraordinary region for many years now so the guided walks and accommodation, although very basic, have been well established. We met up with several other groups that would converge on a village either for an extended lunch (it was too hot to trek from 11am til 4pm) or at an "inn" to spend the night.
Seydou explained the history of his people, their fascinating cosmology, how they migrated to these cliffs from another region and displaced another people, the Teleb, who had resided high in the cliff walls. The plains below used to be much more forested then they are today, with lions and elephants. One reason they lived in the cliffs was for protection from the animals. The last hundred years however, with population growth and agriculture, the forests have been cut and most animals have left. Dogon life is very basic and revolves around village activities... fetching water from the well, tending the fields of millet, the main staple of their diet. Everyday, you hear the pounding of it by women in the village.
Back in Mopti once again, I decided to take the public "pinasse" (long passenger/cargo boat) down the Niger river to Timbuktu (yes, it does exist!). It usually takes two days and two nights. After much waiting at the docks, and watching a loading crew stack over a hundred huge sacks of millet and rice on the boat, we were ready to leave. The men were at the front section of the boat, the women and children at the rear. I had bought a straw mat to place over the sacs of rice... which is your seat and bed.. and made myself comfortable. I was the only foreigner and it was awesome to be taking this kind of river trip, the same way that it has been for decades. The pinasse is entirely built from hardwood planks and was long, over a hundred feet, with about a 20 foot beam. It was powered by two old diesel engines at the rear that produced a lot of smoke and a noisy drone. Some passengers got on and off a few villages along the way. The boat also came close to shore where it was joined by canoes full of women selling fish and fruit. A meal of rice was provided twice a day with the boat ticket, but everyone shared other food bought from villagers along the way.
It was the day before "Tabaski" also known in Arabic as Eid al-Adha (عيد الأضحى) which is the festival of sacrifice celebrated throughout the Muslim world to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a ram to sacrifice instead. As it turned out, the Captain of the boat wanted to stop in his village (a hundred km short of our destination) for the evening and the whole day after for this family holiday that the entire country was celebrating. I was not really sure what I was going to do when one of the passengers I befriended, a man named Kola Touré, invited me to celebrate Tabaski with his family in his town. He was coming back from Spain, where he worked, to spend the holiday, so he called his brother (everyone has mobile phones now) to come pick us up at the side of the river some 50 km from Diré, where he is from. It was already dark when the boat stopped and a canoe came along side and Kola and I got in. Two boys poled the canoe for half an hour through reeds and small islands to the main shore. The moon was rising on the horizon and it was a hot African night. I remember thinking how amazing it was, being so far away and ending up on this un-planned adventure.
When we arrived at his house, I could tell that Kola, a man in his early fifties, was fairly well off. He introduced me to his two wives and there were five girls, ranging from 2 to 12 years old... as well as a 17 year old son living in the two building home. He has a few older children as well that were no longer living at home. The TV was on constantly and it was interesting to see the West African programing, with music videos and news on developments in neighbouring countries, especially the regional powerhouse of Côte d'Ivoire where elections were coming up. I was exhausted though and fell into a deep sleep on the mat they provided me. The next morning was the big day (Armageddon for sheep). A couple of them were slaughtered and cut up right in the courtyard that separated the two homes. Half an hour later, I was eating bar-b-qued sheep liver. Kola changed into his beautiful "boubou" the long patterned cotton robes that men wear so elegantly and after he went to the Mosque, he brought me to walk around the town, stopping in several homes and greeting family and friends. The sun was hot by midday and like most of the town, we retreated to the shade of the mud brick homes. The best time of day is late afternoon. Being the only "toubab" (white foreigner) in town, I was getting a lot of attention and I was invited several times for tea. Tea is almost a religion in this part of the world, a small pot is placed on a charcoal burning stove with two teaspoons of green tea, even more sugar, and then it's mixed between the pot and a glass several times creating a long arc of liquid in the air, to mix it up and cool it of. It's bitter and sweet at the same time. It's served in a small glass and there are always three servings each. 
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| "amer comme la mort, doux comme la vie, sucré comme l'amour" |
It was not long before all the neighbours knew I was there and once I took my camera out, I had a long request to take photos of everyone from toddlers to elders. The people are so beautiful, genuine and friendly and although their life is very simple, I could not help but think of the richness they had, the entire community all know each other, not the least bit of worry for kids on the street... something that can't be said of in our towns and cities. I am still in the process of making some hard copies to send by mail.
When it was time to leave, it was difficult to know when the boat would be passing by the dock, despite Kola's calls to the Captain. Therefore, I decided to take the last leg by bus. After waiting several hours in the dusty square of Diré, another sardine-packed bus ride for the last 100km toward the mystical city of Timbuktu. As we were approaching, I saw several Touareg, on the side of the road, on their camels, in their traditional indigo robes and turbans, an amazing sight of these famous nomads of the Sahara.
Populated by Songhay, Tuareg, Bella, Fulani, and Mandé people, Timbuktu is about 15 km north of the Niger River. It is also at the intersection of an east–west and a north–south Trans-Saharan trade route across the Sahara to Araouane. It was important historically (and still is today) as an entrepôt for rock-salt originally from Taghaza, now from Taoudenni.
Its geographical setting made it a natural meeting point for nearby west African populations and nomadic Berber and Arab peoples from the north. Its long history as a trading outpost that linked west Africa with Berber, Arab, and Jewish traders throughout north Africa, and thereby indirectly with traders from Europe, has given it a fabled status, and in the West it has long been a metaphor for exotic, distant lands: "from here to Timbuktu."
Timbuktu's long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is scholarship. Timbuktu is believed to have had one of the first universities in the world. Local scholars and collectors still boast an impressive collection of Arabic manuscripts from that era. By the 14th century, important books were written and copied in Timbuktu, establishing the city as the centre of a significant written tradition in Africa. This is why it has been called "Athens of Africa", "Sudanese Rome", "Mecca of the Sahara", and "Black Pearl of the Desert".
I ended up at a great hostel at the northern edge of town run by a Canadian woman and her Touareg husband. From there, it was easy to organize an excursion into the desert... well, not really the true desert, as the Sahara starts two hundred kms to the north. There are still large dunes however. Everyone has a brother, cousin or friend that is willing to take you out on camel for a trek. Firstly though, I wanted to explore the ancient city. Ali, a 16 year-old, acted as my guide and gave me some historical information on the famous mosques as well as old buildings in the heart of the labyrinthine town. The wooden doors were particularly beautiful. Despite a reputation of being a bit of a tourist trap (there are many 4x4 guided tour groups of Europeans and just as many touts trying to sell you souvenirs) I still found it to be a laid back and friendly atmosphere.
One evening, in the sandy streets of my 'quartier', I heard some hypnotic music, coming from a distance. Ali told me it was a wedding. He fetched me a long "boubou" robe and a turban and, in the darkness, I followed him. I was all of a sudden totally incognito and no longer a "toubab". The Touareg are mostly of Berber and Moroccan origin so as opposed to most other parts of Mali where the population is black African, here there were many North African faces. I blended in quite well actually, especially in the dim lit streets. There was a large circle in the intersection of two streets and the bride and groom were dancing along with other members of their family, people clapping, the mesmeric sound of a distorted, plugged in 'ngoni' (a sort of simple lute) played by a man sitting in the sand accompanied by many others that were singing and clapping.
The next morning I was off on the camel trek. A middle aged man named Jedou, a cousin of the hostel owner, came to get me and there was the camel. Just one. I mounted it, with the help of Jedou and promptly fell off as the animal rose to its feet. Lots of laughter form the kids gathered around. The saddle was pretty cool, made out of wood and cow leather. He taught me how to put a turban on, a necessity in the hot, bright Saharan sun. It's a 5 meter long by half a meter wide cotton cloth. Only the men wear it as they are the ones out in the dunes all day. Often known as "les hommes bleus" the indigo dye rubs off on their dark skin giving it a blue hue around the neck and forehead.
I must admit, it did feel like quite a touristy thing to do, especially as it was only me on the only camel and my Touareg guide walking. At one point he did hop on the back and instructed me how to direct the camel with the reins. We were gone for about an hour and a half, just on the outskirts of Timbuktu actually, when we arrived at what was his family's compound. There I met his wife and their three children. They had a small collapsible hut, basically some wooden poles with a thatched roof, at the centre of an enclosure made of thorn bushes, on a large sand dune, some scraggly trees here and there. A few goats, one cow, a couple of pots and a charcoal stove and that was it. I couldn't help but think of it as living your entire life as if you were camping. That's how basic it was. There were a few other families nearby and Jedou told me that when the tourist season begins, (from November until March) this is how they get some income. Other times of the year, he stills goes off on camel caravans across the sahara to get the salt tablets as they have done for centuries.
We sat around in the shade, drank some tea, ate some sandy rice with a few bits of meat and I sketched, while waiting for the intense sun to lower toward the horizon. It was fascinating to watch the countless scarab beetles going about their way as if they were construction workers scurrying about a city site. I was in luck as it was the full moon. Quite a sight to see it rise, pink-orange above the dunes. The night sky was filled with stars so bright. Jedou told me the name of several familiar constellations, all with their own, logical names. The 'big dipper' for example was a 'big camel', not the the 'big bear' as it's called in French. Sleeping "à la belle étoile" (under the stars) was awesome and no mosquitos as the temperature dropped to around 10 degrees from the mid 40s during the day. As with the mighty baobab trees in le pays Dogon, these sand dunes also made me think once again of my favourite childhood book: Le Petit Prince.
I returned to Mopti by land and saw the spectacular towering cliffs of the Gandamia massif from the window of the 4x4 jeep, bouncing on the washboard sandy road. It was then a 4 day odyssey by road back through Burkina Faso and south across Ghana to the coast and to a beach town near Accra called Kokrobite. I decided to spend my remaining 8 days in Africa there as it was the ideal place for some R&R. It was just what I needed after the full on travel and intensity of Mali. Kokrobite is pretty laid back. Although there are a few tourist-bungalow operations, it is still a local village, with many fishermen working on the beach, bringing in their catch every morning the from their massive dug out canoes.
I stayed at the most popular joint, Big Milly's and got myself a small room in a clean, thatched roof hut. It was fun meeting other travelers, most of them backpacker types like myself. This one older Italian got a kick out of my analysis when we were talking about travel and countries all over the world. He had been to Zanzibar in the late 70s and told me, at that time, he was one of the few white people around. I told him you can measure tourism's influence and transformation of a place by the degree of how many restaurants pop up and start serving "banana pancakes and muesli". Indeed, Big Milly's muesli was a nice break from my breakfasts of mutton tripe up in Mali.
One interesting feature of Kokrobite was the rasta scene. There were many of them, Ghanian mostly, but also from neighbouring Togo and Burkina, there to sell crafts and ganga but also to hook up with the large number of young European women, mostly Brits and Dutch that are in Ghana to do volunteer work (or what can cynically be called "voluntourism" by some). They tend to do a one to three month stint, then come to Kokrobite to get a break from eating local fou-fou and indulge in the party scene. I met several interesting people there and it was awesome to simply relax, do some watercolour paintings, read, have long discussions over beer and pizza at this one excellent Italian restaurant. I did go into Accra, the bustling capitol city, for a day to sort out my return ticket through Europe and to see one of West Africa's largest craft markets. There, I picked up two wooden masks, one from Côte d'Ivoire and the other, a classic from the Dogon. Although only 45 km away, it took almost 3 hours each way as the highway was so congested. 
With time running out, I was taking in the sun and the sea on the beach. The water was almost warm and the waves erratic with a strong undertow. As the sun rose, the fishermen's sailing canoes would make their way back to the beach to sort and sell their night's catch. I was already thinking, with a touch of nostalgia, of the amazing things I had seen and experienced in the last 5 weeks in West Africa.
