Still playing catchup with the blog – it’s hard not to be lazy and lethargic after the last 6 months or so of running around the world in the sun and now being able to relax for a while… in the freezing cold. But we are getting there and should be leaving for India just as soon as we get our visas, which is a whole other story.
On to Mali. It’s a bit difficult to know where to start with Mali, Mali was difficult, confusing, exhausting, and on and on, but also completely amazing and fascinating and on and on. Perhaps I shall stick to a nice, normal linear description first. After starting to write, the sheer volume of words has prompted me to split it into two posts.
Our first stop in Mali was Segou (mentioned last time, long bus ride, etc, etc). A nice, relaxed river-side town. There really wasn’t much to see there, more of a place to break a journey up. There were some lovely, crumbling, old buildings – relics of France’s colonial past – to walk around, aside from that the only other thing to see was a village an hour away by boat that made (and fired) pottery. We found out about this on the night we arrived from a would-be-guide who appeared from out of the shadows as we were waiting for our dinner at a restaurant (this is an occupation that took up much of our time, it seems that food is not able to be prepared in less than 30 minutes in Mali, an hour (we always took books with us) is much more reasonable). He spoke for a while to us from behind a wall in the dark before I gestured for him to actually come in and sit near us.
So he took us off the next day and showed us around, we saw the local women making pottery without any fancy machines – all they needed was a stand and a thong (flip flop for the UK residents) and voila, fantastic pots. The firing was done with fire (of course) but we were eventually told that it was done the next day, not the day we went (despite being told otherwise). Still, interesting.
By this time the Djenne Monday market (a big event) was looming so we headed off. From anywhere in Mali, the only way to get to Djenne (if you are a tourist that is) is to take a bus that goes along the highway between Segou and Mopti and get out at the carrefour (it’s French for yoghurt, I mean intersection or crossroads) for Djenne and “steel yourself for a long wait” in the words of our trusty Lonely Planet. As it turned out, they were right, though not in the way we thought. Luckily for us, another couple got off there as well with their Malian guide also going to Djenne. As soon as we all got off we were met by a driver of a “bache” (a ute with seats in the tray bit and a little roof) who quoted us a price, which we thought was fairly reasonable and loaded our bags on the roof for us. We all jump in, excited and relieved that it has gone so smoothly and start chatting away. The driver goes away, comes back 5 minutes later and says “oh I’m actually waiting for 10 more passengers before we go… or you could just pay that straight up and we can go.” Of course 10 more tickets between us made the great deal rather terrible so we said no, but waiting looked a little ridiculous when we stopped to assess where we were – which wasn’t on the highway at all but in fact a little off it and looking a lot like the middle of nowhere. A lot of arguing later, a driver from the hotel that the other couples guide had booked shows and the arguments continue and continue. Eventually, they sort it out, we pay the equivalent of maybe 5 more seats (a bargain!) and drive off, 6 to a car. As we are leaving, we notice another bus show up and drop 2 more tourists off who walk over to the same bache driver…
Anyway, after all that we made it to Djenne and stayed at an absolute hovel of a hotel on the Sunday night (but they had an awesome Knight Rider sheet on the bed!) and looked around where the market was supposed to be – not much chop and almost nobody around was the verdict. The next morning we went out to see what had become of the market and were rather surprised to see the area covered (amazingly densely covered) with people, food, clothes and random products of every possible description. Though when I say every possible description that should really be every possible description except for things that a western tourist would ever in their right minds buy. Buckets, pans, cheap and second hand tools, clocks, hideous underwear and inedible food (mounds a metre high of dried, stinking fish were by far the most inedible of all) were everywhere and commerce seemed to be brisk but it was difficult to tell as the market operates on it’s own special language that we knew not a word of and it was never entirely clear if people were buying things, haggling incessantly or simply just talking to each other. A fantastic sight but we, of course, bought not a thing. Another major highlight of Djenne is it’s fantastic mosque. Mosques throughout the region are all mud brick buildings with wood sticking out everywhere. Apparently every year after the rainy season the buildings all need maintenance so the wood is both decorative and scaffolding.
We decided to take advantage of the high volume of traffic to leave Segou for Mopti. We had no problems securing a seat in a bache but it ended up proving to us that you can in fact fit 15 people in one of them. A very uncomfortable trip, I got the lucky spot of on top of the spare tyre at everyone’s feet. Mopti was a real crossroads in our trip, from there we could take the boat to Timbuktu or organise treks through the Dogon Country. The problem was the boat to Timbuktu has a reputation for an incredibly loose schedule and supposedly takes 3 days to get to Timbuktu. The trick was going to be balancing when the boat left (which we wouldn’t find out until we got to Mopti), a trip to Dogon Country and getting back to Bamako with enough time to catch our plane. That was the worry anyway. We showed up in Mopti at 5pm and went to the boat office only to be told that the boat leaves at 7pm that night. After a mad panic to change euros and buy toilet paper, food (meals are provided but have a reputation for being small or running out) and water before leaving, we jumped on the boat and took off.
The first thing we realised was that despite the promises that dinner was included on the first night, it in fact was not (lucky we had bought extra food). The boat itself was quite interesting, bottom deck was mainly taken up with cargo – huge piles of fruit and vegetables, a motorbike, a goat, a horse, and all sorts of random things; the second deck was taken up with the cabins, our “first class” cabin was there along with 8 other tourists; the top deck was half wide open space where Africans travelled – sleeping, cooking and everything else in the open – and the other half was the restaurant area. Every time the boat stopped at a village (there were about 8 or so stops between Mopti and Timbuktu) every woman on board (some guys too, but not many) trooped off the boat loaded with their goods loaded on their heads and set up a little mini-market on the riverbank. The locals of course know this and are waiting in huge numbers at every stop (in fact, even in the villages where the boat doesn’t stop the people all gather to watch the boat passing) to buy their wares, this didn’t change even at the night stops, everyone just brings along a torch. But all good things must come to an end, and after only 2 nights we were told to pack up and get off. A shame as with the unexpectedly quick departure of the boat we found ourselves with a little too much time left plus we liked life on the boat – the food was decent, the temperature moderate and the other tourists friendly. Oh well, we consoled ourselves with the fact that we were in Timbuktu!
Photos and junk below, part two coming soon.
