{"id":121,"date":"2004-06-03T12:19:52","date_gmt":"2004-06-03T19:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=121"},"modified":"2004-06-03T12:19:52","modified_gmt":"2004-06-03T19:19:52","slug":"tales-of-a-toubaab-bamako-mali-pt-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/03\/tales-of-a-toubaab-bamako-mali-pt-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales of a Toubaab: Bamako (Mali, Pt. IV)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed: Well, my Tales of a Toubaab catching up didn’t really happen at the pace that I had hoped. But hopefully I’ll fill out all the stories that didn’t make it into writing yet this summer. This is Part IV of the Mali trip, continued from here<\/a>. This episode describes the arrival into Bamako and our first day.<\/i><\/p>\n

Takes Place: March 31 2003
\nWritten: January 15 2004 & June 3 2004<\/p>\n

Bamako.<\/p>\n

The final destination on the fabled railway that Ousmane Sembène writes so vividly about.<\/p>\n

Bamako. <\/p>\n

The heart of Mali. My third African capital city.<\/p>\n

Bamako.<\/p>\n

We lowered the window and stuck our head out, like dogs riding in a car. Approaching the platform people stood, watching as their eyes followed the movement as the whistle and commotion of the train decrescendoed slowly. People ran along the platform, talking with people in the train, and even began to hand luggage down from the moving train. <\/p>\n

As the train finally came to a stop, the people emerged once again. They came out of the woodwork, and out of the bathrooms and wherever else they had spent the last 14 hours. Those who had not already woken up were certainly woken now once the final brake was applied and the hard, slow thunk locked us in. The long 53 hour journey from Dakar to Bamako was finally over.<\/p>\n

Al got down, somehow managing to squeeze through the people and positioned himself outside of our train car on the platform. Susan and I handed him through the window our things (just a couple of backpacks) and made our way to meet him.<\/p>\n

It was only 9 am, but the heat of the the Malian sun shone down from us, as a sort of tease for what we could come to expect later in the day and later on when we would trek through Dogon country in some of the hotter regions.<\/p>\n

Being somewhat experienced travellers, we agreed that our first priority was to put as much distance between us and the train station. This was based on the assumption that any transportation hub anywhere in Senegal, to varying degrees, was a den of theives. Con men and “coaxeurs”, men whose job it was to entice you to use this or that taxi or to offer their services as moneychangers or hotel managers flocked to these types of locations. <\/p>\n

Bamako’s train station, while packed with people, all of whom were trying to exit a single gate, did not really have many hustlers around. We got ourselves together and picked a direction and walked out. Bamako, like Dakar, has a good amount of road traffic. <\/p>\n

We seemed to be in the center of town, near some large plaza with big buildings, a large turning circle, but all of that aside, we were American kids lost in a big city.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for us we had a contact in Bamako. Al’s friend from the Wharton School, Meribeth, was a Fulbright scholar living there doing research on women’s cooperatives and microfinance in Mali. So our first priority was to call her and have her direct us to her house.<\/p>\n

About a half block from the station we found what in Senegal would be called a “telecentre” — a small kiosk looking structure with a person running it to use the phone. While Susan and I sipped on Cokes, Al fished out her number from his wallet and dialed her number. She picked up.<\/p>\n

I turned to inhale Bamako. I felt the cars and the loudness of it. Not quite like the loudness of Dakar — more like the largeness of it. Not quite grandeur, but definite size and volume. She gave us directions, and we were off. We hailed the first taxi we saw and attempted to direct him to near the British embassy, where she lived. <\/p>\n

As we pulled into traffic, rounding the large circle I tried to think of myself living, like Meribeth was, in such a large place, alone, far from family and friends for over a year. Our situation was different, we had other students to keep us company — she was most certainly on her own. She was doing research at her own pace — nice, to some degree — but also with no structure to speak of. <\/p>\n

Crossing the river, Al noticed some American kids that he recognized from Dakar on the bridge and called out to them from our moving taxi. He exchanged a few words, expressing suprise and delight as their paths crossed again, a 2 day journey from where they had last seen one another. <\/p>\n

Eventually we came to near where the British embassy sat something like 20 minutes later. It was a large building with a big gate, punctuating the seemingly endless dirt road which came out perpendicular to it. But she didn’t live at the British Embassy, and apparently our driver didn’t quite understand the directions afterward. He went out and asked the guard, but they didn’t quite understand it either. We drove around more, eventually finding the American Cultural Center — “Stay where you are,” she told us on the phone “I’ll come pick you up.”<\/p>\n

We paid our bill and bought some more Cokes from a roadside vendor and waited. This part of Bamako was far different from the part that we had just come from. It looked something like an up-and-coming neighborhood. There were a lot of large embassy-style structures, plus large houses and apartment buildings, but there were dirt roads and little road traffic. <\/p>\n

A small car pulled up. Al smiled.<\/p>\n

Meribeth got out and they hugged each other tightly. I felt happy to have a place to stay where I didn’t have to keep my guard up all the time. We bumbled along a few more dirt roads (I got completely disoriented) and finally pulled up in front of a large nearly two-story building with a big gate in front of it. She waved to a couple of Malian guys sitting out in front of the building, sitting on chairs as we pulled into a very tight-fitting garage. <\/p>\n

We walked out, and we were introduced to her guards — in Bambara, the lingua franca of Mali.<\/p>\n

“Blah blah blah America blah blah blah étudiants au Senegal blah blah blah blah blah blah.”<\/p>\n

We smiled and shook hands with our newfound Malian protectors.<\/p>\n

“They watch over the place. There’s not a lot of crime, but it’s good to have them here. Plus, I sort of inherited them.”<\/p>\n

She turned the key and led us into her apartment. There was a very large room which connected a dining area and a living room area. She had a TV (she got about six channels, but it was mostly on CNN nearly all the time) couch, and a coffee table with assorted old issues of The Economist. The kitchen was large and fully stocked with both hardware and software. She had everything from a microwave to Kraft Mac & Cheese (“I have access to the embassy store,” she explained.) There were two bedrooms, one with a large double bed with a mosquito net that she slept under with a large closet and bathroom attached to it. That was her room. Another bedroom lay sparse and clean — Al’s and my room for the next couple of days. <\/p>\n

The apartment was owned by a Malian landlord and for at least the last year had become the de facto Fulbright house in Bamako. It was a sweet deal, and best of all, Fulbright paid for it. Meribeth also used her money to pay the guards, to buy a stick-shift car (and learned to drive it), and for everyday expenses. By American standards, it was simple. For road-weary though, it was luxurious. Hot water? A microwave? CNN?<\/p>\n

Following a much needed shower we munched on some omelettes that we threw together and just unwinded. Meribeth was off to “Sciences Pô” in Paris next year, the prestigious French political science graduate school. She read the NYT and The Economist regularly. We connected pretty easily. <\/p>\n

As the afternoon wore on, I began to learn more and more about Meribeth. She had been to Mali before, during her own study abroad as a junior at Penn, where she was a Wharton student. After graduating in 2002, she would spend the year in Mali studying microfinance, particularly among women’s cooperatives in Mali. <\/p>\n

Given that we were pretty tired, Meribeth promised our first day would be pretty easy, but she wanted us to get oriented, so after lunch we hopped in the car and drove about 10 minutes away up the hill to the University of Bamako.<\/p>\n

The University sits on the south end of the city, on a pretty substantial hill that allows for a good view into the city. There isn’t a whole lot to see in terms of a skyline in the valley below, besides the West African Banking (CBEAO) tower, which is the sole thing that is noticeable, in a sea of small office buildings and haze. <\/p>\n

In the cooling afternoon Bamako somewhat reminded me of Los Angeles. It is a sprawl, stretching from the southern part where we were, to hills opposite the urbanized river valley where some malaria research labs were, to the airport to the far southeast. It just seemed to stretch in all directions. I had something of an idea of bearings now. <\/p>\n

We headed back, but about an hour or so later, Meribeth announced that she had to go to a soccer practice — she was on an amateur women’s Malian team. Al and I tagged along with the promise of a nearby cybercaf\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd which we found and alerted friends and family (particularly our fellow toubaabs back in Senegal) of our crazy journey. <\/p>\n

Two hours passed quickly, and Meribeth picked us up with two Cameroonian female friends of hers from her team — she always gives them a ride home. They were very friendly and spoke excellent French. <\/p>\n

After a quick dinner, I found myself with Al, Susan, Meribeth and the Cameroonian girls at a new Belgian bar in “downtown” Bamako, where I had a bière rouge<\/i>, which is the only beer I’ve ever had that I genuinely enjoyed. Might have been the grenadine. <\/p>\n

After dropping the Cameroonian girls off, I fell asleep in the car and then crashed on the couch as soon as we had gotten back. The trio chatted late into the night. I slept in my clothes all night long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed: Well, my Tales of a Toubaab catching up didn’t really happen at the pace that I had hoped. But hopefully I’ll fill out all the stories that didn’t make it into writing yet this summer. This is Part IV of the Mali trip, continued from here. This episode describes the arrival into Bamako and our first day. Takes Place: March 31 2003 Written: January 15 2004 & June 3 2004 Bamako. The final destination on the fabled railway that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-travels","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-1X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}