More about Mali

After describing her 1975 visits to Timbuktu in Visa 107, Janice Booth moves on to Bamako

Back in 1975 the Grand Hotel in Bamako was impressively palatial, with masses of marble, a huge gleaming foyer, glossy reception desk and wide staircase leading up to a balustraded balcony. It was the first hotel built in Bamako in the colonial era, in 1952, just eight years before Mali gained independence from France; it had been part of French West Africa. We’d flown in late from Belgium – I was with the MD of a Belgian charity whose husband liked her to have company when travelling – and were glad to arrive. Our room (opening off the balcony) was large and opulent, with king-size beds and thick black curtains. My companion took a strong sleeping pill and went straight to sleep.

         

As I turned off the shower I heard a clunk; and on returning to the bedroom saw water pouring from a sleek fitted wardrobe – which turned out to contain a water tank so old that its bottom had finally rusted away. I piled our bags and shoes up on a chair, then phoned reception. Two impeccably dark-suited, white-shirted Malians appeared, and looked sadly at the flood. I suggested in French: ‘Perhaps one should turn it off at the mains?’ and they brightened.

         

‘Indeed, Madame, one should turn it off at the mains. One will do it.’ And they vanished.

         

Ten minutes later they were back. ‘Very unfortunately, Madame, he who can turn it off at the mains is at his home tonight. We must await the morning. Meanwhile we will transfer you to another room.’

Transfer? At midnight? With me in my nightie and my companion dead to the world? Anyway, the room seemed to be on a slight slope; the water was collecting along the wall furthest from the beds, and running out under the door rather than getting deeper. I declined their offer and went to sleep.

When I woke at 8.00 the flood had stopped and the floor was fairly dry. For almost six hours the water from the tank had continued flowing: under the door, across the balcony, through the balustrade and, in a gentle waterfall, down into the foyer, which surely had never been so well washed. I went back to the Grand Hotel nine months later, and as I checked in I could swear I heard a murmur of ‘cîterne’ (tank) from among the reception staff.  In 2004 it was refurbished and is now the Azalai Hotel Salem – presumably with better plumbing.

On my second visit, an American with a lurid, roughly dressed gash across her forehead came to sit with me in the restaurant, asking me to translate the menu. She’d been knocked down by a 15-year-old on a scooter (her fault, she readily acknowledged: she’d stepped out straight in front of him) and had had the wound scrubbed clean without anaesthetic (ouch...) in the city hospital. The boy then appeared with a huge bunch of flowers – he knew no-one blamed him but was still terribly shaken – and I translated his heartfelt and very well-spoken regret. From the menu, the woman chose hare while I had my favourite grilled capitaine. She received a massive haunch, enough to feed three people, which probably the leftovers would have done back in the kitchen; but to my great embarrassment she asked me to ask the courteous but puzzled waiter for a ‘doggy bag’ so she could finish it later in her room. The experiences of travel...

Bamako in those days was a lively, chaotic, very African capital, with some dramatic architecture, vibrant local restaurants and fantastic live music. The French influence lingered in the food, and the trays of fresh baguettes hawked in the streets each morning. Nearly four decades later I’m left with impressions rather than precise memories – of tall, graceful people, many shades of colour and types of bone structure, from fine, pale Tuareg to much darker and chunkier Moors and Mali’s numerous other ethnic groups; veiled faces, turbaned faces, open faces, stylishly dressed women in rainbow colours and dangling jewellery; dust and noise and the feeling of a confident city at ease with itself. Poor and rich areas, shabby and flamboyant buildings, sleek new-builds and chunky traditional homes, smart shops and outdoor markets all somehow rubbed along amicably together.

The wonderfully atmospheric  Marché Rose, a huge, pink, circular mud-brick market in neo-Sudanese style, with increasingly exotic items on increasingly dark stalls as you wound your way inwards, was destroyed by fire in 1993, but was so popular with both residents and visitors that it has been rebuilt. I bought dress-lengths of printed cotton there, and had them made up and embroidered by a tailor in Timbuktu. There were some pleasant parks and gardens – dusty, but with flowers and birds – and I remember a peaceful walk beside the River Niger, the city’s water-source. All along its sloping banks were small fruit and vegetable gardens, growing well in the irrigated sand. Bamako means ‘crocodile river’ but none appeared...

Traffic was bad, pollution worse. Traffic lights did work – mostly – but the vehicles on either side confronted each other like adversaries, revving fiercely and hell-bent on being first away. I remember once, opposite me across the lights, the nearside wheel of a stationary 2CV gently detached itself and rolled slowly into the cross traffic, causing  no small amount of braking and blaring of horns.

Djenne Mosque

We were heading for Timbuktu, and sadly I’d no time to see more of the country. Borders have changed over the years, but the area of today’s Mali, with the River Niger at its heart, has been for centuries a crossroads of races and civilisations. Many prehistoric remains, including some vivid cave paintings and finely made artefacts, have been found, and first European accounts of its history start around the 3rd century AD. I should have loved to see Djenné, with its massive mosque – the largest mud-brick structure in the world, designated a World Heritage Site in 1988 – and excavations at nearby Djenné-Djeno, possibly the oldest-known city in West Africa, dating from about 250BC.  

Also I missed the Bandiagara area, so-called ‘Dogon country’ and probably the part of Mali most visited by tourists, with its intriguing culture, distinctive art, burial caves and characteristic cliff villages clustered below a towering escarpment. (Remember Robert Temple’s controversial ‘The Sirius Mystery’ in 1973 and the African tribe that apparently knew more about the Dog Star than astronomers did? Rightly or wrongly, they were the Dogon.)

In fact art and culture are fascinating throughout Mali, very often specific to particular areas, and I returned home with far too many souvenirs which, thirty years later, I still had. Through editing Ross Velton’s Bradt Guide to Mali I’d discovered a small charity, the Joliba Trust, based on Dartmoor that was doing useful work (farming, health, livestock, children...) among villagers in central/southern Mali; in 2009 they held an exhibition-cum-sale of Malian handicrafts to raise funds and, as I live in Devon, I filled up a box and drove over. It was lovely to see a display of the bright colours, fine weaving and characterful carvings that I remembered – and even better to see mine being sold to Joliba’s profit! They work on a narrow shoestring. As I watched, a small, carved wooden door from a Dogon grain-store went for £75...

Joliba have kindly provided some of these photos and some updates about the present situation: life in the south of the country seems tense but fairly normal, while in the north prices of everyday goods are rocketing and there is still sporadic violence – today a suicide bomb has killed a Malian soldier in Timbuktu, and Gao is a target of rebel attacks. The Joliba website includes a heartfelt letter from a Timbuktu inhabitant, written during last year’s ‘Islamist’ occupation. In Bamako and other towns there’s suspicion now among the inhabitants, as lighter-skinned and darker-skinned wonder who may be supporting whom. Although the French intervention in January did (vitally) drive the insurgents from the northern towns and prevent their further advance, not much is solved in the long term by killing a few dozen ‘Islamists’ and destroying some of their hideouts; it’s the very, very rich pickings offered by drug trafficking in the desert that need to be tackled, internationally. Meanwhile, the insurgents will simply return and the country can’t stabilise; also its tourism income – particularly important in Djenné, Timbuktu and Bandiagara – has been stripped away.

As always in wars, it’s the ‘little people’ who suffer, and Mali is already a poor nation. Some governments have withdrawn much-needed  development aid from the north but NGOs such as Joliba are plugging away throughout the country – and Mali is so rewarding in that respect because, as I’ve seen for myself, its people are happy to organise themselves and work energetically on projects that provide the basic finance or materials they lack.  It’s a beautiful, fascinating and very varied country, well worth considering as a destination once the unrest is over. In fact – Mali needs you!

First Published in VISA 108 (April 2013)