Stories from a South American Traveler

Music can make you travel. I don’t mean a voyage to unknown sensorial realms. I actually refer to jumping in a plane, flying thousands of kilometers, and coping patiently with immigration checkpoints, language barriers and cultural differences. That is how I ended up in Mali, Western Africa, in January 2009. I was a third-world traveler from Peru not heading to Europe, as most of my friends dreamt about, but to another third-world country instead.

My destination was the remotest music festival in the world in Essakane, an oasis in the heart of the Sahara Desert. The Tuareg people, a feisty nomadic tribe, started this event more than a decade ago. Amazing artists from Northwest Africa performed yearly at this multicultural celebration. Western musicians joined triggered by curiosity that dragged thousands of music lovers from Europe and North America.

“You’re going to Bali? How beautiful!” exclaimed a friend excited. “No,” I responded bluntly. “I am going to Mali. M-a-l-i,” I spelled it out. “And where is that?” she asked clueless. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have known either. But a friend from Seattle introduced me to the haunting music of this landlocked, dry, millenary country. It mesmerized me. The challenge was set. I had to go to Mali, sooner rather than later.

Eight months later, I landed in dusty Bamako, Mali’s capital city. A few minutes after stepping out of the airport a herd of street vendors shoved into my face anything from a cell phone to a shaving razor. They were offering me their products in an incomprehensible language. Mali, I realized, is a francophone country. My decent English and native Spanish were not going to help me get around, I feared.

Confirmation came soon: I got lost in the city after giving the wrong directions to a cab driver. I ended in a remote undesired town when I obviously took the wrong bus. People would stare at me when I mumbled my ten badly pronounced French words. I couldn’t make myself understood. And I built up frustration under the deep, hot sun. How did I end up here? Why? It was my fourth day in Mali.

I had another thousand kilometers ahead of me to reach Essakane. I took a battered bus to Ségou, and then sailed the mighty Niger River on a pinasse to legendary Timbuktu. My last stretch to the oasis was done in a four-wheel vehicle. I understood that my passion for music was the source of my strength to complete the journey. I was a South American traveling in Africa. I was simply following my bliss.