My photographing must be pretty conspicuous. At least, my camera must have been, even if I tried to be as low-profile about it as I could. In general, some people were taking it gracefully, but some played guardians of law and order, and threatened me, asking for „authorisation“.
Having said that, I had an incident related to it and for quite some time I didn’t even have an idea that there had been an incident in the first place.
The road between Sikasso and Bamako is literally infested with check-points. Why exactly, I am not sure. I know that if you asked authorities, they would surely come up with all sorts of important reasons and explanations. For all that, they remained incomprehensible for me. I am even tempted in my bouts of petty malice to claim that those roadblocks didn’t serve any purpose other than giving the police a good excuse to collect more bribes. But OK, it was as it was and as a tourist, you just take it all as it comes.
Anyway, at one of those check-points some of us left the bus and went out to stretch our legs. I did the same, as I always do whenever given an opportunity. And just as ever, I started roaming around, looking for things to take a picture of. However, this time around, I had not even found anything interesting yet – maybe because after a while such spots finally start looking like each other – when a policeman came up to me and gave me a polite, but stern warning that photographing was not allowed. I told him, this time really truthfully, that no pictures had been taken. OK, quite honestly, I wasn’t guilty of not wanting to take any pictures. I surely would have if I had found anything to catch my eye. However, the policeman didn’t have to know that. According to the letter of their regulations, if they existed as such, I was guilty of nothing. But he wouldn’t take just my word for it. So he summoned me for the passport check to the tent by the roadside where the police manning the check-point retreated to avoid the sun. He also demanded to see my camera display.
I will be the first one to fess up to the fact that it may be in human nature to be suspicious, at least sometimes, of other people’s motives. Particularly if those people are totally unknown to us. And if they are in a position of any kind of authority to boot, you may have all necessary ingredients of a healthy suspicion brew. Much as you consciously try to keep in mind that your travels and interactions with unknown people have taught you exactly opposite, you nevertheless occasionally fall into that trap of distrust. So in a way maybe Annette and I were not all that different.
Therefore when the guy took my passport and started leafing through it, I couldn’t be convinced of anything else than it was his intention to find me out on some count or other, so he could slap a „fine“ on me. Or in translation, to tease some backhander from my wallet. Also, when he asked, I showed him a few of recent pictures and he realised that indeed I was not trying to pull any wool over his eyes. Just as I had told him, no pictures had been taken.
Well, my passport and everything else was in order and, to his credit, he didn’t really seem to be too pettifogging. The more he was at it, the more he looked like someone who was really trying just to do his honest job. So in just a few minutes his short passport check and everything else was over and he let me go. Just before I stepped out of the tent, he had warned me not to take any pictures at any of the further check-points. I pretended I „didn’t know“ I couldn’t do it, professed to be „really sorry“ about the whole trouble and promised I wouldn’t do it.
We shook hands like best of friends and I went back towards the bus. By the time I returned, the bus driver had cleared whatever he had to clear on his part and we were ready to go.
Once in the bus and on the road again, Annette asked me about my close encounter with the Malian road police.
„Nothing special,“ I said. „The guy was OK. He just checked my passport and when he saw that I hadn’t taken any pictures, he let me go.“
She nodded and then it was more or less the end to our conversation. Again for some reason, she was not in much of a chatty mood.
But a young guy, to the right from me across the aisle, seemed more than happy to step in. He spoke some English and soon started asking this or that, like it was by now pretty much usual whenever I got in touch with any English-speaking locals. Even those only French-speaking ones.
“Good camera,“ he said at one point.
I thanked him. Then he added:
„Many good photos,“ showing around and outside the bus, indicating there were many interesting things to take pictures of.
„Yes,“ I said and nodded.
And then, in a way that pretty much made me raise my eyebrows, he started pointing things out and urging me to shoot them. Needless to say, the two of us didn’t necessarily saw it eye to eye as to what made an interesting picture, and somehow I didn’t follow up with action on any of his suggestions. But that didn’t seem to deter him much. He just marched on and literally every two minutes kept encouraging me to take pictures, quite peculiarly, of almost every conceivable nonsense he could lay his eyes on. The more he did it, the less I found it amusing, and gradually I lost every enthusiasm of as much as looking his way.
By the time we arrived in Bamako, less than two hours later, I didn’t have a single picture shot after we had left Bougouni.
And when we retrieved our luggage, I never even bothered to say good-bye to the guy.
Our bus station in Bamako was gare de routière de Sodoniko. As almost every other town of some size in West Africa that we had been to so far, Bamako probably had more than one bus station. This particular one was pretty far down to the south of the city, below the Niger river. So we had to take a taxi, cross the river, go up north and find ourselves a hotel to stay in. I kind of thought that „Tamana“ hotel might be a good choice, so we asked one of the numerous taxi drivers to get us there. After some hard bargaining, when I had a feeling that we had still ended up on the receiving end, one guy agreed to three thousand CFA francs and we left the station.
At first the ride seemed smooth, but when we crossed the Niger river – which was my first encounter with this lifeline of West Africa – it got ever slower. The streets got ever more jammed. It was first cars only, but then after a while there were people all around, spilling all over onto pavements and carriageways from all possible places, and the area we were passing through was more like somewhere around a football stadium right after a derby game than a downtown street. The driver didn’t seem to mind much, which led me to a conclusion that he was not seeing this nearly impenetrable chaos of a crowd for the first time. Well, either way, for a while, when we moved, it was only at a snail’s pace. And then we wouldn’t move at all. Then a bit of a snail’s pace again and so on it went.
Finally, when we cleared the Grande Marche area, for it was the grand Bamako market that we were trying to push through and no local Wembley or something, the things looked up again. After that, it was only a matter of minutes until we arrived at the „Tamana“ hotel. And when, after more than an hour in the taxi the driver asked if he could get a bit more than three thousand CFA francs, I realised with a sense of guilt that the bargain Annette had struck with him back at the bus station was really hard. But he would have been the short-changed party, not us. So with my changed perspective and this nagging guilt, I gladly gave him more and we left the car.
In the hotel, there was a room available for us and we checked in.
And then Annette told me an interesting story which made me realise I had been a part of a more sinister plot back at the check-point than I had originally thought. According to her, while I was in the tent, the rest of passengers urged the bus driver to go on without me. For some reason, collective maliciousness got the better of people and took over.
„They thought I didn’t understand what they were saying,“ she said. „But I did.“
However, it didn’t seem to be powerful enough as the driver did wait for me. Or had to wait. What it was exactly that pissed them off, I can’t know. It couldn’t have been the wait itself. It wasn’t longer than, literally, five minutes. If at all. But for some reason, if Annette was to be believed, they turned against me. So even if it was absolutely negligible next to all the accumulated waiting time at all police check-points along the way, according to Annette one guy nevertheless volunteered to try to cause me problems for the rest of the trip.
And that was the guy who was so oddly urging me to take pictures. This time there may have been something to it and more than just her innate fear of strangers that usually makes her see things. If what Annette said was true, and it may have been because the guy was simply flaky, to put it mildly, then he clearly expected to get me into trouble merely by persuading me to take pictures. As if it is a felony. But for some reason, just as I said, I took no pictures any more. Not least because his friendliness didn’t seem quite right and for once, to Annette’s satisfaction, I turned out to be less than ready to engage in a friendly chat. So if this guy was really getting up to pushing me into trouble, his plan had clearly run aground.
So much about it.
Well, at the end of the day, nothing happened and so Annette and I were now in the „Tamana“ hotel, leaving bus rides behind us for a few days to come.
It was still the broad daylight outside, so we rushed out as soon as we could to take a walk, maybe find a place for Annette to eat, possibly locate a supermarket in the vicinity for some drinks and milk, and such things. After several days back to back on wheels, it felt kind of refreshing to know that only wheels we would use for a while would be taxi wheels and nothing more. The afternoon was getting late, so it was really pleasant outside. A great setting for a stroll, to stretch cramped legs.
„Tamana“ hotel is located at the very beginning of a small, leafy, unpaved side street and is a very pleasant place with a large, equally leafy garden, complete with a swimming pool. There is an outdoors bar in the garden where you can sit in the evening – or even during the day if you insist – and enjoy yourself on a barstool with a drink in your hand. You didn’t need to be too smart to guess that locals didn’t come to this place much. Only the staff were black, and apart from them, there was one young African lady so pretty as if she had just stepped down from the centrefold of a fashion magazine, and a young, smiling guy who had spread some souvenirs on the bar on display, and possibly for sale.
„This girl is waiting for the bartender,“ Annette whispered to me. Her sharp eye had already sized up the situation. Well, the bartender was white.
„Is she?“
OK, maybe she was waiting for the bartender. And upon a closer inspection, you’d probably come to a conclusion that it was really so. It’s just that I was not connecting the dots. I simply didn’t care much about who was waiting for whom. But Annette found it much more of interest than I did.
The young guy politely asked us to check the handicraft he had in his possession. I told him that right now I was not interested in buying anything. Besides, we were going out on an entirely different business. But I did stop by for a minute to shake my hands with him and he told me that he was an artist. When I asked him whether he could do any good living like this, he smiled with a bit of uncertainty and said:
„Not much.“
I already had my two souvenirs, all that I was ever going to buy during my trip, and just wished him luck. Then Annette and I went out.
It takes you literally just a few steps from the „Tamana“ hotel to reach a much bigger and paved road, called Rue 235. Which is colloquially much better known as Rue de Bla Bla. This street is allegedly where all the fun of the neighbourhood is, so we hoped that we wouldn’t have to stray too far and yet find whatever we were looking for.
We found even more than that.
For starters, just a few hundred metres up the Rue de Bla Bla we located a hair salon.
Annette had been fixing for some time to get her hair changed, as she called it. Before I met her, I had had no idea that African women couldn’t grow much hair, certainly not in the fashion that women of other races did. I saw all those wonderful and colourful hairstyles, but it never occurred to me that they had all been made out of artificial hair and simply attached to the short and relatively weak natural one. This genetic twist on African race was a true revelation for me. Maybe the entire rest of the world knew that all along, but as for me, in that respect I had been living in total darkness. Only when I had learned that, did I fully comprehend why with my long hair I was standing out to such an extent among locals.
Anyway, that artificial hair would wear out after two or three weeks – at least that’s what Annette told me – and then it was time for a hairdo overhaul. Quite an expensive sport, if you ask me, particularly on a continent where incomes were not exactly soaring sky high. I have no idea if American blacks had the same problem or not, but right now it didn’t matter too much. The question came to me merely out of curiosity.
So now it was about time for Annette to have her hair rehabilitated, as it were. And true lady as she is, she dropped off everything on the spot, meal, drinks and all, walked into the salon and her hair was the first thing she was going to take care of.
There were three idle ladies sitting, with no customers at all, and I guess Annette came in both as a welcome diversion and an even more welcome potential source of income. Not much of a guy who is at home in hair salons, particularly not those for ladies, at first I followed the proceedings with fascination. There was a load of transparent packs with artificial hair in all lengths, colours and forms hanging on one wall, and it took a long and elaborate decision-making on Annette’s part to settle for one of them. Once she had done that – I guess many a man would have come and gone, shorn as a sheep by the time she just picked and chose her future hair – they were finally off the blocks with the stage two. The real hair-making. However, by the time they had really gotten down to it, my interest in the whole hair business somewhat faded and I told Annette I would explore the neighbourhood and drop by later.
Once out, a guy who even at first sight safely belonged among those least clean ones in the street approached me and – started speaking English to me right away. Well, it may be true that his clothes had last seen water during the last rain he’d been in, but I wouldn’t discriminate against anyone just on the strength of how clean they were. Besides, the fact that he spoke passable English was something that made him different in a way that was interesting to me, so I returned his greeting.
He asked me usual things like where I was from, how I liked Mali, where I was headed to and so on. I told him a few things, all in general, and then he enquired if I would visit the Dogon country. Now, they say the Dogon country is one single thing in Mali that shouldn’t be missed if you’re there, so understandably it was pretty high on my agenda. I said, yes, I did plan to go there.
„I am a Dogon,“ he said.
„Really?“ I was genuinely interested now.
„Yes,“ he nodded. „I come from a village near Bandiagara. My family lives there.“
„So what do you do here?“
„I go to school.“
Ah, OK. School. Right. But weren’t they having vacation in Mali right now? Or very soon? So why was he still in Bamako?
„I needed to get some more money,“ he said. „I’ll go tomorrow.“
I nodded.
„If you want, when you get there, I can be your guide,“ he offered.
„Can you indeed? Well, we’ll talk about that later. I just arrived in Bamako today, so I don’t know my exact plans yet,“ I said, refusing to commit myself to anything yet. „I might let you know when I know more.“
The guy was insisting on giving me his telephone number, so I could call him when I arrived in the Dogon country, but I told him it could wait.
„I am David,“ he said.
„Nice to meet you, David,“ I accepted.
Then he wanted to know what I was up to right now. I told him about Annette and her hair business, and explained that basically I was waiting for her and not up to much.
„I might just go have a look around if there is a supermarket nearby.“
„What do you want to buy?“
„Nothing much,“ I said. „Some water, maybe a milk, that’s all.“
„I know a supermarket,“ he offered. „I can show you.“
„Is it far?“ I didn’t want to stray too far, as I didn’t want Annette to wait for me. I knew it wouldn’t necessarily go down well with her if she was to wait for me all by herself in a strange city she was visiting for the first time.
„No, not far,“ he assured me.
„OK,“ I agreed. „Let’s go.“
And indeed, the supermarket was not far. Just a bit farther up the road. We took a leisurely walk during which I shot a few pictures and then we were there. On our way to the supermarket at one point I suddenly heard „hello“. So I looked around and saw some smiling fellow, probably in his early thirties, looking pretty sophisticated, with eye glasses on. I smiled back and returned the greeting. After a few initial sentences, he said:
„I am a teacher.“
„Oh, that’s nice,“ I tried to sound enthusiastic. „So what do you teach?“
„I teach in a primary school.“
„Very good.“
„But you know,“ he started up, „it not easy. I have a wife and two children, so maybe you can give me some small money...?“
Well, another one. I shook my head and told him straight:
„I am sorry, but do you know how many people here ask me for money every day?“
That was something I obviously didn’t have to explain much. His face expression clearly told me he could well guess.
„And even if I wanted, I couldn’t possibly give money to every single person who asks me,“ I added. He just looked at me, smiling a bit of an awkward smile.
„So tell me,“ I asked, „why would I possibly give the money to you and not to the guy over there?“ and I pointed to someone at random. „Give me one reason.“
Of course, he had no reason.
„I’m sorry,“ I said. And I was. But I didn’t feel guilty.
David wasn’t happy. You could clearly see it on his face.
„Don’t give them money,“ he said.
Of course I wouldn’t. But what was it to him?
„Why?“ I asked.
„It’s not good,“ was his only explanation.
By the time I bought the water in supermarket and we returned to the hair salon, it started getting darker. I checked on Annette, but she was still in the chair in front of the mirror, with all three ladies in attendance. I asked how long she thought she would take.
„Soon,“ she said.
Fine.
As it was getting dark quite rapidly, it made no sense for me to go anywhere without her any more. So I just got out of the salon to watch people pass by from the doorstep. David was still there. I was a bit surprised, I must admit. He was sitting few metres away from the salon entrance on what would have been a curb if the road had had curbs along any length. But it didn’t, so this way, it was just a piece of an extremely low wall. He seemed to be waiting for me. I nodded towards him.
„Will you call me when you come to Dogon country?“ he asked.
„We’ll see,“ I said. „If I come there, I will.“
„What will you do now?“
„Now?“ I wasn’t quite sure what to begin with what to me looked a bit of an inappropriate curiosity. It put me a bit on guard and I tried to be vague. I said that it would depend on when Annette was going to have her hair done. But by the looks of it, it increasingly looked like we wouldn’t have time for much.
And then, suddenly, David asked me for money.
„What for?“ I frowned.
„Because I showed you the supermarket,“ he said.
For that? Well, I told him that for that he wasn’t going to get any money.
„I could have found the supermarket without you just fine,“ I assured him. However, the less likely I looked to give him anything, the angrier he grew. And his demands grew nastier.
„And what about my time?“ he demanded, now obviously looking pretty ominous.
„What about your time?“
„I spent my time with you! I want my money!“
„You’ll get no money,“ now I was beginning to get huffy myself. But he started threatening me.
„You won’t go before you give me my money!“ he declared.
I realised a quarrel with him would get me nowhere. So I returned into the salon. Annette was nowhere near being done yet. However, the girls inside got a whiff of something being afoot outside. So they asked me what it was and I told them. One of them got out with me to check. And David was still there.
„Give me my money!“ he snarled.
We both, the girl and I, wanted to return inside when suddenly this guy from the „Tamana“ hotel who was selling souvenirs earlier in the afternoon passed by. He saw me, smiled and came up to me to shake hands. We did and he asked what I was doing here. I told him Annette was having her hair done, but I also pointed at David and said that he was threatening me for my refusal to give him money.
The guy only now noticed David and asked:
„He?!“
„Yes,“ I answered.
„Don’t worry,“ he said reassuringly and went up to David. Then he started talking to him. I have no idea whatsoever what it was that he told him. At first David was angry and not willing to go, but the guy from the hotel wouldn’t give up, so he finally managed to get David away from his spot. Still mental, but going. After a bit more discussion he seemed to finally be able to persuade him to go away.
Then he returned to me, smiled broadly, put his index-finger to his temple and said:
„He’s crazy, but he is not dangerous.“
I thanked him, not entirely sure that David was so harmless. The guy went up in the direction of supermarket, and I stood on at the entrance, now almost on watch, less than certain that David was really away.
True to my suspicions, soon after the souvenir guy from the hotel had left, David returned. This time he didn’t take up his former position on the wall near the hair salon, but rather lurked in the deep shadow across the road. But he was there all right. For a while things didn’t change much. Some fifteen minutes later, the guy from the hotel doubled back, obviously on his way to the hotel now. He smiled and waved.
„David is still there,“ I said as he passed by.
„Where?“
„There,“ I pointed in the direction of the shadow. The guy looked there and sure enough, spotted David again. He went up to him once more, probably trying to get some sense into him, but the result was the same. Initially he persuaded him to leave, but as soon as he disappeared out of sight, this loopy, unwashed guy returned.
I was feeling increasingly ill at ease. Not so much because of myself, even if in the best of circumstances you don’t really need such nutters who, ultimately at a loose end, cast about for foreigners to harass. I was more concerned about Annette. After all, having come with me, she was under my wing and my responsibility. A pillock like this David, who got round the twist after I had refused to give him „his“ money, didn’t make things any easier in that respect. The longer I stood there at the door to the salon, the clearer it got to me that David wouldn’t give up just like that.
So what now?
For all I knew, he could even be dangerous, and in a real way at that. Not only by being big on threats like those guys looking for authorisation for my pictures. I vaguely felt that he wouldn’t let us get off the hook and go to the hotel just like that. And I wouldn’t risk his turning violent. So I decided that, once Annette was over with her hair, we should fake going up in the direction of the supermarket and then catch a taxi. And then we would see what would happen next.
Annette took her time. When she was finally ready to go, it had been more than three hours since the moment she had stepped in. Night had long fallen over Bamako. Rue de Bla Bla wasn’t exactly basking in street lights. And David was still there in the shadow across the street.
„Let’s go up there,“ I told her.
„Why?“ she asked.
„Let’s just go,“ I said. „And don’t turn around.“
We headed up the Rue de Bla Bla and sure enough, David emerged from his shadow, starting to stalk us. I kept a deliberately measured pace, reckoning that any display of hurry would work against us. For a while he matched his pace with ours.
„When you see a taxi, flag it down,“ I told Annette.
Well, one of the things I liked about Africa at that very moment was the fact that there would be hardly a minute, wherever you were, before you spotted a taxi. So very soon we got ourselves one. We tried to get in as fast as we could and shake David off. But it wouldn’t work out that easy. Seeing us getting into the taxi, beside himself from rage, he ran up to the cab and sought to open the door by force.
„Give me my money!“ he roared from the outside.
The driver looked at him in amazement.
„Just go,“ Annette told the driver. Finally, he started the car again and we cut David loose at last. I was hoping the driver would get us to the hotel before David returned there and then the matter would be settled for the night. But it wasn’t going to be so simple. First of all, this was a shared taxi we were in. Which meant there were other passengers inside, two ladies, who had already paid for their own destinations. So getting to the hotel before David was now impossible. The ladies were to be delivered first. And second, the driver would not even get us to the hotel. He just dropped us off in some dark side street, overcharging us for this short ride and lit off.
So we now had to look for another taxi, but fortunately it was not much of a problem. We found one easily.
I wasn’t even in a mood to haggle. I would pay whatever it took to just return to the „Tamana“. And as expected, David was there. The taxi got us as close to the entrance gate as it possibly could. Annette sneaked right in and I stayed only so long as to pay the driver. And during those two minutes when I was giving the driver the money, it was clear that David had been completely off his head. He kept demanding his money and pledged to „f... my mother“ and „kill me to my room“ (his exact phrase).
I ignored him and disappeared inside the „Tamana“ hotel garden. There was a guard at the gate and it was clear that whatever David was getting up to, we were now out of his reach. The calm and rational part of me was ready to place my bets on it that he wouldn’t get to fulfilling his threats in this incarnation. But as he seemed to be batty enough to camp outside the hotel gate, we decided the most prudent course of action was just to stay in for the evening. After all, Annette could eat in the hotel just as well.
After her dinner in the hotel garden, with a lot of western tourists in after the day in town, or arrival in Bamako, and all tables occupied, we discussed what we would do next. We had no word from Annette’s father yet on whether she could stay on past the January 2 with me or not. But nevertheless, we decided to change our plan, skip Ségou and extend our stay here in Bamako by another day, three in total.
I guess the wonderful atmosphere of the garden and clean hotel on the whole did the trick.
