In the morning, while I was by myself at and after breakfast in the garden, I realised that if it had not been for the diary I was keeping, I’d have no idea what date it was today. Or any day. It’s so easy to lose track of time when you travel and when all days are alike, so you can’t tell the difference any more. Or when all days are so different from each other – precisely because you travel – so you can’t tell the difference any more. Were it not mostly for the need to know when the grocery stores are open, maybe I wouldn’t even care?
But at one point I’d have to go home, so I couldn’t afford myself a luxury of getting lost in time. Of slipping into a time warp, as it were. Therefore I knew it was the last day of 2008 today and I was seeing it off in the „Tamana“ hotel in Bamako. A wonderful place with clean bathrooms, reasonably priced and a splendid, leafy courtyard that any time of the day you could retreat to and find yourself a tree shadow big enough to forget you’d ever come to Africa. I could’ve done much worse in my choosing of where to stay in Bamako. „Lonely Planet“ has obviously done it a great service and the only non-Caucasian among the guests was decidedly Annette.
Anyway, the two of us would see the 2008 off together tonight. And then tomorrow we’d have our last day together this time. Early on the 2nd she’d go back to Ouagadougou and I’d head on to Mopti, and then farther up in search of mystery and past glories of Timbuktu. All in all, I could say I’d had a very good time with her. She’d been a good companion to me over the last two weeks or so.
I didn’t have any big plans for today. And I knew Annette wouldn’t have any whatsoever. So it was up to me to make sense of the day. Knowing she wasn’t much of a sightseeing tourist, I sought to find some middle ground between what I guessed she would prefer and what I would like. By the time she was up and ready to go, I asked her if she would mind to take a walk down the Route de Koulikoro to a monument we’d seen as we’d passed by in a taxi on several occasions before. She said she wouldn’t, so that was our plan for now. Nothing revolutionary, nothing to remember as a highlight of a trip, but a chance for a stroll for me.
We took it easy. After all, where would you hurry under the African sun at eleven in the morning on the New Year’s Eve? We just took pictures, chatted and explored the scenes along the Route de Koulikoro which usually escape you when you are in a cab. I was observing roadside tinkerers with a bunch of dilapidated cars lumped on a heap, with a clear doubt that any of them would ever be able to start again. But my guess was they were trying to put together one that would, out of various parts all of them combined provided. I took picture of a guy who was fixing a bicycle and then a plot of arable land along the Route de Koulikoro, literally in town, and people who were working it.
Then we slid off the Route de Koulikoro and continued parallel to it, following the railroad running alongside it, and I couldn’t know if that railroad was ever in use any more on not. Judging by the animals of the animal market that I had first noticed a few days before, all those goats and sheep in a lazy slumber all over the tracks, I doubted that there would be trains coming this way any time soon. People doing the trade on the market evidently shared my opinion.
Beyond the animal market we came to some sort of a long and narrow park, running along the Route de Koulikoro and the railway, called Promenade des Angevins. Those few African towns I’d seen so far were characteristically devoid of any parks in any significant measure, at least in the sense that we are accustomed to in the western world. So this Promenade des Angevins was a sort of interesting change.
I have no idea if this particular promenade, its name, that is, had anything to do with any of the medieval French royal dynasties. It might as Mali is a former French colony. And then again it might not, as by the time when what today is Mali had become a French colony, those Angevins guys had long been consigned to the dusty cellars of history and Mali had never even remotely had anything to do with them.
Well, be as it may, it was a pleasant promenade to walk, and even very tidy by African standards.
At a very leisurely pace, in an hour or so, we came up to that monument I’d wanted to see. It looked pretty much Islamic in the spirit of its architectural style and for all I knew at first, it could have even had religious connotations. But it turned out it did not. In fact, it was very much political. The name it carried was Al-Quoods, which clearly sounded very Arabic to me and it was dedicated to the Palestinians and all their fights and struggles in their hapless homeland. Interestingly enough, very close to that monument there was a simple house, offering public bath – or a shower at least, for 100 francs, and a toilet for 25. I am not entirely sure the two had anything to do with each other except for close proximity, but it was certainly interesting to see them so near.
And that was the end of our walk. I wouldn’t press Annette any further. I knew that walking was not her dream mode of recreation, so I asked her if she was hungry. She nodded and the decision was made. We hailed a taxi and went to our usual lunching spot, „Le Relax“.
You don’t need to always do something to have a feeling that your day was put to a good use and that you had a good time. You can take it easy, just as two of us did. We were in no hurry in „Le Relax“, then in even less hurry in the afternoon in the hotel garden, and only when the sun was about to go down, we took another late afternoon and early evening walk.
Just as I have already said, if I had not been keeping my diary, I wouldn’t have known which date it was today. And there was absolutely nothing whatsoever in the street to indicate we were parting ways with the 2008 at midnight. In my country, and entire Europe for that matter, the whole New Year’s Eve is permeated with anticipation of the last few hours when one big party always kicks off, whether you stay with your friends and family indoors or you join the festivities outdoors, usually at main city squares with stages and big names form the music industry that provides for entertainment. Well, a part of it, in any case. For the rest, there is a lot of food stalls, booze in rivers, squibs and firecrackers and mandatory fireworks to mark the midnight hour. For days, for weeks indeed, towns are decorated with Christmas trees and lights. I’m not even going to mention shopping fever for it should have nothing to do with the atmosphere of celebration.
Here in Bamako, there was none of it. You just couldn’t tell anything.
Not that I minded much. If I had been so addicted to it, I wouldn’t have planned my trip at this time of year in the first place. But even if such things stirred only mild sentiments inside of me, those sentiments were pleasant nevertheless. And mild as they were, I mildly missed them, as well.
I asked Annette what she thought about it. She didn’t seem to care at all, so I came to a conclusion that Burkina Faso was probably no different and she had simply not been brought up on such kind of tradition. Fair enough. If there was going to be anything in „Tamana“ hotel – after all, it was catering almost exclusively to white clientele – fine. I might join it for an hour. If not, fine as well.
„Tamana“ hotel didn’t get up anything. All the guests behaved same as on any other day. They first enjoyed the evening in the garden and then, some time around eleven, started retreating to their rooms. We did the same. Even a bit earlier.
Annette was munching on some chicken which she bought during our evening walk up and down the Route de Bla Bla and flipped the channels on the remote to see what they had on TV. The programme was following up on the mood in the streets. Just a usual staple of those ridiculous African soaps. Compared to them, Latin American ones which are aired on TV in my country, and at most impossible times at that, when almost nobody watches them, give out an impression of being an outright Oscar material. So much for the TV programme on offer.
That being the case, I just waited for midnight, not even knowing why, wished Annette all the best in 2009 – this time she probably didn’t know why – and we both went to sleep.
