Last day in Bamako, first day in the New Year, I was an early riser today. Last night I had the shittiest night ever since I’d arrived in Africa two weeks before. Actually, I’d even set my mobile phone alarm on before I went to bed to make sure I’d make it to breakfast. Just in case I slept in. But for some reason it’d felt hotter than usual, and the mosquito net – the only serious drawback in this otherwise great hotel – was a joke. So eventually, all in sweat and bitten by mosquitoes, I woke up around six thirty this morning.
But then again, there’s a good side to everything, so now I was chilling it out in the hotel garden, enjoying this beautiful morning. Annette was, of course, still sleeping. She never felt as hot as I did, for some reason mosquitoes usually gave her a wide berth, and on the whole her sleep was tighter than mine. Even if in a certain way it didn’t amount to much as I was always the one who had some more strength left to go on, and she was the exhausted one.
Even if Bamako was not displaying any visible signs of being aware that we just jumped over into 2009, I had nevertheless expected a somewhat noisier night. I don’t know why. But that had never materialised. The night was far from quiet, to be sure, but a night on Route de Bla Bla never seems to be too quiet anyway. Which most certainly hadn’t helped my poor sleep.
Today was the day to buy ourselves bus tickets for our respective onward journeys. So as soon as Annette was ready, and that was about eleven, we headed out on the Route de Koulikoro, took a cab and went all the way across the Niger river to the gare de routière de Sogoniko, the same bus terminal at which we had arrived from Sikasso. And on our way there I noticed the first real sign that today it was a bit different here in Bamako after all. Maybe due to the New Year, indeed. The traffic was markedly thinner. Even the Grande Marché area put up no major obstacles in our way. So even if it was quite a long way to the bus terminal, we took much shorter to get there than on our first day.
On our way to the bus terminal, while we were in the taxi, Annette told me:
„We must buy some milk for you.“
Milk? Of course, every now and then I bought myself a bottle of milk, so I could enjoy some black tea in the hotel room, but somehow Annette never felt called to consider it her worry. And why should she? So naturally, I had no clue what she was onto.
„I got some message last night,“ she explained.
Now I started getting an idea what she meant.
„From your friends?“
„Yes.“
„But I drink milk every day,“ I said.
„I know. But not that milk,“ she insisted. The thing was, she had had one of her visions the night before - I don’t know how else to call it – in which her friend, or friends, as she terms them – probably the same guys her father refers to as „them“ – send her messages. This time she allegedly received some regarding her upcoming trip to Ghana and one about me, the rest of my journey and the milk. The unprocessed cow milk would supposedly protect me from minor evils during the remaining part of my trip. I know many westerners would laugh it off and dismiss it as some African voodoo, but I knew better. Whereas I failed to see a connection between unprocessed cow milk and protection from evil, and always tend to believe that no harm will come my way during my trips, no matter what, I know there are things we know nothing about, and for all our ignorance, they are at play all the time nonetheless. Even Annette conceded she had no idea how exactly that milk would keep me safe, but she never questions the validity of her visions. Or messages she receives. Even her father, who has his own sources of guidance, equally mystical, seems to have specific instructions from his guys to heed Annette’s visions. And he does.
So whatever deep down I may have thought about it all, I decided to go along with it. What harm could it do, after all? Other than possibly have me incur some digestive disorder, but I hoped it would never come to that.
When you leave the paved road in order to veer off to anywhere inside the bus terminal area, and particularly if you are a white guy in a taxi, you draw immediate attention of almost everyone. So the moment you are down on the dirt road, your appearance provokes a mad dash of a number of probably ever-ready youths, who start chasing after your car in hope of catching it before you pull up. Some do and, as taxis usually have only four doors, which means four windows – all of them open in the African heat – you eventually end up with four young guys, who’ve jostled and elbowed for their positions, each one holding one door with his hand and running alongside the moving car. At the same time they all shout, trying to outdo each other, in effect all asking the same:
„What are you looking for, sir?“
In French, of course.
Seeing all this for the first time, and understanding negligibly little French, I was inclined to completely ignore them. But it all seemed to be a perfectly normal thing and our cabbie obviously was not experiencing it for the first time. He informed them we were looking for a bus company to sell us bus tickets for or trips tomorrow.
Which one?
The driver turned back towards us and asked which company we were looking for.
„Bittar,“ I said. That was supposed to be among the best and most reliable ones. When they heard which one it was, each of the four guys hitched to our taxi immediately claimed they knew exactly where its office was located. And naturally, each one claimed it was in a different spot.
I was perplexed at first and couldn’t quite get my head around as to why we needed anyone to show us directions here in the first place. I was even a bit annoyed. To my mind, it all looked just like an unnecessary nuisance since, the way I saw it, the driver should just deliver us to the spot we’d instructed him and that would be it. Annette put on one of her trademark frowns, as well, which she regularly did whenever we were dealing with people we didn’t know.
But soon it all made sense. The area that gare de routière de Sogoniko covered was so huge, really sprawling, full of small, single storey buildings, and many of them served the purpose of being an office of some bus company or other. In just a few minutes I realised it was next to impossible to know exactly which one of them was the property of Bittar, in our case.
So that’s what those young guys, and all the rest of the pack that in case of our taxi didn’t make it into the last four, were there for. To act as bus terminal guides, as it were. The only problem was, just as I have already indicated, each one of them „knew exactly“ that Bittar office was on a different location.
Our taxi was trundling slowly all along. Slowly for a taxi, I mean. But those young guys had to put up quite an effort to keep up with us. At the same time, the loudest one at any particular time directed the driver and instructed him where to go. Upon discovering that „their“ location was not the one we were looking for, one by one of those young lads fell off until the last one guided us to the Bittar office indeed. And then, when we finally found ourselves at the spot where we wanted to be, he expected a „cadeau“. A small present for his service.
I didn’t know that was how it worked. Annette opened her bag, produced a few coins and put it into his palm. Two hundred CFA francs or so. Which would buy some thirty cents euro if there was any exchange office in the world to trade in such paltry money. And then the guy retreated.
Then I realised that all those youngsters practically spent their entire days on the bus terminal, hunting for incoming taxis, or maybe private cars occasionally, each one fighting to grab a spot at a window, sometimes with success, more often without it, and hoping to be of help to whoever was inside. That was their way of scraping everyday living. More basic than any of the people I knew in my world could even imagine. And then we in the west whine and moan about loans and inflations and recessions and mortgages.
But we had a problem. Bittar was closed today. Happy New Year.
In all the rest of the world, at least in parts I’d visited so far, you could see decorated streets and buildings, shops and even private homes for Christmas and New Year. But public services were always open. On any day. Train stations, bus terminals, anything that you needed in that sense. Here in Bamako, on the other hand, I couldn’t tell for the life of me that it was January 1st today. As if no one gave a toss about it. And maybe no one did. But frustratingly enough, the Bittar lot decided to close up due to the holiday. Precisely today. Precisely when Annette and I needed them most.
Now what? OK, if it couldn’t be Bittar, then I thought we would go for the second best. Like Bani. Or Somatra. They shouldn’t be so bad, either. After all, „Lonely Planet“ listed them, too. So we started looking for them. But things grew bleaker than I originally thought they would be. Bani and Somatra were closed, too.
In fact, almost everyone was closed today.
And now, it increasingly looked like we were in trouble. In fact, less so for me. In the worst case I could stay on another day in Bamako. And apart from one more wasted day, there wouldn’t be much harm done. But Annette was rapidly approaching her deadline. And correspondingly, she was rapidly getting nervous.
However, as nothing in this world is all black or all white, so there are upsides and downsides to everything. I was the only white man in sight and as such naturally the object of everyone’s interest. And in this particular case, when they all heard I was looking for a bus company – for any bus company –open today and selling tickets to Ouagadougou and Mopti, it seemed that entire resident and transient population of gare routière de Sogoniko spread all over the place to find me one. Maybe they were friendly. Maybe they sought to glean one or two more coins. Maybe I was just a welcome diversion and gave them a break on an otherwise lazy and boring day. Maybe all of it. Probably all of it. I should not do them an injustice and pretend there were no friendly motives and a pure desire to help in all that. So what if they hoped to make a little money along the way?
However, it was not as easy as that. It almost looked as if it was easier to find a New Year’s decoration in Bamako than an open ticket booth here at the Sogoniko. But finally somebody found someone who claimed they could sell us the tickets. And the bus company? Djiguiya Transport. Never heard.
Anyway, we were now in no position to shop around for a better offer. It was highly likely that this would be the only offer we could ever find today. Both Annette and I agreed without much hesitation that it was better to settle for a sparrow in hand than search for an elusive pigeon on a branch. And so we bought our tickets.
The guy told us, when asked, that we would depart at eight the next morning. Both of us. Which was a good time. If she was going to be lucky, Annette might reach Ouagadougou in the evening. I expected to be in Mopti some time late in the afternoon. That was fine for both of us. So we would be back here on the terminal at seven. Fine.
Taking that unpleasant load off of our back, we were now feeling much lighter and ready to devote ourselves to the rest of the day. And that for starters meant the search for that cow milk.
The taxi driver was waiting for us all along, suspecting correctly that we might need a lift back to the hotel. So he figured it would be a shame to let someone else snatch his customers away from him. We didn’t mind going back with him, so everyone was happy.
And he was even happier when he heard we had additional requests. First off, I wanted to stop briefly by the Niger river. I knew I would see much more of it during the rest of my trip, but I wanted to have a short look at it here in Bamako, as well, and maybe take a few pictures. Five minutes was all I needed. Ten at most.
That done, Annette told the cabbie we needed some particular cow milk. Which, of course, couldn’t be purchased in supermarkets. Only in private homes. And only if you knew where to look for it at that. Which we didn’t. But sure enough, our driver did. At least approximately.
On the whole, we took it all very seriously and with the help of – as it turned out - our very friendly cabbie, cruised the slums of Bamako today in search of that milk.
Speaking of slums, what I’d seen of Africa so far was in a way basically one huge, sprawling slum. Ouaga in particular. Bamako occasionally flashed a colour or two of what was supposed to be a capital city. But only occasionally and such occasions were really coming up far and wide in between. This really was a different world. Dirt, poverty, squalor, overcrowding, just name it. This was a stark reminder of how many people live so deep below the poverty line that you can’t even see them from high up on your lofty perch.
But at least these slums were harmless and friendly. People didn’t accost you in any way, you didn’t feel threatened in the slightest, and in one of them we finally located our milk and bought some from one woman.
Now, I may believe – and I do – that the always-do-good-to-your-neighbour approach and firm belief in God’s protective hand will always keep me from harm’s way. Or keep harm from my way. Either way, it always has, even if I remember London from two and a half years ago, and it always will. So even without that milk I knew I’d be fine. But that’s just my way of connecting with the Divine. That and intuition. I didn’t feel I needed anything else.
But others have their own ways. Annette had hers and I decided I would honour it. If nothing else, then out of respect for her personally.
Eventually, our entire mission accomplished, we asked to be taken to „Le Relax“ and with it returned to our daily routine in Bamako. It was again first a long lunch in this pâtisserie, then some lazy stroll back to the hotel, an afternoon in the garden, and at the end of the day another walk.
The only difference was that today in the hotel room I drank some unprocessed cow milk. Following up on Annette’s instructions, of course. When she saw my face drawn in a grimace upon tasting it, she laughed.
„You don’t need to drink it all,“ she said.
„Really?“ I felt relieved.
„Yes. You take just a little. It’ll be enough.“
„And what do we do with the rest?“ I asked, conscious of the fact that there were people in the world – and right now I didn’t have to go very far out into the world to find them – who would see this milk as a Lord’s blessing and maybe often couldn’t afford it. Taught as a kid that the food is never to be thrown away if edible, much as the taste of this milk wasn’t exactly at the top of my favourites’ list, I was nevertheless loath to spill the rest in the toilet.
„I’ll drink it,“ she answered.
„Are you sure?“
She nodded. And so everything was settled to general satisfaction. Particularly mine as, in truth, apart from the taste which still had some way to go before it would thrill me, I was quite a bit leery of what bacteria it might contain that might spoil the rest of my trip. Or a part of it. Even if I knew that only a sip or two could do a job of an uprising in my guts if they really decided to, and it wouldn’t necessarily take all the milk we’d bought, I nevertheless felt better and relieved.
And somehow knew for sure I’d be fine.
