We may have left gare de routière de Sogoniko around twelve. But it took us one hour to leave Bamako altogether. We had four stops inside that hour and apart from filling the fuel once, other three stops seemed entirely unaccountable. Or at least inexplicable to me.
I felt a huge relief when I realised we were finally leaving Malian capital.
In the bus I was seated next to a huge Touareg – or at least I thought he had to be one – one of the blackest guys I’d ever seen, complete with turban and everything, who spoke absolutely none of the known languages. But whenever I took a picture through the bus window, he would lean towards me – never as much as pretending to be discreet – and with a healthy dose of curiosity checked the camera display over my shoulder. After one or two pictures, it turned into a routine for me to first check the picture myself and then show it to him. With a grave nod every time on his part and a thumb-up on mine, we soon became excellent friends, even without a spoken word.
Around three in the afternoon, which means some two hours after we had really left Bamako, we had the first stop. It was in the town of Konobougou.
They gave us some fifteen minutes and immediately I used an opportunity to stretch my legs. And to finally take that overdue leak.
I was not the only one. And interestingly enough, as opposed to what I had experienced in Bamako, right by the main road, in a small side street, they had a facility which served as a loo. It consisted of a series of roofless brick boxes, each one with a door that could hardly be closed, and with a hole. The odour around was not exactly of the pharmacy quality, but at least they provided you with plastic cups. You could fill them with water and... well, away you were.
I wasn’t going to be pettifogging about that. For all sorts of reasons. And one of them was surely that the more pressure you feel inside, the less picky about the circumstances to relieve yourself you are.
It seemed as if the whole town was lying in one relatively long stretch along either side of the Bamako – Mopti road. As usual, as soon as we stopped, the bus was surrounded by a crowd of locals. Many wanted to sell us something, and quite a few to just kill their curiosity. I roamed around a bit, not being in any hurry to go back into the bus before I really had to. But fifteen minutes were a short time and soon we were about to move on.
