When I put the final touches to my packing routine in the morning, I realised I couldn’t find my sun-glasses. I looked into every corner of my hotel apartment, checked and rechecked pockets and compartments in my luggage, but they were nowhere in sight. Hence, much as I refused to take it for a fact yet, the reality that I might have lost them was gradually setting in. It didn’t exactly contribute to what might have otherwise been an upbeat mood caused by a nice day yesterday. However, I tried to approach the matter calmly. I unrolled the film of the day before in my mind in an attempt to retrace my steps and places I had visited. Most of the time I had been out in the open and only on few occasions I had gone indoors. Out in the open, my glasses had most of the time been sitting atop of my nose. Until I had lost them somewhere along the way, that is.
I had usually taken them off indoors.
So where had it been? Supermarket. A boulangerie, or a bakery shop where I had bought bread for Mopti today. Daouda Dembélé’s music shop. And Internet café. That was all. I struck the supermarket off the list. For the sheer reason of distinctly remembering how I had put the glasses down on the bakery counter when I had asked for bread in my rudimentary French. But I didn’t remember putting them back on.
So it left me with three spots where my glasses could have been lost.
It was still early enough, so I decided to rush back to all of them and with some luck try to possibly recover them.
Bakery and the music shop were both in Rue 33. The guy in the bakery remembered me and somehow, in spite of my less than stellar French, eventually got a fix on what I was looking for. He appeared genuinely sorry telling me that no, I had not left my glasses there. Next up, Daouda Dembélé was glad to see me again, but unfortunately he didn’t have my glasses, either.
Which left me with only the Internet cafe. And when I got there, it was closed up. Until some time later. Late enough for me to not be able to check it. By the looks of it, I was going to have to part with my Ray Bans for good.
Yes, I was a bit downbeat now. And not least for the reason that I had paid for them a few years ago a sum to the tune of more than one hundred euro in the Zagreb airport duty free shop. I mean, I was not going to go hungry for the loss. But I was not going to be Bill Gates any time soon, either.
Well, if there was any consolation in all that, then it was the fact that someone had gotten richer by a margin which handsomely exceeded average monthly income in these parts. The only question was, would they be aware of it?
Having left my Ray Bans in Ségou, I arrived at the gare de routiere shortly after eight. I reported at the shabby concrete box which moonlighted as the sales outlet and asked if everything was on schedule. Two guys in a dark room with only a wobbly wooden, decrepit table, and two shaky chairs placed right below the ticket window, assured me that everything was in order and offered me in a very friendly manner to leave my stuff inside for safekeeping while I waited for my bus. I accepted this very nice offer and went back out to knock around the terminal in search of pictures to take. Just as usual. As it was still pretty early, it was actually quite pleasant outside and the temperature still had a ways to go. Which it undoubtedly would, but I hoped that by the time it really shot up I’d be in my bus on the way to Mopti.
Around the ticket booth there was a paved space with some flat roofing and a few concrete benches, obviously serving as a waiting spot. People gradually came in and among them there were four of us whites. A lone, long-haired, blonde girl from who-knows-where and a couple from France. And me. We didn’t feel compelled to talk to each other and everyone kept to themselves. But on the whole, we did draw some interested glances and looks from locals.
And locals were getting their everyday business up and running. Women cooked food for travellers and passers-by, men worked donkey carts, vans and buses, and seemingly everyone tried to sell something along the way. There were food stalls, there were cosmetics items, music tapes, shoes, sun-glasses – yes, sun-glasses, too - and all sorts of other conceivable and less conceivable trinkets. For quite a few of them I’d be hard pressed if asked to guess their purpose.
There was even a small-size mosque within the terminal perimeter. All in all, just as usual, this gare de routière was another lively and entertaining spot.
At one point, nine o’clock passed. And nothing happened. By now I knew that timetable in Africa is a thing subject to a pretty liberal interpretation. So I didn’t get too upset about it. After all, I had never fully believed we would really set out at nine. But I had hoped all along that our departure would be reasonably close to nine. Whatever „reasonably“ meant.
Some buses – albeit not too many – came in, and eventually left again, but none of them seemed to be mine. After a while, and by degrees, I started to tense up. All involuntarily, of course. That’s the trouble when you don’t know the language on top of the fact that you are somewhere where nobody seems to know anything else anyway, even if they do assure you everything will „be fine“. The only thing that soothed me to an extent was the fact that other three white people - and as I said, at least two of them were native French speakers - seemed to be as much at a loss as I was.
I tried to calm myself by telling myself it would be no end of the world if I had to stay on in Ségou for another day. Of course it wouldn’t. So it worked to an extent. But then again, I just couldn’t get stuck here for good. At some point I would have to leave this charming town, if nothing else, then to go back home. So why not today, as I planned?
Finally, it was already past ten thirty, the French couple and I were given a sign to pick up our luggage and board a minivan. Which had pulled in some time earlier relatively unnoticed. At least by me. After all, I had been led to believe that I would be on a proper bus on my way to Mopti. Not that I cared much which way I’d travel. It just seemed too long a stretch for a van. But this was Africa. By now the only thing I knew for sure was that you could never know anything for sure.
The blonde, long-haired girl just gave us a look of mild curiosity and returned her attention to the book she’d been reading. And we, joined by a handsome number of locals, who helped make the atmosphere in the van tight and cosy, pulled out at last. Was this going to be the way to Mopti? With elbow room in as much of a demand as water?
It turned out, it wouldn’t. Just a few minutes later they dropped us all off on another terminal, the one I hadn’t even know it existed. The STV bus terminal. It looked better and better-kept than the one we’d been at up until few minutes back, and in a way it gave me hope we might have a reliable means of transport after all. Except there was no means of transport anywhere in sight. Our van disappeared the second we all got off and we started waiting again. The only difference was that this was another terminal. That was all.
Finally, around eleven, a bus - a proper bus - arrived and somebody said that was the one we’d been waiting for. And miraculously enough, another somebody appeared from somewhere and started checking our tickets. Including mine. For the first time this morning I had a strong feeling I might be on the right spot after all.
However, it was not going to be that simple. There seemed to be a lot of bustle and improvisation going on as to who would go, who wouldn’t, and who would sit where in the bus. For some reason, or more to the point, for every good African reason, the number of tickets sold and available seats inside the bus didn’t exactly match. With seats being handsomely outnumbered. Was I surprised? Not really.
And then one of the guys who obviously worked for the STV company, our carrier, came up to me and said something. Sure enough, I didn’t understand anything. Fortunately, those French guys spoke decent English, the man friendly jumped in to my rescue and translated for me:
„He says that there are not enough seats in the bus. So he asks if you would perhaps rather wait for another bus and have a secure seat there.“
It didn’t bode well. I frowned.
„When would the next bus come?“
There were a few words in French going on again in both directions between the Frenchman and the busman. Then the Frenchman turned back to me:
„He says in two hours.“
Hmmm. What did it mean hear in Africa? Based on my experiences in Mali, it meant next to nothing. OK, maybe those STV guys were more reliable than the rest of the bunch so far, but I was not prepared to bet on it. I reasoned that if I decided to stay on and wait for that next bus, I might as well book another night in Ségou, for all I knew. And I didn’t fancy staying on. Not if I could help it, anyway. Therefore, since I could, I wasn’t going to risk it.
It took me whole of two seconds to make up my mind.
„No, I’ll go now,“ I said.
The Frenchman translated back, the busman nodded and I was lead into the bus.
As the French guy had this French lady on his hand, they were given front seats. And I? As for me, I was seated in the aisle. As I had already noticed as a common practice here, they routinely oversold their buses and those extra passengers made do with whatever they could in the bus aisle. It didn’t seem like anybody treated the question of passenger comfort as a pressing issue in these parts. And aboard this particular one they placed a number of plastic containers, which probably hold twenty or thirty litres of liquid when full, down the aisle. For people to sit on.
As a white guy, I got the front container. It was a privilege, I guess. With the excellent view through the front window. Same as for those French guys. Only, they got seats. Well, not exactly the most luxurious way to travel, but then again this too would be an experience of Africa, wouldn’t it? And that was what I had come here for, after all, wasn’t?
With just over two-hour delay, we finally set out on our trip. Was it too late or just fine? I couldn’t tell any more. It seemed that here in Africa I too gradually started losing the clear sense of what was still on time and what not. But in the light of all my recent experiences, I assumed that the fact that we on our way, and aboard of what – at least on the face of it – seemed to be a relatively reliable bus was a thing to feel upbeat about.
