Honestly, I had somehow had an impression that a ride from Mopti to Djenné would be shorter. It’s not that I hadn’t known how many kilometres separated two towns, but for some reason in my mind I had always thought it would be an excursion, as it were, nothing more. Well, an excursion it sure was, but quite taxing.
Maybe on the account of the space we had – or didn’t have – inside our taxi. The French chap and I were sitting next to each other, with two more local fellows in the same row of seats, to make it all cosier, and exchanged our positions just to ease the ride a bit. First I would lean forward and the Frenchman would lean back against the seat, and then we’d reverse it. There was not much else we could do, but at least we attempted to take advantage of the few options we had. In other circumstances we would both probably be at our happiest if our ride went straight ahead to Djenné, without any stops whatsoever. But these were extraordinary circumstances, and in the light of how tightly packed we all were inside the car, we were more than glad when the car occasionally stopped and we had a chance to stretch our bodies. Saying that the inside of our beat-up „Peugeot“ was a squeeze was never running a risk of turning into an understatement.
The first stop we had came early into our ride. Only after twenty minutes or so. At first we couldn’t exactly figure out why. I suspect that our driver was as clueless about it as all of us passengers were. We pulled over by the roadside, on a spacious, dusty clearing with a number of cars already there, many of them four-by-fours driven or hired by western tourists. Few armed soldiers in military fatigues made sure that no one stepped out of line and kept the road clear. I roamed around taking my pictures and soldiers didn’t seem too concerned about it, except that I kind of made it a point not to openly aim my lens at them.
And then there was that motorcade, coming from the opposite direction, heading the way of Mopti, that obviously had a right of passage. A number of shiny limos, some of them sporting tiny Malian flags fluttering in the morning air, escorted by some mean-looking motor-bike riders. I wondered who on earth would bother to get up so early and round up a motorcade. And go where? To Mopti? In normal world only boozehounds and stoners would knock around at this hour, and only because they didn’t have a place to catch a nap yet.
But in Mali things seemed to be different. Not only a handsome number of locals and tourists were already up on their feet and wheels, but also at least some local bigwigs. However, who exactly, we never found out.
As soon as they had passed, we were given all clear and resumed our trip.
And then it was on to Djenné along an almost empty road for at least an hour and a half. The traffic we encountered consisted mostly of horse-carriages and only an odd lorry or motorcycle. Every once in a while there would be a village, and then a herd of goats or cows grazing on sparse vegetation on mostly red and dusty flatlands, and that was it. Not much of an action.
Finally, after what had felt like eternity, we turned off the main road and I saw the Djenné signpost. Right after which we stopped.
This time it was a kind of check-point, very much along the lines of what I had seen when we had crossed from Burkina Faso into Mali, complete with red-and-white metal barrels. The difference now was that there was no visible police and no ID checks. But we had to stop just the same and our driver disappeared from sight into one of the low, run down, brick structures, to pay someone their dues after he had collected from us 1000 CFA francs. Kind of visitor’s tax or something. I am not sure if everyone was required to pay, but I was and the French chap was.
Anyway, again we used the opportunity to stretch our legs. This time we were even offered to buy some food and drinks by local girls. As for me, I was too much on the move around the spot, taking pictures as usual, so nobody seriously considered me as a potential customer. My fellow French passenger, though, was lingering mostly around our „Peugeot“ and one of the girls, carrying some foodstuffs on a plate, asked him if he would buy some. When he shook his head, and she realised she wouldn’t be selling him anything, she asked him if he could give her some money anyway.
„Pourqoi?“ he asked.
The poor girl didn’t know what to say. She dragged her feet a bit, hoping perhaps for a while that by an outside chance the Frenchman would change his mind and toss her a coin or two. He didn’t. So she left.
Then our driver returned. But we didn’t resume our trip yet. Now it was time for an engine check-up. I had no idea if that was a routine thing or even our Malian transport providers met with the limits their wretched vehicles couldn’t possibly exceed. In any case, he opened the hood and started tinkering with whatever was inside. Just as all the passengers had shared a keen interest in whatever had been going on during my hapless bus ride from Bamako to Ségou a few days before, now nobody cared as to what the driver was doing now. Most of our fellow passengers hardly left the car in the first place. Now they just patiently sat inside and only occasionally yawned. That was all.
This looked to be a bit more ominous than just a routine check, though. It was my guess, at least. I am no car mechanic and most of women in this world are more qualified to give an opinion on matters mechanical than I am. But even I could tell when things looked smooth and when troublesome. What we seemed to be dealing with now conspicuously resembled the latter. But then again, looking at the car we had been in, how could anything be smooth in the first place with such a contraption? I just hoped I was not in for another break-down. Even if this one would probably disrupt my plans less. Nevertheless, I didn’t feel I’d be happy to have been up at four thirty this morning just so I could enjoy another unplanned change of schedule.
Luckily, things turned out not to be that bad, after all. Against a collective sigh of relief, our driver at last triumphantly slammed the hood down with a bang and we finally moved on.
Only to stop less than half an hour later. But this time with a very good reason, at least.
We arrived at the Bani river ferry-crossing.
Now, for a first-timer in Africa like me, that was a sight to see. In fact, when we got there, it was a kind of surprising. Nothing in the surrounding terrain indicated we were approaching an area that a river ran through. It’s not like there was any vegetation, not on the scale any larger than usual, in any case. We just got over a low ridge and suddenly there it was – a shallow and lazy water that separated two wide and flat pieces of land, as sandy and unforgiving as anything we’d been seeing along the way. There were one or two shoals shyly covered with some low grass and that was all.
But the whole spot was bristling with activity. On the placid river itself there were two or three ferries, but also a number of pirogues, manned in most cases by two guys each, probably fishermen, who were slowly poling their way up and down the lazy flow. However, the riverbanks on both sides were much livelier. There were a number of cars, majority of them in less than enviable repair, same as ours. There were horse carriages and donkey carts. And there were cyclists. And of course, there were a huge number of people on foot, dressed as they probably dress every day, but to me the carnival mob elsewhere in the world would look drab and less enticing than this crowd here. On this side of the river, we were all concerned only with crossing it. But over there, on the opposite bank, people set up what they called „shops“, in effect wobbly stalls with ubiquitous African fare – a bit of food, like fried fish, for starving passengers, drinks for thirsty ones, handicraft items for tourists, and an inconceivable number of trinkets and doodads for I didn’t know whom.
It didn’t mean, however, that our side of the river was a bore. Far from it. The very act of boarding the ferry was a show in its own right, with everyone and everything rushing to get a spot on the deck, rendering the poor vessel as overcrowded as any other transport means here in Africa, only on its own scale. When it was finally time for our „Peugeot“ to qualify for a bit of space up there, somebody miraculously decided that even here in Mali there is a limit at some point as to how many people – and vehicles – you can take on, and we had to board another one.
It all took some time, but honestly, not a minute of it was wasted.
The crossing itself didn’t take that long. Just a few minutes. After all, I had an impression that you could wade across the river with just a bit of an effort. Had it not been for the cars, carts and carriages, that is. It took us a lot longer to embark and disembark than to get to the other side. And then at the bank over there, there was a scramble to get back on the solid ground with everyone suddenly in a hurry and rushing to be the first one out. For some reason, our ferry came to a halt two or three metres off from the dry sand and we all had to dabble through shallow water to get on the land. Those with waterproof shoes like me were basically fine. Others with only thongs on were also fine. Those with normal shoes just took them off and crossed the water barefoot. Bicycles were a bit shaky and wobbly, but they too made it out fine.
Horse carriages had the hardest time of all. They were too heavy and had no mechanical drive like cars. And the sand in the water, or mud, rather, was way too soft and simply gave in. Horses pulled all they could, but it didn’t work out that easy. So the crowd got back in, kids, men and women, some of them with toddlers strapped on their backs, all ankle-deep, joined forces and started pushing from behind. Inch by inch, they slowly edged the first carriage out of the mud. Then they went back to the second and so on until eventually everyone and everything was safely out.
Soon after that we squeezed back into our taxi. And only ten minutes later, we arrived in Djenné.
And then another spectacle started unfolding itself before my eyes. Bâché gare was located right in front of the most celebrated Djenné landmark, its famous mosque, an edifice which has safely been, along with the Djenné Old Town, on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list for good twenty years now. When you get there, you leave your car and literally just gawp. Whatever picture of it you have seen, it never does it a justice. This thing was an outright belter.
Anyway, Djenné itself carries by some accounts the title and honour of the oldest known city in Sub-Saharan Africa. Something like the old boy of the region. And that region isn’t exactly just a two-hour drive by four-by-four from end to end. Built conveniently along the ancient trans-Saharan trading routes, the town has been standing right where it is for more than twelve centuries now. And by the 16th century it had developed into an important settlement and a centre for Islamic learning. With years passing by, rulers came and went, in the process eventually tarnishing Djenné’s standing and influence. So today it’s more like an agricultural trade centre of diminished importance. But Djenné’s Old Town is still there to tell the story of its former glory days.
And those days when it served as an Islamic academic hub, left its legacy in the shape of its most important site – the Grand Mosque. Well, of course, the first mosque standing there was not the present one. The one standing before my eyes was its descendant, if I may put it like that. They say the first one was built as far back as 1240 by a certain sultan, Koi Kunboro by name, who converted to Islam and in his new-found zeal turned his palace into a mosque. Then that one fell into disrepair and rulers built a new one. Which too crumbled to dust when its time came. The one that we are seeing today, that’s on the UNESCO list, that I was gawking at, is a relative youngster, just over a century old. Built in 1907, it’s not like a relic from times lost in the mist of ancient history. But it was constructed in characteristic Sudanic style, from sun-baked mud-bricks, and each year after the rainy season the entire town allegedly turn out to repair the structure at the Spring Festival. Wooden posts, along the lines of those I saw in Bobo Dioulasso, adorn the structure and basically enable workers to scale the walls during the restoration process.
In any case, the thing is spectacular.
And another spectacle, rubbing shoulders right there with both the mosque and the Old Town is the Djenné’s Monday market. Now, I am aware that my every attempt to describe it will defy the truth and I can only end up doing it a gross injustice. So I’ll just outline it in a few words, without any pretence that I might convey in telling what eyes can see. In short, right there in front of the mosque, there’s this big clearing, or square – unpaved, of course – and it’s full to the brim with a preposterously colourful and densely packed crowd, most of them gathered with just one purpose. And that is to sell or buy something. Only a tiny proportion of us were there in other capacity. A fair number of us westerners who came to enjoy the show, an odd youth here or there who prowled the area with an eye on a tourist to latch onto and thereby try to squeeze some money, a few people who made their living by selling transport to whoever was in need, and a handsome number of genuine and fake beggars. The vast majority, though, was there to sell or buy. Anything.
A portion of them had wobbly and rickety stands, but majority simply spread some sort of plastic sheet or canvas right on the ground and thereupon laid whatever merchandise they had on offer. Some held it in baskets, some in sacks, some just kept it open and bare right where it was. Occasionally there would be a makeshift shelter from the sun in the form of a few crooked poles driven into the ground, serving as wall corner stirrups, as it were, and canvas tied to their tops, serving as roof and providing shadow. Walking ground was in glaring shortage and whichever way you turned, you had to tread carefully in order not to step on something or other.
People sold everything an inhabitant of those parts could imagine and possibly need. There were fruits and vegetables, dried and fresh, grain, clothing, African fabric which could even be sown right there on the spot if you would, wall paint, tooth brushes and tooth paste, chunks of laundry soap, bicycle wheels and rubber tyres, truck tyres, spare automobile parts, screws, nuts, bolts, shoes, iron scrap, fly-covered meat, torch-lights, combs, toys, pens... and so on and on, all piled literally into one disorderly jumble. There were donkeys, goats, chicken, dogs, cows, just so the whole setting would look more exotic and lively, as if it was not exotic and lively enough anyway. And all that unabashedly spilled over into the side alleys, defying any attempt to restrict the grand Djenné Monday market inside any boundaries.
For a long while I just roamed among sellers, meticulously watching my step. I kept my camera to my waist and shot pictures like crazy. A few people eyed me with suspicion, as they always did whenever they spotted my Nikon, but I seemed to have perfected my photographing technique quite well, so no one appeared to have any firm evidence that I was taking pictures and consequently couldn’t positively get upset over it.
At one point one young lad approached me and asked if I needed a guide. I thanked him and said that I was perfectly fine just as I was. Well, he was a bit too persistent for my liking and wouldn’t be shaken loose just like that, so I had to sport some catalogue frown, for the good measure, saying:
„Look, if I need a guide, I’ll let you know. Now I don’t.“
That seemed to do the trick and the lad went off.
Above the whole Monday market spectacle loomed the spectacle of Grand Mosque and it was a pity that as a non-Muslim you couldn’t go in. OK, there were stories going around that for the right back-hander grease those Muslims-only rules could be pretty successfully bent. Now, whether that was a good thing or not, even from a tourist’s point of view, I was not sure. Either way, I had no intention of soaping things, so I just circled around the mosque like a kid around the county fair stand with sweets without any pocket money to buy myself a lollypop. Right there, next to the stairs leading up into the Mosque there was a signboard clearly stating „entrée interdite aux non-musulmans“.
I don’t know how long I was roaming around. You tend to lose the sense of time in such places. In any event, after what seemed pretty long, the same young lad suddenly resurfaced again and asked:
„Do you need a guide now?“
I had to laugh at the way he had interpreted my statement literally. Almost as a lawyer splitting words in order to trick court opponents and beat them on technicalities. I was about to dismiss him again when a thought occurred to me that I’d like to have one or two pictures of myself within that crowd. After all, you don’t come to Djenné every day. Maybe no day any more. Maybe this was the visit to Djenné of my lifetime. So I changed my mind on the spot and said to the guy:
„Actually, I don’t. But I might use your help a bit.“
He was ready to do anything reasonable in order to earn some dosh. Serving in a capacity of some dippy tourist’s photographer may not have been in his usual work description, but when you get right down to it, he must have thought, it was as well. So I explained to him how my camera worked and he took to some practice, soon getting the hang of it quite fine. We roamed a bit around the market and I took what to me looked like a few good positions. Nobody could grumble over being photographed as you could always argue that the guy was taking a picture of you, and the fact that they just „happened“ to find themselves in the picture, well, that’s what you call a rotten luck, right? Then after a while we gradually started drifting out of the thickest on the market and emerged on the Bani river.
There on the Bani riverbank, not exactly the cleanest environment in the world, strewn with garbage laying all around, local women were doing their laundry in the murky river. Pot-bellied kids were playing around. Watching the scene, I honestly wondered whether the laundry was cleaner or dirtier than before after the treatment in this water. And I wondered how sick or healthy those kids could be, playing barefoot in what in effect amounted to a riverbank waste dump.
But in a quirky way, that too was an interesting scene, sadly but nevertheless truly a part of real Africa. The young lad and I lingered around for a while and then I decided I had enough pictures of myself. I thanked him, gave him measly 200 CFA francs, which he seemed perfectly happy with, and took his e-mail address to send him the pictures he would be on. Taking down his yahoo, I found out his name was Oumar. He was a Djenné native who was away from his hometown on studies, but was back for holidays now. Probably because of New Year. He confessed that he felt a bit bored in Djenné and could hardly wait to go back to his school. I wished him all the best and from then on out proceeded on my own again.
I went on along the Bani river in the direction my taxi had come from, intending to circle a part of the town perimeter and re-enter it at some point through the maze of the Old Town streets. After all, Djenné is not exactly a sprawling settlement and it didn’t represent the ultimate feat, crossing it from end to end. It took me just a few minutes to find a spot looking suitable enough to delve into the old town core.
And Old Town was like a different world, indeed. It’s difficult to call spaces between tightly crammed mud-brick houses any other way than passages. Those houses did occasionally sport white tables with names like Rue 157, Rue 166 or Rue 169, which even I understood to mean Street 157 and so on. But streets are something different by any definition. These were just long, narrow spaces where only people could pass each other by without serious threat of having a traffic accident.
But they did have their lively social life, complete with horses, donkeys and goats that seemed to claim equal rights of spending their leisure time there as any human being. And not only that. They all seemed to make up a nice, motley group of living creatures who evidently got along very well, with a lot of mutual tolerance. I was an obvious intruder into this distinguished company and the only one who didn’t belong there.
Adults eyed me with a guarded suspicion – all that because of my conspicuous camera – kids received me with open expressions of welcome, just as kids always do, and animals treated me with regal indifference.
When you get right down to it, were it not for electricity lines hanging somewhat loosely and disorderly off the poles, you could easily be deceived into thinking that you had just stepped back into the past. That’s how ancient Djenné Old Town came across to someone like me.
However, world has changed. World has grown. If Djenné was once big and significant, now it’s tiny and easy to cross. Even if it may not have necessarily shrunk in size. And I don’t want to imply it’s grown insignificant. On the contrary. When you see the hustle and bustle of the Monday market and us tourists flocking in to be a part of it at least for half a day, it’s not like Djenné is fading out of the picture. But scale the world nowadays exists on has changed dramatically and you realise that Djenné has somehow got stuck in its own time warp somewhere back up the road.
So you don’t need to be in the best of your hiking shapes to find yourself on the opposite edge of the Old Town. In fact, you inevitably wish your wanderings through the dusty alleys had taken longer. That’s how charming it all is. But, well, that’s one of the things you can do nothing about except possibly go back and retrace your own footsteps. However, that was an option I never seriously considered and so instead I found myself back out and on the Petit Marché. Which, as its name suggests, is basically the same thing as the Grand Market except for being tiny in size, crammed in an open but walled-off area. There I spent time in proportion to its size compared to the Grand Marché where I soon returned.
So now there was more of the same and I continued working my way slowly through the tightly packed crowd of sellers and buyers in the direction I had not explored yet. I reached a tiny square where town post office was located and adjacent to it there was a truck stop. But it didn’t mean that this particular spot looked much different. Except for the addition of a few lorries parked there, it simply felt as an extension to the big thing back there by the Grand Mosque, with its lively selection of both turbaned and bare-headed men, women all in hijabs, or burkhas, or whatever they call them there, from head to toes in true conservative Muslim fashion, but also some heart-stopping, snappy African lookers that would twist your head round on your neck twice in any spot in the world. There were goat herders stubbornly pushing their way, together with their goats, through this crowd where even a colony of feral cats would have a tough time to do the same. And there were tourists, increasing in their numbers as the sun went ever higher up in the sky.
I continued past the signboards advertising „Frederic Beigbeder Cultural Centre“ and local Radio Jamana through an arched gate and found myself in a lot quieter, rather wide space, surrounded by some wonderful walls and buildings, all in keeping with the local architectural style. On some of them somebody had hung rugs and clothes, all with local design motives, probably for sale, even if I noticed no one in attendance around. Not that I was particularly interested in buying anything myself. It was just for the record.
The huge majority of people here - much thinner in numbers, so you couldn’t even call them a crowd – were westerners and the car park, by far the largest I’d seen in Djenné, was all sleek and sturdy four-by-fours. You didn’t have to be a Nobel Prize winner to gather that this was where they all stayed overnight, in case they had decided so.
This was all still the Old Town, of course, but entirely different from what I’d seen back there.
I went on and came up to a long line of mud-brick buildings which in effect created a wall. So it was either left or right from that point on, but either way along the row of houses. I settled for the left-hand side, the only foreigner in sight, and again it felt like I stepped back in time, when western tourists had not been invented yet. Locals hardly paid any attention to me and I walked along, taking pictures and wondering where next my feet would get me.
What they got me to was some kind of low embankment stretching off from the town to what looked just like an ordinary piece of semi-desert, cutting some swamps in two. Except that the crown of this embankment, solid two or three metres wide, served as a bridge and a river of people were streaming in both directions. And there, on the other side, on the solid ground beyond the swamps, there were domestic animals in numbers, strapped to carts and carriages or not, roaming in search of sparse and parched grass or not, and a lot of people seemingly just loitering around. That was another spectacle, but unlike the market over there by the mosque, totally unadvertised. I would be willing to bet that majority of tourists were completely unaware that this thing even existed.
Never lazy to mingle with locals, and ever more so the more authentic and genuine they looked, I started crossing the swamps by way of the embankment, occasionally descending down the side slopes. There were goats scavenging piles of garbage and swamp edges for whatever food they could find, blissfully unperturbed by people. There were women doing their laundry or washing dishes in the water where I wouldn’t dip my foot in with a sock on for the life of me. Others were scooping that water into pots and I decided I’d better not dwell on what purpose it was going to serve later. There were kids, as ever, who played happily around. There were guys who were giving their horses a good brush. All that in those swamps.
I noticed one man, pretty much off the embankment and thereby the hub of activities, making mud bricks out of the wet soil. I descended down the slope again and went up right there to see it first-hand. The guy smiled and waved, I smiled back. And then, after taking my pictures, I headed back towards where everybody else was. However, out of nowhere, a young girl materialised, carrying a huge basin on her head full of stuff whose purpose I had no way of explaining. And she started trailing me. When I turned around, she said in a low voice:
„Bidon, monsieur.“
At first, I had no idea what she meant, but then I realised she was referring to one of the two by now empty half-litre plastic bottles which I used for water. They were neatly tucked into side pockets of my knapsack and she wanted to have one. I duly took one out and handed it to her. She wasted no time in grabbing it, and the moment she did, she disappeared as if going up in smoke, so to say.
By now, it was time to have lunch. I consulted „Lonely Planet“ and the nearest eatery it seemed to recommend was the „Kita Kouraou“ restaurant next to the post office and truck stop. So I went there.
I found the place with relatively little hassle, a nice shady spot, and even got myself a free table. Which was no mean feat since seemingly every foreigner in Djenné appeared to start sharing my ideas right after me. It didn’t take long until people came in and had to go straight away in search for an alternative place to eat. And the moment I took my seat, I realised I was in fact rather tired. Chalk it up to an exhausting bus ride from Ségou the day earlier, to mercilessly early waking hour this very morning, to by now not any less merciless sun up above – or probably to all those factors combined – I was wondering how long I would in fact stay in Djenné. My original plan was to return to Mopti in the evening. But now I started questioning my physical shape and mental readiness to stay on that long. Besides, how much more was there to see in the town itself?
Well, I decided to leave all those issues for after lunch, assuming that by then I’d be wiser. Until then, it was just good to sit in the shade and enjoy my rest.
But either way, I could already decidedly say that Djenné definitely trumped all I’d seen in Africa up to this point and it was by far the highlight of my trip as of yet. I couldn’t know what Dogon country would look like as I knew by now I wouldn’t see it this time. It’d have to wait for some other occasion should my feet get me this way again. Maybe Timbuktu and Essakane would top everything. Maybe Gorom-Gorom would. That remained yet to be seen. So far, however, Djenné was my absolute favourite. I’d thought I couldn’t be awed any more, but Djenné was outright spectacular. An elegant collection of some wonderful sandy Sahel architecture, an unbelievable Monday market, a most astonishing array of indescribably colourful characters and infinite number of domestic animals. Add to it the river, or I think it’s the river even if quite dry in places at this time of year, with some pirogues, or pinasses, and you had a period setting matched by nothing I’d seen either in Burkina Faso or Mali. OK, it’s inevitably dotted with Western union outlets, banks and western-oriented hotels and restaurants. Also, that clearing where those high-rolling types with well-lined pockets parked their – or rented – four-wheel drives, all the likes of Toyotas, Mitsubishis and so on, wasn’t exactly the stuff that had gotten Djenné on the UNESCO list. But in the twenty first century it’s inevitable, I guess. If a place is worth seeing, people like me are sooner or later there. We all know there’s no such thing as thirteen-century Djenné any more. But what you have today is as good as it gets. And so yes, if in Mali, this was a place not to miss.
Sorry as I may have been to see Annette leave in Bamako, it’d had its upsides. I had the freedom to roam as I please, without having to care if she was tired or not. In my own way, I was enjoying Djenné tremendously, burning the space on my camera’s memory card like there was no tomorrow. Which I most likely wouldn’t have been able to do with her around. Ever since the moment I had got in that beat-up Peugeot taxi early this morning, it had been one fantastic, kick-ass ride.
Most of the people in the restaurant, of course, were English-speaking independent travellers like me. And as you get accustomed to seeing along the way, they all had similar destinations and trip goals in mind. So it didn’t come as much of a surprise to me to overhear them discussing Timbuktu and Essakane festival. Some of them were going there, some decided it was not worth the hustle, and some were still thinking about it. The loudest ones were a group of three Brits who discussed the whole thing with an American who they happened to meet up with just then.
„You don’t go to Timbuktu to see it, you go to say you were there,“ one of the Brits said.
„And the festival is probably as good a cause to go there as any,“ another one added.
„Yes, but it’s insane,“ the American replied with disgust. „I mean, hundred and fifty euro for tickets?! As if they are shipping Michael Jackson or U2 in!“
I listened in, not really getting my kicks from eavesdropping on people, but you did need information on travels like this. And fellow independent travellers, especially in less than organised places like Mali, are often an indispensable source. But the whole discussion soon watered down as a Portuguese couple entered the restaurant and they seemed to know the Brits from before. So the topic veered off from Timbuktu and Essakane and I started again minding my own business.
Well, it all didn’t bring me much closer to final decision, but at least I got some idea about the price. Unless it was some cock-and-bull story which grew larger and more incredible with every new rendition, now at least I knew what to expect in terms of money for ticket. I turned to my lunch.
When my lunch was over, if nothing else, I was sure about one thing. And that was that I wouldn’t be staying on in Djenné. It was around one in the afternoon, and knowing how things worked here, and the way they approached timetables in these parts, I realised there would be no point in being longer in town. Market would gradually start shrinking until everyone left by the sundown and I had seen most of it anyway. The town itself was no London or Paris. Not even Ségou. In terms of size, of course. So I didn’t think there were too many things left I’d not seen yet. And who could guarantee me that even if I went straight to the taxi station, I would be in a taxi to Mopti right away? Putting two and two together, I decided to leave.
A few minutes later, I was on the same spot where I had arrived several hours earlier. At a makeshift waiting spot, in the shadow of a make-do shelter huddled from four crooked, sturdy vertical posts and four horizontal wooden beams, and with a heap of thatch as a roof, there was a shaky wooden table, and a few benches in hardly any better shape. The table was the working office of a guy who was, in the same manner as this morning back in Mopti, taking down names of would-be passengers and as soon as a vehicle filled up, they would leave. I was the second on the list. When would we go? Soon.
Of course, I could have known even before asking.
But we didn’t go all that soon. The thing is, people trickled in. Among them a local guy who bought six seats for just two people. That certainly got everyone already on the list in a good cheer. We just now needed to wait for those two people – two ladies, as he said – to come from their lunch and then we could go. And they would come „soon“. Which didn’t happen so soon after all.
Before they arrived, though, almost everybody else did. First, not long after that, those three Brits from the restaurant were there. They too wanted to go to Mopti. However, when they signed up for the ride, they were explained that they couldn’t get on our taxi because it was booked. They could only sign up for the next one.
„But if this one is full, why doesn’t it leave?“ one of them asked, the same one who had talked about Timbuktu and Essakane earlier in the restaurant.
The guy who’d bought four seats told him we were now waiting for two ladies to arrive from lunch.
„Fine. So we can book the other one and leave?“
„No,“ the guy who was registering the names said.
„Why not?“
„Because this taxi goes first.“
„So even if the other one is full, it must wait until this one goes?“
It appeared so. Nobody seemed to understand. Nobody of us westerners, that is. All locals considered it perfectly normal. The young guy shrugged and gave his name. He was Steven. Other two friends followed his suit and we all now waited.
Then Steven turned to me and asked me if I spoke English. I said I did and we began a usual chat about where we were next headed.
„I thought you spoke English as I saw you there in the restaurant listening to us,“ he said.
„Yes, I’m going to Timbuktu myself,“ I nodded.
As we chatted, the Portuguese couple arrived, as well. They too wanted to sign up for taxi, and they too were pretty confused upon hearing that they couldn’t sign up for the first one even if it was waiting for the two ladies.
„But why can’t we take this one and then the ladies, when they come, can go with the next one?“ the Portuguese guy asked logically. „Why does everyone has to wait for them?“
But no. It had to be like that.
„What you can do,“ I suggested to him „is either book yourself the other one – the few of you here – and go, or try to pay someone off to let you take their seat in the first taxi.“
He thought about if for a moment, but then said:
„No, I don’t want to do it. On principle. I don’t want to buy my way here just because I have money.“
Steven was obviously more stoical about the whole thing than the Portuguese guy. He said:
„In Europe, when the train is due to leave at 12:01, then it leaves at 12:01. Here it’s just not like that.“
Gradually, the Portuguese guy calmed down and accepted that he wouldn’t be leaving Djenné – unless he wanted to bribe some passengers – so soon, and certainly not on the hour and a minute. From then on, it was just a chat about this and that.
Until an hour after I had arrived, two ladies who we’d been waiting for finally showed up, too, and we could leave at last.
