When I woke up at 3 a.m. this morning, I knew full well that the four-wheel drive wouldn’t pick me up at four, even if Guele had told me it’d be then. But of course, I wasn’t sure to such an extent that I could risk it. So I had to be at the hotel gate at the appointed time. Sure enough, when I showed up there, ready to go, even earlier than two days before when I had visited Djenné, I was not surprised that no one but me turned up. The only question was how long I would wait and when they would really come.
It was five when they did.
They loaded my stuff and then we were off to pick up Katrin and Lea. They were waiting just as they should have and, interestingly enough, after we had said good morning to each other, they informed me that Guele had told them to be ready by five. As they had no habit of having a breakfast, they had slept two full hours longer than me.
Next off, we were going to Sévaré to collect someone there. A girl.
She too was waiting, but she was nobody Guele had been in negotiations when I had visited him the night before. Not that it mattered much to me. It only indicated that here things were constantly in flux. Anyway, the lady was Barbara, and hailed from the Netherlands.
The morning was again cool and everyone but me was wrapped warmly. Barbara even went all the way to put on a coat. But then again, why not?
So, now we were four, with the addition of Guele and the driver, and we were finally going to set out. Or were we? In fact, not quite yet. Barbara was obviously too sleepy to think anything. Or who knows what Guele had told her when they had been making her arrangement. But Lea and Katrin were no less surprised than me when Guele announced that we had few more people to collect before the actual start of our ride.
Katrin frowned:
„Where would he seat them?!“
That was a good question. It definitely remained to be seen.
Those people were also in Sévaré. As it was still pitch dark outside, and public lighting in Mali wasn’t what you necessarily call energy waste category, none of us had any idea how far we were going. For all we could make out, we could have been driving in circles just as well.
But I guess we were not. Since few minutes later we noticed three more people standing by the road, obviously waiting for us. When we saw there were three of them, you could literally sense a collective frown inside the car. Not that anyone had anything against them personally. And why would we? But space was rapidly growing to be an ever scarcer commodity and no one exactly looked forward to a long day on the road with so many people inside. But Guele apparently had his own calculations.
Those three people were all Americans. Peter, Sandy and Karen who in spite of the early hour looked breezy and bright when they wished us good morning. But then, when they realised where Guele was going to pack them – inside the cargo area behind the back seat – in short order they lost a considerable amount of sunshine on their faces. If the rest of us had been worried about the comfort of our trip, I could only imagine what just went through the heads of three Americans. None of us envied them. When I saw them, I knew clearly as a day that I had fared comparatively well.
So, now we were going, were we? Well, not exactly. Believe it or not, there was someone else to collect. A cook.
„She isn’t a passenger,“ Guele defended himself upon our protests. As if it would render her invisible. Or immaterial. A passenger or not, she was going to take up her space, as well.
I lost track of whether it was still in Sévaré, or Mopti again, or some place in between. In any case, we did pick her up somewhere. And to the delight of the Americans, Guele bundled her in among them, so now in this very agreeable condition they enjoyed the cosiness and close intimacy of each other’s company, merrily passing the time in guessing which limb belonged to whom.
Just for the good measure, Guele explained that there was one more thing to do before we would finally start. We had to load provisions. It turned out, our cook was not going to be only our cook on the festival. She was going to be in charge of an entire open-air kitchen there and a lot more people than just the seven of us were expected to eat the products of her cooking. Nobody asked any questions and tossed any remarks any more. Everyone knew by now that it was of no use. All we could do was to brace ourselves for whatever kind of trip we were going to have and try to take it as stoically as we could.
In the early morning darkness, those provisions, the way they were heaped out by the road, looked like an entire stock from a small-size warehouse. The only question, albeit silently, anyone could ask was „where on earth are we going to put that?“ Anyone except Guele, that is. With much vigour, and with the help of the driver, he set about loading the stuff mostly on top of the car. So with every new item our car was conspicuously changing proportions, in favour of height and at the expense of length. And when at some point it dawned on Guele, too, that should he continue with that tendency, our car might be quite prone to keeling over, much more than desirable, he decided – all in the good service of general safety, no doubt – to cheer us up, the Americans and his cook in particular, by packing neatly the rest of the things inside the car, mostly in the cargo space. He must have beyond any uncertainly ascertained that the Americans and the cook desired some extra padding against sliding left or right on winding Saharan roads.
When we finally started on our way, it was seven o’clock and the new day had already dawned. I wondered for a while why I had had to wake up at three and wistfully wished I had slept longer. But there was no point in brooding about that now. There was a whole day of new adventures ahead of us. Besides, a glance at the Americans and the cook behind me brought me back in good cheer bang off. Out of ten people in the car, seven of us tourists and three locals, together with Katrin and Lea on the back seat, while it was not precisely the first class arrangement, I could safely say I was among those better off. And much as I felt rather sorry for the Americans, the quantity of my compassion was nowhere near big enough to create an incentive strong enough to persuade me to trade places with any of them.
Lest I get spoiled by my privileged position in the car, though, the window that I was sitting next to couldn’t be shut. One of the two in the car altogether. I mean, there just were no panes on them. The fact that even I had to soon put a sweater on was a lesser problem. As far as the dropping temperature inside our car was concerned, that was all I needed. But what really troubled me was the sand that was constantly blown in from the outside. The road we travelled on was paved. But it was windy and a moving car creates an even stronger wind effect. Whoever had sun glasses put them on, to protect themselves both from the wind and sand. And everyone had them except the cook and the driver.
And me.
The landscape was arid and mostly flat as a table, almost completely devoid of any vegetation. Occasionally we would pass through an odd village with just a few mud-brick houses and a mandatory mosque. Not much to cheer you up and create any significant diversion. Once or twice we made a stop for a minute or two when Guele and the driver checked our battered ride, looking for I couldn’t tell what. In other circumstances, taught by my experiences in Mali so far, I guess I would have been fully justified in expressing every concern whenever they set about inspecting the car. It should’ve given rise to every legitimate suspicion any of us might have. But all we cared now about was an opportunity to jump out and stretch our legs. No one could be bothered to give a second thought to what it was that Guele and his driver were exactly searching for.
Some two hours into our trip, we arrived in the town of Douentza.
Douentza is the capital of the namesake cercle, or district, the poorest one in a poor country like Mali. They say the town has some eight thousand inhabitants, which may or may not be true. Whereas I am prepared to give this information the benefit of doubt, even if the town itself didn’t look big enough to accommodate as few as one thousand, I certainly find it nearly unbelievable that it is served by local airport. Now that’s something I’d really have to see to believe. I mean, if you come to a place which, at least according to what you could see, stretches for some length along both sides of the road, with not much in terms of width, and nothing more, you inevitably wonder who would need an airport in this god-forsaken spot on Earth.
We stopped there. I suppose it was a scheduled stop-over. But I am not sure how long it was originally planned to take. In any case, while those who had not had any breakfast in Mopti were given a chance to eat, either picking food at some of the street stalls or in one of the roadside restaurants, Guele and his driver fetched a car mechanic. In fact, quite handily, next to the restaurant „Tombouctou“, which was our eatery of choice, there was a car mechanic’s, complete with „Mercedes“ trademark sign painted on the house façade and a stack of old tyres in front of it. And so, while they happily started taking our „Toyota“ apart, and then welding it back into shape, the rest of us went about other diversions and businesses.
In truth, the town seemed to be rather thriving at the moment. With all those colourful and by now ubiquitous local traits that every place seemed to have, there was an unusually large number of western tourists here, as well. Of course, everyone was going in the same direction as us, and stopped for the same reason as we did. OK, maybe not to have their car repaired, but certainly to stretch their legs and have a snack. For the first time in West Africa, here I had a sense of real tourism and not only of just a few westerners who for some reason difficult to understand apparently ended up in, say, Mopti instead of London or Paris. For all a sane soul could tell, for the first time now one would suspect those westerners were not here by mistake. Like having boarded a wrong plane or something.
Of course, locals tried to make the most of it, by any means possible, from attempting to foist whatever they could on those rich „blancs“ to outright mooching and begging. It wasn’t difficult to tell that the best success scored those who offered food. Western tourists seemed to be nothing less than starving.
I roamed around, taking my pictures and watching street scenes unfold around me. There was crowd, both local and foreign, there were quite a few terrain vehicles parked by the roadside, most of them either belonging to or hired by tourists, there was one or two local buses, one or two lorries, a handsome number of goats crossing the road in all possible directions, with a sense of entitlement and behaving as the right of way was inherent to their birthright, there were food stalls, cabines téléfoniques which as a rule consisted of a lone landline telephone, and all sorts of small shops. And a mosque built in 1997, of course. All in all, Douentza seemed a lively place.
And we seemed to be among those who lingered around longest.
Everybody else seemed to take less time than us. They stopped, ate and left. Only we remained behind. And the welding business around and under our „Toyota“ continued apace, long after everyone who had been hungry in our car had eaten. After a while we even started casting envious looks after all those other vehicles which smoothly started their engines and went on with their trip.
But, as widely known, everything comes to an end sooner or later, so eventually our good mechanic finished his job, sewed the old „Toyota“ back together and even we were ready to go. In spite of the fact that we knew what kind of ride we were again in for, with a sigh of relief all of us got back in.
After a good hour in Douentza, we finally resumed our trip.
