If somebody had told me that in Sahara I’d be yearning for more sun, I’d have held them for mental. But after a night of desert blues, both in terms of music and sleeping conditions, or more to the point, desert woes, there is nothing mental about yearning for morning sun to rise as early as possible. So when the sun finally came up, I greeted it as a long-lost friend and couldn’t wait for it to kick more of the stiffness out of my bones with every new degree centigrade.
When I crawled out of my tent, our worthy and hard-working cook was already about her pans, pots and cauldrons, and the fire was already crackling with a new heap of embers. So it meant I could have my breakfast without any major delays. But just about everything else was still in slumber. This whole, huge tent camp that was Essakane festival had not waken up yet and only first early risers – or poor sleepers – like me were casting about for early diversion.
I felt the desert was beckoning me and as soon as I finished my breakfast, I slung my camera over my shoulder and set out in the direction completely opposite to where Barbara and I had roamed the day before. I would spend enough time with people and among tents later in the day. So now was the perfect time to get away from it all. The more so since the temperature was still unbelievably pleasant.
I followed a straight line, cutting dunes as they came and I would veer off only to avoid heading straight into an odd bush. But much as the festival location really looked to be in the middle of nowhere, in truth it was not entirely so. They had most certainly not closed their eyes over the map of Mali, pinned their finger wherever it fell and then said „there, that’s where the festival will be held“. Quite on the contrary. In fact, even if not seen from where we were, not far from us there was the village of Essakane. Or town, as some choose to call it. Albeit, at least in my mind, a town should have a road or two, paved if possible, maybe an odd two-storey building, a shop where you can buy your groceries and so on along the same lines. None of those were anywhere in sight here. So I’ll call Essakane the village. But either way, it had to be not too far off.
Because I saw people and camels coming from somewhere and gradually trickling in the direction of the festival grounds. They were obviously returning to the hotspot of activities to resume their business as soon as possible. I, on the other hand, was seeking to get away from it, at least a little and for a while.
However, after treading through the sand for some time, I didn’t find the surroundings any more interesting. On the contrary. Sand was still beneath my feet, but desert vegetation increasingly came into view. Certainly, to a European mind it was at first an incongruous picture – dry and arid sand and trees springing out of it, along with some parched coppice. I was, in fact, longing to see some vast, Mars-like landscapes like the ones you see in TV documentaries. And such – or closest to what could resemble them – were precisely there where our tents were pitched.
I started seeing goats and donkeys and then I decided to return to where I’d come from. Even if not by exactly retracing my footsteps. So I circled around a bit when suddenly, some distance off from me, I noticed a number of military vehicles. Yes, I’d seen soldiers at the festival. It’s not like they tried to completely retreat into the background or blend in. But they kept a pretty low profile. However, what I was seeing now indicated that their presence was much heavier than I’d suspected. In fact, seeing this, I could safely rephrase myself and claim that they had been keeping a low profile indeed. While most of us visitors were being blissfully unaware of it, they were pretty closely monitoring every movement at and around the festival.
Seeing soldiers is never an inspiring sight for me. Not even in the movies or on military parades, and let alone in real-life circumstances. So I can’t say I felt a transport of rapture upon noticing them. But on second thought, they were obviously protecting our safety there. So knowing that they too were there was also reassuring in a way.
Well, I slipped away, not really wishing to be in their sight. After that close encounter with them in Tombouctou, I was not yearning for an encore in terms of friendly interviews with local officers. So I went back to the tents.
Katrin and Lea were up. We wished each other a good morning and started some friendly chat. They had not bothered to attend the musical part of the festival the night before. More out of courtesy than out of curiosity, they asked me what it had been like. I told them that I was not overly enthusiastic about what I’d seen and that closed the musical chapter between us. We then went on to some other things. Like their intention to go for a camel ride after breakfast.
That gave me nn idea to do the same. Since my plans to have one in Tombouctou had run aground for reasons never explained, I decided to correct it here. With so many camels around, it should work out this time. As soon as Guele appeared, I told him that I’d like to go for a camel ride myself.
„No problem,“ was his immediate answer. Ever a businessman, he added:
„I’ll find you a very good one!“
I told him I’d like to go for at least three hours, and that four might be even better, that I’d like to see the Essakane village and that, if possible, the whole camel-riding tour should finish as syrupy as you average tourist reasonably expects – with the desert sunset.
„No problem“ was Guele’s constant mantra and he assured me that he would find me „the best“ camel owner.
„He’s my friend,“ he added. I should just sit back and wait.
„When do you want to go?“
I reckoned that if the ride would take me three or four hours, including the sunset, then the good time would be some time comfortably after lunch. Guele confirmed he was now aware of all my demands and conditions, and the only thing left to do was for me to cough up a paltry twenty thousand CFA francs. I did that and he disappeared.
Lea and Katrin soon left on their camels. On departure they asked me to take a few pictures of them which I duly obliged and then I decided to stay around.
As our cook was cooking for everyone who wanted to eat, this spot was pretty busy and attracted many westerners. And as usual in such situations, chats ensued very easily. Peter stopped by, too. He came to eat and to do some drawings – one of his favourite pastimes - along the way. So while our cook was at her cooking, he sat cross-legged on the sand and did his sketches.
I was sitting on a dune slope, just up from my tent, with Florian, a young German who was working as a civil engineer in Vienna and an English guy whose name I hadn’t picked up. While we were chatting about this and that, Barbara appeared from her tent after a long and healthy lie-in. She had stayed all the way to the end of the concert the night before and then partied some with a number of folks. She told us that „some princess“ seemed to be here on the festival, too. The way I understood it, she’d learned about it the night before, probably on that party.
Naturally, the subject of our conversation immediately turned to this princess topic. Florian said that he too had heard rumours that some royalty was around.
„I think she’s from Monaco,“ Barbara said.
„I heard she was from somewhere in Scandinavia,“ Florian added his two cents’ worth. „Maybe from Finland?“
I cautiously set him straight and said that Finland had no royal family, the only country as such up there in Scandinavia.
„Then maybe Sweden,“ he took it in stride.
Barbara insisted that it was Monaco. Wherever she was from, and whoever she was, she was staying in one of the biggest tents around. As expected, of course. It was nothing on the scale of tents Persian rulers and Egyptian pharaohs had once dragged along, but certainly a bit bigger than the two-by-two, metres of course, that I slept in. In any event, her tent was allegedly just across another dune from us.
Whether it was true or not, and which princess she was exactly, no one could tell for certain as of yet, but some security personnel had been spotted, even if none on the scale of, say, the US President’s security team. And some modern aircraft had been seen a bit way back. If she was really here, then it made sense. She certainly hadn’t arrived at the bed of a pick-up truck through the desert from Tombouctou. And if she was here, then it was in keeping with the fame this festival seemed to be carrying.
And it explained, maybe fully, the heavy presence of military just behind those dunes, half-hidden among desert trees.
As we were now sitting lazily on the sand, the day grew baking hot. Right on the heels of a freezing night, quite unsuitable for sleep. At least for me. Because I was sure this princess hadn’t had such problems. Well, this all was just as Sahara was cracked up to be.
Then the conversation turned to music. Barbara was the only one who was enthusiastic without reservation about it. The English guy had not even bothered to listen to it last night. Except for a short peep. Florian was hardly a convert, either. None of them was a musician so I was the one who was laying it out in most concrete terms of all. Of course, I didn’t need any support in order to stand by what I felt. But it was nice to nevertheless know that I was not the only nitpicking monster around.
At least the three of us – as Peter didn’t voice any opinions – agreed that the Essakane did not carry a reputation it did for the quality of music. I’ll say that any time. I repeat that I accept that I don’t understand the musical idiom they usually offer here, and it certainly is a must if you want to enjoy the music. Any music, for that matter. But then again, as a musician, I can recognise a good musician after two notes and a good group after two bars. None of what I had seen last night even remotely qualified as good, and the way I see it, even flew directly in the face of reputation this festival has. While rhythm sections could be in the best of moods still termed as passable, even if nowhere near the world class, lead instruments – and those were invariably electric guitars – had been outright woeful. Singing followed closely behind, being often irritatingly pitchy, and as entire thing was usually an endless repetition of same, not too imaginative, four or five-note phrases, it soon started being as entertaining as scraping an empty pot with a spoon. Which even if composed by Bach would’ve inevitably blown your brain off, sooner or later.
OK, let me be benevolent and add once again that I most certainly don’t understand that music.
Sitting there with those guys and chatting, I really had a nice time. I’d seen Tombouctou and that was it. I hadn’t gotten married and here in Essakane, still single as I was, I was enjoying myself. OK, with westerners mostly, but from time to time, it’s not so bad. You could never know what good might come out of it. The only thing that I found as a drawback was the fact that I couldn’t wash myself. OK, the desert sand is dry and clean, but it’s sand anyway. And showers were few and far between. But then again, I had always known it’d be like that. And one way or another, I’d survive until tomorrow night, and then have a good, long and hot bath in Mopti.
Just one thing really bad about the whole setting was the trash. I knew this was Africa, but westerners were coming here to this spot in droves. So first, Africans – if able to come up with Marshall amplifiers and Sonor drums for the festival – should have been able to provide a few trash bins. I don’t think it would have been that difficult. And I couldn’t see any. Or hardly any. And second, probably more important, why did westerners find it so hard to just retain some of their habits from home, even while in Africa? Was it such a problem to collect your garbage instead of having it recklessly strewn all over the place? Everyone would be on the winning side with just a little effort.
Sahara most of all.
Anyway, in such an easy and relaxed atmosphere, we first saw Lea and Katrin arrive from their camel ride, and then also came the lunch time. Actually, after all the efforts one inevitably goes through on trips like mine, it is occasionally not bad at all to slow down, even if under scorching Saharan sun without a proper shower in sight.
And after the lunch, well, not quite right away, but after a rather generous interval, Guele arrived with some Tuareg in tow, who on his part was leading a camel by a rope, dressed so warm that you would be tempted to believe we were not in a sand desert, but in an ice one. And that a pole, North or South, just the same, was only half a day of leisurely walk away. Except that the sun was relentlessly burning on your own skin and adding it a new layer and shade of tan by the minute.
In any case, Guele proudly announced that this was „his friend“ and that this guy would now take me for the ride. I asked once again, just to make sure there was no misunderstanding:
„So we’re doing it until sunset?“
„Yes,“ Guele nodded emphatically.
Everybody gathered around as it was now my turn to be a show, or more to the point, my attempt to climb the saddle on the camel’s hump was. I think it’s called saddle, at least. Anyway, Katrin offered to take pictures of the whole enterprise. And so, while I was doing my best to accomplish that feat for the first time in my life, she was busy shooting like there’s no tomorrow.
Stiff as a bone, I finally managed to do what it took and eventually even relaxed a little bit up there when I sensed I had regained a bit of balance, after the camel stood up, standing first on its hind legs and then on the forelegs. For a few seconds, while the camel was in the process of standing up, it felt like I was on a rocking boat, somewhere out there on the high seas, waiting to keel over any second and get gobbled up by the waves. I held on as fast as I could to the V-shaped front section of the saddle and somehow, against all odds, survived in it. For a non-rider like me, it was probably as risky and close to dangerous as breaking a bronc would be.
But once up there, when the camel started walking, and after I had been instructed as to how to rest my feet against the back of the camel’s neck, it all felt much smoother. So gradually I even summoned courage to take pictures from up there every now and then.
Just two or three metres higher up than usual human perspective, the desert immediately appeared even more majestic. The Tuareg guide led his camel, and me on top, away from the festival and so off into the desert we went. I even experienced a mild sense of exhilaration as I’m sure at least some people do upon knowing they are leaving the usual comforts and safety of civilisation. All the more so as I knew all along that this safety, should anything go astray, was still just behind the nearest dune. So I could indulge in the sense of adventure without actually being anywhere near real frontier.
Some ten minutes later, or fifteen at most, I saw a tiny cluster of low, red-brick buildings, an odd goat and a few kids. A settlement. Was this the Essakane village? It may have been. Or may not. Or perhaps Essakane is just a loose term comprising a number of such small settlements over a larger territory. Either way, the Tuareg led me to one of the houses, somehow commanded his camel to go down and I dismounted.
We had arrived at his place.
His place was one of those small, ramshackle brick structures, by the looks of it from the outside, with a one-room interior where both smaller animals and people slept. And the yard consisted of a makeshift structure probably serving as a sun shelter, out of crooked wooden poles and piles upon piles of multi-coloured fabric and canvas sheets.
His household, at least as far as I could see, consisted of two women and two barefoot, dusty kids in tattered rags. The older woman was clearly the mother. The younger one was the mother of the kids, of course. And the Tuareg guide? Well, he may have been the son there with his wife and kids. Which would be my bet. Or he may have been the son with his sister and her kids whose husband was not around at present. Which I considered somewhat less likely. But you could never know. Anyway, I never asked.
As we were now already into the handsomely progressing afternoon, the Saharan sun relented somewhat, so the women and kids didn’t seek shelter from the heat any more. Instead, they were sitting in the open, right there in the sand as other people would sit on their carpets. As I had already observed, the sand was not dirty at all.
Soon I realised I was not the first foreigner to have been led there. When you matter-of-factly get presented with an array of home-made trinkets in an obvious attempt to persuade you to buy some item or other, you know as clear as a day that it’s about business as usual. I had no intention to buy something I’d never need, so I clearly gave the Tuareg to understand as much. I was much more interested in the whole scene as such, in the shabby shelter structure, in yellow plastic canisters tossed around as if they’d never be used again, in rags here or there, either hanging off the poles or lying on the sand in an apparent disorder, all this together giving an impression of just being garbage. The kids eyed me cautiously, but also with curiosity, whenever they thought I didn’t look at them.
When it was clear to everybody that I wouldn’t be budged into buying anything, the Tuareg motioned me to mount the camel again, and his household never spared me a second look. As if I was a non-entity. And the three of us, the guy, his camel and me, started back towards the festival grounds. At one point, without a single man-made structure in sight, we heard something ring and the Tuareg produced a mobile phone from somewhere inside his desert robes. So much about the life of modern Tuaregs.
Soon we reached the same dune where the day before Barbara and I had seen the big crowd and the small stage. The crowd was there again, if not even a bit bigger today. So we stopped again and the Tuareg told me to dismount. When I was back on my own feet, I asked him what the whole thing was about. He managed to explain that there was going to be the camel race. Well, camel race was OK. I’d be happy to see that.
So we lingered around for a while. The crowd was there and the time went on. Occasionally, there was a camel in sight, but nothing along the lines of racing animals. Those were all the camels like the one I was riding. Grumpy and chippy creatures, naturally disposed to wake up grouchy and fall asleep morose – if they sleep – but basically tame and docile. We stood there for quite long. Long enough for me to grow pretty impatient and for a knot to start tightening around my stomach. After a while, it became clear that if there was ever going to be a race, then either it had already taken place or was being held elsewhere. Either way, it was not where we were, no matter what the crowd was expecting. After all, as I had already realised yesterday, the presence of the crowd did not automatically translate into a guarantee that something was, or would be, going on. It seemed to be the case again. And so, after more than forty five minutes of pointless loitering around, the Tuareg told me we would move on.
I clambered back up in the saddle, finally relieved that we were on the move again. With so much sitting around, I had already begun feeling somewhat short-changed. And not nearly happy about it.
But after just one minute in the saddle, things started looking suspicious. The thing is, we were heading straight towards our camp. I was alarmed. That was most certainly not the deal and I had not paid twenty thousand CFA francs for that.
„Hey!“ I called from up there. The Tuareg turned around.
„Are we going there?!“ I pointed my finger clearly in the direction of the camp. He nodded.
And it blew my top. I didn’t like to be robbed of my money so blatantly. We had had a deal, I had paid for it and what I had got in return was outrageously, inexcusably inadequate. Unfortunately, I knew I couldn’t argue with this Tuareg guy. Maybe he was pissed off with me because I had not bought any of the junk from his family. But that had not been the part of the deal anyway and I didn’t feel obliged. I was sure a few-hours’ walk through the desert with a pillock of a foreign tourist up there on his camel was not a hard-earned money. So I didn’t feel guilty for that.
Flying off the handle, I said:
„Get me down.“
He didn’t understand at first what I wanted.
„Get me down,“ I said again, pointing at the sand below me.
„But...“, he started.
„Get me down!“ I growled, by now rubbed in a completely wrong way. I guess that whatever he didn’t understand, my face translated vividly for him. They say a picture was worth a thousand words. I am sure a picture of me at that moment was worth a whole book.
The camel kneeled at his command and I hopped off the saddle. Without a word I started wading through the sand towards my tent. The guy called after me:
„You want to go on camel?“
„No, thank you!“ I hissed, quite sure that the guy had never received a more poisonous expression of gratitude in his life.
Soon I was by my tent.
„How was the ride?“ Barbara chirped. Katrin and Lea were friendly and curious as well. And Guele was there.
Obviously, he was no expert on reading faces. For if he had been, he would have left me alone. Instead, he asked me about the ride and if I was satisfied with it. And that was all I needed. Already sizzling as I was, I lashed it out on him. I told him that I was cheated, that the guy had given me a paltry half an hour in the saddle out of some two hours that we’d spent together, that there was at least one more hour to go until the sunset.
„But it’s not my fault,“ Guele started defending himself. Barbara, Lea and Katrin were just watching me give Guele an earful, fuming all along.
„I don’t give a shit!“
I realised I was going down on him with a bit of a vocabulary, which in fact is not like me at all. But Guele retreated a step back, shrank almost visibly and was now under full attack. I was jabbing at him:
„I paid you! You are my agent. I gave you the money with clear instructions. And not only that. We have an agreement for this tent, blankets and everything. Where is the blanket? I want my money back and I want the blanket. Otherwise your name will be all over Internet and in „Lonely Planet“. I swear it!“
Guele was growing smaller with every new second right there under my eyes. Meekly, he took out a wad of banknotes from his pocket and gave me ten thousand CFA francs back. I guess the thing with Internet and „Lonely Planet“ scared him most. I took the money. And then jabbed my finger at him once again, this time with my voice cool. Icy but cool.
„And the blanket.“
„I’ll give you the blanket,“ he said.
„Now!“
Next minute I got the blanket. And Guele disappeared.
When the whole scene was over, the ladies asked me what had happened. I told them the story in short and they all agreed that, unfortunately, people here needed to be taken to task occasionally. We all loved Africans, that was indisputable. And we knew that Africa was not Europe. But we were all giving the people here big money, big particularly for local standards, and they had to respect that. Katrin, most of all, was glad I had dressed Guele down because she’d been unhappy for days with the arrangement about the car we were using. First, the car was in a much poorer repair than most of the vehicles around here. And second, she and Lea had paid for it with a clear arrangement that it was their vehicle to use and nobody else could join in without their explicit consent. That’s what paying really stood for. Instead, Guele had been making business on the side with the car all along, which resulted in the epic squeeze from Mopti on our way to Essakane. Nice as they were, Katrin and Lea had been loath to deny any fellow tourist a transport means as basically we were all in the same shoes. But to say that they were happy about it would be a stretch.
Lea, as the quieter and gentler one, usually grumbled only to Katrin. And Katrin was the one who was giving Guele piece of her mind when she couldn’t hold it any longer. So he was even afraid of her a bit. Now they were both happy they had an ally in upbraiding the poor old Guele.
But with half of money back and a blanket in my tent, my good cheer was largely restored. The whole misadventure with the camel fell into oblivion and we were looking ahead to another evening with music. OK, Barbara and I did. Lea and Katrin didn’t plan to go to the stage.
„Do you want to go on stage his evening?“ Barbara asked me.
„Why on stage?“
She explained that last night she and another lady from the Netherlands had met someone who was authorised, and who had promised them, to let them up on stage so they would be able to watch the whole show from the sidelines up there. Somewhere where they wouldn’t be in the way, but on stage nevertheless. As close to the epicentre of activities as a non-musician could possibly get, as it were.
„If you want, you can join us,“ Barbara added.
I thought about it for a moment. But then I thought better of it. I knew I’d be tired of the desert blues sooner than Barbara. By the way she talked about it, you could clearly tell she was enjoying it all. I knew myself, though. If again I was going to see such a low level of musical skills as the night before, I’d swerve on my heel and go. And would it be polite to people who would allow me to go up to disappear so soon?
I explained it to Barbara and thanked her for the offer. But of course we would go there together, same as the night before.
We still had enough time to have a drink in a nearby café with an English guy from earlier in the morning and a Dutch couple, the said friends of Barbara’s, and when it was all dark, the four of us – the English guy having stayed behind – went to the stage.
Barbara and the Dutch girl went on stage, taking up the guy they’d met the night before on his promise and I soon saw them clap and sway up there in the rhythm of the music that was already under way. The Dutch guy disappeared in the dark and I joined the crowd, again pretty sparse, same as the night before.
And on stage there was a band whose name I didn’t know. I don’t think they were any of those mentioned in the official leaflet. But at least they were a colourful outfit. In terms of music, they could comfortably join the acts from the night before and hand in hand ride the camel into the desert sunset. However, they looked great. At least ten people, maybe even more – it was difficult to determine the real number as all the time some came and some went – there were both women and men up there. Women were singing, mostly harmonies, if I can be so generous and call it like that, and men fiddled with instruments. The musical pattern was of the same mould as the night before. An endless repetition of a simple phrase, accompanied with hardly any musical arrangement worth mentioning, so what had to be the linchpin of it all were lyrics, I’m sure. But I was not tired yet, and now I knew what to expect, so I survived it just fine.
And then it was time for Haira Arby. The one who had been giving an interview I’d never gotten to see the day before. Musically, her outfit was better than this band that I had opened my night with. Nothing worth remembering, but certainly better. Also, the lady sang well. I had to hand her that. For the first time I could say that, much as this kind of music was as distant from me as a musical genre could go, it was nevertheless clear that she could sing. And she had a back vocal in the shape of a young black lady, in tight fitting jeans, the only one in the whole band who was dressed in the western fashion. And dressed to kill at that. So the whole concert was pretty tolerable from my point of view. I could already say that, at least to me, this night had quite a few things on the one before.
When Mrs Arby was seen off the stage with an enthusiastic acclamation of the crowd, the guy who was some kind of a presenter at the festival, another one of those many turbaned characters around, came out and without any other announcement said three times in a row:
„Et maintenant j’appelle le fils de l’homme!“
That was supposed to be enough to let people on into the secrets of the rest of the bill. And I guess it was. People responded. Even I, who could hardly utter a word in French, and who knew next to nothing about this music, understood they were now inviting „the son of the man“. It sounded very religious as some devout Christians could no doubt attest, but in this case it could only mean Vieux Farka Touré. And I was right.
So basically, he was the headliner this year in Essakane.
His line-up consisted of only six people, including himself. Therefore, not nearly as crowded as we’d been seeing it already. He was on electric guitar and lead vocal, there was another guitarist, a bass player, a guy who occasionally lent him a hand as a background, a percussionist and – a lady drummer. Seeing a lady on drums, particularly in an otherwise all-male band was most certainly a unique sight. Of course, seeing a lady on stage was nowhere near a sensation, but they seldom ended up on drums. Well, this one did. So I was really curious as to what she could do.
Right from the first bar it was clear that for the first time at this festival the crowd was dealing with a professional band. Certainly professional in terms of skills and quality. They stood apart so unmistakeably from the rest of the pack that you didn’t have to be a musician to know that. While no brilliant virtuoso himself in instrumental terms, Mr Touré jr. did his job on the guitar correctly. Same as everybody else of his band mates.
Except for the lady drummer. She was not a correct drummer.
She was brilliant.
Now this was the moment I’d been waiting for. Now I could finally hear and see a musician who unhitched my lower jaw and it simply dropped. Now I was wowed in the real sense of the word. Finally, I was hearing music. And finally I enjoyed myself, too. For real.
Vieux Farka Touré’s band was the highlight of the festival for me. Its musical part, at least. When I was already afraid that musically this thing would be an utter flop, I heard some good music at last. And so, when the „son of the man“ ended his show, I knew that was all I needed to hear. So I wanted to end my festival on precisely such a note. I was not ready for some Mauritanian guy or other with a cigar dangling from his lower lip to assault my ears again. I owed it to myself that the last act I heard would also be the best one.
So with Vieux Farka Touré having gone off the stage, I left the crowd too and went back to my tent.
This time with a nice, thick blanket inside.
