Marianne and here son were Australians. She was a single mother and a music teacher by profession. However, the fact that she was a single mother, or a mother at all, didn’t seem to prevent her from travelling around the world when time and money permitted it. I could only imagine how much of additional responsibility it took to have your child along, particularly in countries where infrastructure was still far from being developed. Some people would even say that it takes a lot of courage. In fact, I don’t think that courage was the right word for it. At least not here. Mali was a peaceful country with very friendly people. Same as Burkina Faso. However, even if you were entirely on your own, like me, this was not an easy journey. Having your ten-year old son along could only make things more demanding.
But Marianne seemed to be determined not to miss all the world out there just because she was a single mother. This was not their first trip like this. I admired that immensely. And I was sure that the young lad would thus, even without being aware of it, one day grow to be a young man with a healthy outlook on the world and respect and understanding for all the foreign cultures. And wasn’t that direction where all of us should really go?
On top of it all, I really had to admit that he was a patient and obedient kid. When I had first seen them back up in Tombouctou, I was half expecting him – to put it mildly - to peck and nibble, and whine and whimper during our trip back to Mopti. This was going to be a hard ride and it inevitably tested your patience. But young fellow, even if squeezed between his mother and our cook at the back of the car, hardly ever uttered a word.
And then, true to the form, just over an hour into our ride, we had a car breakdown. No mechanic by any standards, I had no idea what happened. I just saw our driver get out of the vehicle and crawl underneath in an attempt to fix whatever had gone wrong. You couldn’t claim anyone was too pleased with it. Katrin tried to keep her cool, but you could see on her face that she was getting tense. That flight she and Lea were trying to catch in Bamako wouldn’t wait just because of a car breakdown. Guele tried to play things down but without any visible success.
One thing was for sure. Princess Caroline’s „Toyota“ didn’t have such problems. I’d bet my bottom dollar on it.
Well, trying to make most of the situation, at least I decided to take advantage of an opportunity to stretch my legs again. The ladies didn’t bother to come out. I guess they were either too tired or their spirits were too low to get in on the act of sightseeing here on this spot, tens of kilometres away from anywhere. They just waited with resignation until we could resume our trip.
Our driver tinkered with the bottom part of the „Toyota“ for a while and then it turned out we were luckier than originally feared. Relatively soon, to general relief, he managed to start the engine again. We moved on.
And then, hardly fifteen minutes later, we saw the scariest scene of our entire trip. Just to remind us that whatever happened to us, worse things happened to other people all the time. In the same wilderness, away from settlements and water, we passed by another „Toyota“, with French licence plates, that had evidently just had a car crash. Our driver wanted to move on, but Katrin jumped up on her seat and demanded that we pull over on the spot. I don’t know about local driving ethics and customs, but I had already noticed on our way to Essakane that people usually didn’t bother to stop and check if you needed help. However, Katrin absolutely insisted on it now and wouldn’t hear of continuing on our way. Flight or no flight from Bamako. There could be injured people and she wouldn’t go on without seeing if we could be of any help. So some hundred metres down the road we pulled over.
This French „Toyota“, incidentally of the same colour as the one the Princess Caroline was in, was initially in a much better shape than ours. But you could tell it’d hit something on the road, taken a tumble and rolled over, maybe even more than once. Now it was back on its wheels, but it was all squelched and squashed, with almost all the windows broken. By the looks of it, this sturdy vehicle would probably be able to drive on, unless its fuel tank was punctured, of course. But the damage on it was extensive.
Licence plates with the end number of 13 indicated the passengers were from Marseille. But at least for now they were stuck with a damaged vehicle in Malian desert.
There were four of them, two men and two women, all relatively young. After a short inspection, it turned out they had all been extremely lucky in this accident, having gotten away with almost no injuries. The one who had fared worst was the youngest one of all, a lady in her early twenties who had incurred a number of cuts and maybe a bruise or two. She was the only one who was sitting on some kind of blanket, probably more recovering courage than strength, just behind a bush by the road. But even she could thank God for her good luck, because all those cuts and bruises seemed to be just surface injuries. Nothing to really be worried about. Under the circumstances, of course.
They seemed to have all the first-aid kit they needed for what had happened, so Katrin was now satisfied that even if we left them, her conscience would be at peace. As for the rest, like how they’d move on – under their own steam or towed by someone – it was beyond our power. All we could do was pray. But we all knew they’d pray themselves harder than anyone.
At first a bit shaken by what we’d seen, our good spirits gradually recovered. The rest of the journey went smoothly, even against the long odds of our own „Toyota’s“ condition.
And then, some two hour later we came to a settlement called Tombori.
For some reason, we stopped there for a few minutes and I took an opportunity to get out, walk around a bit and take a few pictures. The whole surroundings in this village is dominated by a two-headed sort of escarpment at the foot of which nestled a number of low, mud-brick, flat-roof houses. The escarpment was rather spectacular, all the more so as it stood out from the rest of desert flatland. But in fact it was just a face of a much wider area of pinnacles, canyons and valleys which is almost totally unknown to tourists. Collectively they are all known as the Gandamia Mountains.
Unfortunately, we had no time and didn’t plan on lingering around, let alone visiting the mountains. All we had were those few minutes that Guele took for whatever his business there was.
Tombori seemed a rather dismal place. I could not imagine what this local population scraped their meagre living from. There was nothing around, whichever way you turned. And yet, on a clearing just a short distance off from the road, with makeshift goal-posts, I saw a number of kids playing football.
For all my thoughts, they at least looked happy.
