I woke up very early after the musical night: 9am and it was the heat that woke me up. On the car from Mamou to Kankan when someone asked me how I find Guinea and I said it’s hot they told me that the real hotness I will experience in Bamako.
It’s not really hotter here than further South – the temperatures are not even reaching +40 – but somehow I started sweating, even though I’m closer to Sahara, i.e. drier climate. Is the river generating so much humidity?
I did wake up with a headache which I attribute to lack of sleep (and maybe the heat) – I only had three small beers and they are not strong here. I was lying down trying to fall asleep again when Bogoum my hotel caretaker knocked at the door. Turns out there is breakfast and it’s included in the price and it’s ready.
Breakfast was small baguette, not too fresh, some marmalade, a glass of pineapple juice and coffee in form of Nescafé. At least I could put as much coffee into the cup as I wanted. While I was eating another white man showed up and entered the kitchen and…. cooked his own breakfast, including his own, very aromatic, coffee. We didn’t chat. Strangely, white tourists don’t interact much with each other here. As if each of us wants to be the only white person around. There are no tales and travels stories, no exchange of travel information. Except David the cycler and the two Douglases in Bissau I did not speak to anyone else really. But maybe the man with his own coffee lives here? I really don’t see any other guests in the hotel.
I left the hotel before noon and the first stop was post office. It was Saturday and it surely was closing soon. Took me a while to get a taxi to city centre for 1000cfa and we hit the traffic just as we entered the centre and central market. The post office had closed 5 minutes ago, at 12:30pm. There were men around selling books, postcards and “souvenir” stamps. The books were mainly in French, which was tempting but I thought I still have much to read myself, plus a small book for 3500cfa isn’t too cheap. Postcards prices started at 1000cfa (!!!) each, I had to look further and finally settled for cards for 400cfa each. Hint: National Museum has postcards for 250cfa each. They also have stamps at a rip-off price of 1000cfa each.
I walked on towards marché artisanal. The streets were very crowded and very colourful, there were many shops selling wax materials (which I think is called bazin and is a form of cotton), there were quite loud touts trying to direct me to their shops. And there were crowds from all beautiful and unknown corners of Mali. Ah, if only people would allow photos…
The art market isn’t very impressive in Bamako. There are few carvings or masks, mostly it seems there are leather goods. I was the only white person in the market. Some sellers seemed to recognise me from the previous visit (I’m quite easily memorisable) but it may have been just a tactic to get me to buy from them. Anyway they weren’t even interested in the usual chit chat just come to my shop, viewing is for free, what are you looking for today.
I wasn’t looking for anything and soon left. Outside the tourist market there is a fetish market. That’s an interesting viewing, although a bit uneasy and certainly smelly. I once tried to ask for a photo and I was quoted 1000cfa. This time the sellers were quite chatty and even eager to explain what the stuff is for. And of course it’s for gris gris, for juju. The witchdoctors or marabous are buying it, for good and for bad. You can buy a head of just about any animal there is, there are porcupine needles, snake and other skin, there are full dead birds, including a culture, with or without head. My Rough Guide also mentions lion urine but I doubt there are any lions left around and also I didn’t see any bottles or jars with liquids. One man spoke English he said they are bringing this stuff from all around, it’s not just made in Mali and he didn’t miss the opportunity of trying to talk me into buying kola nuts “to help children”.
I walked away, tried but failed to get a secret photo of a fetish stand when a man came up to me. His name is Abdelraman and he’s from Dogon country. The Dogons live in Central Mali and together with Fula/Peulh and Bambara/Bamanan are one of the three main ethnic groups in the country. Their lands are famous for the wood carvings (masks, artefacts and doors) and villages built on escarpment walls. Trekking in Dogon Country was one of the great experiences of Mali before the jihadists.
Abdelraman was very friendly, he has a shop selling Dogon art and out of sheer lack of alternatives of things to do I went to see it. He also said that yeah noone is coming to Mali anymore although things are safe in Dogon Country and one could go all the way North to Mopti and enjoy it. Needless to say I got interested. The Niger River has some of the most intriguing cities in this part of the world, culminating of course in Tombouctou. Abdelraman even told me which bus company I should take on order to have some comfort of travel. I started day-dreaming of Mali. Of course Abdelraman is a guide in Dogon Country and if you feel up to visiting it he is more than happy to help (and guide) and his number is 75 44 87 50.
I will not go to Mopti or Dogon country although I want to do so very much. I googled “Mopti 2018” in hope to find someone’s track of going there lately – the latest sign there is is from a hotel in Djenné in 2017 on iOverlander – and all I got was news of violence and that 2018 was the worst year on record with hundreds people dead and thousands displaced and all that in Mopti region. And then a headline arriving on my phone, a massacre in Dogon country, just today, over 130 people dead. The news will not get any better.
It was after 2pm and I got hungry. Bamako doesn’t have restaurants on every corner but I knew one. Two years ago when I was in Bamako for Orange Mali, the guys I worked with showed me a restaurant that I liked very much, Restaurant Guaduman. Two years ago I was in Bamako during Ramadan and they only served plat du jour which is usually the cheapest deal to eat around here in restaurants and I enjoyed it very much.
I took taxi to the district of Hippodrome, 500cfa, the driver told me I am Malian because I haggled about the price. He also told me that people don’t have money and use taxis less and less and it’s one of the reasons I struggle to get anywhere for 500cfa now while two years ago I don’t remember paying anything else than that. Now CFA is a currency pegged to euro and inflation here should be close to zero but apparently it isn’t.
The restaurant has grown a bit, they have now seating outside, the plat du jour also rose in price and is now 3000cfa including drink. I had riz au gras with fish. It’s a rice made with some spices, grayish in colour, tasty. I had also of course jus gingembre and I asked for a 1l caraffe of water. I think it’s tap water. I finished two such caraffes during the course of the meal. The heat is strong in Bamako.
After lunch I went to a nearby N’ice cream bakery and ice cream shop. My guilty pleasure is a decadent croissant aux amandes and they have it there, complete with espresso for 1600cfa together. You sit among families with children eating ice cream. Air conditioning is a bliss.
There is a pleasant walk across the city centre. From the restaurant continue East straight ahead and walk on until you reach armed security guards standing on their posts around government buildings. It’s about 3kms of walk. The first part is on the bus road but quite soon you enter residential area with stone-paved streets. It’s a very poor area, with houses opening up directly onto the street but because there is no traffic, occasionally a motorbike or a car passes by very slowly, you can see life on the streets, people sitting and drinking tea, children running around, women chatting. It’s a shaded leafy area and it’s very calm, just be ready for endless bonjours bonsoirs ça va and saluts. The neighbourhoods are called Missira and Medina Koura.
Towards the end of the walk on the left side there is a metal stand with signs pointing to café noir, which in Guinea is a codeword for espresso. There is an Ivorian running it, he has a robusta straight from Ivory Coast called Coffee no. 8, he has an espresso machine and the cup of coffee is only 100cfa.
Once I reach the street with armed soldiers – some of the streets ahead used to be open now they are gate-shut – I picked taxi and for 1500cfa I went to the hotel.
I needed to sleep because at night there was another concert in Tiken Jah’s Radio Libre, a certain Rokia Koné was performing.
I slept a bit and after dark I went to seek food. Next to the auberge Djamila – where I originally planned to stay – I saw a “fast food” joint, which was also recommended on iOverlander. I walked there. There was not much choice and certainly no choice was too exciting, no rice, no fonio, no Malian food. I settled for omelette with chips and I got with nice fresh salad and small baguette. It was 1250cfa and because the owner had no change he told me to pay only 1000cfa.
I walked back. On my way back there was a supermarket, the one with imported stuff. I entered hoping to buy maybe shampoo. I didn’t buy the shampoo, the prices were ridiculous but I ended up walking around the shop marvelling at the choices. I mean, I possibly haven’t seen so many different Lindt chocolates in one place, 3000cfa/$6/€5 each. There was of course Haagen Dazs ice cream, $10 per box. Whoa. Even the biscuits were all French. The only interesting section was with local spices and jams. They had a jar of piment, fresh pepper in oil, which I adore. I even thought to buy it but to transport it without breaking it? Nope.
I arrived in the club after 11pm. There were more people than on Friday, the entry price was 2000cfa and beer prices also rose, from 700cfa per bottle to 1000cfa per bottle. In the end the club was almost full. The concert started at… 1am and Rokia, the star, didn’t come out till after 2am. She was accompanied by three guitar players and three sets of drums. The drums part of the music were possibly the most exciting ones, where the dancers went mad to their raw rhythms. The music was slow and a big part of the concert felt like spoken performance, Rokia conversing with a man on the microphone for almost 30mins at once, music jamming in the background. Her parts brought laughs from the crowd but it was not in French so I could only listen to her voice talk-singing. This type of music may be quite popular here, most of the 9 hours from Kankan to Bamako the driver was playing something similar.
I left the club before 4am, the concert still going. There was a taxi waiting for clients just outside and for 1500cfa it carried me to the hotel. I was falling asleep as the muezzins outside were singing their first song of the day.
Coming back to Maman 