Il y a beaucoup de chaleur a Bamako...

Bamako is filled with color, sweat, markets, mangos, tired and overworked women who don't bother to smile and absolutely mad young men who think about nothing but money and white women. They are not the only men in Bamako. But on some hot, frustrating days (which are the only ones I get to see) it seems like Malian men come in town types: soft and loud. The crazy, young, crazies are clearly the minority, but they are an active minority, cruising around the streets looking for trouble. Trouble isn't very hard to find this time of year.

It is a tough town for two pretty young Tubabs fresh off the train from Senegal. We have left the Lion of Hospitality. Gone are the music, smiles and laughter of Dakar. Instead virtually all interactions leave that dirty aftertaste which is a special mix of desperation, ego, greed, pride, misogyny, ignorance and a perchance for violence. When you are called a Tubab in Bamako, it is not just a comment on the color of your skin – the word is spit at you. These men have no shame – but they also cannot handle loosing control or being proved wrong or being called a liar even as they continue to lie, intimidate and abuse you.

It must be even worse now in the hot season when there are few tourists, no work and when everyone is tired and angry. The men roam the streets like rabid dogs looking for a Tubab to bite.

I spend four days in Bamako with my German friend Helga staying with a family in Hamdalie. In those sweaty days, I was stalked, grabbed, screamed at, and threatened. One particular crazy followed me all over town starting fights with anyone I might appeal to for help, trying to hit me with his motorcycle, then screaming, crying. I have bruises on my arm and the last time I saw him, he chased me for five blocks yelling all sorts of abuses at me in Pulle and Bambara and French. All the time waving his registered guide card in the air. As if that gives anyone permission to hit and abuse white women. Eventually he spit in my face and drove away. It was quite a climax.

I suppose it is good to have another person spit in your face completely unprovoked. Makes you develop a certain sense of humility and bewilderment. Things remain very surreal until I leave Mali.

It makes a girl tired, and these run-ins ruin my experience of the city. I can't even go out to hear the music this town is famous for. By Monday, I just want to escape. Tuesday morning I jump into a 16 hour bus ride to Mopti hoping things will change. The bus ride leave sweat stains on my clothing. You can't drive away from 45 degree weather. The heat is unbearable.

West Africa Retrospective

MOROCCO (April, 2006):

Lost in Fez - Finding myself to be no longer in India, I proceed to orient through the disorientation of the winding alleyways and markets of Fez's surreal medina.

Mathematics - Hassan teaches us all a lesson in humanistic calculus.

Into the desert - from Marrakesh to the mountains to the desert. (with a slideshow link)

More Questionable Nomads - The sand dunes and desert of Merzouga are a sad and beautiful fantasy.

Sweet Essaouira - Another slideshow with photos of the lovely seaside town where I took time to rest, write and drink espresso.

South into the Sahara - Leaving Euro Disney Morrocco and entering the actual desert en route to the border with Mauritania.

MAURITANIA AND SENEGAL (May, 2006)

South into the Sahara - Leaving the cafes and tourists of Morocco behind for a dustier Sahara. But the buses keep running and so do I.

Mauritanian Nomads - The family I should have stayed with but didn't. Arrived and realized my heart wasn't there.

Lured to Senegal - Avoiding my sandy future for the meantime and instead hugging the coast. I an alternate route through Senegal, lured by music, fish, dancing and the promise of a doctor.

The Infamous Dakar-Bamako Express (Dakar part 1) - The joys of waiting in Dakar for a train with no schedule.

Battling the Chef de Gare (Dakar part 2) - More days or waiting and a day of victory against all odds and custom.

Travelling first class in Africa - Pre-photos of my luxurious compartment. This is what eighty dollars will buy you in Africa.

click on photo to see a slide show of photos from Senegal...

MALI (MAY 2006)

Il y a beaucoup de chaleur a Bamako - A difficult first few days in the capital.

Unwelcome - A determination to find beauty in the streets of Bamako despite my aching belly.

Trying to get to Timbuctou - Even a crashed jeep and bags of fish can't keep us from the desert.

The saddest village in my desert - My medic training leaves my unprepared to deal with five year old victims of female circumscision. I decide not to stay in my Touerg village.

Dry season - Waiting for the rains.

Leaving Afrika - a slide show and an apology.

Homes - A few thoughts about imagined community and isolation.

Trading Camels for Caravans - Reflections on leaving Africa, movement, illness and heading to Ireland

travelling first class in Africa

battling the chef de gare. (Dakar part 2)

I relinquish all control over my movement here.



In the meantime, I meet some other Tubabs living in Dakar who want to make sure that I see the city and have some fun before leaving for scorching Mali. This mostly involves cold beer, swimming, soccer, and music. I am glad to be out of Mauritania and back in a country where people dance and smile.

I meet the first batch of Tubabs at Chez Dany on the night of the bar fight that gets Tony punched in the face. Things are a little less serene that night. Things are very silly that night.

Ben, the other Californian is drunk and dancing. He is speaking in Wallof and declaring his love for the city and all its inhabitants. It is good to meet people who love where they are living. For the next two days he shows me around town and takes me his school – Ecole de la Rue, where he teaches English. He showed up in Dakar seven months ago not knowing anyone, not speaking a word of French or Wollof and having never taught before. Now I watch him singing and dancing, switching between English, French and Wollof to explain grammar, to keep his girls awake and to make everyone laugh.

We walk all over town and drink café touba in tents, while he teaches me about Muslim mystics, dancing beggars, these children everywhere with their tin cans asking for sugar for their marabou, of going on pilgrimage to the African mecca and of making a life here.

My days are filled with walking, little chores, visits to the beach, bottles of cold beer, bags of bissap juice, and a steady diet of haricot and chocolate sandwiches and bananas. I swim in the ocean, hear lots of live music, stay up late talking with Danny and almost forget that I'm waiting to leave.

Danny and I leave the city and spend the weekend in a rented house on a beautiful beach with ten French kids. Back in Dakar on Monday morning; everything feels different. I am hopeful. I think I am going places. Danny takes off class and we go see that troublesome chef de gare, the only man who can actually get me on this train.

We wake early, make our banana and chocolata sandwiches, take café touba au lait in a tent near the corner truck stop, buy some chewing sticks and walk into town through the perpetual rush hour. How can the chef de gare say no to us when we are chewing sticks? Impossible.

We arrive, the boss is in his office. We talk, I get excited. He gives us a story, come tomorrow in the afternoon to buy a ticket, the train will leave Wednesday. Yes, yes, the train is here. No it won't leave before Wednesday. Vraiment. Absolutement.

I'm excited. I begin to dance. We take a little walk and come back.

The chef asks us to wait some more. He's decided he likes us now, because he picks up the phone to call someone. It's a long phone call. He makes another.

Okay, buy your tickets now. The train leaves tomorrow at one o'clock.
Vraiment? Vraiment. Absolutement? Oui.
Is the window open?
Okay, come, we'll open the window.

We find the ticket seller and make him open the window. A sign is posted with a day and a time. It is all very official. An hour later, I walk out of the station with a ticket in my hand, a stick in my mouth, the happiest toubab in Dakar.

the infamous dakar - bamako express (Dakar part 1)

I am in Dakar waiting to buy a train ticket for a train with no departure date. There is no schedule for the Bamako – Dakar train. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Unfortunately, everyone is very happy to give answers. It's all very absurd. But the enormous amount of mystery and drama surrounding this train is reason enough for me to stick around for a few days. I am not trying to spend three days in a rusting puegot with eight people driving to Bamako. Though, it would be considerably faster. Again, it's not about the time, but the movement.

"Excuse me, do you know when the train leaves for Bamako?"
"It just left a few days ago."
"What day?"
"I don't know, a few days ago. You missed it."
"Won't it leave again?"
"Yes, but it has to come back first."
"Of course, but what day does it leave next week?"
"Depends on when it returns. It can't leave before it gets back."
"I suppose not. Well, do you know when it is supposed to come back from Bamako?"
"How can I know when it will leave Bamako if it hasn't arrived yet?"
"Well, when did it leave here?"
"I don't know, a few days ago, just after it arrived."

Everyday I go to the station and have some variation of the same conversation.
On other trips, I am told that the train will leave in two days, that it is still in Bamako, that it has already arrived, that it already just left last night… all by men in uniforms with big smiles and sticks in their mouths.

It's perfect African logic, of course. But I never leave the train station more sure of things than when I arrived.

I can't buy a ticket until the window opens. The window opens when the train returns and is going to leave again. I find out when the train gets back from the guy who works who works behind the little window. He'll sell me a ticket if he is there, and I'm there and it's the right day and he feels like it.

But, there are worse places to wait for an imaginary train.

I begin to wonder if the only way to get on this train is to set up a blue tarp in the station, camp out, and sell bags of peanuts.

lured to Senegal

After the allure of that first Senegalese wedding, a few more uncomfortable run-ins, continued sickness of an undramadic but unimproved sort, and general indecision, I end up not heading straight overland into Mali as intended and instead find myself jumping into a car bound for Senegal.

I am just not ready to leave the ocean just yet. I need to do a little dancing, eat some more fish and see a doctor. Senegal helps be do all of these things with grace. Landing in Dakar for a few days also gives me a chance to sort out some embassy paperwork, write more and try to get myself a seat on the infamous Dakar-Bamako train.

I'm in a bushtaxi, waiting in the Rosso bound lot in Nouakchott for one more person. We leave when the car is full. Anytime a taxi arrives, all the boys jump up and fight for the new passenger. We are three partially filled cars. After an hour of waiting, a taxi pulls up and body jumps out completly covered up in a dusty black turban. But, I know those runnign sneakers...

Either some toureg has robbed my poor Dutch friend Merijn, or it is the devil himself. I jump out of the cab and fight with the rest of the touts who are only mildly suprised when I grab the turbaned man by the shoulders and kiss him on the cheeks. I hurry him into our car and off we go.

During the next ten hours of driving and then waiting at the border for the guard to return the passports without a bribe (after five hours of waiting, he is convinced we are not going to pay up) I am happy indeed to have a fellow traveller to talk to.

The ride is long. We are stopped every twenty minutes or so at police checkpoints where our sassy smuggling carmates pay off the police each time. I still wonder what these ladies had in those sacks on the roof. At one stop the policeman comes over and appologizes to Merijn and I after pocketing the cash. It adds up pretty quickly and soon the girls are asking us for cash to bribe the police with.

Merijn and I decide to stop in St.Louis for a day or two before continuing on the Dakar. The town is beautiful and lush with a crumbling colonial charm flavor. But the days pass quickly with hot showers, good food, a real bed. I even manage to catch a Yossou N'Dour concert and visit a famous wildlife reserve where I see nothing but hundreds of dead fish, a cat skeleton on the beach and the carcass of a goat.

mauritanian nomads

south into the sahara

The move into Western Sahara, with forty hours of desert outside my bus window does wonders to clear my head. It is a quick exit from Euro Disney Morocco. I travel bus buses all the way to Ah Dakhla. Stopping rarely, seeing little but sand and truck stops. Agadir, Tiznit, Laayoune... People get on the bus and leave. I hold my ground watching as couples say goodbye, husbands allow thier wives to leave to visit a sister or attend a wedding, boys leave thier families to join the army. No one goes to Western Sahara without a reason. There is really nothing to see but sand and sun and the occasionsal military compound or prison. Outside of Laayoune, we stop at what I think is another customary military checkpoint. But I start asking questions when we are detained for over an hour. It seems we are picking up new passengers. All the women move to the front of the bus and I am left all alone in the back with three empty rows behind me. A while later, a group of five convicts board the bus handcuffed together, along with two police escorts with thier shiny white patent leather gun holsters. I am suddenly less interesting to the police when we stop at checkpoints and we raise an eyebrow or two at the canteens where we stop to eat from then on.


There is something remarkable about this place where the sand of the Sahara reaches the ocean. I don't know if I am looking at dunes or the beach, at the blue of the ocean or the sky on the horizon. For hours we drive along a cliff just above the water and I strain to make out the waves. I am happy to wander through these dusty towns - if only for a day or two.

As I move south, the land gets drier,
people become darker,
the light becomes sharper,
the tea becomes stronger.

I don't stay in Noudhibou for long enough.

Downtown Noudhibou

Noudhibou is a small, dusty border town full of beat up mercedes making border runs, Arab businessmen with thier flash cell phones, Senegalese boys sitting on street corners listening to Tupac, Arab women covered in meters and meters of beige fabric while the Senegalese girls strut around with braided hair and beautiful wrapps in bright fabric flashing smiles at everyone. Its like I haven't seen sunshine in days. I'm captivated.

During my stay in Mauritania I am overwhelmed by hospitality, but there is always something a bit unwholesome about things. Everyone wants to be my guide, my driver, to take me to a friend's place. It is always like this, I know. Maybe it is because I begin to fall sick right about the same time that social graces begin to strain. I am tired. I come to Mauritania thinking that I could stay a month. I look and look and look. People welcome me into thier tents, thier homes. I am offered rides and information. But nothing feels right. The place doesn't grab me and I continue moving down the coast never stopping for long in one place, never heading east further into the desert.

Still, there is never a dull moment. I am taken to two weddings - one Senegalese and one Mauritanian. I am brought home often; I eat steaming couscous and millet out of huge basins with great awkwardness and western hands that burn easily. I drink dozens of foamy glasses of tea with drivers, shopkeepers, herders, grandmothers, and a herd of new suitors. I get driven around for two days by an insane man named Moulai who spent the past three years living in Brooklyn and sort of speaks English. I am his immediate best friend and he takes me everywhere - a situation that would be better if he weren't possibly the most unreliable, bipolar, fierce, ego inflated, jackass I have ever met. One minute he loves you, the next he has tossed you out on the side of the road to flag down another ride in the middle of nowhere. literally. amazing. Two days later, he is convinced we are going to get married. He is a small nightmare, the only consolation is that everyone knows it and his friends are helpful and sympathetic. I play along for a few days, then decide to leave town.

Mauritanian tents along the road to Nouakchott