I've been to Timbuktu . . . and back again!

It took a lot of convincing to get Shannon to agree to even go to Timbuktu. Mali, no brainer, we were going to Mali. But Timbuktu? “Oh Melissa, it is so much money, and it is only for 24 hours, is it really worth it?” And I was thinking, “Um, the only reason to even go to Mali is to say that you have been to Timbuktu, it is the only place anyone knows, of course we are going to Timbuktu.”

It is a long haul flight from Nairobi to Bamako on Kenya Airways. It should be, we were traveling across the continent from East to West to get to our destination, and the only place we could have gone that would have been further would have been Dakar. The flight over was lackluster. I am not a huge flight person anyway, and this was particularly uneventful. In typical Shannon fashion, she was up all night the night before we left working on who knows what, I think she got 2 hours of sleep in total. This meant that while I was wide awake watching horrifically bad movies (I think 17 Again was on), Shannon was peacefully sleeping in a seat next to me.

The Mali visa process is an interesting one. When you arrive at the airport, you are able to get a visa valid for 7 days. If you want to stay longer, you have to go to a police station and get an extension, valid up to 30 days. The initial visa costs CFA 15,000, which would be fine except if you arrive without CFA, there is no where to exchange any other currency in the airport. You have to go out to the currency exchange and then return with the money to get the appropriate stamps in your passport. Not a very well thought out process. You also have to do all of this in French, as very little English is spoken. Let’s say that my French consists of being able to ask where important places are located (Where is the bathroom? Where is the church? Where is the hotel?), and while Shannon’s is much better, getting her to switch from Kiswahili to French proves to be a challenge in and of itself. Piecing together enough French wins us good will, some smiles, a walk through of every poster in the office, a sticker in our passports, and entry into Mali.

Visa hurdle down, we head into town in a World Vision car, thanks to a coincidental encounter on the flight over with the National Director for Mali, Fabiano. Fabiano is a lovely man from Brazil that I met at a conference in South Africa a month prior to our trip. The ride to town includes a tour of the city highlights, tips on where to go in Mali, and names of folks we can contact should we get into any trouble on our adventure. We are dropped off at our hotel, where we check in, drop our bags, and head off to enjoy our one day in Bamako (we were supposed to have two, but we lost one . . . more details to come on that). First stop: travel agency. I had booked 2 tickets with a travel agent, but paid for only one via wire transfer, which in and of itself had made me nervous. Sending money to someone I didn’t know, in a far off country, hoping that the tickets would be booked, and that I would not have any hassles on the other end? Seemed like a stretch to me. We arrived, and a very tall, large man in a dress (so not a dress, but not sure what to call this traditional garb, a long sleeve shirt that went to the floor, with pants on underneath) greeted us, had our tickets, and we were good to go. A quick stop at the ATM, and we were paid up and on our way.

(OK, so I was stressed, and rightfully so in the end, about having enough cash on hand. There are no ATMs in Mali outside of Bamako. None, zero, zip, nada, ziltch. We were very lucky to be able to hit the ATM twice before we took off for the North, plus I was able to change USD. All that said, we did end up running out of CFA before our return to Bamako, and it seriously limited my ability to buy anything and everything – which might not have been such a bad thing).

I am going to make a vain attempt to describe Bamako. Even though it is the biggest city in Mali, it still feels like a town. There are some big main streets, but it didn’t feel big in the way that Nairobi did. In some ways I liked it more than Nairobi: people obeyed the traffic lights, it didn’t feel like there were maniacs driving all over the roads trying to kill you, the streets were fairly clean, the people were very nice as you walked around. As a matter of fact, at two different points in the city tour either Shannon or I was not feeling well. In Shannon’s case, a man actually stopped on the road and helped us flag down a taxi as she had a coughing attack, and wouldn’t accept any money. In my case, I had a migraine at a restaurant and two people came over to see how I was feeling. I would likely go crazy living there long term since it is a small town and probably a very small expat community, but for a short amount of time, it was nice. We hit the market, where we were able to see some crazy fetish stalls selling all sorts of strange animal body parts, monkey heads, crocodile skins, animal hair, bat parts . . . you get the idea. It made me sick, all of these dead animals and the heat, not a pretty combination. I did like the shopping at the market, lots of cool things to see and do, and I personally did some metalwork for some jewelry that was being made. I think locals like it when crazy foreigners come along and offer to lend them a hand, I am sure it makes their work easier for them . . . or not.

Bamako down, we caught an early morning flight the next day to Timbuktu. The in country air transport leaves a lot to be desired. There are two airlines – Air Mali, and Mali Air Express. The former is in theory the better airline, while the latter goes by the nickname Mali Scare Express. We were able to survive all 3 of our local flights without incident, although we later found out that our airline definitely has more ‘accidents’ than one would like to see. On the upside, they served amazing croissants and half way decent coffee, surely better than what I would get on a Kenya Airways flight. During the 2 hour flight, we met two kind expat Belgians from London, crazy guys named Karim and Paul. Both in their 40s, both married with children, escaping for a couple of weeks on an adventure tourism getaway. Last stop for them was the first stop for us. As per the usual when I travel, we became fast friends, and they not only took us to their hotel from the airport (at no cost, an added bonus!), but they convinced us to stay there and join then later for a camel ride with the Tuaregs in the desert.

There is something magical about Timbuktu that goes beyond what you see. Maybe I built it all up in my head, but it felt special. It was my favorite stop on the entire trip, for no reason in particular. We had better food in other towns, we had better weather in other towns, we stayed in nicer places elsewhere, other towns had similar attractions to offer (i.e. mud mosques), but there was something that made it stick out in my memory as unique. Lazily wandering around the narrow streets in the blazing sun, fantastical men dressed in flowing blue and white clothing and scarves appeared to almost dance as they moved past you. Children gleefully posed for pictures with genuine smiles. Hassling was at a minimum, relatively speaking. Maybe personality really does go a long way, and I found it to be charming. I decked myself out in a blue scarf and went native. I loved it, every second, from the imams who could be bribed into letting non-Muslim women into the mosques to our 14 year old tour guide who had to run from the cops so he wouldn’t have to give them any of the money we paid him. Even the camel ride and the hokey Tuareg women singing and dancing for the tourists with their male companions brandishing their swords I enjoyed. Maybe the desert has that affect on people, being so far out, on the edge of civilization, knowing that this massive expanse of nothingness was just in front of you, a challenge for the mind to grasp and the body to endure. Like the ocean, miles and miles of golden sea just lulling you into a calmness and oneness with the universe. Whatever it was, I loved it, took it all in and I was left wanting more.

One night in Timbuktu might be enough for any person unless you plan on doing a 40 day overland trek with the Tuaregs across the desert. We left our sandy paradise behind us, and flew into Mopti. Now, Shannon’s favorite activity while we are on vacation: negotiation. I have very little patience for negotiating things that only save us $5 USD. For Shannon, it could be an Olympic sport, and if it were, she would most certainly get the gold. There is this whole principle of the matter thing that I just don’t understand. We must have spent 15 minutes with her arguing with all of the taxi drivers over what amounted to $3 USD per person. Seriously? Yep, seriously. And the thing of it was that there were no options. The airport wasn’t particularly close to anything, we couldn’t just walk with all of our bags, and there were only so many cab drivers there, who were all colluding against us. But, in these situations, I have learned to just sit back and let her do her thing so she doesn’t get frustrated. In the end, I don’t recall the negotiations leading to a price reduction, just a bunch of really irritated locals and one sorry cab driver who got stuck with us.

We were going to go into Mopti itself, but realizing that Djenne was the opposite direction, and that my preference was to go by private car vs. shared mini bus, we negotiated a decent rate to get our cabbie to take us from the airport straight to Djenne. The drive there in and of itself was worth it to me, going past all sorts of small towns, people riding behind horse drawn carts, a boat crossing for the car which almost ended up as a swim for all of us (suffice to say that our driver, in addition to being perpetually inebriated, was not well skilled for getting the car onto the boat, and we got ourselves stuck in the river), the landscape that seemed to stretch on forever, all of it was great. And while we drove, Shannon slept (sensing a theme here?). Actually, it is jealousy. I can’t sleep at night, let alone nap during the day. Shannon can sleep anywhere.

Djenne was all about the richness of the experiences we had there versus the town and the people themselves. It was not the prettiest town I had ever been in, I mean sure, there was a quiet, understated charm that you could appreciate, but I wouldn’t call it picturesque. Opening running sewers and trash all over the place sort of kills it, that, and the heat, oppressive, scorching, searing heat. It was the only place I really remember noticing the heat. In fairness, the mud mosque was impressive, towering over the town square. At night it was illuminated by the moon from behind with low lit lights from the street and homes that surrounded it, during the day it irradiated a warm glow as it absorbed and reflected the sun. Lots of tiny streets, madrassas around every corner, playful children waiting to have you take their picture, and then ask you for money. The begging was much more noticeable here. It can get very old very quickly. But the town and the people were nothing to write home about.

I guess three things stick out vividly in my memory about the experiences: the wedding, the mosque tour, and the market. We, and by we I mean Shannon, managed to pick up yet another child guide for the town, and I was sort of over him from the start. When he offered to take us somewhere to see a women being stoned to death (which later turned out to be a marker to a place where a woman was stoned to death long ago or something like that), I ditched the guide and Shannon to wander about on my own. Maybe 30 minutes later we met back up as we both found the same wedding celebration taking place in the street. Colorfully dressed women, traditional music playing, children playing games, singing, and dancing, it was all you could hope for in a traditional wedding experience. I started out dancing off to the side, outside of the fold, with the kids. Kids find white people dancing super entertaining. Actually, kids find white people entertaining, period. But finally my dancing was detected by the adult women, and once Shannon sold me out, I had to join the group. It was sort of a blur after that, I let my mind and my inhibitions go, and melted into a gyrating, hopping, arms flying, rhythmic dancing mess. The women laughed, danced along side me, and it was great. But hot, I think after 10 minutes of flopping about, I slipped away from the circle and huffed and puffed a bit before downing an entire liter of water.

On Market day, Monday, we bribed yet another imam to get into the mosque. I don’t know many Muslims in the US, as a matter of fact, Africa was pretty much my first exposure to the faith in action, and I have to say, it is a beautiful thing. We are all so similar, and it is too bad that thousands of years of conflict gets in the way of otherwise sensible people from getting along. I found the inside of this mosque to be so peaceful, calming, quiet. God has a way of reaching all of us, no matter by what name you call him. I could see how He could be found in this particular mosque. The light shining thru the windows to break the darkness, the coolness indoors in contrast with the heat outside, the quiet escape from the chaos outside. The imam himself was an imposing figure, at least a full head and shoulders above me. There was a gentleness about him, and even though I spoke no French, there was something I found in his demeanor that set me at ease. It is never easy going into a place you know you shouldn’t be, but I felt quite welcome, invited into his home. We wandered about, taking photos, for about 30 minutes, probably longer than they expected us to stay, but then again, Shannon is a great negotiator, and after reading our guide the riot act for not living up to his end of the bargain, the imam allowed us to walk around for the agreed amount of time.

The market in Djenne exceeded my expectations. As far as other markets in Africa (Nairobi, Addis, Cape Town, Zambia, Maputo), this was the best market I had been to. Not that I bought anything, because I didn’t. It wasn’t really a tourist market, but rather a massive expanse of hawkers and stalls filled with dried fish, fruit, vegetables, fried dough balls, drinks, socks, shoes, clothes, necklaces, hardware, plastic bowls, chickens, hats, flip flops with Obama and New York written on them, you name it, you could find it, and with proper negotiation, buy it. The heat made for a smell around the dried fish that I didn’t quite care for. But I enjoyed walking around, with my camera propped on my purse so I could take photos discreetly of the people as they passed me. We were there for hours, meandering through the hoards of people, bumping off and between people. We watched the groups of female vendors gather amongst themselves and chat, I can only guess that they were talking about the same things any group of women would talk about: men, children, how much they like a particular kanga that one of them is wearing, politics, how unfair life can be. I couldn’t point to one specific thing that made it so enjoyable, but I suppose it was the aggregation of all of the individual experiences that made it so much fun.

Did someone say boat trip on the Niger? Why sure. I mean, how many chances will I ever have in my life to take a boat trip on the Niger River? Not many. We returned to Mopti from Djenne after market day to do an afternoon river cruise. Let’s first talk about the name of our guide. Dicko, Agaly Dicko to be exact. You know good things are afoot when your guide is named Dicko. After yet another round of superior negotiating on Shannon’s part for the cost of our voyage, we set out on our three hour tour. Yes, there was a skipper in addition to our guide. But no Gilligan. I love the whole bobbling aimlessly around on a boat for three hours, I am not an open sea person, but rivers and lakes seem to do it for me. We made a total of four stops to different villages known for different things: boat making, metal working, fishing, and I can’t remember the last one. We got to see tradesmen working their craft, fish being hauled in from the sea, women washing clothes, and lots and lots of kids playing, splashing, and laughing. And they all wanted to come over to see the boat and talk to us. One of the best things about traveling with a photographer is that it opens up this whole other world that would otherwise be closed to people like me. The big camera with the long lens, people are intrigued, they come over and want their picture taken. And the looks on their faces when they see their images is indescribable, this look of joy and excitement and wonder, almost always followed by laughter. The tour ended with the sun setting over the river, happy hues turning to blues and finally darkness.

On to Dogon Country. I really had no idea what I was signing myself up for when we started our 3 night, 3 day (2 full days, plus a morning and an afternoon) trek. I like to hike, I really do, spending an entire day walking and exploring appeals to me, it is the only way to see the countryside, to get up close and personal with the people. But the whole steep climb up followed by a steep climb down, not so much. I have terrible balance, which I blame on being top heavy (they don’t call me Tits McGee for nothing), and I am clumsy, so the up part, not so bad, but the down part is brutal. Takes me longer to go down that it does to go up, and falling and heights, let’s just say I can usually feel my heart beating in my chest. One time I went on a hike here in Arizona, and my friends actually had to help me get down the mountain, one on either side of me, and I did most of that on my butt. Of course I didn’t realize what the hike was going to be like until we met the Belgians in Timbuktu, one of whom had a fear of heights, and that is when I realized what was in store. Shannon had sort of hoped that I didn’t figure it out until it we were there, but it sort of didn’t matter. I had signed on to this crazy train, and there was no looking back.

We had found a guide and a porter thru our Belgian contacts from Timbuktu, and Shannon did a bang up job in getting things sorted out in terms of price (so much so that I actually felt badly about potentially taking advantage of them). A taxi ride plus a motorbike ride got us to our jumping off town of Sangha. This would be the largest town we would be in for 3 days, and the most indoor plumbing. We are led by Pe (Pebelou), and our porter, Bam (as in Bam Bam). Pe speaks some English, which is awesome for me, and Bam speaks only French. After a delicious lunch of vegetable stew and couscous (a meal I would repeat for lunch and dinner for the next 3 days), we strike out on our adventure. Let’s do the high level overview of the trip:
Day 1 afternoon: Sangha to Yendouma
Day 2 morning: Yendouma to Kundu
Day 2 afternoon: Kundu to Ibi
Day 3 morning: Ibi to Banani to Ireli
Day 3 afternoon: Ireli to Amani and back
Day 4 morning: Ireli to Sangha.
In 17 hours of walking over the course of those days we covered close to 70 km in distance up and down the Falaise du Bandiagara (escarpment in English, I’d call it a cliff, but whatever, new fancy words for geological structures).

I could go on and on about Dogon Country, the mystical aspects to the animist culture, the fetishes found in each town, the medicine men, the hogon, the greetings between people. You don’t just say “Hi, how goes it?” You ask about each person individually, husbands, wives, children, family, well, you get the idea. The back and forth of the dialogue is harmonic and rhythmic – Po, O, Sewa, Sewa, Oumana Sewa, Sewa, Ounou Sewa, Sewa, and so on. I could attempt to describe the escarpment and the villages precariously perched on its overhangs, but I would miserably fail in my attempts. In hindsight, I could have spent more time in Dogon Country, trying to understand the culture, walking from town to town, but I guess we are meant to be left wanting for more when we go on vacation.

My best memories of the hike include the up, over, and down on a plateau between Yendouma and Kundu, through the Youga Villages. I have a tremendous fear of heights, and I thought I was never going to make it, or that I was going to embarrass myself with the ridiculous pace at which I had to go. But, as it turned out, I did not take too much more time than the others, although it is slightly embarrassing that Bam, carrying over 10 liters of water plus my backpack could go faster than I could. I am going to chalk that up to the fact that he is 15 years younger than I am. Yeah, that’s it. From the top of the plateau you could see vast expanses of arid land, small villages, the face of the escarpment, and it just went on until the line between the horizon and the land blurred together into a haze for as far as the eye could see. I felt a sense of oneness with the world around me, and a sense of smallness in comparison to the expanse that lay before me. The going down part was less exciting, and there were times when I didn’t think I could make it. There was a rickety old log ladder going down a ledge, and just in case you fall, there was a safety net built from branches to keep you from going further down. Not too encouraging. But I overcame my fear on a small scale, and I look forward to the next challenge that forces me to confront my fears.

I enjoyed the conversations we would have with the guide as we walked, my feeble attempts to speak to Bam in French, singing songs to pass the time. Yes, I sang songs out loud in front of others in English and Spanish (and maybe one or two in French) as we ambled along on our hike. I loved sleeping outside at night, looking up at the stars as I went to sleep, which was more like passing out from exhaustion, and then waking up to the moon as it set and the sun as it rose. The welcome respite of an encampment in the middle of the day, and the mattresses to lounge upon as you are attacked by flies while you wait for lunch. And the pamplemousse. I would go back to Mali just to drink pamplemousse for a week straight. It is potentially the most amazing soda I have ever consumed in my entire life. It is theoretically a carbonated grapefruit drink, but it doesn’t taste like that at all. Not too sweet, not too bitter, just the most amazing, perfectly crafted beverage on the face of the planet. I may start an importing business into the United States just to get my hands on the pamplemousse. It actually became my nickname in our little group since I talked about it so much. Scream it from the rooftops, I love Pamplemousse!

I hiked barefoot thru streams. I weathered a sandstorm in Banani in the house of a woman who owned a massive turtle (I believe there was some mystical aspect to the turtle, but cannot recall the details), watching the storm roll across the dessert, the massive wall of brown as it came upon the town. I witnessed the effects of time and gravity on the breasts of local women working the fields, thanking God that I had been born in the west and had access to bras, lest my breasts would have turned out the same way. I came to appreciate the simple things, shade, a cool breeze, anything cold to drink, shoes (Bam did the whole trip in flip flops), a shower. I saw frogs mating, which I added to the list of giraffes, hippos, and DLTs as animals I had witnessed having sex. I danced in a small village with the guide while everyone watched and laughed. I did all that I could, and wish I could have done more.

And that was the trip. An amazing, magical, wonderful journey that covered off just about all I could have hoped for and more in Mali, and then some. The last detail: I mentioned that I missed my last day in Bamako, and I did. I had become lax in my eating practices, emboldened by the fact that I had not been sick over the course of the 12 months that I had been living in Africa. The night before our trip home I was so bold as to eat gazpacho (for those of you who don’t know what that is, it is raw tomatoes, pureed with water, cucumber, and day old bread). The next day, well, let’s just say that the soup didn’t sit well, and I spent the majority of the day in the bathroom at the home of a pilot we had met at our hotel in Timbuktu who was also the pilot on our flight back to Bamako. Thank goodness for his pity, otherwise I am not sure what I would have done. Shannon spent the day beating the boys at card games, and I moaned and groaned on the couch. And the flight back? Well, I finally started throwing up, which made the flight back extra special. Upon arrival I was put into a wheel chair and taken thru customs and directly to the hospital. Some way to end the trip!

One side note: West African men are so much more attractive than East African men. Not to turn into that girl who is giggly and boy crazy, but I think I had been starved for attractive men spending all that time in Nairobi. In fairness, there were some very attractive expats, but the locals, eh, they didn’t do much for me. But the West African men, bigger and taller and darker . . . well, you get the idea. They reminded me of the men from Southern Africa, who are also very attractive, just not as tall. I feel a bit deprived in retrospect that I was denied all of this wonderful people watching in Nairobi. Who knows, in West Africa I could have ended up married and never back in the US!

And one last parting thought. There are words and phrases I can go my entire life without ever hearing again: donnez moi un cadeau (give me a gift); donnez moi l’argent (give me money); and the ever popular ça va? (in Kenya, little children would scream this with inflection on the last word – how are YOO?). If I never eat couscous with runny vegetable stew again it will be too soon. And fried dough balls! I am not a grease person, so it could just have been me, but the fried dough balls were killer. First thing in the morning you wake up to bad tea, grease, and sugar. It may well have turned me off to doughnuts forever.

Dreaming of Africa

I have this tremendous fear of forgetting all of the exciting adventures and experiences I have had over the past 15 months . . . the vacations, the weekends away, working and living in Nairobi. So my hope is that over the course of the next weeks and months that I can go back through my journals, emails, and memories to reconstruct the time I spent in Africa. I think I need to decide whether I start at the beginning and work my way towards the present, or start from my last time in Kenya and work backwards. Oh well, I suppose I will figure it out as I work my way thru this. In the meantime, time to look at the the old blog(s) and get some ideas.