Travel In Mali

Travel in Mali. Where to begin… I’ve been working on this post for ages, and really I probably should’ve just posted it months ago, because pretty much every time I travel in Mali it ends up a story. In fact, writing this is overwhelming, because Chrissy keeps asking, “Did you write about this trip? Did you write about that trip?” You get the point. Or you will by the end of this post.

Back in March, I described my first, long-distance public transport experience in Mali. It was not fun. Now that it’s not Hot Season the trip isn’t quite so bad, and I’ve found some strategies to make it more bearable. But when you get down to it, traveling in Mali is just not fun. It turns some people into Site Rats entirely because they just don’t want to deal with public transport (Ahem, Chrissy).

A few of my traveling stories:

To begin, among other long trips, I’ve done the San-Bamako or vice versa trip 19 times now. Only 5 times have I done it in under 8 hours. It’s funny, that used to seem like such a long trip. But a few months ago, I was sitting around with a bunch of PCVs and one of the veterans was talking about a film festival in Burkina Faso. She mentioned that it’s only 17 hours by bus and we all exclaimed, “Oh wow, that’s short!” (A group of friends who recently went to Ghana had a 60 hour bus ride coming home – it was supposed to only be 28). How perceptions change…

Are We Still in Mali?!?

In early June, (still hot season), all the PCVs from my stage (The Kennedys) headed into Bamako, after our first two months at site, for 2 weeks of In-Service Training (IST). Chrissy and I went down to Bko together. We’d heard about this fancy new bus company, Africa Tours Transport, that was super reliable, fast with no superfluous stops, and occasionally air-conditioned! Please understand, all of this is completely unheard of in Malian public transport. It’s enough to make your jaw drop when you first hear about it. In addition to all of that, they charge you the normal price (6000 cfa) but give you a 1000 cfa food voucher for lunch at the midway point. Brilliant.

We got up in the morning and headed to the bus stop to catch the ATT bus. Unfortunately the first bus was full (it’s starting departure is a region farther up north) so we waited for the second bus and were able to get on that. We made the halfway point in 3 hours, a whole hour quicker than usual. Trips are so much more pleasant without stopping constantly and having the bus invaded by women selling every Malian food item imaginable and beggar boys singing for coins. (I’m going to take a video of this experience one of these days). After lunch, Chrissy and I both slept for a long time. We woke up after several hours and realized we had no idea where we were. Nothing looked familiar. With the rate we’d been going earlier, by this point we should have been passing the villages where we all lived during homestay, which are about an hour out of Bamako. Nothing. We started joking – where are we? What happened while we were sleeping? Did the bus make a detour? Are we in Cote d’Ivoire?!?

(That’s pretty much impossible. Mali has one main road going from major city to major city, and our particular road went straight to Bamako, and only to Bamako).

Despite the joking, I was slightly worried. We should’ve been recognizing signs, and an hour later, we still didn’t see anything familiar. Eventually we realized everything looked so different because it was all green. I hadn’t seen green like this since the previous summer in Amεriki. Rainy Season had begun in Bamako! It was still mango season, and we passed literally thousands and thousands of mangoes lined along the sides of the road, waiting to be bought. I can’t begin to imagine how many mangoes must go bad every year, simply because people can’t eat them all.

Eventually we did make it to Bamako. It took us the usual 8 hours, which means while the first leg of the trip was shorter than usual, the latter leg was longer, in spite of the lack of extra stops. Between the weird timing and all the green everywhere, it was a very confusing trip! Thank goodness our bus had air-conditioning. :)

Sick & Traveling/Bashés

After IST, Chrissy went back to San (It took her 29 hours, including an unplanned overnight stop. But that’s her story.) and I went with my friend Michaela to Manantali for the PCV 4^th of July party. We stopped in Kita, Michaela’s regional capital (mine is San), for a night, as it is about halfway between Bko and ‘Tali. After 6 months in Mali diarrhea-free (believe me, it’s quite the accomplishment!) I’d gotten sick that morning. On a travel day. So not cool, Mali…so not cool. I managed to sleep the whole way to Kita and most of the night. The next morning I downed some Imodium and prepared for the trip – I’d heard it wasn’t the most pleasant. Sure enough, we crammed into a bus and enjoyed a fairly pleasant one-hour trip on a paved road, and then turned off onto an unpaved road for the next 4 hours. That’s right. Four hours on an unpaved road. During rainy season, with pits and ditches and mud everywhere. And I was sick. Good times.

A Bashé

Well, we made it, thank Allah. And had a great 4 days in ‘Tali. But then we had to go home again. This time we were on a bashé, a bush taxi. Basically it’s a van with crappy seats in the back – it’s the same public transport I can take between San and my site. I was feeling much healthier this time, but the trip was much more miserable. The seats were designed 5 to a row, 4 rows, but the seats were made with midgets in mind. Or Michaela, but she is an extremely tiny human. No one else could ever comfortably fit in those silly little seats! Which means at least one of your shoulders is on top of someone else’s, or their shoulder is on yours. Not to mention other body limbs. You don’t actually fit on the seat, so you end up sitting half on one seat at one height, and half on another seat at another height. My backpack was too big to fit on the ground, so I had to put it on my lap. It was heavy enough that it cut off the circulation in my legs, and after 4 hours on the unpaved, pot-hole filled road, my legs were swollen and I could barely climb out of the bashé and walk to the ɲεgεn. It was miserable. And after we got to Kita, I still had another 4 hours on the bashé back to Bamako. At least this time there were less people and a bit more space.

Malians Are Awesome

I spent a night in Bamako and the next morning headed back to San alone. I found myself a cab and told the driver I needed to go to the Sonef Company Bus Station. ‘Which one?’ he asks. ‘Well crap, there’s 2?!’ I asked the prices for both and picked the most reasonable sounding – the cheapest, of course. (In Mali you negotiate taxi prices before ever getting in the car). So he drove me to the station, and I knew immediately it was the wrong one. I asked him if I could get out and ask for help at the counter. Not only did he agree to wait, but he got out with me to help interpret. Sure enough, I needed to be at the other station across the river, but at least I could purchase my ticket here. The driver and I got back in the car and he told me he would give me a slight discount on the price to go to the second place. On the way, he taught me how to give directions to the correct station for the next time I came to Bamako. Once we got to the right station he got out of the car, took my 2 heaviest bags, walked with me to find someone who could point out my bus, and waited with me to make sure my bags got on the bus. And when I paid him, he didn’t even complain that I needed change! (Most Malians use nothing but change. Most people rarely have change. Most banks insist on giving out the highest bills in existence. It’s all very problematic). Best taxi driver I’ve ever had. And on the bus, my seatmate offered me the seat next to him when he saw I didn’t know where to go, shared bananas with me, and kept me updated on where we were and what was going on. Moral of this story: Malians are wonderful people!

Totally Normal

Another trip to Bamako a few months ago I again wasn’t feeling well and was traveling alone. A lovely young woman on the bus decided to take me under her wing. At each stop she sought me out and found a seat in the shade for the two of us. She watched my bags while I went to the ɲεgεn. When we unexplainably stopped in a particular town for over an hour, she explained to me we had to wait because the President of Mali was coming through and all the roads were closed until he passed.

The bus I had wanted to take – the fancy ATT – was full, so they put us on another nearly-full bus. In fact, in order to accommodate for me, two boys had to squish together into one seat so I could have the other seat. And like typical Malian kids, they were used to it and never complained the whole 8 hours. They were so cute, the big one taking care of the little one. They would find ways to sleep, the big one with his arms wrapped protectively around the little one. I felt bad they had such little space.

It was strange, I kept hearing chicken noises near us. Chickens on the bus are totally normal, but I couldn’t figure out where these sounds were coming from. Near the end of the trip I realized there was a box with chickens in it under the boys’ feet. So in one, little, two-person seat, there was me, two boys, and a box of chickens. Totally normal!

Making My Way

A Bamako Sotroma

Back in September I was in Bamako and had the opportunity to visit my Homestay family for two nights. The hard part about visiting is that the village is not easy to get to. It’s outside of Bamako and another 7km off the main road. The first visit I was able to take Peace Corps transport most of the way there and several Sotromas (similar to a bashé but sort of a city bus system) and a taxi home. This time I was already half-way there – I’d gone to a resort for two nights with a group of friends for a birthday celebration. The resort was located in a town I’d once biked to during homestay to go hiking. So I was pretty close, but still had to find transport the rest of the way.

Moto-Taxi

The resort was several km off the main road, and we took a moto-taxi to get to the road. A moto-taxi is a motorbike with a sort of cart attached to the back, and people ride in the cart. They’re pretty fun! Once on the main road, my friend and I shared a cab – me to the turn-off to my vill, and him continuing on to his vill further down the road. I was able to find another moto-taxi to take me the 7km into Mountougoula. The cart was full, so the driver put me on the bench right behind his moto. It was a great ride, and I felt so…Malian! I was breezing into my old town, joking with the men who were riding in the cart. I’d found my own transport, negotiated my price, and was chatting with Malians, all outside of my comfort zone of San or Bamako. I felt pretty good. :)

Getting out of Mountougoula was more complicated, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. To complicate matters, it was Rainy Season and a storm was approaching, but I needed to leave; I had business to take care of and I’d already stayed several hours later than I’d intended. My brother Moussa walked me to the main road and almost immediately we saw a pickup truck approaching. It stopped and the man in the passenger seat moved to the back to join another man and a woman so I could have the more spacious front seat. Several minutes later we picked up another man who also squished into the back, again leaving me alone in the roomier front seat.

I had only asked for a ride to the main road, but when the driver found out I was actually headed to Bamako, he offered to take me as far as he was going. It was a good portion of the distance I needed to cover so I happily accepted. As we turned onto the main road, the wind started to pick up and the sky darkened. Just after we passed the town with the resort, the rain started. I was frustrated that my bag was in the back of the truck, getting wet, but what could I do? Well, it turns out I didn’t have to do anything. The driver stopped and one of the men got out to get both my duffel and his backpack. He passed his small bag up to me and crammed my bigger duffel into the back seat with him and the other 3 passengers; and despite my protests that I had plenty of room up front, he said it was no problem to keep my bag in the back. One by one we dropped off passengers, and by the time it was my turn to get out, the rain had stopped. I was willing to take an expensive cab the rest of the way, but the driver passed his turnoff and kept driving until he saw a Sotroma where he could drop me off. The remaining man in the back got out and took my bag onto the Sotroma for me. Then the driver got out and walked me onto the Sotroma, made sure I had a dry seat, and made sure the Sotroma door guy knew where I needed to go. Again, Malians are wonderful people!

The Sotroma was pretty quiet most of the ride. When the door guy asked for my money, I had to ask how much I owed, and he answered me in super-dumbed-down Bambara, obviously thinking I couldn’t understand much. When I gave him the wrong amount he clearly thought I was confused, so I explained to him in Bambara that I understand Malian money perfectly, I just didn’t have the proper change. Immediately everyone in the Sotroma swiveled their heads to look at me and broke out into huge smiles – the toubab speaks Bambara! After that, everyone wanted to talk: who was I? Where was I going? What was I doing in Mali? And as usual, they took care of me; told me where we were in the city and when I should get off.

Immediately after I got off the Sotroma in the grand market, a man came up to me, took my bag from me, and asked where I was going. I assumed he was a taxi driver, so I told him my destination and he said, “Ok, let’s go!” Again, I was totally willing to take an expensive taxi. But then he didn’t move and I certainly didn’t know where to go. Turns out he wasn’t a driver, just a guy carrying my bag for money. After a few moments of awkwardness, he asked someone else how to get me where I was going, then the two of us walked a few blocks to another Sotroma. The driver told us it wasn’t the right one, but he did flag down the right one for me. A woman on this Sotroma overheard where I was going and also took me under her wing. She made sure I got off at the right stop and pointed me in the right direction for where I needed to go. So by the end of this trip it had taken me much longer than a simple cab would have, but it’s not like I had anywhere to go, and thanks to lots of help from some really good people I saved 5x as much money as I would’ve if I’d taken the cab!

Annoyed.

After a trip to Bamako in October, I left with 2 other girls at 9am, all of us to take 10am buses back to our various sites. The cab driver (who was very nice) said he knew both bus stations where we had to go. Mine should've been first, but I didn't know the exact turn-off so I didn't realize he'd gone too far till we were almost at the other station. After we dropped off the other 2 girls, the driver told me he didn’t know exactly where my station was. So he asked directions from another cab driver. We went back the way we came for awhile before he made a turn, realized it was wrong, and asked directions again. We went back the way we had just come (I'm now passing some places for the 3rd time) and he once more asked directions as we stopped at an intersection. By the time we actually got to my station, I'd missed my bus and the company didn’t have any other buses going to San that day.

I called my friend Virginia for help and she promised to send me phone numbers for some other bus companies. I waited for 40 minutes before calling her back. Apparently she had sent the text, but somehow it never arrived at my phone (Thank you Malian cell service). She said she'd try again, so I waited another 15 minutes before giving up – if I was going to try to catch a noon bus I needed to leave now! I grabbed a cab to the main bus station and the driver found me a company that was going to San - but not till 6pm. I put my name on the list but didn't pay (trial and error has taught me that!) and sat down to wait for 7 hours at the dirty, noisy bus station, all alone with my 4 heavy bags (Don't judge me. We all know I suck at packing). Virginia called back and gave me the other bus company numbers over the phone. My best shot was a bus leaving at 4pm, which meant I still had to wait for 5 hours, and then I would be traveling alone at night, and wouldn't get to San until at least midnight. OR I could go back into Bamako, stay the night, and take a 6:30am bus in the morning with Virginia and our friend Tom. On the super-reliable ATT bus with air-conditioning and no superfluous stops, cutting the trip short by 2 hours. Done.

Carrying My Bags

For this particular company you have to personally go to the station the day before to buy the tickets. I was close by, so I offered to go get the tickets for all of us. I walked out to the main road and decided I could walk to the station, so I climbed 36 stairs in order to use the pedestrian bridge to cross the busy road. Oh, and all this time I'm carrying my backpack, my purse, my duffel bag, and my giant pink plastic Malian bag - on my head. Up at the top I realized I couldn’t actually see the station, so I decided to walk back down to the road, suck it up, and take a cab. Well, the cab driver wanted to charge me at least 4x an appropriate price, which was just insulting. I talked him down, but not to the correct price, and I was so pissed off on principle that I told him I'd just walk - and I did. I walked for 25 minutes at noon, in Africa, with all that crap. The bag on my head had soft stuff at the bottom so it kept conforming to the shape of my head and pushing down on my glasses. I kept having to take the bag off my head to pound it back into shape and then put it up again. I walked past scary motos, around people who wanted me to stop and talk to them despite my obvious struggles, and through trash in the street. I was so hot and exhausted by the time I got to the bus station, but right next door was an ice cream place! I stopped inside and bought an ice cream and ate the whole thing right then and there. The price was almost as much as the cab ride would've been, but way more worth it. And the cashier felt sorry for me and gave me a discount. Booyah, stingy cab driver!

I finally bought the bus tickets and grabbed a cab back into Bamako. On the way there, I decided there was no point in going back to the PC house right away. I had all of my stuff, I might as well go to the American Club and hang out at the pool! So I did. I bought ridiculously overpriced food and beer (the AC is notorious for that) and hung out at the pool all by myself for 4 hours. I was the only one out there the whole time. It was awesome.

Kimparana

My friend JClay lives in the town of Kimparana, about 25km down the road from me. It’s fairly easy to get between our two sites, so we occasionally make a day trip to visit each other.

My first visit, I left JClay’s house at 4:30pm. That gave me 2 hours to get home – plenty of time. Not. My bashé sat there forever before leaving, and then it took a total of 72 minutes to get home. 72 minutes. To go 25km. That’s approximately equal to 4.6 mph. So. Painful. So much for getting home before dark!

The second time I went to visit JClay, I left even earlier, just in case I got stuck on the bashé from hell again. While we sat in town forever again before leaving, this bashé moved at a normal speed. Thank goodness, because under my feet was a carpet of goats. In Mali, you quickly get used to animals as travel buddies. This particular vehicle was leaving Kimparana on market day and therefore a lot of people had purchased goats. Basically I used a live goat’s head as a footrest. Totally normal, I swear.

Traveling with Moose

A line of bashés at the San bus station

Traveling from San to my site with my puppy, Moose, for the first time was dɔɔni (a little bit) ridiculous. He was tiny enough back then that I was easily able to carry him to the bust station while carrying my other belongings as well. Then we sat down to wait awhile for our bashé to leave. Somehow Moose and I were the last ones to load. I’ll give you a refresher course on bashés. It’s important to remember a motto I learned in Niger: “In Africa, there’s always room for one more (in the car)!” These bashés are basically vans with rows of seats in the back. Each row is the width of a normal van – maybe 5 feet or so. And each row has 5 “seats” in it. That’s less than a foot of space per person. It’s utterly ridiculous. Malians tend to be pretty thin in general (result of lifelong poor nutrition + physical labor) but even 5 Malians don’t fit comfortably in a row. In fact, you really don’t even fit. Four can be a tight squeeze and certainly not comfortable. But if enough people are waiting to take a bashé, somehow they all fit in.

By the time Moose and I loaded, we were put in a row that already had 4 adults, plus a toddler sitting on a woman’s lap. We were to sit in the middle. Basically I was sitting on one thigh each of the man and woman on either side of me. I was supposed to put my backpack (which is technically normal-sized but pretty large and overstuffed) on my lap but I had Moose on my lap, so the bag was mostly on the lap of the guy next to me. The woman on my right had the toddler on her lap. I was in a middle seat, which has a short seat-back only about mid-back height that has the ability to fold down to allow for climbing in and out of the various rows. Since I didn’t have an actual seat, I was doing my best to keep the majority of my weight balanced between my legs (I was pushing off the floor on my tiptoes) and my back, but I was terrified at any moment the seat-back would break and Moose and I would fly backward into the laps of the people behind us. Thank goodness that didn’t happen!

This was Moose’s first travel experience with me, not to mention in a bashé, and I really didn’t know him all that well yet. In that tiny, crowded space I held him in my lap, praying he wouldn’t pee on the lady and toddler next to me. I was so proud of how well he did! He didn’t move at all for the first half of the trip, and he calmed down pretty well when he got antsy a little later. What a good puppy. :) But I was really grateful when that trip was over!!

Life is Good!

After finding myself sick with malaria, I needed to go to Bamako to finish my medical treatment and get the all clear to go back to site. I convinced my friend Lyle to go down a day earlier than he was planning so I wouldn’t have to go alone. We didn’t buy bus tickets in advance but rather assumed we’d find transport pretty easy in the morning.

We headed to the San gare (bus station place) and had only just sat down when a bus arrived. We headed over with our bags, only to find that the bus was full. So we went back to our seats. Again, we’d been sitting for just a few minutes when the bus station people called us over again – but they were pointing at a civilian car. Lyle and I were confused, but we went with the flow. Sharing rides in Mali is totally common, I’ve just never had a bus station-person put me on one before. But the bus people know us and maybe they just wanted to help us get to Bamako quickly.

Whatever the reason, the driver of the car was given our bus money, and they started to load our bags in the car. The very small car. With a very small trunk. Which already held 4 people plus their luggage. Allah only knows how they managed it, but somehow they got both of our bags in the trunk, tied it down, and moved the few things they’d removed from the trunk to the backseat. Lyle and I crowded in the back with another man, each of us holding something on our laps, while another man and woman smushed into the front passenger seat and the driver settled into his seat. And we were off for our 8 hour ride!

A short while down the road, Lyle tried to ask our driver a question in Bambara, but the driver seemed to be having a hard time understanding. He responded in French (neither Lyle or I speak much French) and when that didn’t work we switched to English. As it turned out, the group we’d hitched a ride with were actually from Cameroon. Our driver was a Cameroonian gendarme (an armed road police officer) currently living in Bamako as a student -  not sure what the other 3’s stories were; they didn’t speak much English.

It turned out to be a pretty fabulous ride. They blasted music the majority of the way and our driver either sang or danced most of the 8 hours. I’m pretty sure at one point we listened to a marching band version of the Cameroonian national anthem on repeat. When we stopped about 2 hours out of San for a rest break and food, the Cameroonians bought a bunch of meat (a fairly expensive treat) and called us over to help them eat it. “Take food! Eat meat!” Our driver shared his wisdom: “Life is good. We sing. We dance. We eat. I do not like problems. Life is good!!” Then he pumped up the music and danced outside next to the car. Later in the car we were driving along and out of nowhere he bursts out, “Barack Obama!!!” I replied, “Yes, he is the President of the United States. Do you like him?” The driver answered, “He is not a woman! I like women!” This guy was great. Despite the moderately cramped conditions, it was a pretty sweet trip to Bko.

Chuckie

A few weeks ago I traveled from Bamako to San. It wasn’t terrible but it also wasn’t a very good trip. The craziest thing that happened? The bus had a TV and played the movie Chuckie. In English.

Another typical form of transport which thankfully I have not had to do!

View from behind.