To Timbuktu and back, 1: Bamako

It turns out the only way to get to Mali is through Paris, and the best way to get to Paris from Calgary is through Amsterdam. So that's what I did. But if I'd done that at any sort of civilized hour I'd arrive in Paris 30 minutes after the flight to Mali left. So I started off a day early and spent the night in Paris.

Any reasonable person would have gone to Paris days early and taken in the sights of the City of Light. But Paris doesn't hold a lot of appeal for me any more since the last time I was there I broke my wrist. All I did this time was sleep - for 14 hours straight - and hang around the airport. Charles de Gaulle airport has about as much charm as Heathrow with a few high-priced designer shops thrown in. It was a relief to get out of there.

Three of the eight of us on the tour arrived in Bamako together at 9:15 in the evening, Saturday January 22. We got out of the airport about 11:30 after our bags finally made it off the plane and into the baggage retrieval scrum. It was hot, it was crowded, many of the people we were jammed in among hadn't bathed in recent memory, and it was all very strange. Fortunately the great Barou, co-leader of the tour along with his American wife Cynthia, tracked us down and assured us that everything was going to be all right. And it was.

We drove through dark and mysterious streets to our dark and mysterious hotel: Hotel Comme Chez Soi, one of the highest-rated in Bamako. To me it seemed at first to be a little quirky and primitive, with a toilet that left puddles and minimal lighting, but viewed in the context of other places it was fantastically luxurious. And it had air conditioning (and a swimming pool).

Sunday, January 23
We woke to the sounds of donkeys, roosters and motorcycles - the background music of life in Mali. I met the others on the tour at breakfast:
- Ann from Port Townsend, Wash. (actually I'd met her the night before - she was my roommate)
- Liz from Tacoma, who'd sat beside me on the plane from Paris
- Susan and Steve from Brooklyn; she a retired therapist, he a retired teacher who had worked in Nigeria in the 60s
- Dianne from Toronto, a retired nurse
- Anne from California, another retired nurse and good friend of Dianne's.
And we met our leaders and their helpers:
- Cynthia from California
- Barou, her Malian husband
- Papou, Barou's near-cousin and lifelong friend
- Dra, driver of our van.

As soon as we could get moving we set off for the National Museum of Mali and its textile exhibit for a preview of all we were about to see. There was a sculpture outside the museum that we particularly enjoyed: a lifelike version of the dominant form of transportation in the city.

A fine lunch in the museum restaurant, and we were off again to the Donniyaso Centre where a master marionette maker trains young people in art and music (and literacy). Their marionettes are really life-size costumes worn by dancers. They put on a spectacular show for us - my Flickr page has a video I made there.



Monday, January 24
We hit the road early to go to the Grand Marché, the huge marketplace. Our mission was to get some bazin, cotton damask that we were going to dye using traditional methods; the rest of our visit would take us to see some of the craftsmen who turned the bazin into the clothing every fashionable Malian wears. We visited a man who folds and ties and wraps the fabric so some areas are protected from the dye, and another who sews tiny, tight stitches into it to protect it.

And then we went upstairs to a room on a roof where an acre of men with sewing machines do intricate embroidery on nearly-finished outfits. I honestly don't know how they manage to do such work so fast.

And finally we got to rest at an instrument-maker's stall while he demonstrated his drum and Liz (a retired music teacher) got lessons on the kora's little sister.

Lunch at a Lebanese café (all good restaurants in Mali seem to be run by the Lebanese) and we were off again to visit Tantou, Mali's most famous dyer. We watched tied and untied bazin being swihe pounders' hut, where strong men spend the day whacking the daylights out of nearly-finshed and soaked in vats of intense color, rinsed and swished again in starch. Then to tished fabric. The desired end result is something that looks like coloured wax paper, stiff and shiny. Once you're looking for it everyone seems to be wearing clothing made of this stuff.

And that was Bamako. Tomorrow we're off to Ségou.