Bamako road mysteries

We are wrapping up our final three weeks in Mali. It's been much too short of a stay, hardly time to uncover some of the more interesting mysteries of the country and the culture. But in our own small sphere there are 2 small mysteries worth giving story to.

When we first arrived, we spent a lot of time of walking. Our previous house was near the river and it made for a country walk to school, with farming fields and mango groves all around. Since we've moved, car troubles have resulted in a lot of walking to the main road. We also began a nightly walk through the neighborhood. It means getting to know your neighbors a bit (turns out there are a lot of friendly folks willing to offer a ride- walking is really the best way to get to know a place.) It also means a lot of time inspecting the earth.

Just behind the lettuce fields, a path opens up....
heartbreakingly filled with garbage

Sometimes we get to see this beautiful horse

Almost magical, if it weren't for the
depressingly real trash 

Favorite purple flowers we always stop to smell

Almost serene

While it is impossible not to feel panic and remorse about all of the garbage around, there are small pockets of beauty too. And mystery. I began noticing the "packages" around our neighborhood shortly after we began walking to school every morning. I saw them on the main road near the carrefour just before the turn off for the river. I also saw them occasionally on the intersections of the dirt roads in our immediate neighborhood. 

After a trip to Segou, when we visited the bogolan workshop, I had an idea of what they were. Our instructor had mentioned the small sacrifices made at the crossroads, and the hope that they would bring healing and prayers for those in need. When I asked a friend about the packages I was seeing everywhere, he had a slightly different interpretation. 

Rather than wishing for strong thoughts for the weak, he suspected the contents, wrapped in leaves, were meant to send curses and bad luck out into the world. He said sometimes they were left on doorsteps or in front of houses. 

Perhaps the real answer is a bit of both. Intentions are everything. Maybe a similar leaf wrap contains the ability to do harm or good, depending upon the spirit in which it was discarded. What I haven't really been able to get answers about is what exactly is inside. Or how it is prepared? Or by whom? 

I think I actually saw a table full of them as I drove past a market one day, deep in the middle of a side neighborhood as we searched for a short cut around traffic. These days I am mostly content to sit with my wonder a bit, observing without the constant need to seek answers.

I marvel at the frequency. I saw them every morning on our walk to school- someone was feeling insistent. When we began walking to the road from our current house, those packages could be seen at least once or twice a week. 

Most of the ones I saw were not still
wrapped in plastic

Intentions: for the good or the bad?

Another mystery that is likely to end with more questions than answers concerns a little patch of road, also at an intersection- a coincidence I hadn't considered until just this moment. It's on one of the main paved roads and gets a lot of traffic. There is a square hole there. I don't think it would be too much of an exaggeration to describe it as a living hole. It is a stubborn, resistant hole. It will not be tamed. 

All manner of solutions have been tried- from the obvious- just pave over it, to more creative solutions such as placing a palm leaf in it to alert drivers, to putting a board over it- for those drivers who somehow manage to miss the palm leaf, to this:

Rainy road alert

I suspect this latest addition- the tall board sticking up, was the result of recent rains which flooded many roads and would have left the dangerous, deep hole invisible to drivers. Every solution seems to work for awhile, temporary fixes for a determined hole that won't go away. It's as if each fix becomes absorbed by the hole. After only a day or two, the hole reappears, still square, still empty inside, still disrupting the roadway.

Although I am not pro-concrete, I wonder why someone doesn't just fill it with concrete (although, honestly, I think I do remember something like that happening, and the top of it bowed and curved under the pressure of the cars until one day, the hole reappeared and whatever had been used to fill and pave over it had been absorbed by the hole.) I often imagine Stephen King could wrap a good tale around the energy of this hole and maybe some creepy ill effects spreading out to the people who pass by it daily. 

On the other hand, maybe it could be a spirit of the earth, determined to break free from the confines of concrete and steel and other manmade impositions. Maybe it begins to draw in the rest of the road way, like the pull of a sinking ship, until the surrounding warehouses and big trucks are consumed.....

Just a few little mysteries of Bamako roads.

Final touches

Taking care of the last minute details for our art opening was a bit of an adventure. I'd thought the printing of the book was the hardest part. Searching for a place to bind it wasn't much easier. We began the search on May 1, which is a pretty big holiday in many African countries. Or, I guess I should say it is a national holiday (not much happens except businesses close.) I had thought it was true for the US also, but apparently not. 

It just means that our preferred stop was closed. We asked the taxi driver to continue on to another place. For some reason we ended up on the market road, which was completely blocked with traffic. We had just come from 2 hours at the printing place (a momentary power cut resulted in the machine needing to be reset- a 30 minute operation, and then trimming the pages took at least an hour and a half....oh my Africa. When the guy calls and says everything is ready, he means, everything is ready to come and be looked at and discussed and maybe have some tea over....)

Playing taxi while waiting for photos

So we're stuck in unmoving traffic on the market road and the young taxi guy decides he doesn't want to do this anymore. He actually asks us to get out. Ultimately its a good thing because by walking we leave him in the dust, but really? There was no logic behind that decision since he was still stuck in the traffic. 

On foot we approach first one and then another print shop. They don't appear to be print shops; they are camouflaged in between the tire shops and hardware stores. There are very few signs, just names and phone numbers painted directly on the concrete wall. A few say Imprimerie, but it's not clear if that is a current message or one left over from years past. 

Because of the holiday, we are not having much luck. One guy has the machine we need, but he didn't come to work. Other shops point us toward a cyber cafe. When we arrive, they give us yet another location. We are constantly being told, "No, no just go down one block, turn left and he is there, on the right." Or, "just go up to the main road, take a left and the first right. It is there." Or, the classic, "go down one block, take a right and then ask." Ask for what? No one has a name, there are no street numbers. We explain our story over and over, telling the whole neighborhood what we are looking for.

Eventually, I make the call. One more stop and then we just go home. Mbalia has been walking around like a trooper, but I am exhausted. When we arrive to yet another nondescript concrete storefront, I am not expecting much. But the guy pulls out an old machine from under a table, tucked behind a dusty pile of tarps and odds and ends. It looks like it is going to work. 

I took a seat outside, on one of the chairs that are found all over Bamako streets. It is so comfortable (the big deception is that these chairs, which appear to be threadbare and falling apart, are actually divine) and a sweet breeze comes flowing down the street. This is when I know. I understand how people can be sleeping on a street corner in the middle of the day with traffic passing and people making a fuss all around. I close my eyes and lean back and float away to a beautiful place. Everything feels wonderful, right here, on a tree lined corner, surrounded by people talking and tasking and enjoying the day. 

The last bit of getting ready involved a visit from the jabidala to get some henna on our hands. We were performing the dance of revealing newly henna'd hands, after all and so we needed props.

I don't have a lot to say here- just wanted to share a few photos. But there is always a bit of reflecting when getting the henna. I think about women's beauty rituals - henna requires a longer period of immobility than nail polish, for example, and results in a much more elegant look, in my opinion. There is something exquisite about henna. Temporary body decoration. Powerful. Transformational. 

Jabidala- mixing the henna (and a little gasoline)

Taping the design

Magical....