Things To Do In Mali On Mondays

So what do you do with a spare day on your hands in Mali? Luckily for me the question wasn't really in any doubt as I woke up early yesterday to catch the first bus to Djenne. During the glory days of the Malian Empire Djenne grew rich with trade and became a great centre for Islamic scholarship but declined with growing regional instability 400 years ago.

The town is built on an island within the delta region and a series of causeways and a ferry link it terra firma. Because of its relativly hard to reach location and the limited amount of space the town has retained a lot of its original mud-brick architecture. In fact the Grand Mosque is the largest mud-brick structure in the world and looms over the central square, watching everyone and making sure they behave themselves. The mosque itself is out of bounds to non-Muslims after an incident involving an Italian fashion photographer, a horde of models, some bikinis and not much else. I did, however, manage to blag my way in to have a quick look inside, and despite its huge size the mosque feels quite narrow and close on the inside because of the forest of thick pillars that hold up the roof.

Monday is a particularly interesting day to visit as it is the day of the weekly market when the usually sedate town takes a line of speed and invites everyone over for a party. The large central square is taken up by traders from all over the surrounding all sorts of goods, although foodstuffs of all varieties seem to predominate: fish, bananas, tomatoes, peppers, small local onions, peanuts, watermelons, kola nuts, oranges, carrots and goats all jostle for space. I particularly liked the fetish market where you can buy local remedies which seem to invariably consist of dried, shrunken heads of various different animals. I indicated to one of the stallholders that my voice was going (those of you who know me are probably cursing their luck that I'm losing my voice here and not while I'm with them so that they can fully take advantage of it) and what I should take for it. He scratched his wizened chin for a bit, mumbled a few words and then rummaged around his cephalic collection before presenting me with a cute lizard head. I'm not quite sure what he expected me to do with it - dunk it in my tea? wear it round my neck? or grind it up and snort it up my nose? Anyway I thanked him and moved quickly on before he actually would show me and I might regret it. I think I'll stick to cough syrup, honey and some rest.

Venices

As you head further north in Mali the vegetation gets sparser and the trees smaller as the Sudan gives way to the Sahel. The main town in the region, Mopti, has been dubbed, rather optimistically in my opinion, the "Venice of Mali" by the national tourist authority. If, by that, they mean that it's built on a stinking swamp and is overcrowded then they're probably right, but if they're trying to allude to a romantic town, with stunning architecture, marvellous works of art and an illustrious history then they're well off the mark. It's interesting to note, however, how big a cachet the Venice brand has by the number of times it's used in descriptions of other towns - the decidedly unromantic cities of Nantes, Birmingham, Basra and Fort Lauderdale have respectively been dubbed the Venices of the West, England, East and America. At least Mopti is in good company!

No, Mopti's history is certainly no match for Venice, having been built, pretty much from scratch, 150 years ago by the French as a trading centre due to its strategic location near the confluence of the Niger and Bani rivers. And it is in this respect that Mopti most closely resembles its older, Italian cousin. The heart of the town is the bustling port. There's as much jostling for position on the water amongst the pirogues and pinasses as there is on the quayside between the stallholders, hawkers, stevedores, pushing and pulling their variously laden carts, buyers, dazed tourists, general chaotic scooter traffic, and, on Sundays (as if all the above wasn't enough), regular convoys of marriage parties who happen to believe that the most congested part of town requires a few more cars continuously blaring their horns. This is where people from all over Mali and further afield come to sell their wares: slabs of salt from the middle of the Sahara; myriad varieties of dried, ugly fish from the delta (I was just thankful for once that I had a bunged up nose); cereals and textiles from Bamako and Segou; fruits and calabashes from the south; all sorts of exotic nuts and spices; as well as your usual assortment of cheap tat from China (the most surprising thing I found on sale was a huge pile of beenies and woolly hats). And it's not just goods that converge on Mopti but people too. In one short day I've talked to people from almost every one of Mali's major ethnic groups: Fulani, Bozo, Dogon, Bambara and Touareg. There are also people from all the countries of West Africa: I've met Burkinabés, Ivorians, Guineans, Nigerians and Senegalese, Togolese and Nigerois, as well as the ubiquitous French tourists who seem to have a soft spot for their ex-colonies and outnumber all the other toubabs by about 4 to 1. As one Ivorian lady told me: "le Mali c'est un pays d'acceuil."

Apart from getting a sensory overload at the port the only other reason to come to Mopti is to get out onto the river, either as a short excursion or as a means of travelling downstream. I will be doing the latter and have booked my passage on a cargo pinasse heading up to the fabled city of Timbuktu on Tuesday. I can't wait.

It Makes The World Go Around

I didn't last long in Bamako. On the flight from Casablanca I was disconcerted by the number of people coughing profusely. Half a day in Bamako made it crystal clear, unlike the air, which is laden with the noxious fumes of hundreds of thousands of 2-stroke scooters and old, decrepit cars and vans. The city is expanding at breakneck speed and I think it's finding it hard to cope - of the roads that aren't paved (most of them) they're half made of dirt whilst the other half is flattened plastic bottles. It is not a particularly historic town and my main place of interest was the sprawling market, which mostly consisted of motorbike repair shops, ancient electrical goods stores, tatty stationers and the ubiquitous mobile phone shops selling the very latest models. Not really what I was looking for. Instead I wanted a watch repair shop to get a new strap for my trusty, dirt-cheap Casio that I bought on the first day of my last trip. Unfortunately time is not a very important thing for Malians - very few of them wear watches, and if they do then 'bling' is always an important factor - and so I wandered the back streets in vain.

From Bamako I headed east to Segou, on the banks of the mighty Niger river, the lifeblood of Mali, which winds 1700km through the country on its way to the Atlantic. At this point it is over 500m wide and the last bridge in the country was back in Bamako. The landscape that you pass on the road is quite uniform: flat, red earth covered in dry, impenetrable scrub. Every now and again a dirt track emerges from between the bushes and leads to god-knows-where. The villages are made up of boxy, cinderblock houses with rudimentary, wooden lean-tos serving as little boutiques selling all sorts of things no-one really needs. Segou, or at least the village of Segou-Koro, some 15km distant, used to be the capital of the Malian Bambara empire that ruled the area for 150 years some 300 years ago.

And whilst you can get lost in the smog of Bamako, there's nothing here in Segou to hide the unsuspecting toubab (generic term for white person) from the touts. Here the tactic isn't so much the suffocation that one may find in parts of southeast Asia and India, but instead a subtle guilt trip. For example yesterday I was asking around about bicycle and scooter hire prices because I wanted to see the fabled Segou-Koro (despite it being on the main road to Bamako thre is no public transport) but finally decided this morning to try it out on foot (I will explain the reasons below) and see what would happen. After a few shared scooter rides, a hitch on the back of a donkey cart, and quite a lot of walking, I finally arrived and was given the grand tour. A couple of hours later one of the people from my hostel arrives on his scooter saying that he was worried about me (despite me telling the hostel that I was walking). All very touching, I agree, but when I said thank you and I was OK and wanted to spend a little more time by the river he replied that he was off, oh, and could I give him 1000 CFA (about 1.5 euros) for the effort and petrol. Now maybe it's a cultural thing and it would have been good to give him something, but the cost of the petrol would have been far less than that and I had talked with him at great length the day before and mentioned several times that I was travelling on a budget. But let that, and the Bamako cough, not let you think that I'm not enjoying myself. The Malians are generally a very open and smiling people with whom it is easy to just sit down and have a chat, even if you are complete strangers (fat chance of that happening on the Northern Line). Last night I started talking to a local at a small, out-of-the-way restaurant. Mohammed is a driver for 2 doctors (1 a toubab) and spent 4 years working in France doing odd jobs here and there. He came back to Mali when his brother died and he had to look after his mother (who, incidentally, didn't want to move to France, despite having the possibility - which just goes to show that they're not all beating on our doors). We talked about the politics of the region, cultural issues, his time in Europe, his current job (where, just so that we get an idea of local means, earns a little over 50 euros for a 66 hours week).

My second gripe, if gripe it is - I think it's more of an observation - is that Mali is very expensive. The country produces very little and high import taxes make goods very pricey. I was looking for some Strepsils for my cough, but when I saw the price tag weighing in at 5950 CFA (9 euros - or two thirds of my daily budget) I thought I'd rather grin and bear it (I have, in the meantime, found something cheaper). Even simple services are dear, especially considering the quality. I had initially decided to hire a bike to cycle to Segou-Koro, accepting the fact that I would have to pay 6 euros for the privilege (more than I've paid for a bike than anywhere else), but quickly changed my mind when I saw the bikes: rusty chains, gear cables trailing on the ground, wobbly saddles and brakes that didn't even work. And that really shouldn't be, as maintaining a bike is quick, simple and cheap - the culture of striving to provide a high quality of service seems to be lacking. Currently I'm sleeping on the roof of the hostel, which is effectively a construction site, with only a mattress provided, and paying 2500 CFA (almost 4 euros for the priviledge). And quite frankly I'm surprised I got it so low. Sure, I can actually afford this - I'm nowhere near the poor backpacker I was a few years back, however I can see how this can form a vicious circle: such high prices stifle spending and the flow of money, which in turn acts as a break on government revenue and overall improvement in living standards. Where the answer is I don't know, but I don't think it's the solution. Anyway, that's enough about money, it's not a polite topic of conversation so I will stop right there.

Back On The Road Again

True to form I left home in a disorganised, last-minute hurry. The evening before we had our family Xmas dinner and gift-unwrapping - a good thing too as I received several presents from Santa that I had ordered for the trip. Although it did lead to me staying up past 2am putting music on my new mp3 player (a luxury I didn't have on my last trip).

So once I managed to crawl out of bed I started throwing my stuff together and then into the rucksack (once I found it that is - which, in itself, was a mini crisis). Things weren't helped much by having the electrician round. The full ramifications of his presence weren't clear to me until the electricity was cut off meaning the shower wouldn't work (personally I'm not too fussed about that sort of thing, but I felt sorry for my neighbours on the plane). In the rush I'm sure I've forgotten something, I just hope it's not too vital, although, to be fair, even when I'm not rushing I forget stuff. Actually I was quite impressed with myself when I arrived at the checkout and found that my rucksack only weighed 12.5kg, and that includes my tent and sleeping bag.

For me the most stressful part of travelling is the first bus ride to the airport - I keep worrying about getting there on time and have visions of the trip being over before it even begins. Once on the road (metaphorically speaking in the case of planes, trains and boats) however, all concerns melt away and are replaced by the excitement of diving into the unknown. My first taste of the aforementioned came quickly as we arrived in Casablanca and I awaited my connecting flight to Bamako. The architects of the newly extended airport had been inspired by the film Field of Dreams: "if you build it, they will come". The departure hall is easily large enough for a jumbo to land in and you feel lonely as you wander from one departure gate to another, footsteps echoing in the ether. Our plane was packed with Malians returning from the Haj, swathed in flowing robes amd clutching various souvenirs from their first ever trip abroad by plane: Arab keffiyehs, kitsch memorabilia and, most of all, bottles of Zam Zam water. Unfortunately for those unused to flying the plane was considered like a bus with wings, to be piled high with any and all junk immaginable. Many were told to leave behind excess hand luggage (which did not go down very well) and so the gangway to the plane was littered with all manner of pilgrims' flotsam and jetsam.

We did, however, finally manage to take off for Bamako. I had the very good fortune to start talking with an English student who was returning home for Xmas (his parents are missionaries in Mali) and so offered me a lift to their place and let me kip until the morning when they took me into town. I was indeed lucky as 4am is never a good time to be wandering around a town and country you don't know. Anyway, more on Bamako and my first impressions of Mali in the next post.

December Blues

December has turned out to be quite a busy month with travel preparations (including the dreaded vaccine jabs), Xmas shopping, various Xmas get-togethers and a disproportionately high number of birthdays (including my own earlier this week) - I wonder if there's something particularly fertile about March that leads to more December births, or whether it's just coincidence that I just happen to know more December people. Anyway, a fun time flowing with mulled wine and Winter Pimms, two warm arguments that almost make the cold weather worthwhile.

Before I move onto my rant below (I haven't had one for some time now and I wanted to revisit some old themes in light of a couple of recent news stories) I wanted to add a little bit of information that I had meant to post in my previous post but had forgotten. During my trip I kept a reasonably detailed diary, especially with regards to my daily expenditure, although I hadn't bothered to do a final tally until about a month ago when I was doing a little presentation at work. Apparently, for my entire 3 year odyssey I only spent a grand total of £11,000 (or almost exactly £10 a day). That includes all travel, insurance, accommodation, food and pretty much everything else during my trip (with the exception of the digital cameras I bought). When I finally arrived at the figure I was very surprised, and not to mention more than a little pleased, at how low it was, especially when I consider that over half of that was spent in the first year alone. It just goes to show that you don't necessarily have to break the bank to travel.

It's been a while since my last rant so I thought I'd comment on a recent news story from the UK that demonstrates an opinion that I'd voiced on a couple of occasions previously how I believe that we are, on this world, as we know it, fundamentally screwed. Earlier this week the people of Manchester voted on plans to implement a congestion charging scheme in the city that would have people paying to drive into and out of the city during rush hours. Before the charging were to commence the city would have seen £3 billion of spending on public transport infrastructure. The plan, although not perfect, would have seen jobs created, congestion reduced, quality of life improved and also reduced carbon emissions. Given that an overwhelming majority of Brits routinely place the environment at the top of their priorities when asked about problems facing the world one would have thought that the scheme would have been a shoe-in in such a vote. Instead Manchester voted by an overwhelming majority of 4 to 1 to reject the scheme.

This beautifully illustrates that even when people are educated and given all the facts showing a compelling argument for changing behaviour, with an associated cost and sacrifice, to avert a far greater cost and danger in the future they are unable to see past the short-term hit to their wallet. Such short-termism is the way we, and all animals, have evolved: nature rewards those that think in the present and take as much as they can. Which is why no country is willing to make the sacrifices and investments necessary without others doing the same because the immediate cost would be great, even more so if they are taken alone. Our democratic system doesn't help the situation either as political parties only look as far as the next general elections, their sole raison d'etre being to gain (elected) power, and once acquired to maintain it. All considerations have a timeline of no more than 5 years. This is why when the financial markets went into sudden meltdown it was relatively easy to find hundreds of billions of pounds to bail them out. Amazing when you think that, fundamentally, nothing had changed: there was no loss of life, disease, natural disaster or act of destruction. It was simply that the price people were willing to pay for things (more often than not imaginary, virtual, financial constructs that didn't represent anything tangible in the real world) dropped. Nothing more than that. And yet because its effects were so sudden and hit people in their wallets (where it hurts most) the political will to act was easily mustered. Unfortunately the problems we face are long-term and their effects, if, or when, they come, will move with the speed and power of glaciers, and so we will not notice their coming, but when they hit their effects will be brutal and irrevocable. It's perhaps quite apt that this week also saw the watering down of the EU's objectives to reduce carbon emissions by 2020.

If idealist, socialist, green, responsible, caring, advanced and prosperous Europe can't find the means within itself to do the very minimum required to tackle the most serious of problems just because we're having a few budget problems now then, quite frankly, I hold out very little hope of us not fucking up the world as we know it beyond recognition.

Ho-hum, sorry for being so pessimistic and banging on about green issues. It's the festive season and I will soon be travelling, so that's the last negative post for some time. I promise.

26 Albums Later

Digital cameras are fantastic things: they allow you to take as many pictures as you want without using up precious film; you can immediately see the results and can therefore tell if you're pictures have come out OK; you can touch them up on your computer to touch them up and remove blemishes; and they are a fantastic way of breaking the ice that forms language and cultural barriers. The only drawback with digital photography is that once the pictures have been taken and you return home they get downloaded to the computer ... and that's where they stay, gathering virtual dust. I was determined that that wouldn't happen to my travel pics and so as soon as I returned home last year I set about sorting through them, selecting my favourites (about 30%), polishing them up, getting them printed, individually annotated and stuck in albums. It has taken a little over a year but I have finally finished, 26 albums and some 5000 pictures later (the pic below shows all the albums stacked together).


Now I have the perfect torture tool: "why don't you come round and I'll show you my travel pics...".

Well, I won't torture you, my dear readers, too much, but I thought I'd show you a selection of pictures that I'm most proud of (it's a game of numbers: if you take enough pictures you're bound to get a few decent ones).

A gathering of Tibetan monks at Labrang monastery in Xiahe.

The post-apocalyptic landscape of the shipbreaking yards at Chittagong.

A shaft of light in a yakhchal close to Yazd.

Stopping for lunch and midday prayers in Wadi Rum.

A rather lonely parasol on the Red Sea on a cold, Winter's day in Aqaba.

Ancient Christian defacement of an even more ancient, pagan temple in Upper Egypt at Philae.

Two orthodox Jews watching the sunset at Yad Vashem (Holocaust memorial) in Jerusalem.

Vive La Recession

Unless you've been living in a cave you will surely have heard plenty about the meltdown of the housing market and the subsequent collapse in the world's financial institutions (by the way, if you have been living in a cave then well done on your sound financial acumen in avoiding the housing bubble). I'm lucky in that I am not overly affected by the financial maelstrom: I don't have a mortgage (and there are no house-buying plans on the horizon), I have a job that is relatively safe (famous last words...) and I my outgoings are meagre. I can therefore look at things in a somewhat disinterested light.

Much has been made of the irresponsibility of the banks - how they were lending money to anyone like it was going out of fashion, without checking their means of repayment, and then repackaging those "toxic" loans into complicated investment vehicles to be shunted through the banking system. Now their profligacy has come back to haunt them and they expect to be bailed out by the long-suffering taxpayer. All this has already been aired ad nauseum and I have nothing new to add. However, as the famous saying goes, "it takes two to tango".

The bankers were not lending out money to fictitious people they had made up (at least not most of the time) - they were lending to us consumers. As a demographic consumers are pretty much everyone, and collectively we had agreed to become intoxicated by the dream of being able to have it all, and to be able to get it now on credit. We lapped up endless TV programmes about moving house, getting on the housing ladder, upsizing to a larger home in a more well-to-do area, investing in a second holiday home in France, etc, etc. Never mind the fact that we were taking out ridiculously large mortgages often in excess of 6x our gross annual incomes. It didn't matter as credit was cheap and we didn't think it would be otherwise. We were enticed by super mortgages with low introductory rates, uncaring that the rates would change after two years. We could only just cover the repayments with no thought of contingencies should things take a turn for the worse.

Yes, the bankers had a part to play in the whole sorry story, but for consumers common sense seemed to take a holiday and we revelled in our gluttony. Our interminable keeping-up-with-the-Jones's made us blind to the most elementary principles, not just of economics, but of life generally: don't buy what you can't pay for. Owning your own home isn't a god-given right, it's a luxury you have to work hard for and earn, so I find it hard to muster much sympathy for people who over-extended themselves because they watched too many episodes of Location, Location, Location and became obsessed with Kirstie Allsopp.

In that sense the current financial crisis is probably a necessary evil as we seem to be unable to live within our means then this may force us to learn some frugality and good old-fashioned thriftiness (which, back in Scotland, is among the highest compliments you can bestow upon your fellow man). People keep complaining about, for example, the price of gas to heat their homes, but they have only to put on an extra jumper to drastically reduce their consumption (I wasn't heating at all well into October and probably wouldn't be still if my mother hadn't returned - admittedly as we get older we do feel the cold more and those in need ought to be helped). So vive la recession I say, because it looks like it's the only way we'll learn some common sense.

And The (Abridged) Adventure Begins Anew

I've been talking about it for a long time - ever since I got back really - that I want to travel again. I have, however, been spoiled by my travels so that I can't go off for a simple 2 week holiday as I don't feel I'd be able to properly get to see, and in a small way understand, a country in such a short space of time. So I have decided to blow my entire annual holiday allowance in one go on a big, 6-week trip (going abroad only once a year also reduces my carbon footprint, although that's just an added bonus for my conscience). December and January are the slowest months of the year at work so at least I don't feel as guilty for taking so much time at once (plus I can add the statutory Christmas and New Year holidays to stretch my trip out for as long as possible), and to top it all I can escape the dour British winter weather.

My wishlist of places I would like to visit, despite all my efforts, just keeps getting longer and longer, so it was difficult deciding on where to go. But in the end I decided on Mali as I have not seen much of Africa and it is a country with a long and illustrious history of which we hear very little (if anything at all). The name Timbuktu still has the power to evoke exotic images of remote, esoteric cultures and traditions and as far from Western civilisation as it is possible to get, despite the fact that most people wouldn't be able to place it on a map (or maybe because of it).

Anyway, I've been talking about it for so long now that I can't back out and so on Saturday I headed down to Kingston to find some info on flights to Bamako (the Malian capital). Once I had explained to the travel agents where Bamako was, I was shocked by the dearth of flights. I realised that it would be high season, but I didn't expect to only be able to find flights with Ethiopian Airways via Addis Ababa for over £600 one way. Luckily, after quite a bit of searching I was able to winkle out a cheaper ticket via Casablanca on the 23rd of December that would get me into Bamako at 2:30 am on Christmas Eve and so now I find myself, for once in my life, hoping that my flight will be delayed. Now I'll have to start doing some research and reading so that I can get the most out of my time as it is the one luxury I don't have any more. Now I'm just full of nervous excitement now that I know that I will be packing my bag and hitting the road again (if only for a few weeks).

Seasons

Around the world the changing of the seasons is distinguished in many different ways. And so too here in Britain; but no sudden onset of monsoon rains; dulcet, velvety snowfall; full moons or gophers checking their silhouettes for us. No, here the seasons cannot be distinguished by something so simple as meteorology, we're far too subtle for that (plus we have no weather to speak of - although that has never stopped the English from doing exactly that; incessantly). Instead one has to look at something far more reliable than the British weather: the British traffic. Anxious mothers in their unsuitably large Chelsea tractors, carrying their precious progeny, now vie with work commuters for the limited road space and ensure that nobody gets anywhere on time.

Whilst writing this post I've also realised that a year has gone full circle since I returned. A lot, and yet also very little, has happened since then. As always time is adept at playing tricks with your mind: looking forward a year seems endlessly long, and yet in hindsight is as fleeting and ephemeral as the life of a mayfly.

The Dangers Of A Comfortable Life

There is certainly something to be said for the life on the road: seeing new places, meeting new people, learning about different cultures and history, tasting new foods an the general, constant adrenaline rush of the unexpected. It wouldn't, however, be generally seen as a particularly safe way of life. In hindsight my 3 years on the road contained many incidents and adventures that, in the cold light of day, sound like I was just asking for trouble: being caught and interrogated by secret police in Karabagh, being detained by police for a couple of days in Djibouti, riding on the roofs of buses and trucks along some very hair-raising roads, hitching in strange places (talking of which, it's very sad for me to see that the Swat valley, one of the nicest places in Pakistan, has descended into sectarian violence recently) and living off food of questionable provenance and prepared under conditions of dubious hygiene. And yet, notwithstanding all these potential risks, everything seemed to fall conveniently into place, problems were resolved or opened up new, unexpected and exciting opportunities. Even when I did get ill (invariably a case of the runs) it generally wasn't too bad and didn't last more than a day or so (only three times was I ill for more than a couple of days) and not once did I have an injury (though I did try and make up with blisters and stiff muscles after overdoing it whilst hiking).

Now, in the year that I have been back I have been out of action due to injury and illness more often than on the entire trip. My latest incident was the most embarrassing of all. I managed to badly jar my foot just kicking a football, and so this past week I've been hobbling round the house alternately wincing in pain and cursing my clumsiness. But all's well that ends well and I am now back in the saddle (literally) and will resume my cycling to work from next week.

On a totally unrelated note, and only tenuously linked to the preceding paragraph, things aren't going well in Georgia - it's been hard seeing such a beautiful place being inexorably torn apart by a conflict which, in theory is extremely local, but is in fact part of a larger global power-play. Unfortunately it is a situation that has looked inevitable for some time, especially since the Kosovan independence (see my previous post) that set a dangerous precedent coupled with the rising assertiveness of Russia. It'll be interesting to see how things pan out, standing up to a powerful Russia will take a lot more balls and nous than beating up weak international pariahs like Iraq and Serbia. Of course it's easy to criticise from the sidelines, but I think that the West ought to put a lot more effort into resolving so-called "Frozen Conflicts" - where opposing sides are not fighting, but the status quo of separation, hate and mistrust deepens daily - before they turn round and bite us in the ass when we least expect it. Because in today's interconnected world every conflict affects us, though often in ways we fail to realise at the time, and a resolution which reinforces the primacy of force is a huge step backwards for everyone.