Bamako

Alors, je me trouvais amoureuse de Sénégal...mais puis j'ai découvert le Mali...MALI!
Sénégal had me spellbound and captivated, oh, but Mali. Everyone should come here. It's been a while since I've had access and time to write but will do my best to describe the incredible images and experiences swirling in my mind, now I can pause to process, making me smile widely and with delight and awe and disbelief.
Arrived in Bamako after a short hop from Dakar to be spirited through customs etc, by Ousmane from Continent Tours, with whom I have liaised for a year now, to meet Mousa, who was to be our guide for the next eight days, and Lamine our driver. It felt right away that we were in good hands.
I had no clear idea what to expect in Mali; Sénégal is sandy and has little vegetation, even though it is on the coast, so I was expecting land- locked Mali, that is blown by the Harmattan, and poorer, to be sandy and dusty, too; it is just next door after all. But, no! Mali is GREEN! LUCIOUSLY VERDANT! The rains had already come in and the whole country is lush with vegetation. Two rivers flood through the country abundantly at the moment, the Sénégal and the amazing Niger, nourishing and enriching everything and giving the people four or so months to work the land. The rain is cooling; it is currently hotter in New York. And there are certainly more mosquitoes in New York. This is an agrarian, Sahelien country between the plains of the south and the deserts of the north where the Tuareg nomads roam. And Al Quada. The Tuareg insurrection of the 90's seems to be a trouble of the past. Plan to go up to Tombouctou on my next trip to visit the scholars' houses and works and see the desert and the magnificent Tuaregs who carry and trade in salt slabs that they carry on their camels from the mines. Interestingly, this salt is only used for animals. But I bought some at the trade center, the port in Mopti! While Mali is considerably bigger than Sénégal, both countries have between 12 and 13 million people.
We dropped our cases off at the Hotel Mirabeau and were then taken on a tour of the city. All we could keep saying was "It's so green!", especially Laura who had been in Cairo for the last seven months, but also: "It's so clean" ... Everyone seems to take responsibility and pride in every place we go, and recycling, of every single thing, is de rigueur. There is beautiful landscaping everywhere in Bamako. We went straight up for a view over the city: the life saving Niger runs through and shoots out hundreds of tributaries; it is like a delta. The soil is deep red and there are green, rocky hills all round, which was such a pleasure after the rather flat Sénégal. No high rises, but attractive houses and Sudanese architecture. Gaddaffi has funded some spectacular buildings, including a mosque, the Saudis also; and the Chinese are building a third, much needed bridge over the Niger. Moussa took us around the beautiful heritage museum where Mali is proudly exhibiting its historical artefacts and fabrics and trying to get back what has been plundered over the years. We went to see the fabric treatment: the cotton is grown and woven, pretty much by hand and then, for some special designs, the fabric is knotted or sewn tightly so that when it is immersed in dye, the tightly gathered areas remain white. Then the fabric goes to a place where men spread resin from the acacia tree over it and literally beat it with heavy wooden hammers. This protects and seals the fabric. We also saw how the dyes are made from natural products and how the black comes from Argile, mud. It is all very hard work. We also went to the laundry: the Niger, where women, who clearly do most of the hard work, are at the river washing clothes and drying them on bushes in the sun. We saw a recycling market where every piece of salvaged metal had been remodelled, all painstakingly by hand, piece by piece. We saw market full of jujus and carved Tuareg and Dogon goods and jewellery and fabric... so many amazing sights already but we hadn’t seen nothing yet!