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Archive for the ‘Malian culture’ CategoryAs soon as rainy season begins, the mosquitoes start to breed in the standing water and love all the damp earth in our garden!
In fact, there must be as many as several thousand of the wee beasties in our yard at times: I only have to poke a square foot of earth with a stick and 50 or so fly out! Thankfully, most of them don’t make it into the house because of the screens on all our windows and doors. Nevertheless, I’m killing between 5 and 20 a day indoors, mostly thanks to my mosquito-electricuting racket (like this one I blogged about in Benin). But fear not! Help is at hand!
Or, more acurately, Mr Coulibaly and his mate with their amazing bug-busting sprayer! He charges 15,000cfa to do the whole garden (about $30) but it’s worth it to keep the mozzies at bay, not to mention the malaria risk. So we shut all our windows and leave the house for a couple of hours and he gets to work. For about a week after his visit, we have virtually no mosquitos, then they slowly start returning. Ideally, we should have him come every month, but this works out a bit pricey (and a tad inconvenient), but we do call him in 2 or 3 times during rainy season. If you’d like his services and you live in Bamako, I can send you his number (as looking up ‘Coulibaly’ in a phone book would be like looking for Mr Smith in England!) Other blog posts on mosquitos here. …is all the graffiti:
I was surprised to see this when I first came here, as Cotonou and Lomé had virtually no graffiti. I’m not really sure why this happens here; I think it’s mostly bored youngsters with a can of paint to hand. Most of their ‘tags’ sound like names of gangs or groups of some kind, almost always made up of a suitable adjective followed by ‘boys’ or ‘men’ or equivalent: ‘Master Boys’ ‘Strong Men’ ‘Boston Clan’ etc. Fascinating indeed, though I’d still rather the walls were clean!
In one village I visited recently, someone had written “9 Cent” on the wall of a mosque! Now that’s gotta be wrong (and they’re 41 cents short, it would seem!)
It’s quite different from European graffiti; certainly not as artistic, which is interesting in a country which has some great artists! But I’m not sure the perpetrators of this kind of visual pollution even see it as a bad thing. Just like an African road is a ‘shared space’ (rather than the domain of cars alone, pedestrians, donkeys, barrows and the like also wander freely amongst the vehicles) then maybe a blank wall is also seen as ‘common domain’ and that – in writing upon it – it’s actually improving its appearance? Looking on the bright side, one could argue that it helps literacy in a country with relatively low literacy rates!
Here’s a second ‘African Arts’ video I have put together, this time showing how the ‘bogolan’ or ‘mud cloth’ is made. Also, how the yellow or orange ‘basilan’ cloth is dyed. I hope you enjoy this one too! Yes, Mali – and Africa in general it would seem – continues to possess, sell and display numerous examples of ‘Obama’ goods in all shapes and sizes:
Africans are understandibly very proud that someone with African roots is now running such a powerful country. Almost wherever you go now, you will see small children wearing ‘Obama’ t-shirts or vehicles with Obama stickers on them. Here are some other examples:
TL: The Obama hold-all (travel bag), TR: The Obama t-shirt (not much of a likeness, though), BL: The Obama ‘posh’ shirt and BR: The Obama underpants! Don’t blame me – I just take the photos and tell you about them!! Mind you, even I was surprised by the following example – Barack Obama’s face is even being used to sell toothbrushes, accompanied by the slogan “Change we Need”:
…but I don’t need to change my toothbrush just now and, even if I did, I think I’d buy a make I’ve heard of! Such fun in Africa, eh? Do a bit of train-spotting and take a ride:
Yes, Bamako has a regular (but infrequent) rail service all the way to Dakar, Senegal! I took a short ride one one of the trains a while back (with my mate Clive) and was impressed by (i) the punctuality of its departure (only about 15 mins late) (ii) the state of the locomotive (nicely painted and running well) and (iii) the quality of the carriages – quite comfortable. Also, you even get numbered seats, so you know exactly where to sit and that you will get a seat! Trains only run about three times a week, so it’s worth checking which days in advance!
That’s Bamako station and – like all stations and jazz clubs – it’s in the ‘dodgy’ part of town. Oh, and the ceiling fans look very nice, but didn’t actually work! Of course, at every stop you get the ladies coming to your window selling bananas, yams, peanuts, oranges…you name it. Very handy! It was a very pleasant trip, which we did in just one morning: we left Bamako and travelled about three stops NW to the village of Negala. We had to pay for a ticket further, but this far took an hour or so and only cost a few pounds.
Nothing much to see there – just a typical African village – but the journey was fun and some quite nice views too. From there, the return journey was simple and cheap: a ‘bush taxi’ was waiting at the edge of the village (by the main road) and took us back from about £1.30 each!
Don’t expect a comfortable or spacious ride back, but it will definitely be a cultural experience! It’s not unusual to share your space with sacks of rice, live chickens or breast-feeding mothers! In fact, ours actually broke down on the outskirts of Bamako and we had to walk/taxi our way home! Such fun! So, if you’re looking for an interesting public transport experience in W Africa, look no further! Bon voyage!
I like t-shirts; they’re comfortable, cool and fun to wear! Therefore, I was delighted to see this one, being worn by a motorcyclist in Bamako, and even more delighted that my friend had a camera to capture it:
It says: “When we unite in song, we find a common ground: our love for music.” What a great motto – I agree 100%. Let’s have more singing! Finding this on a t-shirt in Bamako is all the more rare and bizarre given that Mali is a French-speaking country and this is in English! I wonder if the owner even knows what it means… By the way, I also blogged about t-shirts here, here and here. Have a look! (a) For decoration. Well, I’m afraid many of Bamako’s 1,000s of motorcyclists would, in fact, opt for any of the above answers but (b). Have a look:
Yes, a significant proportion of motos in the city will have their mirrors pushed up together like this, rendering them useless as rear-view mirrors and thereby jeopardizing their road-safety. I asked why this was the case and someone told me it was because men consider mirrors to be a ‘girly’ accessory and so any ‘macho man’ would not want to be seen looking in one whilst riding his motorbike! Whatever the reason, I am sure that lives could be saved and injuries avoided if folk started to use these mirrors for their designed intention!
Now, this might not mean anything to folk from other climes, but for those of us who have lived in this part of the world, the term ‘WAWA’ is quite common (and, incidentally, probably not a great name for a hotel).
Let me explain: * When, for example, the electricity board rips out your meter because it claims your bill should be higher than the reading says: W.A.W.A.! * Or when the plumbers come to mend the feed pipe to the toilet, but cannot find the stop cock, so turn on every tap in your house in order to reduce the pressure enough to do the job (thereby flooding your bathroom to 4″ deep!) W.A.W.A.! * Or if I go to the post office to pick up a parcel and they refuse to give it to me – why? Because it’s addressed to me and my wife, and she didn’t come! W.A.W.A.! * Or when you drive your Land Rover through a HUGE puddle in the road, only to discover there’s an open drain hidden beneath the water and two of your wheels are plunged into it before you can say W.A.W.A.! So, are you dying to know the significance of this catchy little word? Well, it stands for: West and comes in very useful in frustrating situations. Click here and here for a couple of other bloggers’ take on the phrase. Now, I don’t want to be too negative about the place; West Africa has many charms and great people. Hearty handshakes, tasty food, fun roads to drive on, great costumes, plenty of sunshine, wonderful languages and warm smiles are just some of the positive aspects of life here. If you want a more neutral acronym to use on such occasions, then I’d recommend ‘T.I.A.’, meaning ‘This Is Africa’, and, consequently, ANYTHING can happen (and invariably does). Hey, take a closer look at that photo again – there’s a Big Momma greeting us from behind the sign:
And the thing is, I only noticed her when editing the photo for this blog post! Looks like she had the last laugh, then! After all, THIS IS AFRICA!
Bamako has to be one of the most musical cities in Africa! There’s always something musical going on and numerous venues scattered around the city, where you can hear immensely gifted musicians playing on a regular basis! Furthermore, folk are generally happy if you sit down and jam along with them (although it probably helps if you can actually play!) So, here I am having ‘fun’ and being musical outside the French Cultural Centre in Bamako a while back, with Monsieur Coulibably and Monsieur Traoré (at least, I think those were their names!)
If you want to find some live music, then the French Cultural Centre is a good place to start. Other venues include the ‘Blonba’ in Faladie (where I saw Toumani Diabaté), ‘Le Diplomate’ on the Route de Coulikoro and the Palais de la Culture in Badalabougou Ouest (near the old bridge). I was at a FREE concert at the CCF the other night and various folk ran up on stage and began dancing in front of the artists performing! This is very common in W Africa and not particularly frowned-upon like is would be in the West. Lots of fun too (although I’ve never plucked up the courage to do it yet…) Happy music-making! Is one of Mali’s most prestigious virtuoso Kora players, and I got to see him perform in Bamako recently:
The photo above was taken at said concert, which was a great occasion with some fab playing! His entourage was a band of around 15 people, including guitars, djembe, tamanin, vocalists and the balafon (seen at the bottom of the picture). The only minor disappointment was that, given the size of the band, Toumani himself played relatively few solos, even though most of us had come to here him! Great gig, nonetheless, and definitely worth seeing. I was surprised, I must confess, to discover that Toumani was only born in 1965, as he seemed much older than that to me. Find out more about him on Wikipedia: here and also click here for his ‘My Space’ page. UK readers – I see he’s doing a few concerts in ‘Old Blighty’ in the next couple of months, notably: Belfast on Wednesday 5th May Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay significantly more than the £4.30 (3000 cfa) it cost me to see him in his home country, but still worthwhile if you can afford it! Finally, here’s a vid of Toumani in action – amazing stuff! Thanks for reading. |
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