Bamako - Never Judge a Book by the Cover

Fish and chips from a street stall in the market, hurtling around town in a ‘bâché’ full of goats, marvelling at the range of colours available should you decide to purchase a non-electric plastic kettle, trying to look like you’re not looking at what look like mummified cats (or rats?) on the fetish stalls, and saying a word of thanks to your respective gods when the only working ATM in town actually works.Take a walk by the river where you will find the most beautifully tended and prolific garden allotments right in the centre of town. Bananas, papaya, lettuce, tomatoes, and mint all growing alongside lush tropical flowers and creepers. Forming a barrier between the dual carriageway and the allotments are roadside stalls selling trees and outdoor and indoor plants. (I was told that you take a plant as a gift when you visit someone in Mali. I don’t know if this is right but it seems like a nice thing to do.) It is here in the allotments where you will find people with more time to talk to you about their country and their lives. The Musée National is worth a visit.

Quick Tips:

If you find people can’t understand when you speak French, try dumping the French accent. I found that if I spoke French with an English accent more, people understood me. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t the only person to notice this.Photography can be a bit of a minefield in Bamako. The place isn’t very photogenic anyway, the inhabitants are not over keen on being photographed, and the police are certainly not over keen on people taking photographs of what they call ‘restricted sight’ but you call ‘mildly interesting view of a bridge’. However, I found that when I bought something, anything, from a stall, I was allowed to take photos of the vendors. Digital cameras with screens can be useful as people often lose their camera-shyness once they can see a picture of themselves. Take a cheap one and expect it to get mauled and manhandled. Use another camera to take the real pictures. When asking a woman for directions don’t be surprised if they don’t answer or even acknowledge you regardless of your gender. This is because many Malian women do not speak French due to a combination of cultural attitudes and lack of educational opportunities.

Best Way To Get Around:

In the town centre, on foot. Traffic gets so congested during the day and the town centre is quite compact, you may as well walk. If you’re heading into, or out of, town there is a network of buses that serve the main arterial routes. Heavy congestion and breakdowns tend to make timetables unreliable. Another alternative is a ‘bâché’ or one of the thousands of green vans in varying states of repair that race round town, their drivers seemingly choosing routes at random with an internal logic that defies comprehension. Once you get the hang of it though, it’s a doddle. (More on that later). If you’re in a hurry, working to on a deadline, got a pile of stuff to carry, or just want minimal hassle then take a taxi. Fix price first.

As it wasn’t mentioned in any guide books, on arrival in Bamako, I had no expectations at all about the hotel. However, after watching two of the hotel staff unsuccessfully trying to bundle nine of us, plus them, plus the taxi drivers, plus the backpacks into two five-seater taxis outside the airport, I was certainly curious. (It turns out to be a perfectly normal way to operate in Mali where transport is involved.) Fortunately the Malian abhorrence of a vacuum does not extend to hotel room occupancy. The rooms at the Relais, are irritatingly semi-circular, but still have enough room for a couple to indulge in some serious cat-swinging. The bed line is worn but clean, and gloomy but clean rooms. All rooms have air-conditioning and fans. The fans have two settings: OFF and GALE FORCE 10. Where there are TVs in the room they can only be tuned to the football channel, apparently.The hotel, which basically is made up of circular cabins, each named after cities in Africa, is situated on grounds beside the Niger River. The area is called Torokorobougou and is roughly 5km in a southwest direction from the centre of town. To reach it from town ask for the Torokorobougou Carrefour, then take one of a number of unpromising looking right hand lanes that lead to the Djoliba football ground. The hotel is next door to this.The food at the hotel is excellent, but I would only recommend eating here if you are prepared to wait for up to 2 hours for a meal (and this includes a plain salad). They just don’t keep food in stock so if you order a meal then you need to wait until someone has been to buy the ingredients. Thankfully there are loads of excellent street stalls in the area.The hotel might seem a bit out of town but actually that’s the nice thing about it. It is a really peaceful location by the river with a large lawn, and a bar terrace from which you can watch the sun go down accompanied by the occasional visiting drummers. The swimming pool is clean and well maintained, and the staff courteous and friendly. There are shaded camping facilities, and vehicle parking in the grounds. Plans are currently underway to have the whole complex refurbished, although it is not clear whether this will prompt a rise in accommodation charges in the future.

Firstly, I have to make it absolutely clear that I did not eat here. Friends did, however, and the overall consensus was that the food was "fine." The menu had a sort of Middle Eastern, pizza and chips fusion approach to food. The patisserie had the usual array of cakes, decorated in icing that had the appearance of runny cement mixed with food coloring. Nothing special, so what?

Well firstly, it sells beer. It’s actually quite hard to find a place in the centre of town that does food and beer and other drinks. On the streets its food or cold soft drinks, but not both together, and often nowhere to sit. If there’s a group of you and someone wants a coffee and someone else wants a beer and a hummus pizza followed by a grey/green cake, then this is the place.

Secondly, it’s a handy retreat after a hopefully successful mission to obtain money from the great god ATM, or failing that but managing to find the right queue in the right bank for changing money. It’s also a good place to prepare for the market experience.

Thirdly, it’s just across the street from a good internet café called Cybercenter Said & Co., So those not e-mailing have somewhere to hang out.

Fourthly, the décor is a stunning example of the fusion between the classic minimalist "you can never have too much Formica in your life" school of interior design, with the more contemporary style of the "but what’s wrong with garlands of fake flowers?" school. The poster of Bob Marley behind the counter reinforces the notion that this space is still evolving, but for the moment the two dominating styles make this as good an example of Formica/flower fusion as you’ll see anywhere.

There is one insy winsy occasional problem with the place. Some street traders who, if they spot you in the café, will let you get settled before inviting themselves to sit with you. If they won’t go away after you’ve asked them nicely then tell the café staff and they will ask them to leave. If on the, other hand, you think that’s a bit heavy handed then you can either buy something or make it clear that you really don’t want anything, but you’re happy to chat. In my experience, the last option is a waste of time and you’re usually back on the sales pitch within 5 minutes. Anyway, it doesn’t happen all the time, and certainly a lot less then when you’re eating outside in the market. And the icing on the cake, for me, is that this place does the BEST ORANGE PRESSE in town. In fact it was the only place in town I could find that did a real one out of real oranges with bits in and all. There’s oranges on sale everywhere, but no fresh orange juice. Even the one I had at the Sofitel was out of a tin. The Phoenicia has the real thing!

Like a lot of buildings in Bamako, this low Sudanese style market could do with a lick of paint, if only to highlight its presence in the clutter of numerous surrounding pavement stalls. Enclosed within its walls are a variety of workshops and stalls all producing and selling local handicrafts. The quality of the workmanship is variable, but the prices reasonable. There is a reasonable, but not unbearable, amount of hassling goes on. The range of goods on display is fairly comprehensive and the market is a good place to get an idea of what’s available, and rough price guides BEFORE setting off round Mali.It’s also a good place for last minute shopping before leaving Mali. It will almost certainly be your introduction to the tribe of ‘Bon Prix’! You will find that nearly everyone who tries to sell you something in Mali is called ‘Monsieur Le Bon Prix’ and you can guarantee that his prices are the lowest to be found in the country despite what his fellow ‘Bon Prix’ tells you. The problem with this and most touristy type shopping areas in Mali is that if you look at something for more than a nanosecond then you’re immediately subject to a sales pitch that’s positively exhausting. I spent ages trying to convince one shopkeeper that some of us would be more likely to buy something if we were left to browse quietly. I did discover, however, one way of alleviating the problem. Find out when there’s an important football match playing on TV and go to the Artisanat while the game is on. At least half the shopkeepers and craftsmen are huddled around the TV sets that have been brought out into the central courtyard, and they wouldn’t notice if the Martians had landed. You can almost browse at your leisure then. Unfortunately, they’re not such big footie fans in the fetish market and browsing is discouraged, in some cases aggressively. Yes, the shrivelled dead things and lumps of stuff for sale make a wonderful photo opportunity but that’s not the attraction. It’s the fact that you are staring at the unknown and you want to find out some answers. What do you do with a dead cat-like animal? What is that ground up brown powder and what do you do with it? Why is that man yelling at me to go away? A visit to the fetish market can be slightly unnerving so I wouldn’t call it a ‘must see’. It is however, an interesting experience and would love to find out more about the uses of some of the things for sale.

Well, to be honest, the first couple of times I visited these markets I hated it. I thought it was hot, dirty, disorganised, and at times disorientating. I couldn’t find half the things I was looking for and assumed that everyone who offered to help was involved in a scam of some sort. There were so many people that the narrow alleys between the stalls were impassable at times, and in the wider unpaved lanes there was a free for all between pedestrians, cyclists, and motorbikes.

Unlike the Artisanat market, here there was no time to linger for a second as you were literally pushed on by the crowds. A few weeks later I was reluctantly persuaded into going to the Marchée Rose area with a friend, and this time I felt completely different about the place. Because I didn’t actually have anything I needed to buy, I found it a much more leisurely experience. I realised that it was perfectly acceptable to barge through the crowd if the need arose, and that just standing repeating "Excusez-moi" was a non-starter in Mali. Thus, I learned the Malian version of crowd surfing by using the crowd to carry and deposit me at the stall of my choice.

Furthermore, if you need to stop for a rest then just ask a shopkeeper if you can sit on their bench or step. They usually agree on the grounds that you become a customer attraction and by extension, an endorsement of their goods. It almost always leads to interesting conversations. There is little pressure to buy, and a lot of the people who offer help are actually just nice people. Can you imagine a shopkeeper in the U.K. leaving his shop unattended in order to show you the way to another shop that sells similar items? Yet, to many Malians it is a basic courtesy to assist a stranger, even if it means leaving their work unattended. So not all offers of help are the precursor to a scam.

I also discovered that the market area does have an internal logic and that "types" of items for sale are often clustered together, with stalls selling similar items. Stalls selling children’s clothes, nylon bras, suit material, motor cycle parts, grain, second-hand clothes, prayer mats, very glittery shoes, and cosmetics all have there own product–specific area of the marketplace. It’s not rigid, but it’s there, and once you get the hang of it then the market is much easier to negotiate. If, like me after just a couple of brief visits, you decide you don’t like the Marchée Rose or surrounding street markets then give it just one more go. You might just change your mind.

A bit scary really. This is the weekend playground of the Bamako ex-pats, particularly those with young families. Couples around the pool were all acting out the same scenario. Because he had spent the week cruising round the country having fun in his brand new NGO sponsored 4x4, and she had been bored out of her brains in Bamako with the kids, it was now his turn for some ‘quality time’ parenting. Meanwhile she was going to work on her tan. This ‘quality time’ parenting involves more than just interacting with your kids, it also means ensuring that they do not interact with their mother during this period. This means that at any given time around the pool there will be at least one man deflecting a barrage of footballs, frisbees, and fluffy toys away from his crisping partner. By the poolside is not a good place to relax unless you have children, or enjoy being hit in the side of the head with a Frisbee. A move away from the poolside at least ensures a reduction in fall-out and, in some places, affords a much better view of the concrete brutalism that is the Sofitel.It costs CFA7000 for the use of the pool and a sun-lounger. So if you don’t want (or can’t afford) a swim then you can drink in the poolside cocktail pavilion whilst listening to cover numbers of western, easy-listening, numbers performed by a local band all dressed in formal dinner suits. There was nothing about the whole poolside complex to suggest we were in Mali. No white staff and no black guests. Staff uniforms – bog standard corporate. A European menu, with prices to match. We had been told they did an eat-as-much-as-you-want style buffet on a Sunday afternoon and that it was quite reasonable. I’m sure CFA27000 is reasonable to some folks but when you’ve been eating fantastic meals on the street stalls for CFA120 (about £1.30ish) it seems very unreasonable. Unbelievable in fact, so we opted for the bar menu and I’m still annoyed with myself for paying what I did for a club sandwich.Despite their proscribed repertoire, the band were excellent musicians. It was good to know that in the evenings they play the clubs of Bamako exercising their freedom of choice as regards music and clothing.A visit to the Sofitel is not just about the pool, the food, and the music. If you can afford it, and it’s a bit of luxury you’re after, a sanctuary from the heat and dust outside, a hot air hand drier in the ladies, or merely somewhere for the kids to play and socialise then go for it. The Sofitel on a Sunday is also a lesson. The next time you visit a country and you announce you’d like to live there, remember the Sofitel. It could be you!

Getting to grips with an unfamiliar public transport system is not always an easy task and it can be made even harder when there doesn’t actually appear to be a system. It’s hardly surprising that the easy option is to take a taxi. They’re not that expensive. As a rough guide, expect to be able to barter about a third off the original asking price for the trip. Sometimes a driver will pick you up even if he doesn’t know where it is you want to go.

The trip will then be punctuated with numerous stops to ask for directions. Allow time for this possibility, particularly if you have to be somewhere at a specific time. If you have a map showing directions then take it with you and give the driver directions yourself if possible. If you are going somewhere in the suburbs then it may be worth considering negotiating for your driver to wait for you as it can be quite hard to get a taxi back. Sooner or later you realise that the public transport has to have a system, it’s just not a system we’re used to. When more than half the population can’t read, what’s the point of having timetables? People just know that another bus or bâché will come along. The buses (mini-buses really) and bâchés do not stop at random, there are designated bus stops that, in many cases, do not have signs. If your French is up to it then you can ask, but if it isn’t then it’s not to difficult to work out where to wait. If you are planning to return, then make sure you know the name of the area you are setting off from.

Look for a landmark that you might recognise. In all likelihood, it won’t be long before a green hybridized van/pick-up of sub-MOT standard will screech to a halt beside you. All bâchés leave from and return to the centre of town. Some bâchés do have cross-district (but not cross-river) routes and it is possible to reach a destination without going into the centre of town, particularly on the south side. It’s probably easier to head for the centre of town and pick up another bâché to your destination, even if it means doubling back on yourself for some of the way. If you’ve never been into town before, then probably the best place to get dropped off is the Boulevard du Peuple. I know it’s crowded and chaotic but the banks are there and so is the start of the market area, which is useful, and in all honesty there is no easy way to be introduced to downtown Bamako.

Remember to carry lots of small change, as the fares are ridiculously low. If you’re looking for a bâché to go out of town then head to the street in front of the railway station. It’s called Rue Baba Diarra (but I challenge you to find a street sign), and it’s a main terminus for the bâchés. Provided you know and can pronounce the name of the place you are going to, someone will put you into the right bâché. As for being "put into" a bâché, that’s exactly what I mean. If you’re lucky it’s got windows, or a metal grill and things to hold on to. If you’re unlucky then it's got holes cut into it at eye-level that appear to have been done by chainsaw, and nothing to hold on to other than the bucket of papayas wedged at your feet.

On one journey there were 14 adults, 3 infants in arms, 6 toddlers and young children, 2 sacks of potatoes, and a sapling fruit tree in this metal box of a bus. The adults, including those with infants, were all perched on the edge of low wooden planks that ran around the inside walls of the vehicle. A rough doorway, wide enough for just one person and cut out of the pavement side of the vehicle with the double doors at the rear tied shut, was another classic feature of this bâché. I was the lucky recipient of one of the smaller toddlers who had been put on my knee, purely on the grounds that his similarly encumbered mother was sitting next to me.

This arrangement involved neither consultation nor consent. The one concession to safety that was common to most of these vehicles was the use of seat belts. After a nifty bit of welding, an inertia seat belt can be pulled across the open doorway to give the illusion that you won’t fall out. A ride in a bâché is a "sharing" experience, particularly in the rush hour. Enjoy! I never took a bus in Bamako, but I was told that most of the buses serve the outer fringes of town and tend to be full before they get anywhere near the centre.