The food was super, among my best French meals ever (not too expensive – about $6 with a drink), and service was gracious. One of the staff took me for a terrific night out at Bambou (walking distance from the hotel), a less sophisticated setting than Zaka in Ouaga and the band was less polished – but much more dynamic in drumming showmanship, that had the audience cheering and some breaking into dance. For tourist attractions, there was an impressive grand mosque in the Sudanese style, a small “old village” with a lot of the traditional animist culture (it’s best to take on one of the youths who offer guide services for CFA100, though they only speak French), and an open-air market (though by then I was rather “marche”-d out!).
I must remark on the travel between Mali and Burkina. My overnight trip from Sevare to Bobo has got to be one of my most gruelling bus rides in my travels, taking about 13 ½ hours. In the first place, the bus – or minibus, actually – whose Mopti office had promised to pass for me at my Sevare hotel sometime between 5 and 6 pm, came at 7:30! (I was just on the point of contracting a hotel room for another night!) It packed the passengers wall-to-wall four abreast (fortunately, they seated me in the front row though I was the last to be boarded - I suspect in deference to my being a tourist!). I was the only non-African on the minibus, and those around didn’t speak any English; it was only at one of the later stops that I found someone, a Nigerian, I could speak English with. The most tedious thing about the trip was the exasperating number of stops – for a rest or a bite, to allow Muslim passengers to kneel in prayer toward Mecca, to negotiate with the repeated police roadblocks in both Mali and Burkina (apparently, the bus driver shelled out bribes at each checkpoint in the hope that the police would not decide to call for a random baggage inspection – which worked most of the time, but not always, in which case we were in for another delay). Then, of course, there was the border, where, in the middle of the night, we stumbled out to blearily queue at Mali immigration, then Burkina immigration and, separately, quarantine, and (strangely, 26 km farther down) Burkina customs, when all baggage had to be taken down, opened for a cursory inspection, then reloaded. (I must say that all along the line the officials were quite nice – to me at least.) I think we first got to the Mali post about 3 am, and had our Burkina customs check at 6 am! On my trip from Bobo back to Mali, this went in reverse, with our most aggravating final stop at Mali customs. (The bus was bigger, but this also meant more baggage to inspect!) Thankfully, in this case my ride to Segou was only some 8 hours. One learns the virtue of patience on West African bus trips!
The West African passengers must have a lot of practice, as it was amazing how good-natured they remain all the time. Though communication with me was necessarily very limited, they were unfailingly nice to me – not aggressively friendly (like my experience in Iran), but helpful whenever they can be, as helping me stow my pack in a convenient spot even if it cramped their leg room. Whenever a passenger speaks English, he makes a point of talking to me. Often, this was not a Malian or Burkinabe, but a Togolese, a Nigerian, a Ghanaian, a Senegalese: my long bus rides during this trip brought home to me how much of a unit West Africa really is, people from the different countries (despite the differences in language between French- and English-speaking countries) moving among themselves a lot.
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Coming back into Mali, I had one last stop (not counting my remaining time on my return to Bamako): Segou. I had almost crossed this off my list; I had felt that after Timbuktu, Djenne, and the Dogon villages, Segou might come as an anticlimax (the Dutch couple, too, had told me they hadn’t liked it much), and I had thought of spending my last days in Bamako. But the office of the bus I was taking out of Bobo told me that the bus was expected to get into Bamako at 2 am, and there was no way I was going to do that! So when he told me that it would get to Segou about 9 pm, I made an impromptu decision to stop there after all. In fact, we got into Segou toward 11 pm (I wonder what time they got to Bamako!), and the town looked dark and shut down, and I wondered how I would find my way to a hotel. But as soon as I asked directions from a group of teenaged youths on the street, they all accompanied me all the way to the l’Auberge hotel, a good way off through dark and half-torn up streets, trying to chat with me in French.
Stopping at Segou was one of my best decisions. I stayed there less than two days, and there was nothing like the highs of the Dogon tour or of Timbuktu. But I loved the atmosphere of the place – the broad and beautiful Niger river flowing alongside the town, the interesting activity along the riverbank (pirogues coming and going, people washing clothes or bathing, vendors selling fetish charms, a small pottery market), the striking colonial-era mansions where the French incorporated Sudanese architectural styles and motiffs. (The easygoing atmosphere along the river was such a contrast to the intense activity in Mopti.) I stayed at the l’Auberge, apparently not related to the Bobo l’Auberge though it seems both are Lebanese-owned. It was my best hotel in Mali. It was more expensive than I’ d expected (about $32), though I think there were cheaper fan-cooled rooms (I took an air-con room), but worth it. The rooms are actually in a compound a distance away from the bar-restaurant-office; the rooms, though simple, were the nicest I had in Mali, but it was the restaurant that was outstanding, with a lively indoor bar (presided over by friendly and gregarious Lebanese brothers) and a very pleasant garden patio; behind some bushes was a swimming pool, which, when I had a dip, I had all to myself.
One of the best things about my Segou stay was the excursion to the original town that was the capital of the Bambara empire 200 years ago, now just a village, Segoukoro. (This was the location of the wonderful novel by Maryse Conde, “Segou”, which, when I read it, was one of my motivations for planning a trip to Mali. I believe it’s must reading for anyone coming to Mali.) It would have been ideal to go by pirogue on the river, but the locally-based operator Balanzan Tours was charging CFA22,000 per person (WITHOUT guide or village “visiting tax”) and besides they required a minimum of four persons. But they offered an alternative of getting there by motorcycle for CFA17,500, all in (the motorcycle driver doubled as guide), which I took. It was a great excursion; the mosques and tombs of the Bambara kings were interesting, but best was the village itself with its mudbrick houses, its winding lanes, its riverbank activity, and its friendly people: as an authentic Bambara village, this in a way represented the heartland of Mali. (The motorcycle ride was also pretty exciting!)
And as a fitting end to my Mali trip, I watched an absolutely beautiful sunset on the Niger from the pier of Segou. I was the only tourist there, among the locals also enjoying the end of the day, but no one bothered me (and my photo-taking); on the river and along the banks, the life of the town were the background as the sun sank into the river. Even more than the highpoints of Dogon and Timbuktu, that was the moment when I hoped I would be able to return to Mali and West Africa.
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