Saharan Adventures: In between spaces.

I have a love/hate relationship with airports. Over the past several years I've spent an awful lot of time in them. Long layovers, delays, dealing with airline staff and finding terminals and gates. When I am in an airport I feel like I am in a holding pattern, not here, not there in the inbetween spaces. Most of the time I find this frustrating as I would rather be here or there and the inbetween is an inconvenience, something to be endured but not enjoyed. Sometimes though, that holding pattern, the inbetween is exactly what I need.

After two weeks in the feild in Mali- two weeks of interesting people, of eating chicken everyday at least once a day, and working long days - I took the bumpy 6 hour drive from San back to Bamako on Wednesday. Bamako is a sprawling city on the banks of the Niger river with streets packed with motorcycles, land cruisers and taxis fighting for position with pedestrians darting in and out trying to get from one side of the busy streets to the other. The air in Bamako is heavier than in San, more humidity and it has been raining there more than in the Segou Region where I spent the last two weeks. I didn't get to spend much time in the capital but it was an intriguing city that both attracted and repelled. I spent some time in meetings and had dinner with a collegue from Switzerland on Wednesday before heading to the airport on Thursday morning.

After going through security I found myself back in the inbetween space of the departures terminal. The international airport in Bamako has only one gate with a duty free shop and a small cafe where you can buy french pasteries and coffee. I only had enough CFA left to buy a small bottle of water but since there is no AC in the terminal it was an important purchase. My flight was slightly delayed so I found myself sitting in the same plastic seats you find in airports all over the world staring out the window at the UN planes (the blue helments arrived in country on Sunday. We passed several UN transport vehicles on the road to Bamako heading north) and at the Sahel stretching out behind the runway. This time the holding pattern was a welcome moment to collect my thoughts and to think and to clear my mind. Maybe it seems weird, but as much as I am looking forward to what is coming over the next couple of days in Mauritania I needed that hour to adjust and to prepare and to relax. The inbetween space, not in Mali, not in Mauritania, neither here nor there.

Flying into Nouakchott was almost like landing on the moon. The landscape below, becoming clearer the closer the plane came to the tarmac, seemed alien and strange and like nothing I've ever seen before. The flowing white sand interspersed with rockier red soil, the Sahel giving way the to Sahara. The buildings rising up, the same colour as the ground, everything bleached white by the sun. The heat when you get off the plane hits you in the face, almost physically knocking you back but their is releif in the breeze that blows off the Atlantic Ocean only a few kilometers away. Nouakchott is a quieter city, smaller and more reserved than Bamako. Women walking in their colourful hijabs, men in their long white robes. Both Mali and Mauritania are Muslim Republics but Mali is more permissive, if that is the right word. Christians are not allowed to prostelatize in Mali but churches are plentiful and well attended. In Mauritania I am told there are only two churches in the capital but they are forbidden to mark themselves with signs and it is illegal for a Mauritanian citizen to frequent them. The city is dotted with the spires of Mosques and you can hear the call to prayer echoing in the streets at dawn.

I am in the hotel in Nouakchott having a rare day off since the office is closed here on Friday. Tomorrow morning I'll be leaving early for the 8 hour drive through the desert to Kiffa. Even now in the hotel with the AC running and a tv playing american movies with arabic subtitles I feel like I am in a continuation of that inbetween space of the airport. Tomorrow things pick up again and the adventures and work continue. For now I am taking the time to rest up and finish some reports and to prepare for the upcoming meetings. I'm not here, not there. A holding pattern in the inbetween space.

Sahelian Adventures: A few pictures

Here are a few pictures of my time so far in San, Mali. The connection is a little slow so you only get a small taste :)


The moon above my Hotel in San, Mali




The rain is coming!

Keeping me company while I work

Sahelian Adventures: the Scenic Route

We had a workshop in a community today, the last day of a two day participatory exercise with various project stakeholders. It is a bit of a drive from where we are staying in San, off the tar roads and out into the bush. The workshop went well and it was a really interesting experience although we had to end early because it was threatening to rain. So we all piled into the vehicles and left the project office to head back to San.

Our driver, Charles, likes to drive fast and is a little competitive, preferring to be the first to arrive places (in my head I hear Rowan Atkinson saying “Is a Race!”). So this afternoon on our way back to San he decided to take a short cut. Instead of following the other vehicles that had left before us he turned off the road onto a little track. It was not a main road, but it looked fairly well used and was clearly visible in the red soil. After a little while the track became a trail and at one point we lost it entirely. We were driving through the middle of open bush with no sense of where the road was. I had the sense that we were in a scene from a Discovery Channel documentary, on safari or maybe trying to find some mysterious and elusive creature in some unexplored territory. At one point we pulled up to a house in the middle of nowhere, much to the surprise of the family who lives there, and had to ask for directions. We found the track again and it meandered here and there past farmer’s fields and baobab trees, our Land Rover barreling along sending goats, piglets and chickens scrambling in all directions. At one point it took us right through the center of a little settlement and we had to drive around a well. Some women who were pounding millet into flour had to move their huge mortars to make way as we drove past. We kept following this track, but it soon narrowed back into a trail and then as it wound its way through thicker bushes and trees it became a bit of a river so that the Land Rover was fish tailing and hydroplaning through the bush, splashing water up over the hood. We were laughing and joking that we were taking the ‘scenic route,’ but all the while I was so sure that we were going to get stuck in the mud. The Land Rover had turned into a kind of boat and we had so much mud stuck to our tires that even when we were not driving through the water it felt like we were slipping and sliding in all directions. We did get a little stuck at one point but Charles was able to get us out without resorting to us pushing the vehicle with us up to our knees in red mud. Finally, just as it started raining we found our way back to the road and made our way back to San. Oddly enough, even after our off-roading scenic detour we were among the first vehicles back.

 I guess Charles won the race afterall.

Sahelian Adventures: A picture of San, Mali

Today I was driving in a Land Rover today over packed red roads through a rural area of Mali, West Africa. The sun streaming through the plumes of red dust being tossed up by the Helix truck in front of us gave the flat, dry landscape an almost dreamy quality as if I was looking at a sepia coloured photograph. The countryside is dotted by huge baobab trees, freshly plowed fields and scrawny bushes and donkeys, cows, horses, pigs, goats and sheep that give the impression that someone has randomly strewn about pieces from a child’s farm playset. The rainy season only has just started but there are already a few places where we had to drive through water and in a few weeks these places will be largely inaccessible.

Now I am sitting outside under a porch listening as the wind picks up and brushes through the leaves of the mango and moringa trees in the courtyard. You can tell the rain is coming because the wind picks up suddenly and there is a lot of dust in the air and the birds start to get very noisy right before the rain starts to fall. For now it is not raining very hard; for all the thunder and wind only a very few drops actually fall to the ground. It may be raining harder somewhere else, but for this area, so desperate for rain, the ground will have wait for a good drink for another few days. I have been told the rains are a bit late this year, and while no one expects another food crisis and most indications are that this year should be a good harvest, there is a still some anxiety in the voices of the people as they look at the mostly cloudless skies and then back at their still bare fields.

I wanted to have a few pictures to add to this post but the connection is not fast enough today. Hopefully sometime soon.

A la prochaine!