It occurs to me, as we careen headlong into a small herd of goats, that hopping on the back of a strange man's motorcycle and weaving through Bamako traffic like a drunken sailor might be a touch irresponsible. After the near miss with the goats, we shave a few hairs off a bleating sheep strapped to the back of a moped and catch some air over a speed bump. I close my eyes. My throat is lined with a fine grade of atmospheric grit, but it's not a mouth full of dust that stops me from grinning, it's a sudden, clear vision of my own wake. I imagine aunts and distant cousins gathered around my coffin whispering:
Wow, P. really porked out after the wedding, didn't she?
There mere thought of this indignity sobers me right up; I am determined not to go splat on this trip until I lose at least fifteen pounds - twenty if I'm lucky enough to attract a hungry tapeworm.
Moto Man - a man of few words and none of them intelligible - deposits me at the market. I signal to him to wait for me as I disappear into the crowd. I pass a string of vendors selling shriveled monkey heads, hyena skulls, and a variety of wizened sundries, and realize that Moto Man is trailing me.
"Fetish," he says, pointing at a jar containing a dead reptile.
He appears to be worried about leaving me to own devices. Perhaps he's right because the fetish vendors shoot me looks that say, Bitch, don't even think about pulling out your camera because this is some powerful animist shit and your ass is no match for our crazy Malian voodoo.
No matter, since 1) I seem to have forgotten how to use my camera, 2) I am yelled at every time I touch it and 3) I am too busy looking for toiletries to offset the odor of my one and only outfit. (No luck on that front, though I did come across a lovely stuffed crocodile baby for the mantle.)
Moto Man, it turns out, is the brother of Baba, a guide I meet who suggests I stay at a cheaper and better and more convenient auberge than the perfectly decent, if somewhat overpriced, Hotel Tamana. He takes me to Cite Flamboyant, a hotel that looks alarmingly like Beirut in 1983. In the bombed-out lobby a haunted-looking receptionist smiles at me wistfully when I ask for toilet paper, soap and a towel.
The room is so dismal that I immediately peel out with Baba, even though I'm pissed that he sent me to a hellhole in the middle of nowhere and pissed at myself for being such a simp. Baba wants to take me to his local bar where a band he likes is playing.
Do I like whiskey? Baba likes whiskey - a lot. He likes it the width of four fingers without ice. I learn this shortly before Baba slumps in his seat in a slumber so drunk and so deep that I have to slap his neck to wake him. But the band is wonderful - a mix of contemporary and traditional instruments with a singer who radiates a kind of beatific joy. A teenaged boy jumps up to the empty dance floor, moving with uncommon grace to the beat of the djembe. He turns to the band, raising his arms as if to embrace them. It is a moment of such spontaneous and unselfconscious beauty that my eyes fill with tears. I am grateful to be part of this, grateful to surrender to whatever it is that brought me here.
