It is the morning of New Year's Eve and I am at the Le Shithole Flamboyant in Bamako trying to sort out my missing backpack. I've been wearing the same outfit for four days - a black and white striped Club Monaco v-neck shirt, a pair of black lightweight trail pants, and hiking boots (the only pair of flat shoes I own) - and I'm debating whether it's more worrying to be without malaria pills or my Secret XXXXXXtra Dry Powder Fresh antiperspirant. The choice is vexing: on one hand I am covered with mosquito bites the size of nickels, and on the other, I SMELL. I table the issue in search of breakfast.
A sweet-faced teenaged boy stands behind the bar in the courtyard drying glasses. There are several plastic tables set on a cracked concrete floor out of which a sad pygmy palm tree has had the misfortune to have grown.
"Good morning!" I say, dusting off my incredibly dusty French. "Do you have any drinks?"
He looks at me quizzically. "I'm sorry Madame, I don't understand."
"A drink?" I annunciate. "Do you have something like a drink?"
"No Madame, we will have a drink tonight."
"But couldn't I have a drink now?"
With infinite patience, he replies," "No - tonight, Madame."
"I don't understand - these people have a drink!" I say, motioning to half a dozen Malians who are sipping Nescafe in "the garden."
I make drinking motions and the boy shifts uncomfortably.
It is then that I realize my mistake. Substitute the French slang word for "party" every time you see the word "drink" above.
Yes, that's right - Madame wants to party and she wants to party NOW. And it's not even noon.
For fuck's sake.
My bag is not coming. It is nowhere to be found. I decide, somewhat recklessly, to go on a three-day trek to the pink sandstone cliffs and desolate plains of the Pays Dogon without it. I hire a car and a guide and hope for the best.
Whatever that is.
"Are you sure?" asks the guide. "You don't have any gear with you..."
"Fuck it," I say. "Let's get out of here."
With that, we hop in a Land Cruiser and head to Mopti, the gateway of the Dogon country.
The drive from Bamako to Mopti is seven hours. Along the way, little girls congregate at speed bumps to sell their wares, surrounding the car to tempt us with baskets of fruit balanced on their heads. The driver buys a worrying amount of food - six or seven watermelons, four papayas, an enormous bunch of bananas. He stops for peanuts and several unwieldy bunches of firewood. Are we bringing a sherpa on this trek? I hope so.
We pass newly circumcised boys shaking calabash rattles and collecting gifts to celebrate their initiation into manhood. I smile at them from the car and they look back with the distant gaze of world-weary men.
Apropos of nothing, these images are by Seydou Keita, Mali's most celebrated photographer.
