Bamako Mali

The scooter boys hang out at the Modern Sandwich shop in Bamako. Mostly teenagers, though some still kids, they lounge on the step outside, waiting for trade. There is always one with a speaker playing hip-hop or some Mandinke griot groove. Another is brewing tea. But there is constant motion, the boys come and go. A job comes in. The boy leaves the tea, jumps on a bike and rushes off. Someone else slips into his seat and carries on brewing the tea. The conversation flows continuously, though the participants constantly change. Even the bikes themselves come and go seemingly at random. A boy arrives with a beautiful elegant young woman on the back. She enters the Modern Sandwich. The driver climbs off the bike, hands the keys to another lad who jumps on and zooms off. These boys with their scooters, are the taxis, the messengers and the delivery men that make the city work. You need to get across town for an important meeting? Jump on a bike. Pick up a prescription? Send a boy. A goat needs to be delivered to the butcher? A scooter boy will casually sling it over his shoulder and, ignoring the bleating, weave one handed through the traffic. Collect a load of grass for your sheep? You guessed it. A boy will load so much grass on his bike that all you will see is a giant haystack coming down the road. No job too small, no load too big.

Money changes hands constantly. Lend me a thousand. Let’s go halves on a bottle of petrol. This is your change from before. If you want me to pay you for using your bike yesterday, then let me have it again today, so I can do a couple of runs, then I’ll have enough for what I owe you. And if I pay you the money, you can buy the tea.

Fat Kalimi, owner, manager and master chef at the Modern Sandwich is doing a steady trade. People come from blocks away for his hallmark ground beef and chip panini. A row of scooters waiting, and a gang of boys relax in the shade. Baku is next in line for a job. A smart car pulls up. The window rolls down releasing drum and bass, and a waft of chilled and smokey air. A sharp dressed man leans out. “Collection from the port of Kalaban-Coro. Take it to The Society of Raising Consciousness on Rue de Diallobougou. You know it?” It briefly crosses Baku’s mind that it’s strange for a man with his own car to pay him to collect, but, a job’s a job. And he agrees a good price.

The road to Kalaban-Coro is busy. The cars hardly move, hooting their horns for entertainment rather than any practical purpose. The minibuses loaded with passengers, stop all along the roadside and a lorry has broken down blocking one lane. All perfectly normal, thinks Baku, as he dodges between the cars, veers off the road completely, through a storefront, behind the fruit stall and then back onto the road. Another bike pulls out suddenly into the space he was just about to occupy. A family outing. Father driving, with two babies on his lap. Wedged between him and his wife behind, a bored teenage girl on her phone, and balanced precariously on the luggage rack at the very back, a small boy. All dressed in their finest clothes for a celebration. “Amateur drivers,” Baku curses, as he brakes hard to avoid them, and neatly swerves onto the opposite carriageway.

The port at Kalaban-Coro is a frenzy of activity. Crammed with innumerable small wooden barges that fill the little creek and are pulled up in ranks on the river shore. They are in various stages of unloading sand, brought from the sandbanks upstream to be used for construction. Files of women walk across networks of springy or half submerged gangplanks, bowls piled high with sand upon their heads. They tip it into piles on the foreshore that slowly, slowly become heaps, then mounds, then mountains of sand. Trucks rev their engines, pumping out clouds of black smoke, manoeuvring haphazardly into a position where they can be filled by gangs of men with shovels.

Baku surveys the chaos, then decides to approach the boatbuilder for directions. Endlessly repairing and caulking the rough wooden barges, he must know everyone here. He points out Baku’s contact, Aliou Camara, who is poling a barge into position some way down the river bank. Baku scoots down to meet him, explains his mission, but is met only with suspicion and silence. He explains again. “A man called Bouba, with a nice white Toyota car, paid me to collect a package from you, to deliver to The Society of Raising Consciousness. He gave me your name, Aliou. Is this not correct?”

“The Society of Raising Consciousness? Is that what he said?” Aliou replies. Then after a pause, adds, “Okay”

The package is not so much a package but a large wooden chest, the size of a small wardrobe. Baku feels there is something very unusual about this job, something suspicious. And when Aliou makes him promise to not open the box, he desperately wants to know what it contains. But he has been paid, and now he has something to deliver. So there is nothing to do, but deliver it. The chest is surprisingly light for its size as they lift it across the back of his scooter. Finding the tipping point, he lashes it down firmly with strips of rubber. Climbing astride the bike, he fires up the engine and checks the balance of his load. It is then that he senses a movement in the box behind him, and a scraping noise. What? He takes a deep breath, shrugs his shoulders and accelerates off. This city is crazy.

With his extra wide load he can no longer nip between the buses, and he briefly gets caught up on a handcart before getting used to it. But soon he is flying through the traffic, sounding his horn continuously to clear pedestrians and the other scooters from his path.

The Society of Raising Consciousness is on the corner of Rue de Diallobougou and a small dirt road, in a quiet neighbourhood. Some children play in a pile of rubbish and a couple of old men play draughts amid the debris of tea making. Baku pulls up in front of the address. A stylish modern building is hidden in a garden of trees. Above the gateway is painted the motto, “Yesterday we were like you, Tomorrow you will be like us”. Pulling the bike up onto its stand, he once again feels the uneasy movement in the box. Baku hammers on the gate, until a sleepy guardian comes out, and between them they carry it up to the house. Shuffling awkwardly, they enter into a cool reception room. A well dressed man in a freshly pressed white boubou receives them with obvious excitement. They gently lay the chest on the floor as he directs. Baku stands, eying the box with interest. The man, however, has no intention of satisfying his curiosity. He says, “Thank you, you can go now,” and slips him a 2000 franc tip to emphasise the point. Baku turns and leaves, but still intrigued, he detours past the big window and peers in. The man in white is kneeling before the box with the lid open. It is full of turtles.

“This city is crazy,” thinks Baku, “but the crazy people do pay well.”