Mali in West Africa - Aunt Anna among ants and motors

Writer: Anna Nilsson Spets

The travel warning is written in angry red at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: travel advice in the weeks before travelling to Mali. Swedes are urged to leave the country, warned of kidnappings and armed attacks. I see the country that has been at the top of my bucket list disappearing into the periphery.

My local guide at the destination keeps updating me while friends and family try to persuade me to go to a normal country, like Mallis or something.

I fill in my visa application online, a laborious French affair with x number of documents attached. A few weeks later, I take the train to Brussels and collect the visa.

The family doctor gives me malaria pills and various other good things to have. The medicine bag undeniably grows with age.

So on a snowy and cold Sunday I take the train to Brussels, the usual Starbucks coffee and cigarette in the icy wind. From -3 to +33.

Casablanca is the first stop, then on to Bamako where I land in the middle of the night and discover that my luggage is not with me, shit. The heat strikes with a vengeance.

A driver is waiting for me, drives me to my accommodation where it turns out that my booking has been misunderstood and all rooms are full. The driver drives across a pitch-black Bamako and wakes up a night watchman at a small family hotel. It's three o'clock in the morning and the sheets from the previous guest are changed to something with a Valentine's theme. That the room is clean is a strong exaggeration.

The generator has stopped and the fan is not working and I fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.

The morning after on to the right accommodation; The sleeping camel which fortunately has a small shop where I can buy a dress instead of my warm travel clothes. The camel is a chill meeting place for expats and locals. 

Tuesday is coming and with it my local guide Amadou, we will do the capital this day. Amadou is a freelance guide who collaborates with international travel companies as well as doing his own tours. We click right away !

Bamako is extremely large, it is located between 3 bridges and the traffic is terrible, would not have driven a metre here.

6 million inhabitants and 1 million motorbikes.

The driver, Aboucabar, has ice in his stomach and we are slowly but surely moving forward.

The markets are scattered, we start with one with mixed content. In my quiet mind I wonder WHERE do all these people come from? It's like the hustle and bustle of an anthill with its invisible aisles.

The most interesting thing here is the area where necessities for traditional folk medicine and rituals are sold. Dried monkey heads, wild dogs, snakes, you name it ...

It's a hodgepodge of stalls, vendors and customers, if I hadn't had my guide with me I would never have found my way out again.

The craft market offers things that we tourists drag home with us, these eternal carved wooden figures of course.

Beautiful wooden masks, drums and the typical funny hat worn by the Fulani people.

High level recycling is seen in the next market, different metals are dismantled, melted down and turned into something else. The axes burn and the sweat varnishes.

Recycling in another form, an old tisha from Stockholm ...

Child labour is common, and my mother's heart aches when I see little boys pulling hair in the smithies when they should be in school.

I have travelled to quite a few African countries but I don't think I have seen as much rubbish as in Mali, especially plastic. It looks awful and the dust from the dry unpaved roads adds to it. Soon the rainy season will start and everything will be a mud puddle instead.

Sales are going on everywhere, the roads are lined with simple stalls where you can buy a bed or deep-fried balls. 

The sad thing is the refuges where the women with a number of small children wander back and forth to beg for a meal. The poverty is painful. I wonder where they live and how they survive.

The cattle market would probably make a Swedish animal welfare inspector faint, but the animals look reasonably healthy and not too thin. A cattle from 450 euros and a goat at least 60 euros. 

The old railway station has not seen any trains for many years, but the building is beautiful in its desolation. A design that bears witness to an earlier colonial era.

Along the road there are boys trying to sell handkerchiefs or wash car windows for a few Korvören.

We continue to the outskirts of the capital where the Niger River flows and where the boat builders are based.

A boat takes around two months to build, sealing it with heated plastic. Recycling again. The children collect wood waste that is taken home and burned.

Boats linked together like a train arrive from the other side of the Niger. Full of sand, they are loaded onto lorries for further transport. Young girls carry big buckets of sand on their heads, it looks extremely heavy.

My luggage then... after a trip to the airport I managed to find it between hundreds of other lost bags, hallelujah.

My second day in Mali is over, many, many impressions and thoughts swirl around in my brain when I go to bed at night. I feel grateful that I was born in another part of the world, a part with different conditions.

The AC buzzes and cools nicely in the 30-degree heat until the power goes out and everything becomes pitch black and quiet.