On Friday afternoon we packed our car for a weekend trip to Segou in tandem with a neighborhood family from Germany (Lars, Gunne, Jacob and Selma). Jacob and Selma are the same ages as Jenna and Gus and in spite of a small overlap of common language (they speak German and French fluently) the kids have a ball together. Lars and Gunne have been really helpful in orienting us to the town (you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a map around here) and ideas for exploring beyond Bamako.
Segou was a really appealing destination. It's the third largest town in Mali about 240km northeast of Bamako on the River. The river is central to life here and they offer trips in pirogues to visit fishing villages, as well as serve as a port for the boats that travel the river between Bamako and points north like Mopti. Segou is a real cultural center in Mali with Bogolan cloth artisans, rug makers, potters, and cotton weavers. The town also hosts a music festival which we have heard is fantastic and more Malian-focused than the now famous Festival in the Desert that happens in Timbuktu. To get to Segou there's one road on which it is recommended one travel during daylight as potholes are frequent (especially in rainy season - now), the road is narrow, and big buses and overloaded trucks are the most common fellow-travelers.
Of course getting out of Bamako is always crazy. We are about a week into Ramadan which means that much of the population is fasting from daylight to dusk and moto-drivers are perhaps less predictable even than usual by late afternoon. On the edge of the city we drove through dense concentrations of people at transport hubs (will take a picture of the "Green Machines" with people spilling out all sides soon and so much stuff piled on top that it's amazing they have forward momentum) and then suddenly there was nobody. Green, open countryside stretching to the horizon. Randy says that you know you are out of the city when the concrete block houses turn to mud construction. Not a bad delineation actually.
We were all starting to feel relaxed and excited for the weekend when Randy noticed a problem - we were losing fourth gear ability, and third gear ability... Yes the transmission which Randy has had some concerns about and talked to the school mechanics about was nearly non-functioning. So much for the mechanics' reassurance that this trip would be no problem. We told our friends that we would turn around and go back while we could (and in daylight) and they would continue on to Segou to arrive before dark. But when we turned around it was all Randy could do to coax the car to move. Of course we were out of cell phone range and an unknown number of kms from the toll road gate and it was starting to pour. We continued on at inchworm speed until the car would continue no longer. Luckily on enough of a hill that my cell could pick up a signal. It was about a bit before 5pm when the School Director told Randy he would send the same mechanics mentioned above out to pick us up. It took them over 3 hours to get there - 3 long hours as Jenna worried how we would sleep in the car, Randy enjoyed the silence of the countryside and the chance to talk Fufaldi with some boys biking by with their milk cans tied to the back of their bikes, and Stacy hoped we would get picked up before dark so that the massive vehicles roaring down the narrow road could see us and avoid rear-ending us. A beautiful place, truly in the wilderness if only 60 miles from the center of Bamako, but not a great place to be stranded with two little kids on a dark, rainy night. Ultimately the mechanics did come and we were back in our Bamako beds by 10:30. Segou will wait for another weekend and a different, reliable car.
The Director told us to use the school van for the weekend if we wanted to try to find a different adventure a little closer to home. So Sunday morning we picked up another family (Lynn and George are teachers at AISB and their kids Dan, Lucas, and Rachel are a bit older than our kids and pros at this oversea life having lived in Sierra Leone a couple years back when their parents taught at a school there) and hit the road again. Destination this time was Sibi, southwest of Bamako by a little over an hour. Sibi is well-known for its enormous groves of mango trees and some beautiful rock formations which attract climbers and hikers. Randy, of course, had Sibi on his radar screen long before we arrived. We had been warned that the road might be dicey after rainy season. Sounds familiar, eh? However, turns out that the road is being replaced right now and much of the drive was on lovely smooth roads that make I-89 in Vermont feel like a logging road.
When we got to Sibi we drove through the main town and continued a few minutes to where an arch we had heard about could be seen. We decided to pull over and hike up toward the arch. Randy thought we could find a local child to show us the way for a few CFA. Needless to say, the minute we got out of the car we were surrounded by kids eager to help, but for a pretty steep fee. Randy wrangled with them for a few minutes during which time they assured us that there was no formal guide requirement to hike here and named a pretty high fee. We told them we would go without a guide and began to hike. After a while, they decided that 1500 CFA (About $3 US) would be fair after all and there was some joking around about who among the ~8 of them would get the money.
The hike wasn't too long, but quite hot in the mid-day sun. The formations are quite amazing though, and Randy was excited to check them out. A few of the routes are bolted for climbing and the school actually brings the 5-6 grade classes out later in the year. We were at the wrong angle to capture the arch in a photo, but the group pics are underneath the arch. Am sure we will be back. Our kids definitely have climbing genes in them!
When we drove back through the main town an elder stopped us to let us know that in fact there was a formal guide requirement in town that the boys had neglected to mention. Not a lot of cars of white people in town so easy to find us. The town collects the money for town projects. We will return another time to visit an amazing waterfall areas off-road that the school van couldn't access, and promised the elder that we would seek out the formal guides. This seemed to please him.
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