After some fifteen kilometers, the tarred road ends and a dirt road, which will continue for another 300 or so kilometers, begins. The border to Burkina Faso is very quiet. I even have to instruct the Mali official to put an exit stamp in my passport – he first thought that it wasn’t necessary. “Is this one OK?” he asks me as he fumbles through a pile of stamps; showing them for me one after the other. I choose (!) a stamp and then continue to cycle the ten kilometers of no man’s land that lies between the two border posts. In the very first town of the new land, I make my way to the police station where I get my entrance stamp. I had already obtained the visa at the Burkina Faso embassy in Bamako.

In Bomborikuy (Bombourkuy), a huge cathedral attracts my attention. I stop to chat with some locals outside, and one of them – active in the church community – invites me to stay the night at their mission. I get a private room with a shower and a sink, and a mosquito net above the bed. In the evening, a play is arranged on the steps in-front of the entrance to the cathedral. The church’s youngest members invites everyone to watch them play drums, sing and dance in the moonlight. Inside the church, the sharp, cool light from a bare strip lamp shines up the empty interior. For the occasion, they’ve carried the church benches outside and lined them up on the sandy yard in-front. There are mostly children from the village in the audience. The love, laughters and joy is just overwhelming. It fills me, too. Beautiful!

They still play when the priest and two of his colleagues from the church invites me to dinner: sweet potato chips and a salty soup of tiny fishes from a nearby river. When I finally go to sleep, I can still hear the drums over by the church. It’s beautiful beyond description. Imagine if all the children in a Swedish village would come together in the evening to dance and play drums?

The next morning, I’m invited to breakfast. I donate 2,000 CFA as a thanks for everything before I continue.

In the afternoon, Lina takes the bus to Ouagadougou. She will fly from there to Senegal, where she’ll meet her parents for a three week long vacation together. Later, she’ll also spend some time with a friend in Ghana. I continue by myself, and we plan to meet again somewhere southeast of Burkina Faso. My first night alone is in small village Somo, next to some bike mechanics’ home and workshop. Early sleep.

Summary Mali
Mali – a huge country in the very centre of West Africa, both geographically and historically. The country is famous for towns like Djenné and Timbuktu, classic African musicians like Salif Keita, Tourmani Diabaté and Ali Farka Touré and modern ones like Tinariwen and Amadou et Mariam. Truly, the country can carry the conception amongst some, that it contains the essence of Africa in one single nation. From its music to its calm and respectful people.

But as huge as Mali is, as difficult is it to give the country a fair description from ‘just’ having passed through from west to east. For us, it was quite monotonous and boring. Long distances, and midway through the country the worst capital yet to visit. We had difficulties enjoying Bamako – a traffic jammed city split in two by the Niger River. It didn’t feel safe enough to stroll around at night, and besides didn’t have much city life except for the somewhat bigger shops. There were few open-air cafés and bars – the kind you appreciate as a visitor, with the possibility to observe people and environment around you.

Despite the rather dull experience of the capital, and the environment in general, we experienced some memorable meetings. Amongst them Paul – an Australian gold miner with roots in Zimbabwe. He sponsored us with a four-night, four-star hotel stay in Kayes. The four stars didn’t matter as much as did Paul’s warm humor and good company. Late nights in the bar playing pool; Creedence Clearwater Revival in the stereo.

I hope to be able to see more of Mali’s huge land next time. Despite a few less interesting days, each such is worth those on which you end up sleeping under the stars. With the fresh air, gently breezing you through the night. Where silence is so complete that you can hear it, and where people are so predictably human that you’ve got nothing to worry about. The definition of peace.

Moussa, a young man also on bicycle, takes us with to a friends compound in Yangasso, where we get to camp.

Eight kilometers before the village Tunah (Tonah, Tuna), right next to the road, is an open compound of about a dozen clay huts with thatched roofs – seemingly scattered at random. We arrive around five in the afternoon. There are only a few children and a woman. Nobody speaks French. An hour later, a few men and women arrive on a moped. They allow us to camp on the ground in-between the huts. They give us water to filter, drink and boil pasta in. The atmosphere is very quiet, but kind.

We stay at Mission Catholique. 2,000 CFA per person for a bed in a tidy but cramped dormitory with mosquito nets.

We stop in a small village for a sandwich around noon. An old man invites us for some very strong tea. A Malian man on bicycle has also stopped in the same village. He is on his way to Ségou, and then Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou, with his Singer sewing machine on the luggage carrier. He cycles from town to town, village to village, in pursuit of work. For only 250 CFA (about 50 cent), he patches my tent at several spots where it has broken. He drives the machine with the right hand and shifts the fabric with the left. A reel of white thread twirls. His driving hand moves gently and relaxedly yet swiftly. He is dressed in an elegant, chartreuse green dress. He refused to have his photo taken, but lets me take a few of the machine whilst he is working, and his bicycle when it is packed and ready for the road again. The machine is tightened to the rear carrier with an old bicycle tube. A pile of different fabrics in various colors and patterns rests on-top of the steering. Soon after having fixed my tent, he departs to the next village. Maybe to buy some food for the money he had just earned.

Reaching Zambougou, we stop at a café to each have an omelet sandwich and a coffee. Most houses in the village stand along the main road. The café lies on a sandy ground in-between the long line of houses and the road. On-top a simple wooden table stands a set of glasses, a pile of spoons, a can of instant coffee and one of powder milk. On the other side of the table lies a wooden box with candy, cigarettes and matches assorted in different compartments. Below on the ground a charcoal grill with a sooty black frying pan. Besides a carton box with eggs. Behind the table, which also serves as counter, stands a young man who quickly prepares our sandwiches and coffees. We sit on a narrow, wooden bench next to the table. The sun is just setting. Busses and cars pass by on the tarred road in front of us.

It is soon dark – only a few lights of labour shine through: a welding flame’s dazzling light from a car mechanic across the street; an oil lamp’s flickering, warm flame from the café table beside us; the grill’s ruby-red bed of live charcoal on the ground next to us. The magic music and voice of Salif Keita streams out of a cassette player. Later, some young men make a campfire on the ground between the café and the road. We stay until late and chat with them and the café owner. Come night, we pitch our tents on a deserted compound a few houses away.

The scarcity of electricity in the countryside is part of what makes Africa so special and human. The communities go to sleep gently and calmly – far away from the unnatural stir of concrete and electricity that exists in so much of today’s world. Also, darkness infuses an important respect and humbleness towards nature. We cannot control everything that surrounds us.

When we wake up, our host has left for Bamako, but his son brings us bread, hot water, sugar and milk powder for breakfast.

Reaching Fana, we camp at a petrol station: Lina on the roof and I in one of two open garages. It seemed like a nice and quiet place until darkness came and the owners got a roaring generator going; chugging out dark clouds of fumes at the back of the building.

A boutique owner in Santigula lets us camp on his compound. We are given spaghetti with pieces of meat for supper.

To leave Bamako is pretty straightforward, although with a lot of traffic on the main road out of town.

In a village after forty kilometers, we get to camp on a compound whose owner seems to have traveled away for the day. All houses, as well as the wall that surrounds the compound, is built of the same mud as the ground they stand on. On the outside, the clay wall is lined by young eucalyptuses that rise above the man-high enclosure and form a thin, green fence. The ground is immaculately cleaned – swept of leaves and branches. It seems that people here are near to obsessed with sweeping their grounds – something that sometimes get rather the reverse effect as it also stirs up fine dust in the air that settles as a thin layer over everything around.

Camp with a doctor in Kati.

We stop in Nossombougou to cook pasta next to one of the shops along the main road. It’s a small town of maybe three or four thousand people. The men outside the boutique though, are not late to announce for us that there are more toubabs than us in town. In a way it is ‘the news of the village’ if there are several of us around, so we are usually told so when we arrive. The men continue and tell us that the others are Canadians (one of them, Nima, has a blog: www.quebecmali.wordpress.com). Nine of them – five women and four men.

As we finish our meal, one of them comes by. Sonam from Ontario has heard of our presence – the rumor seems to spread like wildfire. Sonam welcomes us to town, and after us asking lets us camp on her host family’s compound. We wash ourselves and some of our clothes, before the rest of the Canadians join in. They are here for three months, of which only a few days remain. They work some in the fields together with their host families, but it is essentially a culture exchange project. They’ve previously hosted their Malian counterparts in Canada.

Later, we decide to visit one of the two drinking holes in town. After dinner with Sonam and her host family, we head off to the pub that is hidden inside a large compound, enclosed by a high wall. We are the only guests there, but probably drink as much as the bar usually sells in a month. One of the Canadians even went there in advance to ask them to prepare for our visit – stock up with beer and chill them. Though the latter was impossible today, as there was no ice. Instead the barkeeper had put them in water so that the labels were wet – something that at least gave the feeling of a well-chilled beer!

Finally we get to leave the piste for a good tarmac in Didiéni. There, we also stop for lunch at one of several roadside cafés. We chat for a long time with twenty-year-old Bouba, who runs one of the cafés. He – just like most men here – simply asks me if I can give him a European wife. I try to explain that we don’t see women as merchandise in Europe. I finally suggests that I can put up his picture together with a short profile on my website, and so if someone finds him interesting, they can get his contact details through me. You can find the photo in the gallery, and here is the profile just as Bouba liked it to be: Able to count both thousands and millions; can coop with the cold thanks to a hot cup of coffee every morning; is looking for a European women, but age doesn’t matter, because “the prophet Muhammad married an old woman.”

Three kilometers before Kolokani, a young couple and two of their friends wave to us from the roadside. They sit on the ground, leaned against the long side of their black Mercedes, and invite us to share some afternoon snack. A baguette with tinned sardines, bananas and tea. They are from Mauritania, on their way home to Nouakchott after having spent their vacation in Bamako. The man complains a lot about the corrupt Malian police. Despite his effort in Mauritania to get almost a dozen different papers – filled with stamps and signatures – he still has had to bribe the police at every roadblock. But apart from that one problem they seemed to have enjoyed Bamako – the capital to which we are heading.

In Tiorubougou (Tioribougou), another 26 kilometers south, a charming woman offers us a place to camp for the night. She doesn’t speak any French, but we are able to explain our route and mileage, and she is deeply amazed. She shows us to her family’s compound in the village, and only later explains that she herself lives in Kayes, and has to return with the bus the very same evening.

We pitch our tents, wash our bicycles and make some food. Then, eleven-year-old Mamadou takes me for a late evening walk through the village. We walk to the tarred main road, which cuts through the village, and follow it up to where the village ends with the usual crossed-out name sign. On our way back home, we pass one compound where people have congregated in-front of a TV, and Mamadou explains the obvious, “They are watching TV.” Then past a compound with a big clay oven, which he tells me is the bakery.

He then points out into the darkness, towards a luminous glow in the distance, and asks, “Do you see the light there? That small light?” “Yes,” I reply. “That is solar energy! Would you like to go there and see?” he continues, with a kind of warm enthusiasm in his voice that only children can express. I couldn’t but agree to the proposed excursion. From reaching his family’s compound where I and Lina camp, we continue on a path between crop fields. The light is situated inside the compound of the local water tower. We look at it through the tall steel gates; admire the amazing technology. We gaze at an only glow that shines through the darkness, in a village that else largely still exists on the terms of nature.

Yet another day on the part of the road yet to be surfaced (it’s due to be finished within a year, someone said). Yet another day with trucks roaring past – sounding like derailed freight trains and leaving us in a slowly settling cloud of dust. After each time a truck has passed, we have to stop for a while to wait for the dust to settle – we cannot pedal with our eyes closed.

In Segue, we meet a group of medical students from Canada. They work – do their practice – at the small local clinic at which we also end up camping. Come evening, they invite us to their home in the other side of the village. We get a well-needed, hot shower, a cold beer, and a great dinner. They tell us that there is no laboratory equipment here – not even to test malaria. So medicine is often given based only upon which symptoms the patient shows/experiences.