Da Boat

The Niger River is the lifeline of Mali. It provides water for drinking and crops and baths, serves as the major thoroughfare for transporting goods and people, and is the hunting ground for hundreds of fishing villages throughout the country.

Most relevantly for us, the Niger River was our route from central Mali to the fabled city of Timbuktu. We left the dusty junction city of Mopti on Monday night, armed with a case of bottled water and a quarter kilo of kola nuts (for the elders, ya know) and headed up the river on a four-story passenger/cargo ferry.

Julienne even swapped yellow rhinestone sunglasses with Osmane Bah (self-proclaimed "Mr. Good Price") for some Mopti trinkets before boarding. Look for this kid on a trading floor in three years.  He's gonna be a star.

The rusty boat had everything we expected it to have (except life jackets): overloaded cargo holds of charcoal and vegetables, flooded bathrooms, grungy bunks, unaccompanied minors, and inexplicable depressions in the flooring. We were staying in a small double-bed cabin with a window to the river, and a hole in the boat's hull for a toilet.  All in all, the makings of a long three days afloat. Our emergency plan for when the boat capsized was to swim away from the onions and start yelling for each other in English.

The boat carried about 80 passengers, and while the moms did mom things, their kids played with us. At one point, a young girl started petting Julienne's arm and then reached to touch her eyebrow, quite amazed at the simultaneous similarities and differences between the two of them. We then taught them how to complete a New York Times crossword puzzle.  Clue:  four letter word for "French Sudan, formerly." Answer: M-A-L-I.

The slow float along the Niger River was about as tranquil as one could want, with Bozo fishing villages, pirogues, and mud huts dotting the shore. We passed rice fields and millet fields. The sun set and the sun rose, and the river just did its thing with us on its back.

The tranquility of the boat trip was punctuated only so often when we would near an isolated river village, at which point the heavy cargo load became the reserve stock for a floating mobile market.  At midnight on the second night, a mix of Celine Dion and Salif Keita burst from the boat speakers, calling just about every village resident to the dock to meet the boat's load of bananas and bed mattresses.   

In a matter of 20 minutes, we watched in genuine amazement as a completely empty dock morphed into a thriving market of 300 people in the middle of the night. Women pulled baskets off the boat for small sales while men swapped lumber and major commodities.  In some sophisticated accounting routine that we don't understand, we didn't see a single bill or coin change hands. And then as quickly as we arrived, the boat sounded a horn, and all was packed and ready to go again.

Three hundred kilometers later, we arrived at the dusty port of Timbuktu, Pearl of the Desert.