Back to Bamako

Abdulaye, the terrific driver who had taken us to Severe, just happened to be in Mopti, returning in an empty car to Bamako, so we rode along. Four hours back to Segou, through the same remarkable countryside. We stopped there for lunch, wending our way through the weekly bazaar to a riverside restaurant. The sounds and smells were quite remarkable, but all I can do here is the photos.

Segou’s waterfront was fascinating to watch. People and products moved from the shore to the small craft and back, people were fishing out in the river, bright colors, lots of activity.

At the weekly market, people were too busy to really notice us, a marked difference from most of our stops. When we stopped for gas at one of the “gas stations” along the road, we drew the usual crowd of curious children and merchants selling textiles and jewelry. There are gas stations as I’m used to them in Mali, places with pumps and hoses and the like. There are also tables with liter bottles full of gasoline to serve drivers between the widely-scattered larger establishments.

We arrived back in Bamako around 5, checked into the hotel that had wireless access a week earlier to try to contact various travel agents and family and airline companies to make some plans. Nothing seemed to work. Their internet connection was down. When we called, the Royal Air Maroc ticket agency said we need to call either the Bamako or New York office. We had four different phone numbers for the airline’s Bamako office, none of them correct. The New York office insisted we had to contact our ticketing agent. When we tried that, we found they had sold the business, kept the tickets already written, and were only available by email. We decided we couldn’t do it the “right way,” so instead we showered, repacked, ate dinner, tried to sleep a few hours, and went to the airport in hopes of flying standby.

Airport scene was pretty wild, an overbooked Air France flight with everyone trying to make it to Paris. Once they cleared out, we convinced a sympathetic ticket agent that we really needed to leave and really couldn’t contact anyone to change our ticket. I’d just about given up when they handed us boarding passes with a warning that we wouldn’t find a seat from Casa Blanca to JFK.

We decided to take our chances, and arrived in Casa Blanca after a sleepless night. There we found another terrific Royal Air Maroc agent who put us on the waiting list. Before we had a chance to contact anyone to let them know we were headed home, we had boarded the flight for JFK.