More worried about half-assed way we are planning to leave. December is high water, I want to be sure that wherever we float off to there will be enough water in the channels to float us back, why I decided not to go back to Bamako and do serious logistics. Box with valuables in it is with Dolores at the mission so
Later. They’re back. Asked W. if he got everything OK and he said, Yeah, we went to Wal-Mart. Feeble, but really the first little joke he has made in a long time. Maybe he is coming around. Sent Malik back to Bamako with message for Dolores, telling her to call or wire Lagos to let Greer know what we are doing. Said we might be gone as long as a month amp; if anything turns up will come back and mount a serious operation.
12/2 On the Baoule
We are in an 18-foot pirogue with a seven-horsepower outboard, Togola at the stern, the two of us midships under a woven raffia sunshade with our supplies and gear in bags and baskets arranged around us, maybe six inches of freeboard. Area we are entering called the Boucle de Baoule, the “buckle” of the Baoule River = inland delta?an area of about three thousand square kilometers w/ no significant roads. Channel here varies from 60 to 20 meters in width, 3 to 5 m depth. Thick vegetation on the high banks, shrubs and small acacia trees, occasional larger ironwood and red silk-cotton trees. Large numbers of trees skeletal. Togola says river was much higher in the old days, reached to the tops of the banks and beyond at high water. I believe him; the whole of Mali is drying up, the desert moving south. Meanwhile, the region is alive with birds, we putt-putt through a continual chatter and screech. Saw a paradise whydah and a martial eagle, the latter on a dead limb with what looked like a monkey.
I have not been in a boat in a while, I find myself ridiculously happy. It is Swallows and Amazons again, me and Josey exploring the channels of the Sound in our skiffs at age eight and eleven, pretending we were in Africa or Amazonia. Now this is Africa, and I am with W. and our faithful native guide. Ridiculous, our guide farthest thing from faithful amp; my pal and husband replaced by surly stranger. But he will come back, I know it, I see little sparks of the real him all the time, when his guard is down, like that joke about Wal-Mart, and this morning he made a joke about getting lost and having to eat human flesh. Tastes like chicken, a running gag, he says it of every new food. Pathetic hopes. But what else can I
12/3 On the Baoule
We proceeded on, as Lewis amp; Clark used to say. Millet porridge and coffee for breakie, rice, beans, peanut sauce, for lunch, w/ tea. Tea and sesame sticks around four. When it gets dark, we find a low bank and camp. DEET vs. mosquitoes, they swarm around us anyway. Togola lights a fire, and I set up our tent (a French military thing, and clumsy) while W. mostly idle. Then I cook our evening meal. Togola watches, fascinated; he has never seen a white woman cook before. This convinces him that I’m indeed a woman and not some weird third sex peculiar to the tobabou. A mistake to generalize about African culture, but a fairly safe one might be that men don’t cook. Decided not to stand on my high feminist horse, too exhausting. Can’t help noticing W. seems to prefer me as an African (or “real”) woman. Absurd man.
12/4 On the Baoule
Passed a herd of hippos today. T. steered far as he could away, jaw clenched. Odd being in water with them, feelings of total vulnerability, not familiar to us tobabou zoo goers. Probably more people killed by hippos than by leopards and lions combined. How ignoble to be crunched up by a hippo. I sang the chorus to Flanders amp; Swann’s hippopotamus song in a lusty voice to show courage: mud, mud, glorious mud! W. knows all the verses but he did not join in. T. told me to shut up.
Saw first hornbills, clouds of bulbuls. River deepening and widening as we approach what passes for the main channel. I asked T. how long to get there, but he is silent when I ask him things now, since I am only a woman after all. He talks to W., tho, who answers in his high-school French. W. is interested in me again, however, at night. I let him hump away, feeling little beyond the usual relief of tension. The sex life of nine-tenths of the world’s women perhaps, or maybe even a little better. I still have a clitoris, although maybe he will decide to change that. Where I will draw the line, however.
12/5 Baoule R.
Beautiful sunbird (Nectarina pulchella) lit on the prow of the boat today. Besides that, nothing new. Channel narrowing. T. poles the boat to save gas. He is more nervous; he has dreams at night. We hear him shouting. Have passed no one during this trip, nor seen signs of habitation in the past three days. Supplies getting a little low.
12/7 same fucking river
Caught a big Nile perch today on my troll line. Channel shrunk to four m, 2.5 m deep at center. No current to speak of. Ate the perch for supper with (what else) peanut sauce, and rice. W. and T. thick as thieves now, T. has a bottle of rum, the bad Muslim! And they passed it back and forth without offering me any.
Thought of Dad, how much I miss him now, not like we are now but the way we used to be when I was a kid, and I got him mixed up with God the Father. A little weepy, but suppress it as usual. It would be good if I had a husband I could talk to about these feelings.
We have rice and sauce enough for another two weeks. T. has an old Lebel; I suppose we could shoot a monkey. Maybe I will get lucky again with the trotlines.
12/20 Danolo
Success and disaster in rapid succession. This morning just before noon the channel debouched into a wide (50 m) shallow (3 m) pool, the western edge of which was a long mud beach lined with log pirogues. Togola nosed us in among them. This is the place, he said. He was sweating and wild. He helped me unload our personal gear and got back in the boat, said he was going for his stuff and our other supplies.
W. spotted them first, woman standing at a break in the foliage, at the head of a path. She had a little girl with her, about eight years old. I waved and they both nodded and touched hand to chest. I did the same. Then I heard the rip of the outboard starting up and Togola had it in reverse, sliding fast out into the middle of the pond. Like an idiot, I shouted and ran into the water, he threw the motor into forward and roared off. I sloshed back feeling stupid for not having yanked the fuel line before leaving the pirogue, had failed to see no amount of money enough to fight his irrational terror. W. mimed checking his watch, said don’t worry we’ll catch the six-seventeen, we both burst into hysterical laughter. Worth being stranded in the middle of Africa to hear him laugh, to have us both laughing together. The two Olo were watching us silently. They did not look scary enough to chase off a big, tough professional hunter. Both of them were dressed in a simple white cotton robe, homespun, both of them had on a headcloth of the same color and fabric, tied so as to throw up a stiff triangular flap above the forehead. It gave both of them a kind of medieval look. The little girl came up to me and said something that I didn’t catch amp; I did my i ko mun amp; she spoke more slowly. I found she was speaking a funny kind of Bambara: i ka na, an kan taa = come on, let’s go. Woman said good afternoon, in Bambara, amp; I came back with the female response to the greeting amp; after whole greeting ritual, told me her name was Awa and this is Kani, my imasefune (?). I will take you to your place, and I said, Are you Olo, and she looked at me strangely and answered, Oso, nin yoro togo ko Danolo. Yes, this place is called Danolo. One of the great moments in anthro. We lifted up our bags and backpacks and followed her.
The path led to a wider road, which went through a gate in a high mud-brick wall and then we were in the village. I was stunned. It was like a piece of a larger town or city, picked up and stuck in the middle of nowhere. Houses of one or two stories, made of mud bricks, stuccoed and whitewashed or colored in pale colors, pink, blue, purple, with carved wooden doorways, laid out in neat wide streets, with gardens between them. In the center of the place there was a plaza, and the plaza was paved with pottery shards laid out in a herringbone pattern interspersed with white stones. A major, major discovery!!! The Yoruba used exactly that kind of paving in what they call the Pavement Era, which started in around a.d. 1000. It’s supposed to be unique to them. In center of plaza, right in our path, was a thin stone shaft about twenty feet high, studded in a spiral pattern with iron nails, looking almost exactly like the opa-oranmiyan, in Ife. W. asked me what it was and I told him there wasn’t supposed to be anything like that within two thousand km of here, or within a thousand years, the staff of Oranmiyan, the son of Ogun amp; mythic founder of the Oyo monarchy. I said it was like stumbling on a village in Turkey in which everyone was wearing chitons amp; worshipping Zeus amp; spouting Homeric Greek. Impressed him, he started singing the theme from Brigadoon. There were plenty of people in the plaza, most of them sitting or standing in the shade of an immense baobab tree near the column. Everyone was dressed in white or dun-color.