Road Trip

"Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased." ~John Steinbeck

Sunday I took a road trip with Constance, the one who owns a dry goods store on my street, her husband Maxime and two of their children, seven year old Sophie and one year old Jean. Constance had said they had business to take care of outside of the city, that the ride would take about an hour each way and offered that she thought it would be good for me to get out of the city and see some of the countryside. Knowing no more than that we set off shortly after 2 in the afternoon.

Sophie and I sat in the backseat and Jean sat in the front on his mother's lap, alternately breastfeeding and sleeping. Our street gave way to a larger highway looking road which after a short while was arched with some kind of gates to Bamako saying welcome in both English and French. The sides of the road were sparse with full grown trees every once in a while. The ground appeared as if it had been previously farmed but nothing grew there now, or perhaps it was not the proper season. However the fields had scattered trash in them as if they might have once been a dump (perhaps from the habit of burning trash).

After we'd been on the road a while Sophie declared she was hungry. Having her in the backseat with me was amusing and had much the same effect of sitting on a ping pong table in the middle of a game. She was wound up with energy, no doubt stemming from riding with a relative stranger and also being hyped up on sugary snacks from her parents' store. She is learning English in school as well as French and she already speaks Bambera. She recited a lesson in English and was very good and when I first met her she held out her hand and said, Hello how are you? Anyway when her father didn't stop at the nearest roadside stand her eyes welled up with the biggest crocodile tears I've ever seen and she wouldn't respond to anyone. Some things are universal. Wouldn't you know her father pulled over at the next roadside stop, a group of stands where various items are sold. At once the car was surrounded by people looking to hawk wares. Maxime exited and came back with a paper bag full of grilled mutton that rivals the best I have ever had. (Sorry Brian) We ate that as we continued, tossing the bones out the open windows as we drove and using tissues and water to rinse our hands afterwards. Note: I grew up in California when the culture was very much anti-littering and so do not approve of it, however given the circumstances there was not much of an alternative, and perhaps an animal along the way could find further use of the bones.

After a point we pulled off the highway and drove in the dirt across an open expanse. How did we know where we were going? A look of concern must have registered on my face because Maxime laughed that this must be different than I was used to. Why yes, although at the same time, the rocky outcroppings in the distance looked a lot like Utah...Sogonna was right. Constance said the highway we had been on would take one all the way to Segou and then to Burkina Faso. So we continued that way winding around trees and ditches, fording small streams and such. And I had the fleeting thought, as I noticed that my cell phone no longer received signal, that not only did I have no idea of my exact destination but had any illwill been planned I would likely be unable to communicate with anyone at our destination other than to say "Hello, How are You? Sit down let's talk a while, See you later, See you tomorrow, I'm going home/to the market, Be quiet, I like it, I don't like it, It's good, It's bad, What's your name? Where are you from? I'm from America" in Bambera - none of those being particularly useful for a hostage situation.

We bought some zabon from a random child we drove past who was carrying bunches of them. I don't know the name in English but they look like mangoes on the outside. You pop them to open them and the hull comes apart kind of like a popped tennis ball, revealing little clumps of fruit that looks like mango but is much more tangy and has a seed that looks like a tamarind seed. Very tasty. Sophie was so excited about them and every time she put a piece in her mouth she exclaimed, "C'est Bon! (It's good!). Finally we pulled up at a group of mud brick buildings with roofs of tin and woven straw and a host of people sitting outside. There was a pen of goats (Maxime taught me the difference between goats and lamb on the way there) who were very bashful and all disappeared into their structure upon our approach. Constance showed me the well they had paid for there. Unfortunately it's lip was so low that even a full grown adult, let alone a child, could have tripped and fallen in. ..and it went down forever. Maxime was talking to the me, while Constance discreetly took me on a tour of the facilities, probably about what the next investment would be.

We continued on after that to another place not far away where a man was at home working waiting for his wife who had gone to the market. I mean there was there home, some structures for the animals and then literally nothing but trees and bushes as far as the eye could see. Their well was still being constructed, the slate that had been dug up was still piled nearby and tree branches lay across the well. When the wife came home she was on the back of a moto, someone had given her a ride. She had one baby strapped to her back and another toddler who had been sitting in front of her. Maxime finished talking to her and her husband and then we left there.

The contrast between the city and the countryside was startling and further it sheds light on the issues the country is facing with advancement and access. Further it appears that with most hot, arid countries, when fields are cleared for farming, the soil is laid bare to the sun and is only useful for a short time. I didn't see many things growing in farmed plots. It made me reflect on my trip to Costa Rica where they had started growing plants in the jungle. Although harvesting had to be done by hand and could not be systematized, they actually had a greater yield.

Before we headed back to Bamako we picked up a goat from the first place and then drove back through the dusk to the highway. Sophie fell asleep in my lap. We stopped for gas and ice cream and when I got home I took a pre-emptive dose of Pepto Bismol. I thanked Constance and Maxime for the experience. As they dropped me off at my door Constance told me to come by the store at 8pm the next day and she would have a plate of dinner waiting for me. Whoo hoo!!