Fortunately for me, Timbuktu is just a metaphor, right? It represents the ends of the Earth, right? We all knew that somehow somewhere deep down in our subconscious, right? I mean, if I ever actually got there, then what would I call the blog then? So the moral of the story, of course, is “be careful what you ask for; you might just get it.” Now that’s appropriately vague enough to fit most circumstances, and I’m not sure exactly what I expected, but certainly Mali gets raves as ‘the real thing’ so I guess that’s what I wanted, I being a strict aficionado of authenticity in all its multifarious manifestations. Oh, it’s real all right. We hear much of ‘developing countries’ and ‘under-developed countries’ and ‘least-developed countries.’ That last category must be Mali’s. There’s nothing there; okay, there’s hardly anything, hotels, stores, restaurants, anything, and what there is, is hard to find. Well, nyaa nyaa, bitch bitch, precious little American fell down and can’t find his beer; what a pity! No, I’m serious; there’s nothing, and that’s not the worst of it! To find what there is, you almost have to resort to the free-lance guides that prey on you while you pray to them. This is anathema to independent travel, to resort to the hybrid multi-cultis that comprise the interface between tourist and foreign country. Feeling sorry for me yet? No, it gets even worse. It’s expensive, even exorbitant! This is definitely anathema to independent (read ‘budget’) travel. When the cheapest backpacker hovel is $25 a night, then we got a problem. They never heard of credit cards of course, and ATM’s are not ubiquitous.
Travel writers are not doing their job here. Maybe when they specialize in a country they become accustomed to it and lose their objectivity. I’ve been to over fifty countries and researched this trip extensively and no one ever mentioned the high prices, only that Timbuktu seemed high. If that means Bamako is comparatively low, then maybe I’ll pass on Timbuktu. They also said there isn’t much in Timbuktu! That’s what I’d say about Bamako. Let me clarify this. A fifty dollar hotel in the US is better than a fifty dollar hotel in Mali, by far. That the fifty bucks is easier to come by in the US should go without saying. Lonely Planet is in on the collusion, too. They don’t tell you actual prices, unless you’re actually booking through them, only rating them $, $$, or $$$. Well, that doesn’t mean much when a $ in Mali is $25 and a $ in Chiang Mai is $5. I’m thinking of filing a lawsuit. Lives are at stake here, not just psyches. Sure, we love that roller-coaster empty feeling in the pit of our stomach, but the epiphany is in transcending it. Much has been written of the ‘instant illiteracy’ you feel upon first arriving in China. Mali’s worse, and it’s not about the letters. Though I haven’t mastered French, I can certainly get by, especially if reading. The first Phoenicians arrived close to where I’m sitting right now more than two thousand years ago and conducted trade by mute barter. Many mixed couples in Thailand do this as a way of life. It works. That’s not the problem. The problem is the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness you get when confronted with untenable situations. There’s next to nothing there, and what little there is, is expensive and poorly organized. So what do you do? I did the unthinkable. I played parasite-host with a free-lance guide, even staying in his hovel apartment with his so-called ‘family’, while buying myself some time to re-think my plans. That was an eye-opener to be sure, the Mali equivalent of a slum project, full of color, to say the least. Well, Mohamed and I parted company a bit not so amicably after a couple days, he scamming up my rent steadily, but still I bought a little time and some vivid images for the mind’s eye, so basically a successful maneuver. Never say never.
How can a place so poverty-stricken and undeveloped be so expensive? What’s wrong with Mali is what’s wrong with Africa, just more so. We Americans chastise ‘developers’ with our choicest curses, preferring to save a solitary tree than stoop to WalMart’s central dogma. In Bamako I dreamed of Whataburgers and greasy chicken legs when confronted with the choice of very expensive restaurant food or street food of an uncertain sanitary nature. That’s the problem in Africa, that huge gap between rich and poor, no entrepreneurial middle class. They could use some Chinese businessmen here, and I suspect they’re on the way, given China’s infrastructure investments on the continent. The Lebanese only go so far, doing what those same ancestor Phoenicians were doing two thousand years ago. They’re in Thailand, too. But Chinese represent a modern production capacity and global distribution capability unlike anything the world has seen since Britain’s head-start on the Industrial Revolution and America’s mop-up of WWII. Chinese study their history and learn their lessons well while just doing what comes naturally in monopolizing trade and working within extensive family-based networks. What Zheng He could never accomplish six hundred years ago with his ‘treasure fleets’ of Chinese sailing junks, modern Chinese conquer every day with their container loads of inexpensive Chinese junk. Of course, while a ‘conspiracy person’ might see a pattern to all of this, in actuality it’s mostly just a situation of individual Chinese trying to feed their families and willing to give up citizenship in order to do so. After all overseas Chinese still count and are counted by a country that worships its blood line.
So why is Africa so far behind in the first place? Certainly business acumen is not the same as rocket science, basically just common sense- buy low and sell high, but old habits and fears are hard to break, and complex organization can be difficult to establish. Is it simply a trait of ‘negritude’, or of Africa, or maybe of French cultural overlay? I suspect ‘all of the above.’ After all, the closest out-of-Africa analogy in my experience would be to Haiti, similarly impoverished, over-priced, and very interesting, ultimately. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t say “there is no there there.” That’s Oakland. There’s plenty there in Mali; it’s just not economic development. It’s music, and tradition. Street names are replete with names like Diabate, Keita, and Toure’. You can watch Amadou and Mariam on the evening news and hear Salif Keita coming from cassettes (yes, cassettes). Malian musicians are a regular feature at music festivals world-wide and no less respected back home. I stopped to rest from a long walk at the same time and place as an itinerant cassette vendor, and a magic hour transpired, just listening to Malian pop music blaring from a car battery-powered ghetto blaster. I watched the top 15 music video Friday countdown, and I’d never heard of any of the musicians, but it was all good. Comparisons could be made to ‘60’s Cambodia, where an entire era of music was bigger and better than any of its individual stars, and widespread poverty was not an overriding obstacle to cultural excellence. The comparison is interesting, because modern Cambodia is a beehive of industry and development, quickly moving out of the ranks of ‘least-developed countries’ with the help of its neighbors and cultural cousins Japan, China, and Thailand, etc. They’ll expect a return on their investment of course. This is old news, as most of Southeast Asia would be developmentally retarded without their Chinese immigrant merchant class well established. Who’s going to help Mali, and some thirty other sub-Saharan African countries? Do they really need it? Do they even want it?
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