In the Voodoo Market of Bamako
Bamako, Mali 2002
Mali was once a French Colony. Leafy trees line the boulevards shading the old yellow and white colonial buildings . Our hotel in Bamako was on a street like that. The grounds were lush with palm trees and flowering shrubs. The restaurant served delicious french pastries and good coffee. It was easy to see why the French fell in love with Africa. All this and servants, too.
That first afternoon, we walked to the Grand Marche’ in the center of the city. Streams of tuk-tuks, cars, trucks, and pushcarts clogged the streets. Beggars in rags roved between the vehicles importuning all and sundry. The heat from the blazing sun blasted into our faces. Smells from the garbage-filled gutters overpowered the delicate fragrance of frangipani trees. My head started to spin and I wished I had a glass of the cool ginger tea that settled my stomach at lunch.
The voodoo market is frowned upon these days…or was in those days. Mali doesn’t want to seem like a backward country and so even though almost every person in Mali believes in spells and spirits, the market is hidden from tourists. Table after table was heaped with the dusty skulls, paws and teeth of animals. There were baskets jammed with horns of gazelles, loose piles of cowrie shells, empty turtle carapaces and scads of dead bats as big as a small chicken. The salesman offered me the head of a vulture…did he sense that I needed that particular talisman? What was it for exactly? I never did find out.
On our way back to the hotel, I took a photograph of a woman carrying a ‘headload’ of laundry. A bored policeman standing on a corner noticed and called me over to ask if I had permission to photograph in Mali. He was tall, muscular and intimidating. Or he could have been if I hadn’t read so many travel journals. I took the chance that I could bluff him. I took out my passport and showed him my visa for Mali. It was stamped in French “Ambassade de Mali”. Guessing that he could not read, I said in an imperious tone that I had the permission of the Ambassade. That set him back. He stared at the stamp. It was obvious even to someone who couldn’t read that this meant that I was a very important person. I kept saying Ambassade de Mali and pointing to the visa. Finally, he’d had enough. He wanted to bully me and maybe ask for a bribe, but he had a niggling fear that I could make trouble for him. He handed me my passport and off we went. Thanks to all the travelers who went before me and wrote of their own encounters with authorities in foreign lands.
And maybe, just maybe, thanks to the vulture’s head…had just being near it given me a special power over the policeman???