{"id":1538,"date":"2007-11-28T10:37:11","date_gmt":"2007-11-28T18:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willdoherty.org\/wordpress\/?p=1538"},"modified":"2024-09-23T02:47:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T02:47:16","slug":"back-in-bamako-mali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/?p=1538","title":{"rendered":"Back in Bamako, Mali…."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After Pays Dogon, I managed to get back to Bamako in reasonably good shape. I stayed a couple of nights at the marvelous Hotel Djenn\u00e9, created by the former minister of tourism who had a great idea when she invited artists to decorate the place. On the bus ride there, I met a Dutch woman and her French traveling companion who was working on developing schools for young women in Mali. I met some other travelers over breakfast. O, and the first evening, I went to pick up the package I had left at Hotel Yamey and to try to visit Damien, the French guy working at his father’s restaurant, the Caf\u00e9 du Fleuve. Unfortunately, he wasn’t around so I returned to the northern side of town to eat at the Restaurant San Toro, also owned by the former minister of tourism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a single person, I felt very conspicuous when I entered the restaurant, especially when they had no place for me, but after awhile of sitting and listening to a man playing the kora, I got into the spirit of the place and they eventually served me delicious juices and a vegetarian platter. I was craving good food after weeks in the “brousse” (countryside). Better nourished, and after a walk and a stop at the somewhat seedy cafe where I saw a transvestite, I returned to the hotel and slept well. I had tried to treat Samuel Sidibe and a professor friend of his to lunch, but he was busy, so I just stopped by to pick up the conference proceedings he had obtained for me. They included a griot’s account of the history of the Mali Empire, a crucial contribution to my book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I spent the rest of the day trying to get a flight in January from Timbuktu to Bamako and managed only to confirm my place on the waiting list. That evening I again tried meeting Damien at the Cafe du Fleuve and instead ended up sharing a delicious meal with a Dutch fellow Michiel and a female friend of his, also Dutch, Lisa Winnen. They were very kind of me and my spirits revived considerably in preparation for my trip to Accra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After Pays Dogon, I managed to get back to Bamako in reasonably good shape. I stayed a couple of nights at the marvelous Hotel Djenn\u00e9, created by the former minister of tourism who had a great idea when she invited … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,99,109,135,138,148,149,250,228,239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-art","category-griot","category-history","category-literature","category-mali","category-museum","category-music","category-stardusts-research","category-travel","category-vegetarian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16016,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions\/16016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}