Another Last Time..

And this time, really the last. That is to say, when I sat on my hotel roof on the last day of June, 2017, looking at the familiar sunset view of the great mosque, sipping my last sunset cocktail, that was also the Last Time- but that was for my hotel. I have now sat on the roof of my house, which offers the same sunset view over Djenne, glass of whisky in my hand, for the very last time. I have had my dinner of Tineni  ( Djenne whitebait) in the garden, cooked by Papa and Maman has served it me for the last time. I have walked around MY land for the last time- have stood by the grave of Maobi where a Jacaranda tree now grows- probably the first in Mali.

I have sold my land to a rich local merchant- he will take possession at the end of the year. If I understand correctly he will put one wife in the house and the other in the bogolan studio- having made it a little more habitable I expect- and then migrate between the two as is the Muslim tradition.  

Maman and I burned all the papers of my 12 years of Malian life this afternoon: there were the  lovely but impossible  barman Beigna’s several official warnings- Beigna is long since gone, buried in a collapsing gold mine towards the Guinea border; there was Ali the ‘chambermaid’s’ dismissal;  the contract for the lovely Fatou our sou-chef; the drawings for the house in which I am now sitting  for the last time: “ La Maison de Keita et Sophie”; letters and cards from happy hotel guests with invitations to visit ( I did visit some); reports on trachoma campaigns deep into the bush with Keita and Barry- both buried now... Keita's X-rays and Laboratory results- I had  kept them with an idea I might make a piece of art with them somehow but now know I never will- too dark. Hotel accounts- long hand written lists under the headings ‘logement, resto, bar’; reservations sheets: goodness! we were popular before the troubles struck late 2011: I always count the beginning of the end from the day in November when my friend Karen who ran a successful local travel company called me and announced breathlessly that three tourists had just been kidnapped and one killed in a restaurant in Timbuktu...

I have walked around touching things- the tired and warped wood veneer  of the bogolan tables where I have spent so many days, months and years painting with Dembele  and the others; the mud on the rooftop parapets where the mosquito net was placed for Keita and me when we slept on the roof during the Great Heat of April and May: I have looked down into the garden where we sat in defiance under the stars on that night of Ramadan when the Angel of Destiny crosses the sky and counts those that he will take with him in the coming year...I have looked at the empty stable and thought of my lovely Maobi and Petit Bandit- also gone now. 

A melancholy day when many visitors  filed past to greet me- the last ones I did not recognize at first but they were from the manuscript library. They wanted to thank me for the work I have done there and wanted to make me promise not to abandon them now: I must be courageous they said.  I think they came  to show me their support and appreciation because of the recent behaviour of the village chief: in any case I was touched.