Well, it was a day in two halves…

The first very stressful and the second blissfully relaxed.  If the day were a  play it might be described as a a first act punctuated with a series of planned events resolved one by one not without  a high sense of mounting anxiety ; culminating  in an unplanned, highly dramatic central event, which once it had erupted cleared the air to leave the way open for the second act: a cathartic, languorous and memorable afternoon…

The stress was supplied by the fact that Madou, my IT  friend from Djenne who was going to set up the ‘Djenne Experience’ 3 D viewing was supposed to pick me up at 7am, but he was ONE HOUR late. I should have taken a taxi, but I was gullible enough to believe him every time I called him and he said ‘I am only just around the corner !’ (a terrible Malian habit- don’t ever believe anyone here who tells you that !)  So I started the morning in a frightful stew and when he finally turned up I did not deign to speak to him, but just hissed ‘shut up and let’s get the hell over there’ in my most murderous tenor. 

Once at the Archives I was immediately face to face with some of the first arrivals, among whom I found the Dugutige, or the Djenne Village Chief, who you might recall if you look in on this journal now and then- he is the one who has been trying to get the Djenne Manuscript Library shut down for years, and has done all in his might to ruin everything for us, including turning up at the Ministry of Culture and UNESCO to put his complaints forward. Finally the Minister of Culture- bless her- sent him a letter which was leaked to everyone concerned. The letter said that the digitization of manuscripts is a legal act if the participating manuscript owners have given their consent (which they all have) and that the Ministry of Culture was warmly endorsing the Project etc. That did not stop him. He continued regardless on his incomprehensible quest to destroy us.

So there he was. Uninvited. It was clear to me that he was intending to cause some sort of trouble. And he did- after all the speeches : by Cat the British Ambassador, by Hasseye the President of the Library, by me etc ; after all the symbolic handing over of the hard drives  (the supposed high point of of the ceremony  which was invisible because all the photographers and the local TV News team was crowding in and hiding the view) ; there he was, insisting that he wanted to speak.  Malians are very respectful of age and of position. He is old and he is the Village Chief- of course he was given the opportunity to speak. So off he went again, complaining (in Bambara) that he had never been consulted about the Project ( the late Village chief had been though) etc. People were shifting uneasily in their seats. An  increasing murmur of embarrassed discontent became audible. Samake, the MC had not translated any of his intervention yet. Madame Sanogo Le Secretaire Generale du Gouvernement with the rank of Minister  and the highest official present now sent off a flunkey to whisper in Samake’s ear to shut it up. So Samake did. And in an incomparably cool manoevre he went up to the podium and spoke : ‘ For the Ambassadors present ( the British, Swedish and South African)  and those who may  not understand Bambara I would like to translate the Village Chief’s intervention. He is congratulating the Library on its important work, and he is expressing  how very  happy he is to be here today’ etc…

After this cliff hanger it was the end of the ceremony and people dispersed little by little but not before having had a good  look at the exhibition of course, and having tried out the 3D viewers- a great success. Here we see Banzoumana from SAVAMA trying them out: 

 I had been invited for lunch by Mark Saade the Malian Honorary Consul to the UK in a venerable old Bamako restaurant- formerly called the Campagnard. Cat, the ambassador was also invited, as well as Mark’s brother and a most charming Malian-the ex Minister of Defense and most recently the Foreign Minister:  Tieman Hubert Coulibaly, a direct descendant of the Bambara Kings of Kaarta, and formerly the member of a Reggae band who had the distinguished position of warm- up group for Burning Spear  in the eighties… (Not many people know this I should imagine.) Well it was a most fabulous lunch that went on for four hours…