More Belated News From Djenne

 There was a lot more to say about Djenne but everything went like a whirlwind in the four days I was there and the matters closest to my heart was the giving up of my land. But life in  Djenne continues regardless and those private concerns are now receding into their allotted place somewhere a little further back in my mind.

The security situation seems to have stabilized marginally.  I tried to take the pulse of Djenne by speaking to as many people as possible. It does seem that the stories vary depending very much on the position of the person questioned, and it appears that the opinions are shaped by whether one has cattle or is a cultivating landowner.  If the latter, the opinion is overwhelmingly that the Dozo, the traditional hunter militia who have taken it upon themselves to protect the farming villages, has restored order in the villages around Djenne which have lived through a sort of reign of terror for the last couple of years when the Jihadist Front de la Liberation de Macina  has murdered villagers in their fields and forced the village schools to close down. 
 Djenne is situated in the centre of a vast area of rice and millet production. Animal husbandry, mostly an occupation of the Fulani, is not the main means of survival here, but rather cultivation.  One of those in favour of the Dozo is my old friend the Imam Yelpha, with whom I had my customary chat of course as he sat on the traditional  raised tintin seat in front of his Koran school.                                                                     

 According to Yelpha more than sixty percent of the schools in the surrounding villages have now been reopened.  There are also other tangible developments, such as the deployment of ca 100 FAMA (Forces Armees MAliennes) soldiers to Djenne: about half of which are garrisoned by the Prefecture, and the rest by the halted dam construction.  These soldiers are collaborating with the Dozo, albeit in an unofficial capacity. This is perhaps inevitable, since the FAMA soldiers do not know the area and the population and will need to rely on intelligence from the locals in their hunt for Jihadists.  The problem is that the lines have been very blurred between the ‘Jihadists’ and ordinary Fulani, and there have been many innocent victims.

‘But isn’t it dangerous to let militias exact their own justice?’ I ask. ‘Surely they make mistakes?’ Not everyone that is Fulani is a Jihadist?’ But Yelpha insists that they know who is who and who belongs to the Jihadists. 

I met and spoke to the Djenne merchant Craven Landoure who supplied Hotel Djenne Djenno with all its plumbing goods a long time ago in happier times. He is a Diawando- a branch of the Fulani tribe-and has lost all his cattle, apparently through wanton cattle theft by the Dozo.  My friend Ga noticed and mentioned the presence of Fulani when we drove through the market of Somadougou on the way from Djenne to  Mopti- there are hardly any Fulani in the weekly village markets in or around Djenne these days he said. They have all been scared away. My conversation with Ga, from a cattle owning Serakolle family gave a less sunny picture of the present Djenne situation.  I thought there had been a relative calm recently – he said that on the contrary just a few days earlier 14 Dozo had been killed by a group of Jihadists apparently dressed in army fatigues as the traditional hunters  were escorting a convoy of villagers on their way to the market of Martomo to provide their safety. This massacre was said to be in retaliation for a previous attack by the Dozo on the Jihadists in the village of Mamba.  These are villages situated between Djenne and Diafarabe. According to Ga the Jihadists have not left the Djenne area, they are still there, in the bush, biding their time. The water still stands relatively high and that has been the main reason for a lull in activity. 

The Fulani were undoubtedly the main force of what was called the Macina Group, the Jihadist organization of Central Mali. That does not mean that all Fulani are Jihadist. Neither does it mean that all of the Macina Group are made up of Fulani. The situation is complicated and to reduce it simply to an age old conflict between herdsmen and cultivators or a tribal conflict between the Dozo (mostly Bambara, Dogon and Songhay) and the Fulani is a gross simplification.

Some Dozo may  well know who is who – just like the French used the MNLA at Kidal and beyond to root out the  Aqmi, the MUJAO, the Ancardine et al after the fall of the Jihadist occupation of the north, so the Malian Army are now making use of government friendly militia intelligence.
BUT this is tricky business...

WHERE IS KAREN???

 My friend Karen and I (here we are, winning the quiz at the Sleeping Camel with our mutual friend Hank above) had a drink at the airport in Bamako on the evening of the 19th of December. She was flying Tunis Air via Tunis, then onto London Gatwick where she was changing to Ryan Air to go and visit her mother in Ireland for Christmas. She is then returning here and spending New Year with me. We were happy and excited about our trips and said goodbye about 9.30pm.

Then all went awry:

Karen on Whats App from Tunis airport, morning of 20^{th .} 

(I am in Charles De Gaulle airport, waiting for my London flight to Heathrow) 

“ Hi Sophie, I’m stuck in Tunis... our flight is delayed AT LEAST  5 hours to Gatwick. U are probably not affected because u fly in to Heathrow? What a huge hassle for me... I will miss my connecting flight to Dublin!”

Sophie replies from Charles De Gaulle airport: “ What a pain Karen! So sorry! I do fly in to Heathrow, yes. Have not heard of any trouble?”

“ It is Gatwick only. They closed the airport because of drone sightings!”

Later, midday, Karen from Tunis to Sophie at Charles de Gaulle, boarding flight to London:” I am still stuck in Tunis” I don’t know how long I will be stuck here. If I manage to get to London this evening, would there be any chance of my crashing at your place for the night?”

Sophie only sees this message once back home and replies: “Karen of course you can come here! I am now at home. Let me know what is going on”.

Karen replies at 18.37 from Tunis: “We are still stranded in Tunisia after sitting all day long at the boarding gate and not being given any information at all. They came about half an hour ago to tell us that the flight would not be leaving until seven o clock TOMORROW NIGHT! We were all going crazy. We just couldn’t believe it! I mean, you know, I only have nine days and now I am going to lose three days! And finally she said that they would put us up in a hotel and that we should go and get our luggage because the coach was waiting outside. It was all lies! We all got our luggage but there is no help and there is no hotels -there is nothing! And every time we talk to an official here they say it is not their problem. It’s just unbelievable. And we have no guarantees that there is going to be a flight tomorrow! I don’t know Sophie if there is any thing that you can do.. we are trying to get to the media- because this is outrageous! They won’t even see us! They won’t even give us a place to stay! They said WE are wasting THEIR time when we talk to the officials!!!!(Karens’ voice is breaking up..)Well, sorry Sophie to be going on like this. But obviously I won’t be there tonight. I might be there tomorrow night... thanks for the offer of staying Sophie. If the plane leaves here at seven we get to London about nine.. it would just depend on if I can get a connecting flight to Ireland. Anyway, big hug Sophie and I’ll let you know what is going on.”

9.30 in the morning, 21^st December. Karen from Tunis:

“Hi Sophie, This is so dreadful. I am in Tunis. So our flight is rescheduled for tonight for ten after seven pm. That is a whole other day wasted and it gets me in to London around nine o’clock at night. So I am going to try and ask them to re-route me on an earlier flight through Barcelona to Dublin. They are telling me it is fully booked but if I go to the airport I can be on stand-by. So that is really my only solution to get to Ireland today. And if I can’t get on that flight then I will be in London at nine pm. So then, Sophie, I will just have to decide whether to get on a train and travel all night to Fishguard and get that one o clock ferry or whether I can stay with you but then I will have to get an expensive flight because I am booking at the last minute so I don’t really know...I am not really in a good place.. I have a splitting head ache and I just feel like crying- it’s been hell. I did finally get put up in a hotel last night. I was the only one in the whole flight that got put up in a hotel! You know, it was chaotic and everone was shouting and they said that they were not putting up anyone in a hotel and it wasn’t their fault! So this went on for a couple of hours and then finally I got to talk to one of them and I said, ‘look, I am in transit. I came from Bamako on your flight. You were supposed to connect me and you haven’t! You can’t just leave me stranded! So they finally put me up in a hotel. That is where I am at the moment. But I am just getting ready to go back to the airport to see if I can get on this other flight to Dublin. So that is my story Sophie. I’ll let you know if I am going to take that later flight today. I need to look at my options if I stay with you tonight, how will I get to Dublin? So OK Sophie. Thank you for checking in with me. Bye..”

Karen from Tunis airport at 14.05 today: “ Hi Sophie. I managed to get on a flight to London that arrives around 6pm today. I will then continue to Ireland by train.

London. Six o’Clock news: “ After reopening this morning, we have just had news that Gatwick airport has once again had to close about twenty minutes ago, due to another drone sighting.

WHERE IS KAREN??? She must have been on her way in to Gatwick and then they must have been derouted. No reply from Karen...

                                                                                
Later- here she is! Her Tunis Air flight was bound for Heathrow - she finally turned up here about 10.30 Alhamdulillah. And off to Fishguard tomorrow morning and the Irish ferry. What adventures...

And taking this opportunity to show off my Christmas tree, newly delivered  this afternoon, and decorated to the sounds of the Messiah as usual...

From the UNHAS flight to Bamako

UNHAS- United Nations Humanitarian Aid Service- supplies little propeller planes that flit  between the Malian outposts of Mopti, Timbuktu, Gao, Menaka and Bourem. Although difficult and fairly expensive to arrange, a ticket with one of these planes does at least more or less guarantee that one will get to one’s destination, which is an improvement on the normal MINUSMA planes which are free but nerve-rackingly uncertain unless one has a ticket stamped ‘MUST-FLY’ which hardly ever happens for people engaged in anything labelled ‘culture’. I am flying back to London tonight and am grateful to be sitting in this little plane winging its way to Bamako from Timbuktu, where I have spent two days in the UN ‘Supercamp’ this time, in the company of Father Columba from Minnesota our partner in this Timbuktu project and Dmitry Bondarev, my old friend and collaborator on the manuscript projects since the very beginning of the work on the Djenne manuscripts in 2008. 

                                                                         

We are following the course of the river Niger upstream- the water is still standing very high and some of the villages look precariously close to submersion even now, two months after the end of the rainy season and my river journey which followed this same course from the Timbuktu port of Kabara to Mopti.

It has been good to have my two companions with me this time- the three Timbuktu libraries  with their digitization staff are a militant and sometimes mutinous lot and it is always a challenge to face them on my own. Now I was blissfully able to hide behind Fr. Columba and refer their requests for health visits;  salary increases; the perennial milk demands etc. etc. to him for a change. 

                                                                           

                                                                               
The visits to Timbuktu are becoming increasingly   regulated by the UN because of the deteriorating security situation. This time we not only slept in the ‘Supercamp’ in little prefab rooms with our own bathrooms (more comfortable than the more utilitarian Swedish tented camp)  but we were also escorted into town by a team of our own blue helmeted soldiers from Burkina Faso and Senegal and we even had our own very cute little private tank that followed us around all morning as we went between the three libraries and finally made our courtesy visits to the two great Imams of Timbuktu: first to the Sankore Mosque below to visit Imam Al Aqib,

                                                                            
then Imam Essayouti of the Djingareyber, below:

                                                                                  

The British Library part of the project in Timbuktu will end in July, but the Minnesota Benedictines will probably still continue-  whether I will or not is still not clear.

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.

                                                                              

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…