London Life

 ...still includes the twice monthly Dante Divine Comedy Wednesdays in my flat, which have now entered  their third year. We are somewhere in the first half of the last part, i.e. the Paradiso, which means we are at the beginning of the end. The same faithful group have steadfastly refused to stop, in spite of my sometimes bitter complaining at how dreary it sometimes gets ... That is particularly true of this last part, because it lacks the narrative drive of the Inferno and the Purgatorio, when things actually happened. There is still a journey of sorts going on: Dante is holding on to Beatrice as they travel through the heavenly regions with their lovely names: the Heaven of the Moon, The Heaven of Venus and latterly the Heaven of the Sun. Here they meet various greats, like the shining soul of St. Thomas Aquinas etc. who sheds light on some theological or political concern of Dante's. But there is no doubt that the further they go in their journey towards the ultimate vision of God the more I tend to want it to be over... There are lovely passages as well of course as Dante is attempting to describe something that no human living eye has seen:

"And if imagination cannot run

To heights like these, no wonder, no eye yet

E'er braved a brilliance that outshone the sun, "

And fortunately it is a fun group of friends and we invariably end up having a great evening, discussing everything else between heaven and earth  as we finally sit down for out soup, bread and cheese.

London keeps me busy on other nights too, and there always seems to be some private view, some concert or some event happening. Take last Tuesday for example, when I had been invited to a party in Cavendish Square- a whole building had been stripped bare and was about to be renovated by an architects' firm.  Before they got started they decided to have a party and invite vintage  furniture dealers in in order to exhibit the lovely and oh so happening furniture, lamps and other interior items of mid 20th Scandinavia. There was champagne served  on every floor and a large number of frighteningly trendy people wandering about. I misbehaved again and laid  down on one of the priceless Danish pieces trying to impersonate an odalisque...

Yesterday  was Sunday and a very good one too... because I beat Ralf, my friend from the German Embassy at chess finally and managed to speak relatively comprehensible German all afternoon while I was at it... then Jeremiah joined us for supper and we showed Ralf the Fawlty Tower episode about the Germans which he had never seen... he was gracious enough to laugh and take it in his stride, as it were.
And this week I am wrapping things up again to leave  for Mali at crack of dawn on Saturday...

Reasons to be cheerful:

1, 2, 3, and probably more.                              

For example, my Portobello Road fishmonger said that he will have octopus at his Friday stall tomorrow morning from 7am. I will take courage and follow Leonardo’s venerable recipe, tried and tested, sourced from his Sicilian grandmother. It goes like this, he reminded me in an email yesterday:

 first step remove the tooth at the Centre of the head ( underneath). Then take of some of the jelly thin skin ( a bit do not worry too much). Throw the beast in boiling water together with a wine cork and one spoonful of vinegar. If it’s 1 kg let it cook for 30/40 min then turn off the gas, cover the pot and let it rest in the water for 30/40 min more. Meanwhile u have boiled some potatoes, chop them add parsley salt and pepper and finally add the octopus properly cut in mid size pieces. Add olive oil and toss it well. It should be served lukewarm. Bon appetit my dear beautiful friend!

 

There is always a moment before chopping up ‘the beast’, when I am gripped by a senseless terror: that is when it looks at me -angrily, I swear-  with its one eye which I am about to gouge out. Then I am certain it is about to return to life with all its tentacles to attack me and I throw the slimy thing back into the sink and scream. But it is all worth it in the end, it is a totally delicious dish, and tomorrow dear Sanjay is coming for dinner, how nice!

And of course there is  my Mali trip coming up once more, when I will spend a whole week in Djenné, first to set up the new project at the library, then to work with some textiles in my old studio once more-  maybe, just maybe I can sneak up on to ‘my’ roof once more with some whisky and peanuts at sunset over the mosque and pretend my old life has returned?

Then the opening ceremony of the 7^th edition of the cataract operations when we will once more keep a minutes silence for the memory of Keita.

                                                                        

and I will be there to commission a Kitāb fī Dalā il al-Khayrāt: or a Prayer upon the Prophet ‎
كتاب في دلائل الخيرات from the calligraphers of Djenné who will use one of our newly discovered old manuscripts as a model. This will be the beginning of the Djenné calligraphy studio which will of course turn into a fabulous success, providing plenty of income and work for Djenné… inchallah..

Ah! and I am working through the painstaking process of making a new website which will be a rambling edifice devoted to all my endeavors in all directions as an unrepentant dilettante, and which will hopefully entice someone to give me some work …

  

 Ah! And there is more I know…  

                                                                           

Oh yes! My lovely brother Johan has just spent a few days with me here in London and that was a lot of fun, especially since he bought me a new hat! Here we are at my old watering hole by the Royal College of Art, the Queen's Arms in Kensington.

                                                                           

                                                                               

AND I keep beating my chess computer on level 5 recently (levels are 1-10) so I seem to be confirmed as solidly mediocre! Which is a great improvement.

Life is Good.

Guerilla warfare at Bamako Conference

                                                                           

From my vantage point at the Starbucks Café at Mohammed V airport of Casablanca I am looking out over the morning activity on the runways that extend before me in the hazy sun of the chill North African morning. A couple of planes are taxing slowly getting into position for take off and others are being loaded from the provision transports with lunches for passengers who will be flying off in all directions of the world shortly- one of them me, on my way to London.

                                                                               

My visit to Mali took me to Bamako only this time, for a conference on the manuscripts of the Sahel organized by UNESCO. My participation was only decided a day before it started and I jumped on a plane under a cloud of confusion on whether I was invited at all, and the event took on a dimension of guerrilla warfare… I had at first received an email asking me if I could attend the conference, I replied in the affirmative. I heard nothing back. So after a week I inquired what was going on. They now pretended as if they had not received my acceptance email.  Then there appeared to be problems finding me a room. I said never mind, I can find my own accommodation. Now they developed problems finding me a flight, and it all smelled as if if behind the scenes I had been ‘disinvited’. By this stage I had got the bit between my teeth and what had been a fairly luke warm proposition- a four day conference in Bamako- took on new dimensions of importance. Father Columba agreed, I should go, they would pay even if UNESCO didn’t. My Italian colleague Maria Luisa Russo was going to be there, and also Dmitry Bondarev, the Arabic Scholar who has been my friend and associate from the very first day of my involvement with the Malian manuscripts, when my British Library contacts sent me over to SOAS to meet him in 2008. 

Maria Luisa offered to give me half of her 15 minutes lecture time so I would also have a chance to speak. This was done, and when I stood up to give my address it was totally unexpected- I spoke about the work of the British Library in Djenne and also of course about our work in Timbuktu. At the same time I announced the new project which will start in March in Djenné.

Readers of this as well as my earlier journal djennedjenno.blogspot.com may recall that throughout my eleven years of involvement with the Malian manuscripts, first and foremost the Djenné ones and later the ones in Timbuktu, there have been various factions that have been less than friendly towards the work we have carried out. These negative forces have included the attack of the Djenné Village Chief on the projects- see blog entry 'A Day in Two Halves' from Dec 8, 2018, and all sorts of other shenanigans in Djenné and beyond, one involving the intervention of the former British ambassador Jo Adamson, and I permit myself to quote from a previous blog post from the DjenneDjenno blog, exactly five years ago: 

Back in Bamako more great events unfolded: an International Conference of Malian manucripts had been organized by UNESCO at the end of January. At the beginning of the month Lassana Cissé, the ‘Directeur National du Patrimoine’ had written me an email alerting me to the fact that the list of participants was being drawn up but that Djenné Manuscript Library was only represented by one person. The other people from Djenné were the Imam and the Maire and one person who owns a small private  library set up by Abdel Kader Haidara, the eminence grise and king of the Malian manuscript world,  who has  also put the Imam’s library in place. Abdel Kader was also in charge of the invitations to the conference. Since we are representing over one hundred Djenné families by now, it was quite ridiculous that we should only have one representative.  I phoned up UNESCO in Bamako and complained. They begrudgingly asked me to send the names of the people I wanted to invite, but said these would not be receiving any money for travel costs or lodging, since they had not been invited by the conference but by me.

I now got on to the British Ambassador Jo Adamson who had kindly promised me to give an evening for the Djenne Manuscript Library. Would it not be possible to do this evening in connection with this conference? I asked. She agreed and the date was set for the 29^th,  the last day of the conference. Overjoyed, I called Lassana Cissé again and told him the news: he confered with UNESCO and it was decided that the evening for the Djenné Manuscript Library at the luxurious  Hotel Salam would be a finale to the whole conference! 

I now received phonecalls first of all from Abdel Kader and then from UNESCO: “of course! there had never been any doubt about our being part of the conference! And of course all four delegates from the Djenné Manuscript Library would receive their travel and lodging expenses! There had never been any question about that- it had been a misunderstanding”...

Well, plus ça change…

 We were back in the same hotel Salam again. Jo Adamson was there again, no longer as the British ambassador but in her new role as deputy to the Mali UN chef and attending a conference in the hall next door.  Once more, there was only one representative from the Djenné Manuscript Library invited- Babou Touré. The library now represents 150 Djenné families and their collections. There are more than 10000 manuscripts in the Djenné library which is an important resource now, but still as neglected as ever.  

But nevermind! Onwards! I am back in Djenné in March to set up the new project. Will also be present for the opening ceremony at the Djenné hospital for the 7^th yearly edition of the free Cataract operations in memory of my Keita, still paid for by my dear cousin Pelle and his wife Nanni, and will even be able to do some Bogolan with Dembele who is still working in our old bogolan studio in Djenne, since the new owner of my land has not moved in yet, and is letting the studio to Dembele.

After the conference I stayed three days with Karen and we managed a great hike again every morning in the lovely hills around Bamako.

                                                                             

and finally, this is rather a hilarious illustration from an American magazine article about Father Columba's (and Walid's and mine) trial during the attack of the MINUSMA Headquarters West in Timbuktu- see August 2017.

and couldn't resist putting in this great shot of Columba and me in that same city last December...

This is what Joy feels like.

I am not sure why I should be feeling so absolutely Happy.
 I mean, I should concentrate on being a London Artist, or on trying to write My Book. But I continue being tied so closely to  Mali, and life somehow is still circling around Mali...
I spoke to Father Columba a couple of days ago. And last night during a late night  telephone conversation on the no 7 bus after a splendid concert at the Wigmore Hall  I asked him whether we couldn't go back and do some more work in Djenné instead of trying to expand our work in the increasingly impossible Timbuktu, he said YES! let's do it!  I had shown them some beautiful manuscript which have accumulated in Djenné in the last year and a half after the British Library projects finally came to an end. They have been brought in by local families and are by far superior to the scrappy bits of manuscritps which were presented to us in Timbuktu. So he agreed, and I will b going back to my beloved Mali to set up yet another project in Djenné maybe even in a couple of weeks! There is much more to say about this, but prefer not to for reasons of diplomacy and security...

Good News from Mali

An eventful couple of weeks are nearing their end- flying back from Bamako on Monday, to see out the last hours  of this decade in London. I am spending the last days with my American friend Karen and we are doing great long hikes in the hills surrounding Bamako with her dogs almost every morning, so close to Bamako, but yet  so far away from the pollution and bustle of the capital.

The  trip to Timbuktu offered adventures as usual, but those were more caused by tedious UN administration troubles than with any Jihadist threats, and we shall happily consign them to oblivion.

Here is Father Columba and I at the airport, leaving Timbuktu just over a week ago. I got out of our little prop plane at Mopti, where Ishmael waited in the old Merc to whisk me off to Djenne  while Columba  and the rest of our team continued on  to Bamako. 

                                                                                   

When we arried at the bac (ferry) at Sanouna by the Bani crossing I was unwise enough to take pictures of the FAMA (Forces Armées MAliennes) jeep that was boarding the ferry. The commander jumped out and strode up to me in an authoritarian manner, asking for my documents. I gave him my passport but that did not satisfy him for then he asked for my ‘Ordre de Mission’, a paper explaining the reason for my business in Djenne. I gave him the paper that had been prepared for Timbuktu, but  he snarled that the permission  to travel to Timbuktu did not say anything about Djenné. Somewhat put out I explained that I had never needed any justification for travelling to Djenne before. At this point three people appeared from various directions on the little ferry, and were all ready to defend me. The driver of a vehicle belonging to the Djenné hospital, a  small Fulani whom I did not recognize came up and said  ‘mais c’est Madame Keita ! La femme du feu Barou Keita, notre laborantin !’ The commandant, whose name was also by a happy coincidence  Keita, seemed to be encouraged by this and softened visibly. He still wanted to if I knew anyone with authority  in Djenné whom he could call to check my credentials. ‘Sure, I said. You can call the Prefect, the Imam or the Maire, take your pick’. He chose Dra, the deputy Maire and the manager of the Campement Hotel, who was playing Pelotte in Djenné with some of Keita’s other friends, who all noisily vouched for me.    

                                                    

I stayed at the Campement in Djenné  for two nights, mainly to visit the Djenné Manuscript Library since my other business in Djenné has now been put to sleep, both hotel and textile business. It was Djenné that provided the most important and interesting insight in my Malian trip this time : people were positive and optimistic about the future and about the security situation. My usual question ‘what is it like here now ?’ received a reply I had not expected. Everyone I spoke to told me that since the signing of the peace accord everything was fine and calm had returned to the area around Djenné. ‘What peace accord ?’ I asked, and to my great surprise I was told that the Prime Minister Boubou Cissé, in the company of no less than five other ministers, had witnessed the signing of a peace accord between the Dozo hunter militia and the representatives of the Jihadist Macina group in the Mahaman Santara Hall next to the Djenné Mairie on the 7th of August. The peace accord covered the Circle of Djenne, and had been negociated by traditional village leaders, and sanctioned by Amadou Koufa, the founder of the Macina group himself.  The peace has held.

I looked it up on Malijet, and found that indeed it was true, and it had been reported in the Republicain newspaper at the time:

https://malijet.com/a_la_une_du_mali/231365-centre_mali_accord_cessez_feu_signe_milice_.html

But nobody knows about it. It has been total radio silence concerning this great news item- all we ever hear about are massacres and deteriorating security situation in central Mali. Even the MINUSMA people themselves seem to be unaware of it, and when I spoke to a military advisor to the UN that I met at a party on Christmas Day in Bamako he was not aware of it ! and yet it is true and I saw it with my own eyes. The peace accord does not concern the Dogon country, which seems to be steadily deteriorating, but Djenné is fine ! Why doesn’t anyone want to report this ? Hurrah Hurrah  I say !

I took the local bus back to Bamako from Djenné. Here I am at the Carrefour de Djenné with the old sign...

Bologna, St. Lucia; Election and then to Mali!

 If Bologna had belonged to any other country than Italy it would have been given top billing- as it happens it nestles somewhere further down the list in the shadow of Venice, Florence, Rome and a few others too maybe... but it is a beautiful city, well worth a visit with gorgeous little streets panning out from the grand Piazza Maggiore (with the statue  of Neptune and his rather saucy handmaidens, above) redolent with culinary delights in the form of cosy trattorias,  green grocers;  fish mongers and cheese and truffle shops...

 

 Maybe it is because Bologna cannot boast a really great local art tradition on the level of Florence or Venice that the city has  become relegated to the 'second division'?
There is at least one great exception to this rule though, and that is one of the most important sculptures in Italy, the truly exquisite Lamentation by Niccolò dell'Arca from the late fifteenth century in the church of Santa Maria Della Vita:

The slightly lower status of Bologna  in the hierarchy of Italian cities brings the advantage  that it is not so inundated with tourists as some other destinations. It might also be a reason why the Bolognese  concentrated on developing what they are really good at: food...
I enjoyed the generous hospitality of new friends Patty Simmons (see blog post October 20) and her husband Les, who have a lovely flat directly overlooking the Piazza Maggiore and who introduced me to a cavalcade of their great friends this last weekend.

And now back in London for a few days only before leaving for Mali on Friday early morning- just enough time to throw myself into some more Lib Dem canvassing before Thursday's Great Crunch Time General Election- arguable the most important one for a generation...

Oh yes! And then there was St Lucia last night too (a little early)

   at the beautiful  Swedish embassy Residence with its perfect Adam-designed interior last night :

                                                                                                                                                    

On the Meaning of Trembling...

Manuscript no No 4647 from Imam Essayouti Library, Timbuktu.

It is probably from the 19th century and copied by a certain Muḥammad al-Amīn Ibn Fūdiu bn Muḥammad who might be a descendant of the famous  Ousmān Dan Fūdiu who founded the Sokoto Caliphate in  Nigeria)

Maktūbfī-l-Ikhtilājwa-l-Ayyām: Convulsion

مكتوب في الاختلاج والأيّام

A manuscript of 10 pages  describes the meaning of various forms of bodily trembling. For instance:

trembling of hair= fortune will arrive

trembling of right eyelid= a meeting with a stranger will occur

trembling of left eyelid= people are talking about you

trembling of right side of nose= illness is coming

trembling of left side of nose=your wishes will be fulfilled.

in addition the manuscript claims that the first of every month is a propitious day because God created Adam on the first day of the month, and the second is also good because then He created Eve. The third, on the other hand, is not so good, because then He chased them both out of Paradise...