Marianne, Bamako's sole taxi-woman

Marianne the sole taxi-woman of Mali

Since yesterday was  international women's day and I read a post by NDTV about the sole woman train driver in India , I thought I'd post something along the line , about a very ordinary -extraordinary  I met in a picnic a couple of Sundays ago. Marianne, a middle - aged French woman got down from her Sanili, a Chinese brand of motorbikes and greeted me. She was dressed in black pants and an orange flower print shirt which had lost one or two buttons, exposing a part of her plump midriff. It wasn't coquetry. She just wasn't bothered. I found this enchanting. Many women, including myself are very particular about the image we present to the public and it is somehow liberating to see a woman who does not particularly care. Marianne and I started speaking and I asked her what she did in Bamako. She replied taxi-driver." I repeated in a voice of rising incredulity, "In Bamako?"

Bamako is a sprawling West African metropolis, a combination of a village and a city, where travelling is an ordeal because of the dust and heat, the snarl of traffic consisting of small Chinese geared bikes, cars, four wheel drives, trucks, all aiming to get to their destination come what may, the lack of road signs, lot of  potted laterite roads which give rise to clouds of dust. There are umpteen accidents everyday. A share -taxi is a good way to go around and I often take them. The drivers are all men, mostly Malians,and some from other parts of West Africa. I always exchange a few sentences of Bambara with them and listen to the ubiquitous radio, broadcasting music (Malians love music), sketches in Bambara which makes them laugh uproariously, football matches and imams intoning verses from the Koran. I admire their skill,  patience, and sheer physical perseverance, boxed up in their taxis which heat up like ovens in the sun, and the incredible way they deliver you to your destination without any visible road sign.  I had never, ever met a woman taxi-driver! And here a white, French woman was telling me very casually that this is what she did in Bamako. 

 "Yes," she replied. Then added , "I used to be a  school teacher when I first came to  Bamako, but I got fed up of going to school and back and thought that driving a taxi would be a good way of getting to know the city and its inhabitants."

I exclaimed, "You must be having an incredible sense of orientation!"

" No she replied , "My sense of direction isn't very good."

"You speak fluently Bambara", I said almost accusingly."

"I picked up a lot while driving the taxi, she replied"

My astonishment, having reached improbable proportions, I asked her very politely, "But how did you manage?"

"Well, in the beginning I always asked the clients if they knew the way to where they wanted to go. Many of them did. They directed me."

“But how did you know what price to charge them? Here everybody bargains for everything!“

“Well, I asked them how much  they usually paid for the trip and they mostly gave me the right answer."

I was flabbergasted and deeply tickled by Marianne's unruffled narrative . She had broken into an exclusively male bastion, in a country where her complexion immediately sets her apart, leaving the cushy job of a teacher to become a taxi-driver, not knowing well either the city, or the language, or the fares,and  she spoke about it with  such tranquillity, as if she was telling me the recipe of a dish she had prepared many times. I didn’t know whether to judge her as utterly foolhardy, or profoundly naive. Whatever it be, it had paid off , if not monetarily, definitely humanely.

By this time a group of people had gathered around us and were following our conversation. One of the picnickers exclaimed, “ But many people must be completely taken aback to come across a woman taxi driver, and that too a tubababu!” (white foreigner in local lingua).

Marianne laughed. We looked at her expectantly like children waiting for a Christmas present.


“Well, one evening some children came and told me that there was a client waiting for a taxi in front of the mosque nearby. It was an old man who had finished his prayers and was waiting to go home. I asked him where he wanted to go. He was completely under shock but blurted out “Badalabugu.”

“Ok, I said, 1,000 CFA. Get in.” (1,000 CFA =  1 euro 25 cents)

“Gnnnah", he grunted in denial.

“750 CFA.”

“Gnnah”

“500 CFA.”

“Gnnah,” he said again.

By then I had understood that he didn’t want to get into a taxi driven by a white woman because 750 CFA was already below the market rate. He had never seen such a thing in his life, and must have thought I was sent by the devil to ensnare him. And for me it had become like a challenge, so I said, “Ok, I’ll drive you to your house for free!”

“Gnnah!” he retorted emphatically, and hurried away, fingering his prayer beads.  

Arunima Choudhury