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

With Bintu in the Marketplace

Bintu in the marketplace

I went with Bintu to the market this afternoon;  Bintu riding the jakarta (a small Chinese  motorbike which has flooded the West African market) , and me me perched behind her. Bintou is Malian, from the Malinke ethnic group. She is married to Dominic a former French wine grower from the south-west of France, who has bought land around 40 km away from Bamako, beside a little village called Siby, surrounded  by rocky  hills.  They have built their house in keeping with the architecture of the land, round thatched cob huts in a stretch of land with  mango , shea , moringa and neem trees. It’s situated near a magnificent site, the arch of Kamadjan.

Bintou is always on the move, sweeping, cooking, chatting, joking. On hearing me marvelling over the superb view of this sinewy muscle of the mountain, cupping the blue sky she told me how it came into being.  According to legend, Kamandjan, the most valiant lieutenant of Soundiata Keita, the founder of the Mali empire, frayed a path for his troops through a massive and impregnable rock wall with a single stroke of his   sabre as a demonstration of his occult powers.

The arch of Kamadjan

Each Saturday there’s a market in Siby and the population of this little village swells in size with the influx of people from surrounding villages. I had heard about this market,  and since Bintu was going there to buy provisions for her guests I jumped at the opportunity to go with her. Bintu was born in Siby and has grown up here. I hoped that if I tagged  along with her I would be regarded less as a foreigner, or Tubabu, according to the local lingua. Mostly children but sometimes adults too point you out with the exclamation Tubabu and break  into laughter.  Of course the ghostly appearance of Tubabus can also inspire terror in the heats of children, especially the very young ones,  who promptly burst into tears.

 The market place is about 2 km away from their land  Bintu drove down a winding, uneven dirt road, flanked by huts, children, chicken, men having tea, fields of sugarcane and corn , calling out greetings to every second person. When we reached the tar road we came across a line of Sotramas, the top loaded with goods, calabashes, velssels sacks of rice, coal, and onions, which people had bought and were now carrying back to their villages. There were others who placed their trust in more traditional transport and made their way back in donkey carts, the little donkey bravely pulling the cart and all that it contained. 

Sotrama: A small van used in Mali as public transport

When we reached the market place Bintu parked her jakarta in front of her cousin’s shop , (in Mali , every other person is a cousin, brother, sister),  and  set out on foot, stopping ever so often to launch into the customary  greetings.

I ka kene? How's your health?
N ka kene. My health's fine.
Somogow bedi? How's your family?
Torosite.  Fine.
I bara be cogodi? How's your work? 

It can go on and on with different permutations and combinations, depending on your familiarity with the person, your mood, the person’s status in society.  and end with blessings;  Ala ka tile here caya , for example, which means, may God see to it that you have a good day.  But my limited understanding of Bambara, the national language of Mali allows me to translate only this much.

I think in the world of trade, the innovativeness of human exchange and material wealth is proportionately  inverse .The wealthier the country  the more codified is the relation between the buyer and seller. There’s a fixed price. You pay it and go away with your ware. In rich countries bargaining is considered to be in bad taste. But in countries where every purchase is an opportunity for negotiations, the exchange between the buyer and seller can be an art by itself. Mali moreover is extraordinarily rich in the domain of banter and repartee.

Bintu stopped to buy vegetables and with each vendor there was a dialogue which went  beyond  a mere discussion about money.

Here’s a conversation with an egg plant seller:

“How much are your eggplants ?”

“ 200 cfa for 3.”

“But my grandma over there is selling them for 100 cf.”

“You’re a liar, “ quipped the eggplant vendor.

“No, I’m not, retorted  Bindu,

“Yes, you are and if you don’t stop lying your husband will leave you. ”  

“No he won’t,” said Bintu ,” and even if he does , in the afternoon itself there’ll be another man waiting for me. I may not be as pretty as you are, but I have a very good sense of humour  And men really appreciate cheerful women.

The pretty eggplant  seller

The vendor could not but be softened by this answer. The eggplants were bought and both the seller and buyer parted in  high spirits.

In another conversation with a seller of bananas, the exchange was less cordial but as vivacious.  The seller of bananas exhorted Bintu saying that she should not bargain, because she was the wife of a white man and it is well known that the white man is the source, or the origin  of money in the world. Bintu not to be stumped, retorted that the white man does not collect money strewn on the ground. He has to work hard to earn it. I don’t think the woman was convinced . She was sure fhat Bintu had captured the hen that lays golden eggs. However the negotiations were clinched with no hard feelings and a plastic bag full of bananas.

I tagged along, the typical tourist, taking photos with my phone, asking Bintu time and again for explanations. 

Soap

Young girl posing for a photo

Dried fish

At the end of the market trip our hoard consisted of

bananas, eggplants, tomatoes, a small pumpkin, meat, onions, butter, bread, an incense burner in the shape of a pot, blue liquid in tiny plastic sachets for whitening clothes,  two pagnes of bright orange and blue (a pagne is a measurement for cloth used in West Africa, consisting of two metres), and an ornament made up several strands of white beads.  

Women in Mali  use a pagne like a wraparound  and buy three pagnes to make a complet, which is a long skirt and a tunic. The rope of beads is wound  around the waist, to accentuate the slenderness of the waist and make the sashaying gait of a woman even more alluring. However the pagnes and the waist ornament  were my purchases;  the former to make cushion covers and the latter to use as a necklace. I do not have the audacity to tie the bead ornament around my middle aged waist and sashay down the road.

With Bintu’s sidebag and my backpack  stuffed with  goodies,  we headed back towards the house. “Bintu,”  I asked, “don’t you miss this when you are in France?”  By this I meant of course the greetings, the bantering, the exchange of energies, which extends a half an hour trip to one and a half!  “Yes,” of course said Bintu, “very badly.” One of my friends in France told me during the last  holidays, “Bintu I remember you had told me that on a Saturday , if you were in Mali you would be greeting every second person and they would be doing the same .” It reminded me a bit of Pondicherry, my hometown where every other person is a friend or an acquaintance, and meeting and greeting people are a part of living there.

Arunima Choudhury 

Bollywood in Bamako

 Ah Bollywood, Bollywood, you have enraptured the imagination of people through time and space. Your heroes jumping from rooftops, single-handedly disabling dozens of armed bandits, your heroines in body hugging blouses and artfully draped saris,  batting their eyelids and casting languorous glances from kohl rimmed eyes have lightened men’s miseries and made them dream of a happier clime. Here it suffices to feel an emotion to break into song, and go dancing through meadows and over hills. Here love triumphs over the barriers of class and caste, the wicked are punished and the enemy eventually contrite.

And Bollywood has a very special place in the heart of the citizens of Bamako , the capital of Mali. Mali is a country in the west of Africa; thousands of kilometres away from India, on the other side of the Arabian sea.  I am quite sure only about 1 percent of Indians have heard about it and 1 percent of Indians is already 1000000000 people. It’s a country of diverse ethnic groups such as Fulas, Bobos, Bozos, Dogons, Malinkes, Soninkes, Bamanas, each with their history and language, customs and traditions. Here the national language is Bambara, which a Hindi speaking employee in the Indian embassy of Bamako told  me did not in anyway resemble Hindi,  like other Indian languages did. ” This language is absolutely meaningless,” he assured me.    And yet these people whose language does not resemble any Indian language throb to the rhythm of Bollywood beats.

 One of the cult films in Bamako is Don, released in 1978, starring Amitabh Bachhnan; the tall, lanky, actor of the seventies and eighties.  His onscreen personality was synonymous to that of the angry, young man who is the avenger of the innocent. Amitabh Bacchan was and is a household name in India, which is in the order of things. .  But in Bamako too he is almost as popular though he is better known as Don, like the name of the action-thriller film where he plays the role of the hero as well as the villain.  The other film and hero which rivals the fame of Don is Disco Dancer known here as Jimmy with Mithun Chakrabarty in the leading role of a pop star Jimmy, released in 1982. In 1978 I wasn’t even 10 years old and in 1982 when I was in my terrible teens , “ Jimmy, Jimmy aja, aja aja , aja or I am a disco dancer,”  blared from every loudspeaker in town. I remember going with my cousin to see this film in a decrepit film hall in Bengal and being mesmerised by Mithun in crotch hugging white, bell bottoms, gyrating amidst flashing blue, green and pink strobe lights .  The  café-au-lait complexioned, wavy- haired hero with the muscles of  Rambo, was my heart-throb for quite some time.

Mamadou is a young artisan who has a small shop in N’goloni, the colony of artisans. I had gone there with my companion when he and his friend invited us for tea. Here the tea ceremony is a long drawn out affair. The tea leaves are brewed thrice  in a small metal kettle on an equally small brasier . The first brew is very strong and the Malians say that it’s as strong as death, the second brew is a little milder and is as good as life, and the last brew is as sweet as love. When you sit through these three brews you get ample time to get acquainted with your tea-mates . We thus came to know Mamadou and his friend both stoic philosophers in spite of their young age.

The conversation turned to music and films. “Hindu films are the best,” he exclaimed.  “Indeed!” I replied trying to puzzle out how films of Parvathy or Shiva could interest a young Muslim Malian of 25 years.

“I love Jimmy. Great dance, Great music! “ he enthused.  

 “Jimmy?” I echoed, even more bemused. I didn’t know any Hindu divinity by that name.                    

“ Yes, Jimmy, Jimmy aja, aja, aja.”

It took me a few seconds to make the connection, and then I replied with, “I am a disco dancer.”

“Yes,”  he beamed.

“You have seen Jimmy?”

“Yes!”

“But Jimmy is an old film! I saw it in my teens!”

“Everybody knows Jimmy here,” replied Mamadou. 

During the rest of the conversation I gathered that Hindu is equivalent to Indian,  and that Jimmy in Mali  has the same aura as Elvis Presley.  Thus a generation which wasn’t even born when Disco Dancer was made, has been infected with the Jimmy fever. In my mind I saw thousands of pirated copies of Disco Dancer circulating in the lanes and by lanes of Bamako. His friend, a charming young man with dreadlocks,  who rapped for us a song of his own composition in Bambara,  was not of the same opinion. He was a fervent fan of Don,  

Since then I’ve heard a waiter reminisce  about how excited his friends were whenever a Hindu film came to town and how they would go three or four times to see the same film.  To prove his point he hummed the tune of a song sung by Kishore Kumar in one of Rajesh Khanna’s film;  Zindagi ka safar, Hai iye kaisa safar. It' a melodious, philosophical song which says that the journey of life is strange indeed, impossible to foresee and to understand.   This was also a very popular song during my teens.

 While house hunting  I came across a Franco-Malian lady proprietor, an impatient, snappish person who was transformed when she came to know I was from India, the land of Bollywood. She turned to her brother and said, “Remember how we would climb up on the terrace to see Indian films,” then turning towards me and saying, “I used to live in  Mopti and there would be open air projections of films near our house.  It was wonderful. There was this film about a friendship between  elephants and an orphan who grows up to own a circus.  She looked at me expectantly, “Hathi mere Sathi,” (Elephant my friend)  I volunteered hopefully. It’s a film of the 70s which was a big hit with children. I went to see it when I was about seven or eight years old with my mother.  “Exactly,”  she confirmed.

And besides them there have been taxi drivers, teachers working in the French school, doctors, house help, who have unanimously expressed their love for Bollywood’s ravishing heroines,  action packed stories and the mesmerizing songs and dances. However most of the films they have spoken to me about date from the seventies and eighties, and it’s Amitabh Bacchan, Rajesh Khanna, Zeenat Aman, Hema Malini, Mithun Chakraborty who are the evergreen heroes and heroines. Contemporary films are less appreciated. Some of the critiques are that they have too many songs and dances, are not traditional, do not have good action and are not as gay as the old films.

So Bollywood is the bridge between Bombay and Bamako, and the ambassadors from India are the actors and actresses of the seventies and eighties. The Hindi and Hindu gentleman at the Indian embassy who thinks that Bambara is gibberish would be surprised to learn that the strangeness of Hindi has not deterred Malians from appreciating films made in this alien tongue.

Arunima Choudhury