Goodbye Bamako, Welcome to Kayes

My first and only visit to Kayes was in 2003. Drissa and I were taking the train from Bamako to Dakar and we stopped halfway (24 hrs) through our journey. I remember eating delicious fish and rice during that brief stopover, but that is about all.

Besides the railroad, Kayes is famous for a few other things. It is fabled to be one of the hottest cities in the world (supposedly the iron ore below the earth pulls the heat in); Kayes was the original French colonial administrative capital in present-day Mali. The French built the firsts schools here in the 1880s. In a contemporary context, Kayes serves as a customs junction between the ports in Senegal and landlocked Bamako.

I arrived in Kayes on Sunday. My team and I are staying with my Aunt Djeneba (who ran for mayors)’s family. It is a large concession with trees in the middle. I’ve had to adjust to family-style living: no inside toilet – just an outside “nyegen” (a whole in the ground with cement walls around it, no personal space (my suitcase sits on a series of other suitcases along the wall – I rifle through my suitcases to find items as needed); I sleep outside on a bed with a mosiquito net surrounded by women and children watching TV (people greet me as I sit in mosquito net feeling rather like a pet or zoo animal). I had a David Sedaris moment the other day when I brought some butter cookies into the nyegen with me so that I could eat them in isolation because I didn’t want to have to share.

That said, the pros of my set-up completely outweigh the cons. That a family could so quickly accommodate 4 people is incredible. Completely unlike me trying to run a Bamako house, everything is done for me here. People assembly and disassembly my bed, they bring out food, buckets of water to wash with, chairs, etc. And the food!!! The food here is incredible. A couple of months into my fieldwork I had decided that I no longer liked most Malian food. Kayes has changed everything. I eat and love every sauce that is presented – even the leafy ones like fahgwe and saga saga. I try everything – a Peule woman cam by with fresh yogurt milk which I drank and I am currently sipping millet pourridge as a I write. The food in Kayes is so much better than the food in Bamako. I have asked people here why and they say that it is because the servants cook in Bamako and in Kayes the women in the family cook. Evidence A is my Aunt’s incredible 70/80 something mother who must sleep less than 4 housr a night, who tirelessly prepares breakfast for us every morning. The other theory is that Bamakoise eat out of their homes less often and are thus less invested in food preparation. Whatever the reason I am happy that my faith in Malian food has been restored.