Playing Frogger in the Regional Capital

Kayes is a pedestrian town with no pedestrian space. There is little public transport so it is common to walk 6-12 kilometers a day. Some neighborhoods live in secondary flood plains off the river and this makes walking around a perilous and exciting adventure (we toubabs play a game called – “don’t fall in the nyegen ji (toilet water).”

Yesterday I went on one of my cross town adventures. I was headed from Khasso neighborhood over to the Peace Corps house in Legal Segou to check my email. My friend Brandon (aka supreme Bamanan speaker and esteemed mayor of Bamako and Kayes)had graciously allowed me to sit in on one of his interviews, so that I could meet one of his many Kayes VIP contacts.

I walked down a narrow road along the river. The road, unlike most in Kayes, was paved. Decaying colonial buildings walled in the road. Large trucks transporting merchandise from Senegal lined the walled street, thus making the road narrower and narrower. The road cuts through a market and as darkness fell, people, cars, and motos dodged in, out, and around the layers of building and trucks. About half the way through my walk, pirogues coming across the river (the bridge is out and everyone and everything crosses in a small pinasse) were unloading massive bulls into the road. The bulls, whose legs were bound as if they were planning to win a 3-legged race, were shepherded by a couple of teenage boys holding ropes tied to their back legs. Four groups of bulls funneled out of the pirogues into the narrow road. I watched as the teenage boys struggled to control the bulls meters away from me. Cars zoomed up behind the bulls and only a few feet away noticed the thick walls of livestock zig-zagging along the road. Motos zoomed around the cows and I tried to stay a couple of steps behind them – always anticipating an impromptu and unscripted running of the bulls. Only in Mali would one worry about being hit by both a moto and a pack of bulls in a regional capital.

Yesterday we completed 17 surveys. Today it is raining (12 hours straight and counting): the roads are ruined and people are sleeping, so I suspect we will do none.