Africa ...

Arrived at Djenne last Sunday night along that northbound road  I must have travelled a thousand times: a dusty and hot eight hours drive up the main artery of Mali. The  people had already started to arrive from the surrounding villages and were  preparing for the Monday Market- it seems that it is  Calebash season at the moment! I moved in to the 'presidential suite' at the Hotel Campement, which is not quite as grand as it sounds... and later met up with the cataract team, i.e. Dr. Faira Keita and his assistants, who were in Djenne operating once more on the village population, sponsored by my cousin Pelle and his wife Nanni. 

Faira's team  also stayed at the Campement, which is about the only place now where one can stay in Djenne.

I was curious about the man that sat down in the hotel court yard in the evening, waiting for the Real Madrid - Barcelona match. He was wearing sun glasses. I was told that he had had his bandages removed that same morning, and that he had been totally blind with cataracts on both eyes. This was the first time he could  see anything for three years. He was a Barcelona fan, and as you may know, they won 4-0, making his joy complete.

I was on a mission to the Djenne Manuscript Library, and spent the following day connecting with the staff there, picking up the necessary items and discussing future possible plans with them. The work of digitizing carries on, sponsored by hmml.org,  in spite of a deteriorating security situation in Central Mali. Even Djenne, which up until now has remained something of a peaceful oasis in the troubled central area of Mali,  no longer enjoys the sense of immunity from the troubles I always detected earlier. Even Imam Yelpha is worried. The violence is creeping closer, and more and more dispossessed youths are joining the groups of 'jihadists' which terrorize the outlying villages and carry out indiscriminate killings, such as the senseless mortal shooting  last week of two Bozo brothers  (fishermens' tribe) who went upstream to fish... 

According to Boubakar, my erstwhile gardener, and many others among the Djenne population, the faction amongst the Fulani tribe that make up the main part of the 'jihadist' menace is hankering for  the return to  the  glory days of the nineteenth century, when Sekou Amadou and later Cheick Oumar Tall ruled central Mali with  their Fulani Empires- and when Djenne itself was their first capital.  Although it might explain why the cultivating tribes are killed while they try and cultivate their fields, to give more pasture for the Fulani cattle, it hardly explains the killing of two peaceful fishermen...

Back in Bamako again now, and the charmed  life of the expat of course, as I am staying with my friend Karen and engaging in peaceful pursuits in beautiful settings for a couple of days before flying back 'home' to Italy; such as here, below, playing chess at the poolside of Hotel Amitie- for sure the best pool in West Africa!