ALGERIA
Every home a balcony, decreed Napoleon III. The apartment blocks of Algiers, with louvered shutters and neo-classical details, are a reminder that for more than 100 years, until independence in 1962, Algiers was as much a part of France as the Lyons or Marseilles it resembles.
ALGERIA
On the roof of the Villa Suzini. Behind me, sunlight across the city explains why the French called it Alger La Blanche, the White City. In the cellars of this pretty Moorish villa Algerians who resisted French rule were beaten, tortured and often killed during the independence struggle in the 1950s.
On the road to Djerba, Tunisia. Standing left to right: Basil Pao, John Paul Davidson, Peter Meakin, Claire Houdret. Sitting: Pritchard, Meakin, Mohammed (driver), Man With Grin.
A wall in Belcourt is covered with football slogans. The English contribution, though misspelt, is not forgotten.
In the casbah, Algiers. This is the oldest part of town and dates from long before the French arrived. It’s also the heart of antigovernment feeling. The houses are squeezed tight along narrow alleyways, making it easy to defend and very difficult to attack.
The Portuguese-built bastions of what is now a piece of Spanish territory in Africa, the city of Ceuta.
MALI
Day Thirty-Eight
BAMAKO
As if this second, unscheduled night is not wretched enough, my bowels, so well-disciplined since Western Sahara, suddenly demand attention. It’s as if they know that it’s hot, the train is unstable, there’s no water left in any of the lavatories and there’s someone sleeping in the corridor who I have to step over each time.
As my internal convulsions match those of the train, I look in vain for any sign of city lights, but it’s not until five o’clock that I hear J-P outside my door.
‘Breakfast in Bamako,’ he announces cheerfully.
Forty-three hours after leaving Dakar, eight hours later than schedule, having covered the distance at an average speed of 28 miles per hour, we creak to a halt at Bamako station at five-forty on a Monday morning. For a moment all is quiet. The first streaks of dawn light pierce the clouds in the eastern sky, the smell of a new day edges out the smell of an over-used train, and though we can see only the darkened outlines of station buildings, there is an air of expectation.
Then the doors swing open and for the first time I realise just how many people have been aboard the Dakar - Bamako express. And how much they’ve brought with them. The narrow platform is soon submerged beneath people and their stuff. Chairs, sofas, lengths of carpet, great bulging sacks, cooking stoves, lengths of piping. All become weapons in the fight for the exit.
We are trying our best to film this, which only adds to the chaos. Two men offering us taxis and cheap hotels follow us everywhere. Somewhere further up the platform there are cries and shouts and people fall back as a scuffle begins. A man suspected of stealing has been dragged off the train and is being savagely beaten by his fellow passengers.
I make a scrawled note in my diary: ‘Bamako Station, fiveforty a.m. The Heart of Darkness’.
Breakfast in Bamako. Part Two. A couple of hours ago I felt like a piece of litter ready to be swept up and thrown away. Now I’m sitting by the banks of the River Niger with a cup of coffee and a plate of bacon and eggs in front of me. I’m washed and freshly dressed and have just seen a sunrise as beautiful as any since this journey began. Deepest gloom has given way, suspiciously quickly, to pure, uncritical ecstasy, as we sit on this terrace on stilts built out over the river that will lead us to Timbuktu. A golden sun grows in confidence. There is a swimming pool, fresh fruit, and a day off to rest, relax and generally wallow in the delights of not having to move.
Day Forty
BAMAKO
At first light this morning the surface of the River Niger shone like silver, and as I watched, a boy in a dug-out canoe slowly poled himself through the water hyacinth, a slim black silhouette against the lightening sky, as spare and sharp as a character in Chinese calligraphy.
An hour later the sun is up and the banks of the river are lined with children bathing and men and women washing. This is where the hotel laundry is done and it’s deeply satisfying to watch my travel-worn jeans being pounded against the rock whilst I drink a cup of coffee on the terrace.
We drive into Bamako. The road surface is like a Mohican haircut. A thin strip of tarmac, worn down to hard-baked earth on either side. Like Nouakchott in Mauritania, Bamako is a city that has grown fast since independence, and for the same reasons - drought and the southward march of the Sahara Desert. Forty years ago, 160,000 people lived here; now there are more than a million, one tenth of the population of this huge country, and enough of them have old, poorly maintained cars to fill the air with a pervasive soup of pollution.
We pass buildings that date Bamako’s history like rings on a tree trunk. First, and nearest the hotel, the gorgeously named Bobolibougou market, a forest of stalls stretching way back from the roadside and disappearing into Stygian gloom. Their knobbly wood frames and thatched roofs cannot have changed much since Mungo Park came here. Further into town, the road leads us past the heart-sinking bulk of the Hotel l’Amitie, ten storeys of grey concrete with grass sprouting from the cracks. This unlovely landmark is a reminder of the days after independence, when Mali took the hardline socialist route, bankrolled by China and the Soviet Union. A later stage of development is represented by the Saudifinanced road bridge across the Niger, and one later still by the unmissable BCEAO tower, a bank headquarters which looks from a distance like a skyscraper made of mud. This could be said to represent the latest phase of Mali’s development - African capitalism.
The everyday commercial life of Bamako is not to be found in air-conditioned office blocks, but out in the open, on the hot, busy streets. This is where we find the fetish stalls, stocked with animal skins, shrunken monkey heads, dried ears and hearts, bird’s feet, crocodile parts and all the other charms and potions for the gri-gri - black magic or traditional healing - which is still such a powerful force in the country.
This is where we find the windowless huts of businesses with names like ‘Coiffure, Harrods style’ and ‘M. Yattara, Boutique’, the latter, consisting of a table, a bench and a kettle, located outside the gates of the station we arrived at two mornings ago. So low were my spirits then that I hardly noticed the station itself, which is another French colonial gem, faced in local red sandstone, roofed in terracotta tiles and dominated by a clock tower with the proud inscription ‘Chemin de Fer de Dakar en Niger’ picked out in gold leaf. Sadly, the original clock has gone missing and been inadequately replaced by one out of somebody’s kitchen. Less grand, but equally purposeful inscriptions adorn the walls of the forecourt, including two ‘Defense d’Uriner‘ signs and a third which warns: ‘Defense Absolut d’Uriner’, under pain of arrest by Special Police. The mind boggles at what sort of highly honed skills these special police must require.
Order a coffee, which is made in a tall glass with about eight grains of Nescafe and half a tin of evaporated milk. It tastes disgusting. Mr Yatarra is a character though. He speaks good English and eyes us with lofty amusement. When J-P asks him if he is happy for us to film, he pats the side of his voluminous djellaba.