Showing posts with label Mali. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mali. Show all posts

Finally Found It... The Huts Of Mali


After Trumpanzee's comments about "shithole countries" and "African huts," I searched and searched through my Mali and Senegal pictures looking for huts. I finally found one (above, in remote Dogon country where not many people have ever heard of the U.S.) but most of these photos-- of Roland, primarily in Timbuktu and Djenne-- had no huts. There were fishing huts on an island near Mopti in the Delta that the Bozos used, but I can't find any photos. And there are no huts in Dakar in Senegal or in Bamako in Mali. Sorry, Señor Trumpanzee.


























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Terror attack in Mali


Cell phone video filmed by Chinese tourist taken hostage in Bamako, Mali





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Terrorists attack Bamako Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali









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Mali - harta gjeografike e Malit

Mali - harta gjeografike e Malit

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'We cannot have a terrorist state on our doorstep'

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Indeed.
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Çka është Mali ?

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Çka është Mali ?



Mali është formë impresive relievore në të vërtetë është formë e ngritur në Tokë, e krijuar si rezultat i aktivitetit të korës së Tokës.
ceshte mali, cfare eshte mali, cka eshte mali, mali shqip, malet shqip, cka jane malet, cfare jane malet, malet shqip, mali, cka dmth mali, malet
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Mali... Falling Apart-- And Now A Coup



This week I went to see the country's foremost tropical disease specialists; wonderful woman! But she didn't want to take my case. Mostly she does research and academic work. But she agreed to a consultation. When I saw her I told her I had spent some time in the wilds of Mali and the consultation immediately turned into an examination and a series of tests. I'm down 6 vials of blood!

I've been warning readers that Mali has been disintegrating into civil war and that it is now so unsafe for tourists that some of the major sites are now shut down to foreigners-- like, for example, the cities of Timbuktu and Gao, for many people the primary reasons for even going to Mali. And today there was a military coup d'etat, overthrowing longtime president, Amadou Touré-- who had come to power in a military coup a decade ago.

The 7,000 man army is angry because there are no weapons and equipment to fight back against the Tuareg rebels up north.
Anger has been growing within the army at the handling of a Tuareg-led rebellion that has killed dozens of people and forced nearly 200,000 civilians to flee their homes.

While soldiers had been urging the government to provide better weapons to fight the rebels, bolstered by fighters who had fought in Libya's civil war, one of the mutineers said they now wanted to oust President Amadou Toumani Toure.

"He needs to leave power, that is all. The movement will only stop with the taking of the palace," said the sergeant, who asked not to be named.

...A military source said a trigger for Wednesday's events was a visit by the defence minister to a barracks in the town of Kati about 20 km (13 miles) north of Bamako.

"The minister went to speak to troops but the talks went badly and people were complaining about the handling of the crisis in the north," the source said.

An official in the defense ministry who was at the meeting said a soldier accused the defense minister of betraying them by not giving them means to fight the rebels. Soldiers then began throwing rocks at the minister before they took weapons from the armory and started shooting in the air.

Bamako was briefly paralyzed last month as hundreds of Malians put up street barricades and burned tires in the streets to protest at the government's handling of the rebellion.

Tuareg fighters seeking to carve out a desert homeland in Mali's north have made advances in recent weeks, including the seizure this month of the key garrison town of Tessalit by the Algerian border.

The MNLA rebel movement has been bolstered by heavily armed Malian Tuareg returning from fighting alongside Libyan forces who tried in vain to prevent Muammar Gaddafi's overthrow last year.

Apparently the coup was led by low level officers-- no generals or colonels-- and Touré, who was a paratrooper himself, is hiding out with a loyal paratroop regiment. A.P. painted a pretty chaotic picture tonight-- drunken soldiers looting the presidential palace and suspending the consititution.


UPDATE: Ex-President Touré Is Safe But...

Although the A.P. still insists on referring to Mali as "a functioning democracy" the president who was just overthrown in a military coup became president in a military coup of his own 10 years ago. And Timbuktu is about to fall to brutal Tuareg rebels (who still passionately believe in slavery, I might add).
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How I Lost 15 Pounds Without Even Trying-- And Saw The World's Biggest Mud Mosque

Visiting a quiet Bozo fishing village on the Niger

The alternative title for this post was A How To Guide For Seeing Mali but I thought the one I used would be more eye-grabbing. I suppose if you take all the vaccines that the tropic disease doctors insist on for a visit to Mali-- and thereby not have to worry as much about cholera, typhus, typhoid fever, polio, yellow fever, Hepatitis A and B, meningitis, and malaria (there is no way to protect yourself from Dengue Fever)-- you can eat whatever and wherever and whenever you like. I, on the other hand, only did the barest prophylactic minimum-- the yellow fever vaccine, without which you can't get a visa, and malarone pills, to possibly prevent malaria. The rest... I left to the fates and my own well-honed good instincts for prudently watching what I eat and drink.

I learned about getting sick on the road when I was much younger. In 1969 I drove a VW van across Asia to India on a two year excursion. I was a vegetarian and I quickly attributed the fact that everyone-- like I mean everyone-- around me was coming down with seriously debilitating diarrhea, to the differences in diet between myself and them. I'll spare you the unsavory details of what the Kabul Runs entails, but I can still remember the first time I realized that the slab of dead animal hanging from a hook in every (unrefrigerated) marketplace across Asia was black because it was covered in flies.

These Third World countries are poor and don't have the kinds of infrastructure we do-- even after 8 years of George Bush-- and everywhere you look there are ample opportunities to get really, really sick. Think back to Jamal's earliest flashbacks of the Mumbai slums in Slumdog Millionaire; all that poopie is not poetic license. One of my closest friends, painter Eveline Pommier, contracted cholera in India and died, full of promise and vigor and beauty, still in her 20s. Mali today is at least as bad as rural India was two or three decades ago.

That said, Mali is a gorgeous and unique country with wonderfully, warm, open, friendly people who have a culture unlike anything else you'll find anywhere on earth. It's well worth visiting. So how do you do it? It isn't a place I'd suggest just getting on a plane to, showing up in Bamako, and playing it by ear. There are no really current guide books although the best one I found, Bradt's Mali, Edition 3, is the best out there. First written in 2000, it was somewhat updated in 2004. It was reprinted in 2007 but not changed from 2004. A lot has happened in Mali since 2004 and some of it is even hard to find on the Net. But the Net is where I turned to figure out what to do about my trip. And I struck gold on the first shot.

I found fellow blogger Sophie (aka, Toubab), a Swedish woman who runs a gem of a hotel in Djenné, the Djenne Djenno (which opened in 2006), and blogs about the experience. Sophie's blog is fascinating in and of itself but the big score for me was when I contacted her to book a room, she helped me figure out the best places to stay throughout Mali. And, best yet, she steered me towards a reputable and capable tour agent, Tounga Tours from whom we could get an essential 4WD vehicle with a dependable driver.

I had already figured out that the best hotel choice in Bamako, the capital and the city with the international airport. The Hotel Salam, a relative newcomer at the top of the market, looked like a better choice than either of the two traditional considerably older "best" hotels, Le Grand or Hotel de l'Amitie. But after Bamako I really depended on Sophie's suggestions for which were the best places to stay in each town.

Tounga Tours is run by an unflappable husband and wife team, Van and Ann, in Bamako. Obviously they know all the ins and outs of traveling around Mali. Ann was also kind enough to book me my plane ticket from Timbuktu back to Bamako, which was lucky since it sold out. And she booked the Hotel Salam for me, saving me hundreds of dollars. When it came to the trip itself, my first instinct was to just want to rent a jeep with a driver. Ann patiently explained how we really would need a guide to get the most out of the trip, and an English-speaking one at that. I was resistant but, luckily, I gave in to her good sense. And was she ever right! Our driver and guide were a great team and a pleasure to travel around with. They find their own places to stay and their own food and the whole shebang cost 200 Euros a day, which is very much worth it if you can afford it. We were able to travel in relative comfort and visit Ségou, Djenné, Mopti, spend several days in Dogon Country (the best part of the trip) and then make the iconic road trip to Timbuktu, from which we flew back to Bamako.

UPDATE: Pics

We listened to Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder the whole time. Here are some of our pictures set to their music:

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