Concert, swimming, football

At the station in Bamako we tried to arrange a taxi for the six westeners to the hotel, Mission Catholique. Of course it was not possible to have more than 3 passengers in 1 taxi, while normally they trie to cram 6 to 9 persons into 1 taxi, but ok. After a lot of negotiating, I arranged that 2 taxis would bring us for CFA 2000 per taxi. The high price was not a garantee for service. Our drivers had no clue of where the mission was, although they had admitted at the station, that they knew where it was. The wanted to drop us at the catholique church, I asked him if he expected us to pray at 2:30 in the night? They wanted to go no further and we did not want to pay. After investigation from us with local people we found out the directions and we were finally brought to our destination. We soon found out the mission only was open from 7 in the morning, so we decided to set up camp on a terrace in front of a bar opposite the mission. A neighbour borrowed us a mat to sit on and we shared our last food, before attempting a short sleep. I did not succeed in that, as I had to much trouble with the mosquitos. At 6:30 the Austrians returned to the station to fetch their bikes and all their other stuff as that had been in a cargo wagon and at night they would not open those, even a lot of complaining did not help. Although the mission opened at 7 we were only to check in at 11 as the sisters were in morning prayers and they were not to happy that the 2 girls slept with the guys. Eventually they made an exeption for us.

The next day at the evening we visited a concert in the national football stadium. Entry ticket was only CFA 1000 not much even for the Malinese, so no surprise it was crowded at the gates. One of Pauls new found friends guided us past the huge queues. I felt a little embarassed, but did not complain. At the gate we bribed a police officer with CFA 1000 to let us in. Unfortunately his superior did not allow us to enter this way and sent us back. The young officer felt obliged to perform for his money and forcefully made a hole in the queue for us. We got some angry looks, but we were in the stadium in no time. Inside the big stadium it became clear that the sound system would only be sufficiently strong enough for a middle sized bar. Which meant that when the 20,000 people were quiet we were able to hear a distant bass high up in the stadium. For me the music was not the entertaining part, but the crowd.They were great to watch, singing and dancing with teh playbacked music. Soon after we arrived the stadium ws full, but still a lot of people were waiting to get in. For a short while the police opened the gates to the ground terrain, causing a run for the gate. After half a minute they closed it again allowing only about 200 people to the pitch. Loads of people were hanging in the fences and gates ready to climb over when the right opportubity rose. The first people who climbed over were violently chased and beaten by the police, but did gave oppurtunity to others to climb over and quickly mix with the crowd aleady on the pitch. This game went on for the whole length of the event and was great to watch. Once in a while people were carried away to the ambulance to be brought to hospital. The ambulance would only start after being pushed for a fex meters. In due course thousands of people were on the pitch randomly attacked by police officers. Sometimes one officer had to be stopped by his colleagues, because he would not stop beating up a victim. At 12 at the the hight of the concert, with finally some live music, which we still could not hear, we left an ecstatic crowd of 30,000 spectators behind us. A great show! The last day in Bamako, the Austrians and I really spoiled ourselves with visiting a pool at a big hotel. The pool was nothing fancy, but it was nice to have a fresh dive and some lazy hours at the pool.

The next day by bus to Segou. I did not see much of the city. I had a short visit to the river Niger to watch the local women do the dishes half naked in the river and after that managed to get in a football game on a beautiful green grass pitch. I scored the first 3 goals and for those who know my goalscoring skills, they know the defence must have been pretty lousy. Despite the fact that we lossed, I was invited to join them for a game the next day. I did not accept, because I had planned to go to Djenne.