I’ve been to Mali. Oh, yes. We went overland from the east, 23 of us in the back of a Bedford truck, via the Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. And even after that succession of astonishing countries, Mali stood out as having a unique flavour of its own.
The first intimation that we ain’t seen nothing yet came at the border. Border crossings were usually surprising or infuriating, one way or another. At the one between Niger and Mali, the Malian authorities surprised us by stipulating an extraordinary condition of entry. This was that we must take on board our truck a representative of the Mali tourist board who would ride and live with us for as long as we were in the country. So after much argument, this thin, black, ulcerated leg duly appeared over the tailgate, and then this tall, ragged, unofficial-looking individual with grasses stuck in his hair heaved himself aboard and shyly introduced himself to the company as Dorro.
The road to Timbuktu was cut by an overflow of the river Niger, so we couldn’t go. Big disappointment. Dorro was devastated, too. Which was how he interpreted his role: not as a supplier of information, but as the embodiment and amplifier of everyone’s mood. If we were disappointed, he was abject, suicidal. If the general mood was good, he wanted to have a party.
We stayed for a night in the desert city of Gao, sleeping on the roof of an adobe house. Dorro said that if we gave him some cash he could obtain some exceptionally decent marijuana from his sister, who was resident in Gao. So we gladly had a whip-round and Dorro trotted off into the desert night. We didn’t see him until the next morning, when we were packed up and ready to leave for the Dogon country. The suppurating leg appeared over the tailgate again, slipped off, reappeared, slipped off. He was incapably drunk. Finally, he took his place among us on the inward-facing benches. ‘Well?’ we said. He’d been so pleased to see his sister, he explained, he’d forgotten about his mission.
The Dogon people live along a 90-mile-long escarpment where, it is thought, they took refuge a thousand years ago from persecuting Islamicists. They are followers of the Nommo, extra-terrestrial creatures who came to earth in a spaceship. The Dogon are celebrated among anthropologists for their belief, preached, presumably, by these aliens, that the germ of creation came from a tiny star which revolves around the bright star Sirius. Their 50-year calendar is determined by the orbit of this star, which is invisible to the naked eye, but which in fact exists and has been calculated by astronomers to be a white dwarf.
Dorro was not himself among the Dogon. He refused to answer questions — not that he knew much about them anyway. He looked hunted. The leaves and grasses he stuck in his hair to ward off evil spirits proliferated. When we all sat down to a chicken dinner with the chief Dogon, called the Hogon, a man wearing a red fez who is said to be licked in his sleep each night by a mythical snake, our representative from the Mali tourist board hid under the truck.
The next day, however, as we headed for the capital, and away from the land of the Dogon, Dorro’s spirits rose. The twigs remained in his hair, but he was himself again. And we were glad for him, because in spite of his almost complete ignorance of his own country, he must have been the most lovable and simpatico national tourist board official in the history of modern tourism. The mere sight of this dilapidated alcoholic gladdened every heart. And he basked in our love as though he had achieved a lifelong dream. My goodness, he assured us, how drunk we were all going to get in Bamako! Marijuana! Women! He could get us anything we wanted! We only had to mention it.
We stayed for a week in Bamako and Dorro was true to his word. We lived on the wide wooden verandah of a colonial-era guest house and Dorro made sure that the beers and the joints circulated without ceasing. One evening he and I sat in comfortable low-slung chairs silently smoking and watching the sunset. A lone bat flew across the setting sun, then two more, then four, then a dozen or so, and then a steady stream, which turned into a huge host of a million or two, which took about half an hour to go by. I shall never forget it. After the last few stragglers had passed, Dorro observed, ‘Many bats.’ It was the only didacticism I heard from our wonderful Malian tourist guide in all the time that he was with us. He cried like a baby the morning we drove away without him.
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