Jean-Patrick was part of a concert tour here – a musician came from Switzerland to do concerts in 7 different towns in Mali and JP was on the team of singers. The last concert was in Bamako, so I took the bus to meet him there. I got to be at the last concert and then we stayed a few days after that to do our shopping.
The bus I took left at 7am. It usually takes around 7 hot uncomfortable hours to get to Bamako. People in their private air conditioned cars can get there in 5 hours. (I hope to be one of those people one day!) So I should have been getting into Bamako around 2pm. That would have given me time to wash the layer of dust off myself and get some clean clothes on before going to the concert at 4. But the bus broke down. We were about and hour and a half out of Bamako. I sat with everyone else on the side of the road in a tiny village town. 2 hours later it didn’t seem like the bus would be going anywhere anytime soon, so I hitched a ride (along with several passengers) on another bus that was going by. They asked 1000cfa for the 1 ½ hour trip. That’s about 2 dollars, so I think it was money well spent to get off the side of the road. I arrived in Bamako at about 4 and grabbed a taxi to go straight to the concert. The taxi got flagged down by the police (a man standing on a street corner waving his arm and blowing a whistle) and the taximan had to pull over and discuss his car registration or something (or probably give a bribe) for about 20 minutes while I sat in the taxi. Finally I got to the concert and it was fine because there were still some opening acts playing.
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