Bamako, Mali

So here I am in Mali of all places. Had to look it up. Though it turns out that Mali is home to the world's oldest university - in Timbuktu. I am here for a meeting. Well, actually a conference, which takes place over 4 days, starting on Sunday evening. So I tacked a meeting onto the beginning of it and made it a 5 day trip.

I flew in via Johannesburg and Nairobi. That is not the shortest route. The shortest is probably Johannesburg Accra (Ghana) and across or Johannesburg Dakar (Senegal) and across. The problem with the latter two is that one is then entrusting one's life to unknown airlines, some of which are not allowed to fly to Europe, for reasons which may be fallacious but are more likely to be valid. I try and stick to SAA and Kenyan when flying in Africa. Every now and again one has to make an exception - I had to fly precision air to Kilimanjaro last month and I've flown Air Tanzania once or twice when it was still operating. But like I say, I try and stick to SAA and KQ.

The schedule is somewhat inhospitable. I have done it before. You catch a latish flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg and then wait for the Kenyan Boeing to arrive, which it usually does late. Because it is SAA and then Kenyan, you have to collect luggage in Johburg and check it in again at the KQ counter. I was interested to see that they now plastic wrap all the checked in KQ baggage. I don't think you have an option. My suitcase, whilst not that old, is extremely tatty, having come off worse against a few baggage handlers in Nairobi and elsewhere over the course of the last 2 years. So I was quite amused to see it getting the full treatment, along with the fancy cases my fellow passengers produced. The flight is supposed to leave Joh'burg at 00h40, and because of the rushed turnaround is often a little dirty, but by that stage you are so tired they could pull up in a garbage truck and it would probably suffice.

I got wedged into cattle class between a decent enough fellow, who kept to himself and looked out the window mostly, and an oldish man in a three piece suit, tie and hat who ordered red wine but never drank it and kept the light on till the wee hours reading some great tome. The arm rest was broken between the seats and sleeping was difficult, but I somehow managed a few winks. Actually I must have slept OK because I remember thinking, as I was wakened by the pilot telling us in rather loud and measured sentences that we were commencing our descent, what the ground temperature was, what the outside temperature was, what our land speed was -- all the stuff you really want to know at 5 am - that this could not be right, we'd only just left Johannesburg. If I can permit myself a little ethnic stereotyping, I have to say that Kenyan pilots, air stewards and air hostesses (actually the pursers) seem really to like the sound of their own voices. They do speak English beautifully, most of them, but a little less volume and a little less generally would be welcome.

The 2 hour layover in Nairobi was dreary. It is not a bad airport, but far from exciting. I guess volume wise it is busier than Cape Town but not as busy as Johannesburg. But while the South African airports have improved in stages, with fresh designs and upgrades, Jomo Kenyatta International has stuck with a rather dysfunctional design which can probably be blamed on the Russians (just a guess) and must be 40 years old if it is a day. The place has so much potential and space - they just need a few lateral thinkers, and some money of course.

Our plane to Bamako was somewhat smaller - a Boeing 737-700 which seats about 120 but wasn't full. I had a nice window seat just behind business and the seat next to me was empty so it was a pleasant trip. The flight takes about 6 hours. They serve you breakfast and lunch, although you arrive in Bamako around midday. You gain three time zones - Mali is the same as Greenwich in the northern winter. I sat behind a couple with an infant. Or I thought they were a couple. His hair was 75% grey and he looked in his fifties. She looked under 35. But they both interacted with the kid like parents. Interesting.

There wasn't a lot to see crossing Africa. We flew over Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin and I have probably left one or two out. Most of the way there was a thick blanket of cloud obscuring the ground. My impression as we descended and Mali itself came into view, was of a dry, brown country, sparsely populated, even near the major centres (Bamako is the capital). From 40 000 feet it looked like the Karoo - semi desert. But as we descended you could start to make out trees and actually there are quite a lot of trees. Not a forest, but more like savannah - single trees dotted around.

We flew over the mighty Niger River. I spotted a few makoro's (dug out canoes) or whatever they are called here. I was surprised at the lack of high density housing though. Maybe I missed it. I had expected something like Blantyre or Nairobi. Just wall to wall dwellings and cars and people. Bamako doesn't appear to be like that. Again, the Karoo analogy springs to mind. If you can imagine Colesberg or Hanover writ large, that is Bamako. Plus a very large river. Low koppies.

We made one of these leisurely approaches. At one stage I thought they had put us into a holding pattern but I don't think so - there weren't many other planes around, either on the ground or in the air. Half the passengers were staying on and going through to Dakar. The rest of us clambered out and into the waiting bus. It was hot, but a dry hot. I would guess the temperature was in the mid thirties, like Maputo, but the discomfort level was lowish.

I had to show my yellow fever vaccination certificate and then stand in front of a photographer (none of your webcam nonsense, this was a proper camera) and be photographed (so did everyone else), then show my visa and passport, and I was in. Fairly simple. Picked up my tatty suitcase, complete with plastic wrap, and headed for the exit. I was met by a charming fellow with a placard bearing my name who said he had been dispatched to take me to my hotel. He spoke absolutely no English and I speak no French so it was a challenging trip. He took me to the wrong hotel - the Radisson instead of the l'Amitie. Had to go back. He did manage to point out some landmarks - the statue of the premier president (the first after independence), the new municipal buildings (which I mistook for the presidential palace), the national archives, and sundry others.

The hotel is very imposing. It is not far from the north bank of the river, near one of the major bridges. I have a room on the 8th floor, facing the river, which is rather nice. The grounds are spacious and there is a nice pool, with warm but not too warm water. The room itself was rather hot when I arrived, but now (6.30) is bearable. So ends day 1 in Bamako. I need to go and get something to eat. As I do, the sounds of the city waft up 8 stories - traffic sounds busy, I can hear the muezzin singing and now the imam preaching over the PA system of one of the local mosques. Earlier there were what sounded like fire crackers, but I didn't see any fireworks. Maybe they were gunshots, but they didn't really sound right. An astronautical mosquito has found it's way through my open door. All that effort and then I squashed her!

Some pictures of the view to round it off.