Sylvia's Journal

Alphonse the driver came to pick me up at 7 PM at the hotel last night. I had to leave my room at 6 PM, already quite generous of the hotel, and so I spent the last hour in the lobby, dozing off now and then which made the hour go by fast. I gave Alphonse my leftover Chinese toys and cheap gadgets for his kids and the bar of chocolate I never got around to eat. I also gave him my cell phone chip which will expire in January. I don’t expect to be back before then, so it is better if someone else uses it in the meantime. I never got attached to my number. I have already forgotten it.

In the morning Oumar sent me his contributions to our final report shich took me the rest of the day to complete. While I was working I followed on CNN the path that hurricane Ike was slashing through Texas. It is odd that we sent people into these storms to report on them when they cannot really see anything because of the wind, rain; on top of that the electricity is out. They really did not have much to say and what they said was repeated every 15 minutes as were the pictures.

In between the wet and windy reports on the American disaster I watched a program on Democracy in Africa which included some gruesome scenes from the Congo and some interesting ideas about democracy African style (as in ‘winner does not take all’). Will it happen during my lifetime, I wondered? As we know from Ivory Coast and Kenya, the progress can easily be reversed.

Oumar and I had our last lunch together in a practically deserted restaurant. The only other creatures around us where the ubiquitous bats, screeching and pooping as if there was no tomorrow. I had my last ‘sauce feuilles’ with rice, so did Oumar. Not his last, I am sure, although the crabs will be missing in his hometown of Kankan, deep inland, near Bamako. He didn’t eat the crab pieces anyways, much like I did not eat the bush meat that comes from an animal resembling a large rat.

We reviewed the 10 days we had just completed and then we said goodbye. He called me hours later that he was still at the airport, his plane delayed; nothing unusual in this part of the world, but by the time I arrived at the airport there was no sign of him, so I assumed he was on his way to Conakry or already there.

On the way to the airport I wondered what it was like to have lived here during the shooting and looting that took place not that long ago. It is not like with us in Holland where only old people now remember the war. Here, everyone would remember. Where were they, what did they do and what/who did they lose?

There are many billboards around town and a lot along the road to the airport. They promise riches, beauty, happiness, wisdom and whatnot if only you buy a certain brand of tomato sauce, cell phone, refrigerator or toothpaste. Against the backdrop of the chaos, dirt, the messiness of ordinary life, I can see the attraction. They are part of the attempt to create a consuming middle class. It may actually work.

I had the good luck of sitting in the plane on the same row as a young father with his little girl. She screamed nonstop for the first half hour, bringing in various African moms sitting in our section of the plan with advice, food, toys, even chips; all to no avail. The father who already looked much harried as he entered the plane, was getting increasingly agitated. I wondered about the story. Where was the mother? Was he taking the child to her mother or away from her? With her permission or without? Later, the AF lady who brought the bassinet that clips onto the wall chided the father for not knowing the child’s weight (mothers know such things), standing tall above him, even taller because of her high heels; after that the father looked even more diminished. With a wink to my neighbor and me, she made us witness to her warnings about all the risks associated with placing one’s baby in the bassinet.

Once we had taken off I offered to place the, by then sleeping child, in the bassinet, a delicate undertaking, and discovered what might have been the cause of the screams, a very stinky diaper. I pretended not to notice as I imagined that this would only further agitate the dad. I hoped the smell would be contained in the bassinet (it did).

And now I am sitting in the exclusive AF lounge which offers me a shower and a rich buffet of foods and drinks. TVs are everywhere, though none of the programs shown (all French) mention hurricance Ike or Texas; as if that’s already old news and not worth mentioning. Or is it because other news is considered more important (plane crash in Russia, bombs in Delhi and the Pope in Lourdes)?