Sylvia's Journal

Today my Quebecois friends told me at breakfast he was not feeling well and would not join me, and so I went by myself. I asked the taxi man (we are now considered friends because I pay him well and I negotiate only a little) whether he was willing to accompany me in the park, since I had no idea what the park was like and decided having a male companion might be a wise thing. He reluctantly agreed. At first I thought it was because of the entrance fee and I told him quickly I’d pay for him. Later I realized it wasn’t that (only). He is fasting and it was over 90 degrees and on such days most people just stay quietly in a cool place, like under a tree. Instead I dragged him around the park and up a hill and then to visit the neighboring zoo. I usually don’t like to visit zoos in developing countries because they are too sad, but people told me this zoo was very nice and the animals well cared for. This turned out to be true.

I was kind of excited when we arrived at the chimpanzees, the very few animals that were actually visible. He kept saying how human they looked – they are like us, look at their hand and feet, he kept saying. I told him they were our ancestors and that we looked a lot more like them some 200.000 years ago. He looked at me in disbelief, you mean before Jesus? Yes, long before Jesus I told him.

We also stopped by the lions – it was like one of those ‘Where is Waldo’ pictures – the guard told us there were 9 lions in the very large lion enclosure – we looked and searched and found about 6 of them, the rest hidden in shady places. The enclosure has a fence around it that seemed adequate but my driver got obsessed with people falling over. You’d have to be very dedicated to falling into the enclosure, said the guard, but my driver thought it would be easy; and then, I could see his mind running away, the lions would eat you. I told him that I’d thought the lions looked rather well fed and would probably not eat him, probably just sniff and then walk away, but he was convinced he’d be a goner. Most of the lions in Mali are gone now – killed. My driver told me that this was normal as the people who killed the lion would otherwise have been killed. He was clearly preoccupied with the killing nature of the lions.

Since most animals were asleep and/or out of sight we retraced our steps back down to the park and then to the museum. He declined my invitation into the museum where I hoped it would be cool. It was now the hottest part of the day.

The museum is small and could use some display help but the textile exhibit was nice. The old and new videos of traditional practices and rituals that accompanied the collection of masks, were interesting but I didn’t stay very long as the temperature inside was only slightly lower than outside.

I was beginning to visualize myself sitting at a lovely restaurant terrace looking out over the Niger with a large bottle of cold water and a glass of very cold dry rose. Since that part of the trip had not been negotiated the night before there was a little more haggling before I found myself exactly as imagined at the Brasserie Badala. Looking out over the slowly moving Niger River, seated under an umbrella that sprayed a fine mist of water every minute over the tables, I had the glass of ice cold dry rose, a bottle of water (I drank all 1.5 liter during my meal) and a salade nicoise before heading home. The combination of heat and rose wine called for a nap. And now, even though the day is fading, the temperature is still at 97 degrees, suggesting an afternoon swim.