The owner of the barge we were presently on, had picked us up trying to hitch along one deserted bend in the road to a place called "Gourma", the last town indicated on our rudimentary map of the region on the way to Timbuktu.
we only exchanged some quick glances, leaving our outbursts of joy about travelling this special way for when we had got back to the port, saw our benefactor negotiate with the sailors working for him, and were sure our luck was real. When his employees tried to make us pay, he just insisted "See, they are women, they surely don?t have to pay" and so assured our embarcation for free...
I'll never accuse Malians of being lazy again after I've witnessed these boys stay up all night and shuffle water out of the boat,- they worked red eyed but with steady movements the whole night through till the morning shift took the queue. We spent the night sleeping on the stacked merchandise -our sleep rhythmed by the bucket's dark slurp cutting through the dark as it sucked up the water, then the river's short cough, clash, splash, as it received the sparkling element- and in the morning we were all ready to leave at eight in the morning as we had been told.
Of course -I am tempted to say- the eight in the morning were an African eight in the morning, and resembled more a two or three in the afternoon than anything else so there was much idle time to be dawdled away till departure, lounging comfortably in the shade, eying the reflected light of the waves playing so beautifully like dancing white flames on the inside of the bamboo roof. We dilly-dallied the morning away peeling oranges, reading our books, playing with the kids climbing onto the boat to visit us and I was even having my hair woven by a beautifully singing girl who, in between singing all the while she was
busying herself with my hair, continued to have one long, one-way conversation with me, unobstructed from the fact that I couldn't understand a word of her language, Bobo, as lyrically lilting as it sounded to my ears.
When after these long, short-whiled hours we finally set off, we were not disappointed. Our eyes were tempted to bulge over from taking in the green scenery and pretty villages and on the river itself - we passed fishing boats, merchandise barges with sails sown together out of emptied rice sacks, totally overloaded passenger ferrys with people's baggage topped onto the roof reaching comical heights, and we were even pointed out some hippos, although all we could recognize were nondescript dark bodyparts, presumably of hippos, emerging unspectacularly shortly from the riversurface.
When the evening descends we stop to pass the night near a village whose presence we can assume only by the faint distant flicker of a couple of lights, otherwise the moonless night's obscurity around us is flawless. So flawless indeed that putting your head in your neck and looking up, those timid lights that are puncturing the concave immensity of the sky come as such a surprise that their sheer number alone is doubly awe-inspiring. Stars, more stars, and layers of more stars till the night is all light.
''Look, the water is still enough to reflect individual stars'', remarks Kati.
The early morning is gorgeous.
Woken by the roaring of the engine put back on and everyone scrambling over our sleepily stretched out bodies, I squint out into the breaking dawn from under my warming sleeping bag without even bothering to rub my eyes. At the front of the boat, the steersman's stark silhouette handling his long bamboo utensil to guide our way into navigable waters against the caramel and strawberry coloured backdrop of the morning twilight sky is a memorable sight. Magic seems to stick to his every slow, sure gesture -heaving up the long tool, then plunging it back into the depths, alternatively to his left, then his right. The bamboo's clicking sound against the flancs of the barge as he draws it in, and the river water raining off the length of the stick, glistening silverish: Our slow advance seems ghostlike across this grey expanse of water.
On land silhouettes of people and goats wander dreamlike between their huts and shacks.
Then, sunrise. As if by some invisible lever beyond that molten fine line of the horizon, the sun pops up -one immanently illumined mass of blood-coloured jelly wobbling so insecurely you're afraid its skin may break and spill the whole glorious mess over the entire landscape, even though for the moment it is only leaking -so typically cliche laden beautiful it may sicken the reader- and swimming in the sea of colours that is exuded by it like puss is from a perfectly rounded blister. Such, it briefly dyes the flat mirror surface at it's feet into an illusionary continuation of this vermillion sky whose main vault in our back has already turned the soft colour of day. And with the last splash of blush disappearing into blue, a corde climbing along the roof of our barge is pulled by the Fahrtmann, which agitates a bell in the back, indicating to the boy at the engine to change gears -it's safe now to send our barge off at normal velocity.
So we move forward over the blindingly golden carpet the sun has now rolled out for us and with the mesmerizing shadowplay at the stern of the boat having ceased to a boy in a worn out red jacket sat down with his arms crossed over his bamboo stick, yawning, my eyes wander off taking in the life that has begun on the river itself and along its shores:
A flock of birds rising off the water and circling like the fluid shadow presence of a massive UFO over it -then splitting up, one half becoming one long, airborne, slowly forward moving shadow of a snake, before amorphously disaggregating totally and settling down. Horses drinking, one forefoot inclined to bow down to the river, with cows browsing above them on the top of the slope. Herons plummeting in their flight to fish -there is really no excuse to get back to bed, the day has begun.
And that way, that evening we arrived in Gourma-Rharous -a mere 160 something km from Timbuktu ... but a distance that would take us two more days...