Finally - Day five

March 25 – Sunday

The day starts opened with the sounds of heavy trucks roaring down the streets.  Our only view of the street is blocked.

The streets become quieter but as morning turns into afternoon, there are sirens, honking in the streets and more and more noisy vehicles, roaring up and down the street past our hotel. Our small group searches for news - internet, T-V - to relieve our collective anxieties, some by re-packing luggage and re-filling water bottles, the noise seems to rise to a crescendo.  While staff come and go and everything within our little cocoon is normal, no one can avoid the pervasive sense of fear.  Then the hotel manager tells us to relax – it is Sunday and these are weddings!

Well. That is reassuring. Normalcy pervades even though there is no good news about the airport. A few people venture down the street - after all, if people are getting married, life in Bamako cannot be that dangerous - to do some grocery shopping and even find cheese and wine to accompany our spaghetti and tomato menu for the evening.

Surprise! Suddenly, the Tanzanian member of our international band receives a message that if she can get to the airport quickly, she will be able to leave.  A small aircraft has arrived for the ministerial official from East Africa.  One of our party helps her pack, a hotel staff person accompanies her to the airport to ensure her safety – and she is gone!

There are a couple of cars leaving to parts of the city which are considered safe. When they return, we learn that some have visited an international bar of sorts (very unusual was the report – lots of smoke, no dress code and loud music even in the middle of the day!) and others to a local riverbank bar (but the dust was so thick and night came on so quickly that they never got to see the river).

Bamako is on the banks of the Niger River – an unusual river that has its origin close to the Atlantic ocean in Guinea and wends its way onto the desert through Mali and Niger more than once spreading into tributaries and re-collecting itself before finally emptying into the Atlantic over an enormous delta on the South coast of Nigeria. At Bamako, early in its journey, it is already very broad, a source of fish and water for a wide variety of fruits and vegetables grown along its banks.

The pronunciation of Bamako was a source of argument in Canada: to my ears, not always the most reliable, the first syllable is emphasized, but only slightly.

A young French activist working for SURVIE in Mali tells us that the people in the street to whom she has been speaking support the coup. A small left-leaning political party is having a press conference tomorrow in support of the coup - there are dozens of political parties in the country and this particular party has only two seats in the current government. It is difficult to figure out what a coup one month before an election will accomplish, especially if the "couping" people claim to return the country to a democracy.

The hotel staff person has returned with news of a successful evacuation! Our young friend is on her way home to Tanzania.

The rest of us resolve to keep our bags packed. Perhaps, just perhaps, another of us will be so lucky.

The last activity of the day was a Skype call to Bill - so reassuring to hear his voice - but also a demonstration of how dependent we are upon having both internet and electrical services up and running simultaneously.