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. 

Day four from Mali

March 24

A quiet morning. The night watchman finishes his shift – mostly spent sleeping in the lobby in front of a flickering T-V – by sweeping the plaza of leaves. One by one tired fellow “prisoners” come by, stretch and wait for their coffee.

What to say about the day?

For me, consumed with back pain, it is lying down in a pain-free position. Unfortunately boredom in the bedroom isn't very good either – so as I write, I'm in the plaza on cushions, like Cleopatra being served my water, aspirins and mangoes!

The air is very dry – cargo pants washed in the bathtub will be dry in less than three hours, underwear in one. And no water drips onto the floor from hanging them! With constant sweat and evaporation, skin becomes salty and itchy.

Some of our group were invited by a local to visit his home and tried to do so, only to arrive at a road block where guns were being fired into the air. Needless to say, the enterprise ended in failure and everyone returned sufficiently chastised to stay at the hotel. An Indian colleague goes to visit a friend who lives close by and is shocked by the illness and poverty he finds – returning to wonder about “ordinary Malians”.  

The Tanzanian plane that was supposed to arrive yesterday for the government official, we learn from the minister blogspot, did not arrive.  Fortunately, the East Africans didn't try to go to the airport to wait for it.

Bored with the rather limited hotel menu, our Tanzania member and several supporters ordered a wide assortment of different vegetables. The manager says there will be no problem to fill the order because, even though the fronts of shops are closed, he knows which stores are open at the back. A take-over of the kitchen ensues for the noon meal. Feeding the Malian cooks and staff as well. A left-over fry-up does for supper.

A variety of feral cats roam the courtyard freely. One of our members started feeding a couple but was rewarded by a scratch. This is no time to risk injury of illness!

Internet and electricity being intermittent, the presence of both sends a stir around the courtyard as everyone rushes to get or send news. Probably contributing to the next failure!

Another meeting – this time our African colleagues have prepared reports of their work in Tanzania, Chad and Cameroun. For the upcoming Hiroshima IPPNW conference, we have submitted a workshop proposal – after all, the outside world won't change its deadlines just because we are stuck in Mali.

Three of us attract an audience (indicating the limited entertainment available) by playing iPad scrabble. We have made rounds of the tables asking for unique characteristics of each person – someone is celebrating two months of marriage, another is a cancer survivor, a third sings bass in a classical choir, another has shaken the hands of Ronald Reagan and Bob Marley (not simultaneously) and so on.

My toenail polish is chipping – why did I even put it on? Oh yes, to cover the blackened nail on my left great toe – which is beginning to life off. I think that I'll do something that I usually don't have time for, like pluck my eyebrows - but it would take standing up at a mirror.  Forget that. 

Mali - day three

Day three in Mali

The bathrooms are festooned with washed clothing as our clean clothes run out. Fellow “prisoners” compare notes about medications, soaps and lotions. Do we have enough malarial prophylaxis amongst us? (I will run out on Tuesday. There are definitely mosquitoes and they definitely bite; I wonder what percentage carry the malarial parasite.)

Five am is the best time of the day. The trees echo with bird (and other?) sounds and the air is probably a perfect 25 degrees. But not for long. By seven am, the heat is rolling in and the streets are becoming noisy.

A helicopter passes by but isn't seen. The night watchman has picked up his broom and is sweeping leaves and debris from the little plaza. There were shots in the night but it is quiet now.

Late in the day a message is received by the Tanzanian woman that a government official from her country is “stuck” in Mali but will be receiving airlift out. The same plane will carry other Tanzanian nationals tomorrow morning and there is a round of speculation that perhaps they will be persuaded to take other East Africans.

A voice from home – Garth Materi of CBC Saskatchewan noon show – wakes me from my nap. Disoriented as I am it is a welcome sound, a sound of home, but I'm sorry that I didn't ask to speak to Bill. It is hard to believe that there is a place in the world where the temperature is not +35!

Again an evening meeting where participants thresh out the primary reasons we are all here. To discuss ways in which mining in Africa can be held to the same standards that it is elsewhere in the world. Those who went to Falea are driven by the memories of polluted water, high-decibel drilling and other-worldly lights at night time – all within meters of settlements! The meeting with the villagers was telling in itself - “No one has come to speak to us!” they said.

Night comes at 6:00 pm. My back hurts.

Mali - Day two

Day 2

A flurry of phone calls produces new opportunities for flight. From Germany, a travel agent has found seats for four on a flight through Togo to Frankfurt. Suddenly no one cares what airline or whether they get air miles or travel points. As quickly as the offer arrives it is withdrawn.

The airport is closed. This is now certain. From the womb of our little plaza, we hear more shots in the streets, look around the circles and sigh.

I am with eleven others who attended the same conference – an NGO-sponsored meeting to discuss the effects of mining on the health and environment of Africans. (Our Western and Eastern – the Chinese are here too – based mining companies behave badly when away from the environmental and social constraints of the more sophisticated nations; in fact a quote from an Australian executive, John Borshaff, in 2007 said exactly that: “The Canadians and Australians have become over-sophisticated in their environmental and social concerns over uranium mining. The future of uranium is in Africa.”) Some of my colleagues took an arduous overland trip to a village in the West of Mali, Falea, where prospecting for uranium is occurring so today there is time to share their photos and debrief the trip.

The hotel manager recommends that everyone order a decent meal for lunch because the food is available and he doesn't know if the cooks will be able to get to the market for the evening meal. But other than this small concern, the day is passing quietly with telephone calls to loved ones, travel agents and embassies. Those pesky requests, “register with your embassy”, rarely heeded, becomes important.

As the heat of the day reaches its peak, a sort of communal bathing occurs in the small but refreshing pool. There seem to be sufficient staff arriving and leaving – and, since the tourist season is ending and the hotel during a military coup would ordinarily be fairly empty, the manager is smiling broadly.

The news of the day is that the airport will be closed until Monday or Tuesday. And the female cooks were exchanged for some men who did a very good job although we can see that the menu will not be changing. Ah, we are fortunate to have food.

Activists being activists, the day closes with a group meeting. Someone amongst us has decided that we may as well be planning how to best use the time together. A movie of mining in India is shown – hardly the stuff of a bedtime story.

Letter from Mali, March 22, 2012.

There is a military coup. No, there is not a military coup, there is only a mutiny. The Minister of Defense has been killed. No, only his car has been stoned. The airport is closed. No, it is open. The flight is coming. No, it is flying over Bamako. There is a curfew. No, there isn't a curfew. Everything is under control and it is safe to go to the restaurant. No, it is not safe.

Others have written about the sense of insecurity and the loss of a chain of reliable information that occurs in disasters and war. This is the first time that I have experienced it. It takes enormous concentration to avoid the welling anxiety and emotional turmoil that is happening. People at the hotel – a small two-star affair with rambling rooms, an open plaza for meals served at the coffee table level under an assortment of trees beside a handkerchief-sized swimming pool – gather in small collections of two or three speculating in French, English or German. Whenever one person is able to get an out-going telephone line, everyone else hauls out a cell phone and tries to call a wife or husband, partner or travel agent, children or a news agency. The same crowd behaviour occurs when internet is available.

The T-V shows a group of military men reading from a document. Apparently they are reassuring the public that everything is under control and that “democracy” will be re-established. Then it cuts to a pre-taped concert of women singing.

My travelling companions have booked air tickets for tonight through Tunisia; there was no room for another economy ticket. I might regret not springing for the business ticket ($3500 Cdn).

And suddenly the message is that “it is all over”. What is “all over”? The heads form in circles around coffee tables as a low buzz of speculation recurs, each as uncertain as the next. There are people who are trying to go to France, India, Namibia, South Africa, Ghana, Switzerland, Zambia and I to Canada. Divided tri-lingually – and finally, further divided into smokers and non-smokers!

I can catch a flight through Tunisia to Brussels. No, the airport is closed. So it goes.

Of Errors and Airports

How do errors happen when we are all so smart? My ticket was booked from Toronto to Regina without consideration of how I was going to get to Toronto! So I arrived early for the Toronto departure!! Except that I was in Ottawa. And not early enough to get an Ottawa-Toronto connection. Bill and I both reviewed the ticket last night!

There are worse things and hey, my life is pretty complicated and this is the first time for this.

What's the worst thing about sitting in an airport lounge for six hours?

The endless one-half conversations invariably at stage-level decibel? Does everyone think that we should all hear their telephone conversations? “Well, if you buy the blue one.....” “The Pittsberg Penguinshad a fantastic play.....” “George will be very tight-lipped about plans.....but when we all meet....”

Right now I am listening to a guy who is ordering steaks to cook for his dinner party tonight and I, and the entire lounge, know that he wants them very lightly “marbled”. He ended the conversation with “you know that I'm going to chop them all into bitesize pieces, don't you?” What?

I could be driven crazy wondering about the other half of the conversation.  What is he going to do with his steaks?  "Blue" what?

The two sided conversations that can be a) inane - “F***, I don't have my mascara in my purse”......leading to an on-going discussion about types of and a new brand on the market – actually, this conversation met two annoying criteria because, besides being vacuous, it was also punctuated with lots of s**t and f**k b) border on the politically incorrect – comments on the headlines about transgendered people having babies, 

c) loud comments on the news which assume that all and everyone within hearing distance - entire lounge - shares the political views of the speaker – usually somewhat right of centre, after all, this is a business lounge.....”We should shoot them all (Syria)” (I kid you not!) d) statements that are so patently wrong that I'd like a muzzle (that isn't a type of gun)  "In order to prevent weight gain, never eat beans, salad dressing or any kind of bread".

Now, both of these aforementioned problems can be partially – depending upon loudness and provided that I really don't want to listen to the news - solved by wearing of headsets.

But the only beer on tap in the lounge is dark?

I'm tired and no place to nap?  Sleep is impossible because of the irregular announcements of flight delays over the intercom – even though these are far less frequent than in the rest of the airport – they are definitely meant to grab attention. “Passenger Drummond, Passenger Drummond, please proceed immediately to your gate” almost activated my startle reflex (those who know my reflex would realize what a scene it would generate).

The attendants who scoop up my cups and don't let me recycle them?  Just annoying.

The lack of exercise? – I need a little privacy to lie down on the floor – not quite ready to lead a yoga class here.

No, the worst thing is that going to pee involves loading up all of my carryon goodies and taking them with me to the micro-closet in which the toilet sits.  This also involves recognizing that the urge will come upon me with sufficient time to perform the collection.  Of course, that is standard for travelling solo which I do quite a bit but, usually there is only short periods of time between flights. When given enough time, I tend to “messout” – book, glasses, newspaper, change purse, cup, headset, scarf, folder (thought erroneously that I might try to get some work done) and so on. The size of this flotsum depends upon whether I have a briefcase or a suitcase and this time I have a suitcase with my briefcase inside of it!

(Now I wonder whether “flotsum” can be used by itself – I have far too much time on my hands.)

Awesome morning sky

The awesome sky -

Every once in awhile I just have to sing sky praises. Today I watched the sun come up – stood on the deck wrapped against the cold and monitored the sky lightening in the East and the little pat of butter spread into a sun. It cleared the horizon at 9:17 am CST.

I was hoping to catch a glimpse of Mercury but there was just enough cloud wisps in the Eastern sky to block any stars.

Yesterday, in a breathtakingly clear morning, the “fingernail” moon hovered just above the horizon – holding the “old moon” in it's cradle. About one hand width (outstretched arm) to the left, Mercury blinked into view even as I watched!

The last time we saw Mercury distinctly like this was in Cuba from the top of our resort. It was the first SRPC Rural Critical Care.

Ranking lower on the scale of delightful wonderment, I counted a dozen jet-streams, markers of both our love affair with air travel and also of the most carbon-intensive means of travel. It would be impossible to have an unblemished photograph of the sunrise.

Can't cut the trails out of the sky - so it's all good!