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There are too many people waiting. Even allowing for a small army of farewelling
friends and relatives, the size of the throng outside the depot is definitely a worrying
sign. I weave my way through to the main gates, and from here I can see it, faintly
illuminated by the predawn light, the ‘bus’ that’s supposed to take me across the
Mali-Niger frontier.
Bus – No, modified truck – Yes. It must be over 40 years old, with a passenger
cabin perhaps described most kindly as resembling a shipping container with
windows. Luggage and cargo go onto the roof. I see half a dozen sheep waiting
patiently off to one side. It’s not yet clear if they’ll be coming aboard as luggage or
passengers. But as the sun rises, and more detail comes into focus, time begins
to feel elastic. Indeed, every one of the estimated 17 hours it will take to reach
Niamey, the capital of Niger, seem to have the potential to encompass a lifetime!
As a bus-riding youngster I always bee-lined for the back. That was where the
coolest people sat, not to mention being the furthest point away from watchful
authority figures. In West Africa, though, both children and adults alike prize the
seats in the front half of the bus. Those towards the back are shunned for as long
as possible, the upshot of two mutually inclusive truths: 1. the rear of any bus is
where the ride is roughest, and 2. countries like Mali lay claim to some of the worst
roads on Earth.
Yet, my experience of both truths is balanced by an acute understanding that I’ll
probably have very little say in the matter of where I sit. For although the week I’ve
already spent here in Mali, a place where the concept of the ‘queue’ hardly exists,
has instilled in me a certain cutthroat ruthlessness, I remain a foreigner unable to
fully disengage from his ingrained courtesies. In other words, I still reek of meek.
At the back of the cabin I do take a stand, managing to resist all efforts to shepherd
me towards the far corner. Admittedly, this has less to do with strength of will than
with sheer anatomical impossibility; I cannot fit the legs of my 6 foot 4 frame into the
space available there.
From the outside I had guessed the bus to have a capacity of around 35-40 people.
Who was I trying to kid! Before we leave, more than 70 are packed aboard. All the
benches on the left side of the cabin have a seat that folds out into the centre aisle,
thereby allowing seven people to span the width of the cabin. Immediately in front
of me, and adjacent to the rear side door, there is small space, free of seating,
originally intended for access. But the influx of several fat grain sacks and nine
latecomers obliterate any misplaced hope that I may have enjoyed a marginally
comfortable amount of legroom. All up, it’s painfully apparent that my concept of
minimum personal space needs finer tuning (in fact, my recalibration would be
completed a couple of weeks later, when the sight of 35 Libyans cramming
themselves into a single Toyota Landcruiser failed to generate more than a raising
of the eyebrows).
Oddly enough, before we’ve reached the outskirts of Gao, I’m actually celebrating
the advantage of such bodily compression, applauding the fact that despite every
pothole and every violently evasive driving manoeuvre, I’m held firmly in place.
Delusional? You bet! And indeed, all efforts to convince myself that only being able
to take short breaths is a good thing are dashed soon enough. The pressure on
my midriff is also putting the squeeze on my bladder. Less than 15 minutes after
our departure I have a strong urge to go to the toilet.
Such an inauspicious beginning does nothing to lighten the air of heavy uncertainty
that surrounds this journey for me. I don’t have a visa to enter Niger. It’s not from
want of trying; the fact is this is a country with limited diplomatic representation
around the world, including Mali and several other immediate neighbours. The few
snippets of advice I have managed to glean regarding the handling of would-be
visitors like myself, all suggest the same thing – ‘you will be at the mercy of the
mood of the border guards’. In other words, there’s a good chance I’ll be turned
away. And because my Malian visa is good for only a single entry, I would effectively
then find myself stranded in the void that exists between border posts – No Man’s
Land!
An hour passes, and I’m beset by an image of the death of poor Tycho Brahe, the
renowned Danish astronomer. At the beginning of the 17th Century Brahe was
attending a royal dinner. Having drunk copious amounts of beer he desperately
needed to go to the toilet, however because it was considered the height of bad
manners to excuse oneself from the royal table, he held on….and on, and on.
Legend has it that his bladder subsequently burst and his own urine poisoned
him.
Another hour, and I’m giving serious consideration to reappropriating my Nalgene
bottle, when we rumble into a small village and our driver starts his tortuous
descent through the gearbox. The question now is where do I let go? For while
public toilets are understandably not high up on the list of public works initiatives
out here in far eastern Mali, there always seem to be places where it is more
acceptable to foul municipal property. Thankfully, I’m not alone. Several men
wander over towards the nearest mud-brick wall. They spread themselves out
along its length then squat down, with their knees wide apart. This is the position
that makes best allowance for the long robes worn by most West African men. To
my mind, it has the added effect, perhaps intentional, of disguising the act itself
behind what, to the casual observer, is the purposeful examination of a patch of
ground.
I choose to cling to the somewhat naïve belief that, by doing as the locals do
wherever possible, I will draw less attention to myself. Sadly, my trousers were not
designed with this method of urinating in mind. Preoccupied with maintaining an
unobstructed trouser opening, I lose my squatting balance and tip forward onto my
knees. This is hardly a disaster, except that it quickly becomes clear that I’ve erred
in my selection of ground patch. A slight uphill gradient, coupled with what must be
a personal best pee volume, forces me to shuffle sideways on knees and toes to
escape the marauding backflow. As I say, it’s about drawing as little attention to
oneself as possible.
The driver revs the engine a few times (in the absence of a working horn, his way of
telling everybody to get back onboard), and I wonder whether my seat is now fair
game again. Am I to spend the next 15 hours huddled atop a sack of rice?
Climbing back up into the cabin, I see the man who’d been sitting immediately to
my right shoo away a would-be seat stealer. He then gestures for me to hurry and
reclaim my place. I introduce myself. To now we have only nodded politely to each
other. His name is Ousmane. From what I can see of his face, he looks about 50,
with the slightly lighter coloured skin and sharper-edged features characteristic of
the Tuareg people. Like a dozen other male Tuareg passengers he wears a
turban, or cheche, wrapped around his head and neck. I ask if he lives in Gao or
Niamey. The answer is neither. He is from Koutougou, a village situated about
halfway in between.
This isn’t Tuareg territory however. The road to Niamey runs parallel to the Niger
River, passing through the traditional lands of the Songhai people. As the bus
clatters through settlements, I see brightly dressed women pounding millet or
carrying ceramic jars on their head. Men steer donkey-pulled carts loaded with hay
bales. While the children, legions of children, play, work, shout, cry, or just stare.
Most structures are exclusively mud brick. Angles are soft, straight lines few.
Mosques, granaries, family homes, they all look more like they’ve grown organically
from the earth, than been built by human hands. But it’s the yet more modest
dwellings I see scattered throughout the countryside between settlements, which
really ignite my imagination. These are little round huts, scarcely more than a few
metres in diameter, perched on short stilts. Their walls are made of sheets of
woven grass, the roofs are a conical arrangement of dried reeds, whipped together
at the apex to form an elongated bunch that arcs over to one side in particularly
quaint fashion. For me, they are like something direct from the pages of a fantasy
novel, things lacking any attachment whatsoever to the modern age.
Beyond the port town of Ansongo, the road hits goat track status. Unfortunately for
all onboard, especially those up the back, the driver seems loathe to acknowledge
this fact. There are moments when the incessant jolting, lurching and juddering is
exchanged for silky smoothness. But they are always immediately followed by an
almighty bone-jarring crash, as the airborne rear wheels make contact with the road
surface once again.
Having a truck (masquerading as a bus) operate the Gao to Niamey route emerges
now as an astute decision. Nevertheless, it would seem the already decrepit
interior of the cabin is yet to reach equilibrium with the road. A light fitting is first to
come loose, dancing chaotically at the end of its cord for several minutes before
plummeting into someone’s lap. Soon after, a particularly vicious bump causes
one of the large metal ceiling sheets to rip free of a dozen of the rivets holding it in
place. Neither, it seems, are things a 100 percent rosy on top of the cabin roof.
Barley grains (undoubtedly form a ruptured sack) take advantage of each
subsequent jolt and the new ceiling breach to shower several passengers.
Every now and then the sparkling waters of the Niger come into view. And I glimpse
the lives that are entwined with it. I see the Songhai netting fish from canoes,
washing, swimming, tending vegetable gardens, or harvesting the cane grass that
chokes the shallows. Yet the apparent harmoniousness of it all doesn’t fool me for
an instant. I’m too well aware of the dread lurking in that river. Guinea worm and
schistosomes, parasites linked to so much human suffering, infest great lengths of
the Niger. They are two big reasons why the average life expectancy here barely
eclipses 40 years of age.
Eastern Mali contributes little to the Niger’s flow. Head just a few hundred metres
away from the river’s edge and the soil is thin, a blend of dust and stones for the
most part, punctured here and there by clumps of thick-bladed grass and a
smattering of thorn trees. The latter are rarely taller than four metres, though many
seem to have attained the contortions of much larger trees. It’s as if the dry climate
has a natural bonsai effect.
Countless stumps testify to the unsustainable harvesting of the thorn trees for
firewood and building materials. In fact, their loss is one of the factors
underpinning the steady southward march of the Sahara Desert, which each year
gobbles thousands of square kilometres of formerly arable land into its arid belly.
Given that so many people here already walk a thin tightrope of subsistence, the
dark shadow of starvation grows ever longer.
It’d be a mistake to think that those aboard this bus constitute a cross-section of the
region’s social make up. They are the veritable jet set by comparison to most of the
rest of their fellow countrymen and women. To put it in some kind of perspective, for
the majority of folk who live in this region, the cost of the bus ticket from Gao to
Niamey equates to a month’s income. In European medieval times, the average
peasant never ventured more than 30 kilometres from his or her birthplace
throughout the course of their lifetime. The same rings true today for many rural
West Africans.
More than once I notice somebody gazing almost perplexedly at the scenes
unfolding beyond the windowpane. And I realise that for a good proportion of my
fellow passengers, the nature of this landscape, and the daily routines of its
inhabitants, seem as remote to them, as they do to me.
By the end of nine hours I’m hatching ideas for pointless scientific studies as a way
of taking my mind off the ache in my rump and hamstrings. In particular I’m
wondering if there is a threshold distance at which a vehicle must pass by a herd of
goats before they will flee in terror. The worst wheel slump yet leaves my bottom
momentarily suspended more than a foot above the seat. Chassis grinding on rock
harmonises with the ceiling sheet tearing free of a dozen more rivets. I’m sure the
next similar-sized ‘rut’ will see it decapitate two women sitting in the sixth row.
The Malian border post is at the hamlet of Labbezanga. Immigration officials collect
passports and identity cards as we get off the bus, then process them inside a
nearby mud hut. We stand in the wispy shade of a thorn tree just outside the
doorway, listening for our names to be called. When it’s my turn, the official seated
behind the desk fixes me with a practiced look of severity. ‘I have looked at your
passport’ he grunts. ‘Now you give me 5,000 CFA’. The equivalent of a 10 US
dollar ‘surcharge’ for doing absolutely nothing outside his job description is just
another example of the opportunism exercised by officials and civilians alike
towards the western traveller. Such endemic corruption remains part of the course
here in West Africa. Paradoxically, it is this same opportunism that gives me
comfort and hope as I come a knocking unannounced at the gates to Niger.
Past Labbezanga, the road somehow manages to degenerate even further.
Progress slows to a crawl. And I ponder whether it is mere coincidence that we are
now inside No Man’s Land. As the name suggests, does one regard this stretch of
land as simply being outside anyone’s care? The term is more commonly
associated with the First World War, where it described the area of ground between
opposing armies, more specifically between the trenches. However, while the
distance between those trenches rarely exceeded five hundred metres, there are
over 20 kilometres separating Labbezanga and the Nigerien border post of
Yassane.
That sort of distance raises interesting questions. What laws, if any, apply in the
zone between border posts? Who enforces them, and with how much rigour? The
Australian Department of Foreign Affairs advises against travelling the road
between Gao and Ayorou (the first large town on the Nigerien side of the border)
because of banditry. I wonder if perhaps the next 20 kilometres are the main
reason behind the issue of such an advisory.
For me, the boundaries of nowhere are defined by a sense of exposure. Not only
do I envisage this No Man’s Land as a place of lawlessness, I am conscious too of
it being the ground over which two nations warily eye each other. And in the
historical context of this troubled continent, conflict seldom seems ever more than a
heartbeat away.
As the bus passes a young boy standing on the roadside, his eyes meet mine. In
the instant that immediately follows, just before his face disappears from view, I
recognise the beginnings of a look of wonder. It’s one I’ve seen throughout the
journey thus far, and I can picture him already running home to share his discovery
with others – ‘I saw a white person, a stranger, passing by!’
Suddenly, I’m aware that the boundaries of my nowhere actually extend far beyond
this No Man’s Land. They have been delineated already by something more
intangible – a sense of estrangement. It’s an estrangement borne out of my
ignorance and my status as an outsider, a product of detachment from the
landscape and the life ways it supports. Yet I also understand this estrangement to
be one without shame, coupled as it is, so closely and inexorably to the treading of
new ground.
I try hard to grasp the perspective of that boy. While for me this place represents the
proverbial middle of nowhere, might it be for him nothing less than his everywhere?
It’s not unreasonable to think that he has never seen outside No Man’s Land, does
not know anything else. Indeed, what exists in the world beyond the border posts
may always remain for him just a blurry melange of dreams, imagination and
hearsay.
The bus shudders to a stop at a village roughly 10 kilometres past Labbezanga.
Ousmane gathers together his belongings and prepares to disembark. We have
arrived in Koutougou. He shakes my hand warmly, and although his turban covers
his mouth, I can see mirrored in his eyes the smile cleaving his face. I take it as a
smile composed of two distinct parts. Partly it is a sincere gesture of well-wishing
for me, and partly it is the unrestrained expression of pleasure every human being
feels when they have truly arrived home.
