Segou secundus

Around 9:30 that morning we drove to the old colonial area down by the river, and Papa and I got out and walked. Without thinking, I left my bag with the bottle of water in the car, which we didn't see again for a couple of hours. We had a nice walk along a shady street, admiring the old houses, then stopped at a place where they made traditional cloth and dyed it using traditional natural materials that included tree bark, leaves and mud from the river. There was a very friendly cat, the first I'd seen in Mali, with deformed ears, that followed us around as we toured the workshops. I believe the cloth-dying method is called Bogolan. I bought a scarf in the gift shop.

After visiting the Bogolan workshop we walked a bit further along the river bank before turning into the town to explore a market. I bought a knife to slice the mangoes, and Papa bought a new belt. Then we just meandered through the streets until I said I was thirsty and we stopped at a restaurant for cokes. I remarked that I really liked some of the local 125cc motorbikes, and wished I could take one home with me, if only I could pass it off as a piece of luggage. After the cokes we walked back toward the river where we met up again with Al Fady and the landcruiser. Our next quest was to find an internet cafe. The first one we found had gone out of business, but the next was still operational, although they didn't have any cds to download my photos onto. At least I managed to check my emails and sent one to Anne about the bank draft/euro discrepancy, and I caught up a little on this blog.

When we left the cyber cafe I discovered that Papa had misinterpreted my comment about the motorbikes to mean that I wanted to ride one around Mali, and he'd arranged to borrow his friend Idrissa's bike. We had lunch at a little restaurant across the street from the cyber cafe, and then he drove me back to Idrissa's house on the bike. I spent a very boring rest of the afternoon lying on my bed trying to get cool while Papa chatted to his friends and drank tea.

Finally, around 4pm I asked if any of the local hotels with pools allowed non-guests to use them, and that led to a fruitless hunt around town on the bike before discovering that none of them did. At that point I asked Papa if he had anything else planned for the evening, as I didn't want to go back to Idrissa's house just to sit around being bored some more. Until that point I don't think he had anything planned, but he suggested we go to the plage (beach). This turned out to be miles away, outside town and along a very dicey dirt (read sand) road where the bike fishtailed so much that at one point I got off and walked. Eventually though, we reached a sandy stretch along the Niger river bank, which Papa said was the plage. There was nowhere to change into my swimsuit, so I just unzipped the legs of my trousers, and went in wearing my clothes. The water was shallow until about halfway across the river, and warm. I had a lovely time splashing about - it was very refreshing. I told Papa this made a fine substitute for a piscine (swimming pool)! Papa stripped to his underpants and came in too. Unfortunately as it was so late, we couldn't stay long, as we needed daylight to get back to the main road, but Papa promised to bring me back the next day. My clothes were nearly dry again by the time we reached town. Papa rode the bike most of the way back to town in just his underpants, but stopped to get dressed just outside town. We stopped at the cyber cafe for about an hour and a half, then had supper at the restaurant across the road before returning to Idrissa's house for the night.