-erie Hilarity

Greetings once more from the biggest village in Africa.  I'm still playing lots of banjo, kora, and n'goni here  and as nothing much has changed on that front, I thought I'd talk (write) a little about everyday life here in the city this week.

Bamako is the largest city in Mali, with around 2 million inhabitants.  It dominates every sector of Malian society, with the exception of agriculture.  Industry, commerce, entertainment, and government are all centered here, and the city is growing at an astonishing rate.  In the five years between my second and third trips to Mali, entire new neighborhoods had come into existence.  The huge number of (predominantly young) Malians moving to the capital is a source of serious social friction, and the problem is only aggravated with each passing year; the more people move here, the more everyone else wants to, too.  That said (written), the constant immigration and crowding do make for fascinatingly diverse and energetic street-life, plus great music, food, and a great mix of taxi drivers, food vendors, and merchants.

By far the most common languages here are Bambara and French.  Bambara is a dialect of what is usually called Mandékan or Mandingkan (and, occasionally, Mandenkakan), a language group that is spread across most of W. Africa.  The majority of Malians speak Bambara, and many immigrants from Senegal, Burkina Faso, Guinea, the Gambia, and Ivory Coast speak some language that is mutually comprehensible with Bambara.  The Bambara spoken in Bamako, however, is heavily mixed with French, and also incorporates lots of words from other Mandé dialects.  It's nice to be able to use the occasional French word that I don't know in Bambara, although that's a trick that only works in the capital.  This mixture (fr. mélange) of French and Bambara is evident not only conversationally, but also in various street signs.  One of my favorites is the picture below; a marriage of Bambara and the French suffix "-erie" ("shop," roughly).

Dibi= BBQ in Bambara.  So, "barbequerie?" "Barbeque-erie?"

Another thing I love about Mali are the various slogans, emblems, and proverbs painted, stencilled, or stuck onto the sotramas (public transport mini-busses) and tractor-trailers.  I'll keep updating with more pictures in the future (I get a couple good ones every week) but for now, I'll just put in this one:

"Who knows the future?" Particularly ominous when written just over the "Inflammable liquid" warning on a tanker truck (not that it keeps people from tailgating).  

One last city event; on Monday, there was a general strike by the sotrama drivers and petits comerçants (the street vendors who sell almost everything in Bamako), protesting a precipitous hike in their annual taxes.  The streets were bare, and I made it across town in ten minutes' less time than I ever had.  By nightfall, the government had caved, and the streets were full again yesterday.  "Comme d'habitude" was the only comment from my bemused host-father.  This incident certainly underscored the power of communication and mass action in Malian society to me; the Malian government certainly didn't want such a large sector of the Bamako population angry, particularly with an election six months away.  Not exactly an Occupy Wallstreet, but still an example of the power which mass action can have.

Questions and comments; waraden.diabate [at] gmail.com.