Bamako = 1/Thayer St.

Having shed the wide-eyed incredulity of first-time visitor to Africa, I like to think of myself as a little wiser, a little more comfortable with the particular cadences of this part of the world. And there it is. This part of the world. I've been to Kenya and Ethiopia, this is Mali. The closest to Bamako I'd ever been before this trip was not Kenya, it was a family vacation to Croatia. The point is, Africa is enormous. The East end is nothing like the West end, and not in the way that a Merlot tastes nothing like a Cabernet, but in the way that a silver BMW Z8 is nothing like a bowl of Tom Yum soup.

via Ryan

So it seems I've donned a sophomoric conceit that buzzes each time I see something that I’ve seen before, but only in Kenya. A minibus conductor rapping his palm on the aluminum door to signal the driver that there is a new passenger - the familiar twice to stop, once to go. Haggling over everything. Passing children exclaiming in the local language “Hey, white people!“. Of course, in Nairobi they were extravagant, dedicated to Jesus, Manchester United, or Beyonce, and here they are all a modest forest green.

Even some of my local colleagues seem to fall into this trap, like the wonderful Karamoko, who calmly notes that, since I have experience in Africa, getting to the clinic by minibus should be easy. So I will stay clear of the temptation to make sweeping generalizations about Africa by using a different referent.

Bamako is the exact opposite of Providence, RI.

Let’s look at the breakdown

Bamako means "river full of crocodiles", while Providence = awesome coincidence + Jesus. Not necessarily opposites, but mutually exclusive

In Bamako, the weather is best described as dessicating. Providence is best characterized by Wintry mix

The streets in Bamako are generally made of dirt and dust. In Providence, they are paved, and almost always wet.

In Bamako, the primary economic activity is the small-scale sale of basic food products, like bananas and manioc. In Providence, money laundering

Motorcycles, in Bamako, are practical and efficient, if extremely dangerous, and almost ubiquitous. In Providence, they're purely compensatory.

Both cities are split by a river, Bamako by the majesty of the Niger, Providence by the piddling toxicity of its eponymous piss-flume.

Bamako's cultural claim to fame is the production and nourishment of a generation of brilliant musicians. Ali Farka Toure, Toumani Diabete, Amadou et Mariam, Habib Koite, etc. Providence boasts a famous restaurant that was used as a movie set in the 90s

Physically, Mali is gorgeous. The red, yellow and green of the national flag are lifted directly from the sand, clay and vegetation. Notwithstanding the grime and stench of the street that are the inevitable products of the chemistry of poverty, the city is gorgeous as well. The roads wind at the foot of bright red cliffs with lush green terraces, past a smattering of gorgeous old buildings, and the mile-long bridges that cross the Niger river, curiously lined with red and green runway lights that you’d expect to find at Daft Punk international airport.

One of the first things that struck me was that it’s impossible to throw a stick here without hitting a breastfeeding woman. I have yet to be on a bus without being less than 5 feet away from a suckling babe, and everywhere I turn, there are toddlers, happily toddling away. The birth rate here is absurd - 46 births per year per 1000 people, 3rd highest in the world. The average woman in Mali has 6.5 kids in her 53 years, 4 months and 24 days of life. One of them will die before the age of 5. The median age is 16, which explains the fact that my status as an unmarried man of a full 23 years of age is seen as more than a little odd.

As Malian standards go, our part of town is a fairly nice one - after all, we‘re an international organization, we have a reputation to keep. Known as Hippodrome, it gets its name from the oval track that must have held horse races at some point, but now has serves no apparent function. A bit of preparatory research gave the impression that it was littered with nice restaurants and foreign embassies, and abrief ggogle maps tour indicated that a handful of local residences have pools. And so as I rose that first morning and walked out of Maison GAIA, I was of course unsurprised to find this.

I’ve since learned that the best way to give directions to our house is: If you’re coming from the West, go a quarter mile past the dump of abandoned old trucks. Can’t get here from the East because of the swamp/dump. If you’re coming from the south, go 2 blocks past the dump of unsalvageable jeeps and sedans until you hit the truck-dump. Turn right, and keep going until you see an unreasonable number of goats (not nearly the most interesting animal here- on Day 2 I passed by a woman using her heel to compel a tortoise to put some pep in its step. The tortoise remained insistent that slow jams were the way to go. Sorry, no photos, and no back story).

Refreshingly, it’s not the sequestered expat-enclave that is characteristic of so many developing-world cities, although it’s not exactly like the rest of Bamako. If I ever find myself wondering whether living between 3 dumps makes me any less foreign, any more like the common urban African, all I have to do is stop by the local street merchants. From their shacks of discarded wood and corrugated metal, they sell fruit, soap and bags of water like everywhere else in the city, but also blue shakers of Baleine sea salt.