Travel Guide Bamako

Bamako is certainly the most authentic of African capitals. It does not resemble those of coastal states. Here only the Sofitel L'Friendship Hotel, a Stalinist style, and the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), inaugurated in 1994, with Sudanese neo-kitsch, are a skyscraper. In fact, the capital has few buildings. Bamako stretches along the river Niger. Two bridges allow linking both banks and a third is under construction. The city is located in a bowl surrounded by five turbidites and tabular hills: Koulouba (404 m), Farakoulou (463 m), Koulimagnikoulou (483 m), Point G Koulou (493 m) and Lassakoulou (504 m). Popular neighbourhoods are built in a row. The majority of the inhabitants still live in family concessions as in the past.Bamako is also the crossroads between the different peoples of Mali. All ethnic groups are represented and coexist peacefully. Cousinship relationships, ancestral social statutes like that of griots, persist in the middle of relative modernity.Bamako is also a wonderful souk. Here everything is sold. Malians are among the best traders in West Africa. There are no big stores, but thousands of small shops and vendeurs. Sidewalks are thus occupied by a multitude of banabanas: small sellers, shoe cireurs, travelling hairdressers, radios, mechanics, designers… Here, the informal economy predominates.Visitors must expect a profound change of scenery when arriving in Bamako. Observing the scenes of everyday life is a perpetual subject of amazement. The streets of the downtown are. Here a woman wears a calabash on her head; there, another sells banana chips on the sidewalk. Further, groups of children are selling all sorts of bric to the red light: a packet of handkerchiefs, a moumoute for the wheel of the car, a unit cigarette or prepaid cards to recharge mobile phones. Even further, an old green clunker is overloaded with passengers. On the edge of the bridge, you can see women washing linen in the waters of the river. Not very far away, men are wearing their nets from their canoes. Everywhere, indolence, smile, joie de vivre and laughter of children illuminate the streets, despite very difficult living conditions. But in the streets of the residential quarters, in front of or behind each wall of the houses, the village life repeats its rights: We find ourselves to discuss, drink tea… Even in the most affluent quarters of villas, traders and senior officials sacrifice this tradition.Men, always dressed in clear boubou and slippers at feet, force respect through their ways. Women compete with beauty and elegance, with beautiful, colourful and embroidered basin (cotton damask fabrics) and surpass in the art of forming the handkerchief. They proudly display their gold jewelry and coiffures as beautiful as various: braids plated from the skull, long braids, from the finest to the thickest, dropped in freedom or inadvertently established, braids-antennae, (skilfully erected in various places of the skull). We never finished admiring the treasures of elegance that the Malian women know.Bamako leaves no one indifferent. We love or don't like it. It is the capital of a poor country, but the city is full of activities and has a lot of charm. Furthermore, it has managed to preserve its culture: a little of the traditional life of the rest of the country. The visitor in search of Africa will be happy in Bamako in particular and in Mali in general. People are active, go to their occupations, but always have time to stop, to chat with you or simply to smile. A sign of the good health of the bamakoise society, the capital has not yet known the serious problems of insecurity of its coastal neighbours. Like its neighbour Ouagadougou, Bamako is one of the only African capitals not to be megacity: it is a great African village.