Mercy

One of the problems about the administration of Amadou Toumani Touré which brought about his demise and ushered in the coup was the impunity of the Malian elite- there were certain ministers who had unquestionably lined their pocket with the state coffers and  faced with the proof of their crime all that ATT could find to say was, infamously: “but he is a ‘Père de Famille’! I cannot drag him before the judiciary, it would be too shameful for him. We must show some mercy.”  This passion for mercy runs through the Malian psyche and yes , of course mercy is a virtue but, surely,  impunity for crimes committed is  a sign of weakness and somehow cowardice for not wanting to deal with a pressing problem?

Keita was the kindest person I ever knew. When he died many people came to me and told me he loved even his enemies and that was true: he did forgive everyone, even the ones who in my opinion he should have brought to justice. He had a Sotralma in Bamako ( a small bus for local transport) When he became ill  nearly eight years ago now he entrusted the care for this small business first of all into the hands  of a young relative. This person took all the money and ran the Sotralma into the ground without any maintenance. Finally Keita took it away from him and gave it to a “friend” to manage. The same story repeated itself until the Sotralma was destroyed and meanwhile Keita had hardly received any profit from it. And these two people decided to behave in this way towards him at a time when he was in a wheelchair and fighting for his life!  But Keita forgave them- meanwhile I have always refused to speak to these two and I studiously ignore them whenever I run into them.  In my mind Keita was also too tainted by this Malian Mercy problem and we often had arguments about it.

I am now faced with this  same Mercy dilemma.   Acé (Hasseye) has undoubtedly stolen  in the region of £2000 from me since 2011 by  lining his pockets with certain of the payments for the electricity bills. He has then kept the letters of warning from the EDM (electricity board) from me and negotiated with them, using the fact that we are going through a crisis and that the Ministry of Tourism has given instructions to the services to be lenient with the hoteliers. According to the EDM he has many times told them to be patient: La Patronne will pay. But the fact is that La Patronne had already paid and he had pocketed the money. Of course it was my fault that I did not insist on all the receipts: but last year I was away most of the time because of illness. The day that I went back to Djenné last October while Keita was ill at Eva’s I was also gravely ill and I only just had the time to give Acé the money for the electricity bill before returning to Bamako: I wrote it in my diary: “To Acé: money EDM “– and the amount.  This was never paid, it is one of the eight bills that are missing.

My stepfather in Sweden thinks I ought to bring in the police. He also thinks that I should haul Acé before the EDM again to have the director repeat the claim that he has been there negotiating. I had decided myself not to bring in the police.  Acé is quite ill and has been suffering from a respiratory problem for the last couple of years. This circumstance, coupled with the fact that he is so much part of the very fibre of my life here made me feel that I must tread softly. I did ask him quietly to tell me the truth and we should somehow be able to overcome this together. But he refused and said that he absolutely had not taken the money. So what to do next? I wanted to sack him today but my two advisors Dra, the manager of the Campement Hotel and Cisse the Djenné tax inspector, both Keita’s closest friends, have now stepped in and although they believe him to be guilty they want me to reconsider for Keita’s sake.  So I have done nothing yet. But I do not believe I can just let it drop! It surely cannot be right? I do need to listen to these two – Dra and Cissé- they are more or less my only friends  with any clout here. Is there another sort of justice here in Mali? Should Mercy prevail at any cost? What would Keita say? And what would I do without Acé? It will be difficult here without him. He is an important part of my life here and he was here from the very beginning. This picture was taken by Keita in 2006 when the two of them went to Gao to by fridges and Freezers for the hotel. They are travelling past ‘The Hand of Fatima’ the mountain   peak by Hombori. (The other pictures by Birgit Snitker)
 It  breaks my heart that Acé has done this!

Later: Cissé has been back again and his advice is that I don’t sack Acé but that I cut his wages by 20%.  I should also remove any responsibility of any payments from him.  Maybe this is what should be done- it is certain that I have to try to hear Keita’s advice in this, and I know that he would advocate Mercy...

Boring Stuff

My little friend above is  the best way by far to express my present circumstances. There is nothing to do but either cry, laugh  or shrug one's heavily loaded shoulders. If I step outside myself I can find it all rather amusing and that is more fun than feeling sorry for myself...
Well, its like this:
As I believe I have expressed many times before, I had dreaded Djenné without Keita. But I had not quite understood the scale of the misery that awaited me. Yes, of course I know it is all co-incidences that really do not have anything to do with Keita's demise but nevertheless...
The day before yesterday I was finally starting to attack the vast backlog of book-keeping that had been mounting up in these  last months- year(!) of misfortune for the hotel, the library and MaliMali.  I had been told there was some problem with the EDM (Electricité du Mali) which had made them arrive here in May to take away one of our electricity meters. I was not too concerned because I have prided myself on paying the electricity bills within one week maximum of arrival even in the last five years of trouble and insecurity. I therefore decided confidently to go and see the head of the EDM with Ace  who has been in charge of the payments of the electricity bills ever since the beginning of the hotel. And once we arrived at the EDM office I was presented with a bill of 1 300 000 FCFA! That is around £2000, and it comes as something of a shock to someone who thinks they are up to date with payments.
I obviously decide to check all my records and it seems that I miss seven receipts since 2011. I can trace the other 65. Now the missing ones are exactly the ones that EDM claim have not been paid so it would seem they have a point!  Ace is the person whom I have entrusted with my electricity and water bills. I always give him the money and the bill once it arrives at the hotel and he goes and pays. Then, 65 out of approximately 72times he has come back and returned  the receipt. The remaining seven times he has not  and I have been too busy to notice.

 Keita's best friend Cissé the Djenné tax inspector and the treasurer of MaliMali has been my valiant champion in this untimely trial. We went to the EDM together this afternoon  through the rain and the muddy streets of Djenné. The Director of the EDM must be feeling sorry for me because he has come up with a way to pay the bill off slowly. The thing is, I either pay or I close the hotel... but  hell! I know I have already paid these bills! After reflection I cannot think of any other conclusion then that it must be Ace who has taken the money- I will have to get rid of him. But he has been here since the very beginning! He is someone I am very fond of. Oh, what to do?

My mind full of these thoughts I continued this afternoon to plow through the vast mountain of accountancy which has to be entered into the appropriate ledgers when Maman  knocked on the door and explained that there was a group of people from Mopti waiting for me at the hotel and they  wanted to speak to me. I followed him, heavy with unpleasant premonitions which proved wholly justified. It was a delegation from the Mopti INPS (the department of social security) who had come to give me a bill for 3 500 000 FCFA (more than four thousand pounds) for missing contributions for my work force!

Now, when the hotel was up and running with some people in it we did of course do the social security contributions. But for the last four years we are the only hotel in Djenné that has managed to pay their staff at all, although we have had to drop the INPS and the staff had been paid sometimes through the hotel and sometimes through MaliMali, depending on which one had some money handy. I explained to the delegation  that there was unfortunately no way I was ever going to be able to pay them and if they insisted on this money I would have to close the hotel down forthwith. To give them  credit they were very understanding and they too, like the EDM  came up with a plan to save me. I said I sympathized with them totally and that I realized that they had a job to do and that I pitied them for having to come to Djenné to try and get something out of the hoteliers here because this town, with Bandiagara, the portal to the Dogan country must surely be the two towns in Mali which have been the worst served by this Malian crisis. The hoteliers and restaurateurs in Bamako are growing rich on the UN staff and there are plenty of those in Mopti/Sevaré too. Even Timbuktu and Gao are full of crisis administrators who want to eat and drink and sleep. But there are absolutely none here and none in Bandiagara... we just have to contend with all the journalists of the world bleating on endlessly about the insecurity of the central region of Mali and the threat of the Front de Libération de Macina.
So what will happen? I don't know if I will last through this- there seems at the moment precious little to put in the side of the scales which represents staying here....

Back again...

Going back to Djenné brings  a series of events with dependable regularity- some of these I remember and take in my stride: they are just part of my homecoming, such as the pedicure of my horse. Petit Bandit has not been ridden for some time and his hooves need looking after. Old Malik is called and he ambles over  with his tool bag and gets it done- but this year I noticed he needs supervision because he seems to be  going blind...

Other events I tend to strike from my memory every time because they are so very irritating: one such is the lack of dill. Now, I did give Boubakar the gardener a bag of best English Dill seeds when I left and told him that if there was one thing only he did while I was away this would be the thing to concentrate on.  But alas no dill just as usual...

It is hard here now. I knew it would be. The underlying problem is of course  that Keita will never come back and that fact makes everything else less bearable...the slow degradation of my environment here and the encroachment of the neighbourhood with its sights and noises is  affecting me more than usual:  a blacksmith seems to have moved in next door but one and he bangs and files away as blacksmiths do. He also  starts and stops a very noisy generator at every moment I sit down to try and enjoy the peace of my breakfast under the flambuoyant tree or the peaceful view at sunset of the mosque in the distance with the football playing youths in front of it, nursing my Djenné Djenno Cocktail. This very view has been  severely damaged lately by the fact that our neighbour on the other side, the Ecole Franco Arabe has decided to build a great big ugly cement school there, right in  my field of vision in front of the Mosque. Now, I do not object to schools, but there was no need to put this school here especially since it is impossible to reach it  during two months or more  after the rainy season when the plain is inundated! The lack of municipal building control and any kind of town planning is quite scary.

Talking of such matters UNESCO had a meeting yesterday in Istanbul I believe where they discussed the World Heritage sites and the decision was made to put “the Towns of Djenné “ on the list of those World Heritage sites which are considered to be in peril.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/14/old-towns-of-djenne-precious-mud-village-could-disappear-unesco-warns They identified  the “peril” to be the the growing insecurity in the region and a Jihadist threat.  I do agree that the town is in peril but for other reasons. The UNESCO rules for the town states that cement is not to be used in construction but the ancient methods of mud architecture for which Djenné is famous should be upheld.

Now, the threat to the town is certainly very real but not so much because of the perceived insecurity as from the lack of interest in the locals AND the authorities to maintain the ancient building traditions.

Cement is encroaching everywhere, replacing mud, even in the center of Djenné. It is not the first time I mention, as the most prominent example, the enormous new 'Maison des Artisans' which was built recently totally in cement which was then covered with a thin layer of mud like the icing on a cake with funding from Denmark and the cooperation of the Malian government.   

This serious breach against UNESCO's rules for the town has unleashed a whole series of cement buildings in Djenné: why should the locals have to build in mud goes the argument, when even the government and foreign investors like the Danes do not? In the wake of this gigantic  cement edifice in the heart of Djenne a whole plethora of new ‘pretend’ mud structures have sprung up since it is now a free for all here and no one in authority is willing to stop the river of cement pouring in to Djenné. 

This building below  is a new abattoir bang in the middle of town financed by the European Union through the ‘Conseil Regionale de Mopti’, a local government body . There is flagrant hypocrisy here and Djenné will be destroyed not by any Jihadists or 'insecurity' but by the lack of commitment in those who are in charge and should know better.

To Mali

The day before departure to Bamako ...

I am in London, (Portobello Road above) which is  a place reeling as if it has been hit with some natural disaster like an earthquake or a flood. People are dazed and nothing will seemingly ever be the same. A dear friend of mine had dinner with me the other night. She said that on the night of the referendum she had an old friend staying with her- this person told her casually that she had voted ‘out’!  She left early in the morning and they never met and spoke about the result. But my friend- a level-headed pragmatic Englishwoman- tells me she never ever wants to see her friend again and she will not be welcome in her house!  The ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ have opened up gaping and irreconcilable rifts straight through families and no one could have predicted how devastatingly  this vote would slice through the nation and the very union of the Kingdom.

But on to other trials... It is the first time that I will have to  endure one of those nocturnal arrivals back at Senou Airport, Bamako,  without having the joy and comfort of knowing that on the other side of the hassle; the waiting for the luggage; the running the gauntlet between cut -throat ‘guides’ and money changers  there will be Keita awaiting  me patiently with our old Mercedes ready to take me to either the Swedish Embassy Residence or “our” Hotel the Colibris like he has for the last ten years... This will be an unbearable void. There will be Cheik Omar; Keita’s nephew if  all goes to plan, and he will be with the old Merc, ready to take me to Eva’s, but it is not quite the same... especially as Eva leaves for her holiday today and I will be  all alone in the vast  residence which has been the stage for so much- both joy and pain- as the drama of last year unfolded. 

The last stage of my holiday in Sweden  brought another tragic farewell as I was able to pass some precious time with my oldest friend Stella (above trying on MaliMali necklaces) before she  died peacefully last week after years of struggle with cancer. We had youthful, light-hearted  nicknames for each other: they were given at that  teenage moment  when people  consider themselves immortal.  I was called her ‘Dodspolare’ which means in Swedish, literally translated:’ Death Pal.’  To be with her a few days before her death made me fulfil that heavy prophesy. Stella was a beautiful soul and she saw goodness everywhere. Her faith was simple and solid albeit not always doctrinally clear...

She called me to her bedside just before I left and she pointed at the cumulus clouds that passed by on the bright summer’s day: “Look! Do you see the angels coming?” she asked me. I wish now I had said yes. 

She was quite ready to leave and happy to go where she was certain she was destined. And in fact there never was a more deserving candidate for heaven.