My first trip to Mali West Africa happened as a fast last minute decision. I had a good friend living there studying guitar from Maui, Hawaii who had been asking and inviting me to come for quite some time.
I had been playing in a music trio in Amsterdam and our time had ended in a government furnished rental someone had loaned us. I had been scared of going to West Africa thinking I would get sick. But Mali turned out to be very easy after going to India. And I had been to Cuba in 1985 as well.
I called my friend in Mali and he said he could set me up with private lessons with a teacher in a community center. He said it was very simple and basic. In a leap of faith I got my vaccinations, the cheapest ticket I could find and I was on my way.
After a couple of flights there I was. The airport was swamped with people as you try to exit. It was complete kaos. The people in customs immediately tried to leverage some cash from me and I kept saying “I don’t understand” in French and after a long battle they gave up.
Luckily my friend was on time and there waiting for me. He took me to a really nice house ( for Mali) he was staying at with some people working at the UN.
It was a mixed area with a few foreigners working there and a lot of local people hanging out all day and all night on a dirt street. It seemed like everything happened on the street.
The neighborhood people watched sporting events or movies crowded around a small ancient TV with extension cable after extension cable going to who knows where off in the distance.
Everyone was drinking gunpowder tea. The tea is poured from pot to pot ( or pot to cup) back and fourth in a long ceremony. One pot is high in the air as the other receives the brew in a long stream. It’s more like sugar with some tea put in.
When they first saw me everyone seemed to stop what they were doing to stare at me unabashedly. This turned out to be the theme there. If you don’t like being stared at this is not the place for you.
On my first trip to visit my new teachers Aruna Sidibe and Brylye Doumbia we had to drive through a sea of people in a crowded marketplace. Everyone was staring intently into the car. I did not know how I was going to survive.
My teacher Aruna was in his late 80’s and tall and very skinny. He had many many wives. He was a Jedi master on djembe. Brûlée was the “all Mali djembe champ”. Probably in his mid flurries at the time.
Aruna was left handed and Brulye was right handed. The classes took place in the local community center… to be contd.