Lions and Chimps and Johnny, Oh My!

Up the hill from the National Museum in Bamako is the zoo. I didn't know where it was before I came, so I told the taxi driver to take us to the wara so, the lion's house. It worked, and here we are, my brother and I, the first member of my family that I've seen in over a year. We walk over a bridge, straining our eyes for the first sign of wildlife, but there doesn't seem to be much in the water except algae. But then, there it is! A small elephant, sleeping, somehow oblivious to the fact that here we are, Johnny all the way from America and me with my love of elephants, and the little guy won't even look our way.

We march on and Johnny points us towards the chimpanzees. We stare at them fascinated by how close the chimp's hands are to ours, his ears so similar. Two boys come up to us holding hands, wearing shorts and ratty t-shirts. Have you seen the serpents yet, they ask? And the lions? It's clear they spend every penny they have on trips to the Bamako Zoo, and they become our tour guards. We see ostrich and hyenas, lions and monkeys. Most of the animals are behind metal bars, in stark concrete cages. One lion sits atop a cement block, curled up, his tail tucked in. In every cage lie slabs of meat, pork, we guess by the naive pigs wandering around.


The animals we spy on from outside the bars are not animals from the bush of Mali. They are from the golden days when elephants still passed through my village every year and everyone prayed that the huge animals wouldn't step in their fields. When Banta was a girl, lions roamed the bush and at dusk it was time to leave the fields for home in case of lions. Lahmine brings his gun into the fields with him now, but he only brings back a bird or a rabbit, and that's if he's lucky. Boys in my village hunt lizards. Johnny is so excited over them at first, pointing them out to me at the zoo as if they're one of the exhibits. He has not yet realized their ubiquity, how they're everywhere, including inside your house, on your chair, under the map you've hung from the wall. If you're not a lizard hunter, the only thing to find in the bush are djelis, Lassine tells me, devil creatures that harass people at night if you run into them in the fields. The lions at the zoo are as foreign to the Malians as they are to Johnny and me.

There is an aquarium at the zoo too. It's inside and cooler, and the room is filled with small fish tanks, just like the one that little kids in America keep in their rooms and feed once a day. The fish inside are nondescript, no bigger than the dried fish I see at market every week, but the Malians at the zoo with us find them fascinating, and the boys who are guiding Johnny and I point out each one to us, searching our eyes for an amazed expression that will match theirs.

The star attraction to the museum among Peace Corps volunteers is a dead manatee. It's all I heard about before coming, nothing about the lions or the elephant, just that there was a dead manatee. We stumble across it under a tree after we've seen the hyenas. It's in an elevated rectangular glass box, but the box is broken and the manatee has been eaten by various insects or birds or who knows what. If we didn't know it was a manatee, we'd have know idea what it was, it'd just be some sort of gross black carcass. But Johnny doesn't seem disappointed, he snaps pictures and the two boys lead us onwards.



The next day, Johnny and I take a bus up to my village. It's cooler out, it rained yesterday, and so I only have to fan Johnny a couple times during the trip to keep him in good spirits. We step off the bus in my village and I'm nervous. I have been talking about his visit for months; I have told everyone that my big brother, my koroce is coming. But as we walk into my compound the knots in my stomach relax and a smile spreads across my face. I hear Banta running towards us, "Eh Alah! U nana!" Lahmine's girls, all of them, come running and already everyone is testing Johnny's Bambara, laughing, anxious to shake his hand. Men leaving the mosque after four o'clock prayer hear the noise and come running to see what's going on.

We spend the next couple of days parading Johnny through the village. The chief of the village has named my brother Lahmine Daou, the same name as my jatigi, my host. Malians have special relationships with those who share their name, and call them n togoma. Johnny is Lahmine's togoma and Lahmine is constantly checking in on Johnny. He calls me, barely says hello, and then asks to speak to his togoma. When he comes over in the morning, he asks for his togoma. When he gets back from market, he has fruit for his togoma.

Johnny sporting a gift from his togoma

On Friday night, I drag Johnny to the radio station. He's nervous for his first on-air performance on Radio Benkadi, but I know our show will be a success. It's a drama: we're two mosquitos, flying around looking for people to bite and pass malaria on to them. But when we reach my village, we can't find anyone to bite because they're all sleeping under mosquito nets. Johnny stumbles through the Bambara, but the results are in: my best radio show yet. We walk out of the studio to find that everyone has been recording it onto their cell phones. The next day at market everyone makes mosquito noises and crows over how Johnny couldn't bite them last night because they were sleeping under nets. We make our way through piles of dried fish and baskets of rice and beans. We buy sweet potatoes for Lahmine, bananas for Adama and Moustapha, VivaCafé for Banta. And everywhere we go, hands reach out to shake Johnny's, everyone says that we look alike and, thanks to being introduced to Johnny over the radio, no one calls Johnny my husband.

Johnny and Moustapha. Johnny's shirt is made from bogolan, mud fabric, a gift from Moustapha.

My brother is showered with gifts. A shirt from Moustapha, another from Lahmine, special dishes from Banta and Tata, a hat from Aissa, grilled meat from Adama, fruits and all the delicacies Mali offers. The night before Johnny is to leave, Mapha delivers a chicken to our house. Banta is anxious about making sure we'll have a chance to eat it before Johnny leaves, but women don't usually kill chickens, and Lahmine's not home. She walks back and forth between Lahmine's compound and ours, waiting for him to come home. Finally, we hear the sounds of the chicken dying in the lane behind my house and rush outside. Banta is quick to begin taking out the feathers and she's up long after we've gone to bed, cooking Johnny's chicken so he can eat it for breakfast.


On the way back to Bamako its hot, and we've managed to find the only seats in the bus with absolutely no wind. I hand Johnny his own fan and neither of us put our fans down until we reach Bamako. We have dinner in Bamako and reminisce about the time we got locked out of the house and Johnny climbed the tree and went through the skylight above my bed to open the door. We laugh at how I used to run after Johnny when we were little, begging him to play games with me. And when that failed, how I bossed and bossed and bossed him until he cried. Who could have guessed he would visit me at my home in Mali? Who would have guessed I would teach him Bambara and we would sit in my compound, looking up at the stars, asking his togoma, Lahmine, what stars mean to Malians?

See you next year, brother, old pal.

For more photos of Johnny's visit to Mali, go to http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/photo.php?pid=33086184&id=2900418