Episode
Two: 20 October
Leaving
the desert behind Michael briefly savours the delights of cosmopolitan
Senegal: jazz clubs, wrestling competitions, dance troupes and the
Queen of the Senegalese soaps, Marie-Madeleine.
Joining
the so-called Bamako Express, he endures two days and nights on
the train, but in the process gets to know a school mistress who
is nothing if not forthright about the disadvantages of polygamy.
In
Bamako he finds renowned kora player, Toumani Diabate, and delights
in a master class before heading off to Dogon country.
The
Dogon people have one of the most distinctive and celebrated cultures
of West Africa and they nearly kill him with a combination of excessively
complex origin myths, an exploding flintlock and boiling hot millet.
Celebrating
the Muslim Tabaski feast in the beautiful city of Djenne with a
man called Pygmy, and securing a passage on a cargo boat with a
Norwegian missionary called Kristin, the rest of the journey down
the Niger River to Timbuktu seems plain sailing till the boat runs
aground a day out of its destination.
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