Going to Segou for the Festival Sur le Niger is like going to New Orleans for Jazzfest. We weren’t ready for Jazzfest. We might have done better with something a bit more Summerstock. We saw some wonderful music and dancing and drank our share of beer, but parts of the weekend were pretty intense. Here are some lights, both high and low.

1. The bus ride was an adventure. Three hours hurdling through African countryside was kind of fun, but the scenery gets repetitive, the bus heats up after a while and well, it’s a bus.

2. We saw a monkey on a motorcycle. He wasn’t driving, but still cool.

3. We knew our hotel room didn’t have a bathroom and that we would be using a common one. We didn’t know we were the only room out of 19 like this and that we would be sharing the staff bathroom. We’re certain the staff held this against us.

4. The hotel had a wonderful outdoor seating area under a thatch roof. It was a great place for decompressing on Friday with some gran Castels.

5. We couldn’t sit in the outdoor seating area Saturday because they were pumping sewage out of the ground with a super loud machine.

6. Being white at the festival meant you were ripe for buying stuff. We were constantly accosted to buy stuff or just look or whatever. It really gets on your nerves after a while. People follow you. Put their hands on you. If you do stop to buy something, then a ton of other people come up like vultures. It’s exhausting. 

7. The music and dancing at the festival were amazing. The dancing was like nothing any of us have ever seen. The music was really fun. The stage was actually on a barge on the Niger River. 

8. The seating was wildly uncomfortable. We were sitting on the concrete/rock embankment on the side of the river. It was hard on the rump and hard not to slide down. On Saturday, there was a wild crush of people for the entire concert. We watched the first two acts and then just couldn’t handle the onslaught.

9. We got home around10. It was hot and loud. I was asleep in 10 minutes. I was exhausted. It seems like once the mural was finished, our energy was kind of gone. We started to realize how exhausted we were and although we saw some wonderful stuff, it was hard to enjoy it all. Now we’re back in Bamako and able to relax a bit.

Our flight is late tomorrow night and I’m happy to be going home.

Some photos from Segou: