Incredibly, I loved Rail-da: I was one of two people who had to go through it every day just to get to school and back, and once I understood the layout it became just another stop in my trajet (commute). Every morning, after being let off a block from the Torokorobougou section of Rail-da, I would walk along the main road, passing food stands and women cooking breakfasts, skirting my way through traffic and piles of trash until I found the crooked stop-sign that was the landmark Baissa had showed me that first day. Often a few of us would wind up on the same sotrama in the mornings, and a couple of times I ran into our Bambara professor, who always paid my way. Once the bus was full the prend-ticket would rap his knuckles on the metal, and we would pull out into the rush-hour traffic.

There were only two ways to cross the river, because of the limited amounts of paved road: the usual way was to go directly south from Rail-da, past the grand mosque, through Niarela and Bozola, two of the oldest and most crowded sections of Bamako. Once in Bozola, which bordered the river, we turned west and headed towards Place Koro, near the Shell Station and the Monument des Martyrs, where 200 students had been killed in the 1991 revolution. The other way was to go west from Rail-da, past the train station, all the way to the Ministry of Education, and then to turn back south-east, passing the Cathedral and several banks before arriving at the Shell Station. From there we joined the line of vehicles that were making their way across the bridge.

Crossing the bridge was one of the more pleasant parts of the day: the breeze off the river cooled us all down, and some days I was even chilly. Scooters and bikes zoomed gingerly along the sidewalk, avoiding pedestrians. Immediately after the bridge we turned left, and stopped at Point Dalla, another area where different routes converged. We dropped a few passengers off, and picked up new ones, and headed west through Badalabougou past the Palais de Culture and my favorite rice-and-sauce shack. We turned south on avenue Nassar, which was paved with bricks, and as we approached the mosque and market 10 speed bumps greeted us. Speed bumps are the stop signs of choice in Bamako: they don’t get knocked down, and they can’t be ignored. At the end of Nasser we turned west again to go through Quartier Mali, passed underneath the new bridge into Torokorobougou, and a half-mile later I would say "N’be jigi yan" (I’m getting off here). The prend-ticket, who would usually give me a funny look, then rap on the metal to signal a stop. When we got on in pairs or threes, we greeted the rest of the bus: this made them laugh, and we would introduce ourselves using our Malian names, which only made things funnier. Women would offer us food, calling us too skinny; men would ask the women in our group if they had husbands, and tried to set us up if we admitted we were single.

These conversations would repeat themselves all over the city when we walked by a group of Malians: it was easier to stop and talk in our neighborhoods, but even in the busy market we sometimes struck up conversations with merchants. More often, though, men would stride up to us, calling "Toubabu! Madame! Mademoiselle! Viens voir mon magasin!" (Come see my shop!). Sometimes they wouldn’t even have a shop, but would just want to talk to us, to try and convince us to marry them and / or take them to the States. The best way to deter them was to pretend not to understand French; if you responded, they stuck to you like glue. None of them were too aggressive, in a violent way — I never feared for my safety in the city — but they were amazingly persistent, taking hold of our arms and leading us towards their boutique. It was sometimes necessary to ask strangers for help in getting rid of them. When you publicize the fact that someone is bothering you, their sense of pride usually shames them into disappearing.

It is not just the men who do this, either. I was shopping for cloth with small fishes on it, and checked each fabric-tigi (fabric-seller) in the market. When I told them I was looking for jegeni (small fish) they began pulling out anything from their piles in an effort to make a sale. It soon became clear that they didn’t have the pattern, so I would leave. One woman, however, came bounding after me as I walked up the busy street, grabbed me arm, and dragged me back to her table. "Do you have the jegeni?" I asked. She shook her head disapprovingly at me, and stopped me in front of her fabrics. Again, she pulled out different patterns, but there were still no little fish. "You said you wanted blue," she said. "I wanted the little fish," I repeated, "you don’t have them." "Buy something else, then, tubabu!" she cried. "Why do you want the little fish so badly?" I made more excuses and escaped, their laughter following me.