Public transportation, by van (sotrama) or covered truck (bashee) was always an adventure. Read on to find out the story behind this picture.

We got laughed at a lot in Mali. In the village they laughed at our dancing; people laughed at us on the sotrama; our families laughed at our pathetic attempts at Bambara and at our gastronomic illnesses; merchants would laugh as we overpaid for carved wood statues. The only thing to do was to laugh back. It was really quite hopeless: we weren’t ever going to be truly comfortable in the city, and there was no chance of communicating well in Bambara. We were always going to stick out, and children would always laugh. Laughter is built into the culture. It relieves tensions and reminds us that things could be much worse. The joking relationships illustrate this most effectively. Certain ethnic groups, and certain family names, are related by history and tradition as joking cousins. In my family, the Dante’s had three families with whom we could joke: the Coulibaly, the Doumbia, and the Kouyate. Anytime I met a Coulibaly I could insult him to the maximum, and vice versa. A typical exchange was like the one I had my last day in Mali, with a sotrama passenger who slowed down to talk to me as I walked along Coulikoro Road.

Him: Hey, tubab muso (white woman), what’s happening?
Me: I’m going home.
Him: Why are you walking? Why don’t you get in here and ride?
Me: I like to walk. I’m almost home.
Him: Just get in the sotrama!
Me: Why?
Him: Because! Hey, tell me your name.
Me: I’m Ana Dante.
Him: Eh, Dante! You idiot, get in the bus.
Me: Idiot? What’s your name?
Him: Coulibaly.
Me: Why would I want to get in a sotrama with you, you bean-eater!? You fart and stink up the whole bus!
Him: Ana, listen, you are my slave, you must get in the sotrama.
Me: You are mistaken, bean-eater. You are my slave. You should drive me to my house for free.
Him: Oh no, Dante. Here, take my picture.

So I did. For all the jokes about beans and gas and slavery, neither of us could take offense. It felt weird at first to be calling Malians "my slave" given our respective histories, it didn’t seem like something to joke about. But another Coulibaly, a real-estate agent who hung out with the cab drivers on my street, explained that people joked about it precisely because it was such a difficult subject. Coulibalies kept Dantes as slaves until a Dante rose to power, at which point it was the Coulibalies who were subjected. Kingdoms rose and fell until everyone, at some point, had been part of a dynasty that had been both slaver and slave. The role of slavery in Mali is also different from its American version: slaves were prisoners of war, captured in battle, or raids. Slave women could marry free men, and their children would be free; groups mingled this way, creating a greater level of peace. Slaves were not abused in the same ways they were in the States; they had a role to fill, and work to do, but they were not treated as sub-human beings.

At the same time that slavery was perhaps not as shameful an issue for them as it was for me, there is a certain amount of tension that underlies all the joking interactions. The joking permits the airing of grievances in a way that defuses tensions, and while it may reflect historical animosity, it is also a way of recognizing that one’s position in the world is only a pause in a cycle of power. History brings with it the rise and fall of families and ethnic groups, and joking relationships (indeed, laughter in general) serve to ease the tension that is present in the difficult lives of the people of West Africa.

Cousinage, as it's also called, also binds the two families together. Families cannot refuse to aid joking cousins, and cannot expect repayment of debts. It may be as small a gesture as paying for a sotrama ride, or as large as paying for a wedding or funeral. My host mother, Rokia, once went into an office where she had to acquire a permit of some sort. The secretary was a joking cousin of hers, and when Rokia found she didn’t have nearly enough cash to pay for the permit, the secretary – a complete stranger – bought it for her. She told me that if she had gone back there and tried to reimburse her, it would have brought shame upon both of them.

This bond is not only between certain families (every family has at least three or four others they are linked with) but between ethnic groups as well. These mostly involve taboos rather than mutual responsibilities. Bozo fisherman, for example, cannot marry Dogon farmers or Peul herders. The joking, of course, is present too. This ensures that groups can maintain their ethno-professional roles in society, as well as their good will. Mali has not experienced the ethnic violence that the West often associates with Africa. Of its 76 political parties, none are based on ethnicity, a phenomenon found nowhere else on the continent.

Tanti (Aunti) Traore ran a restaurant near the old bridge in Badalabougou that I ate at three or four times a week. She made the best peanut sauce I’ve ever tasted. A big plate of rice and sauce was 150 CFA, or 25 cents. The restaurant was just a large corrugated tin shack, with a 6x4 area for serving, and a 15x10 room with tables and benches along two walls. A large plastic bucket of water, with a dipper for filling up cups, sat in the corner. Outside next to the serving area was the kitchen: two fires cooking enormous pots of rice and heating sauces, and a tub of soapy water to wash the plastic bowls and spoons. The reason it was so cheap (even by Malian standards) was that there was no meat in the sauce, although bones were used to flavor it. We often finished our meal by buying bananas or mangos from the fruit vendors nearby, and sometimes we indulged ourselves with a Magnum ice cream bar from the Toubab store across the road. It was one hundred times more expensive than the rice and sauce, and it melted instantly, but was immensely satisfying.