"It's the capital of Mali."
Short version: Mali is big, dry and poor.
This is not safari Africa. This is endless sand on the southern edge of the Sahara, tribesmen wrapped in turbans, a permanent dust cloud filtering out the sun. There are lowlands near the Niger River, where farmers can grow crops and fishermen cast nets in the shallow water, but that's not where we're heading.
Long version: I've been fascinated by Mali for years.
Nomads on camels still wander the dunes to the north; worshipers pray at an enormous centuries-old mosque made of mud and sticks in the center; a tribe called the Dogon lives along the southern border with Burkina Faso, worshiping sacred items in their villages, keeping a calendar with just five days in a week and living under the cliff dwellings that their ancestors built. There really is a city called Timbuktu; it was a famed trading center in the middle of the desert, and western explorers died trying to find it.
Now it's a shell of its former self, slowly being swallowed by the Sahara.
And now, of course, Mali is in the news in New York.
The children who died in that fire were born to parents who moved halfway around the globe, from third-world villages to the busiest and most crowded city in America, and I can't imagine what the contrast between them must be like.
But I get to find out.
Every article you read about Mali will point out that it is one of the world's poorest countries. And it's true that children who can't afford to go to school walk the streets of Bamako in ripped clothing.
And it's true that villagers are lucky if they have a hand pump at their well, instead of having to lower and raise buckets every time they want a drink. And it's true that rural areas are pitch-black at night, lit only by cooking fires and an occasional flashlight.
And it's true that drivers fill their gas tanks a dollar at a time, and Malians wear the cast-off clothing that Westerners donate to charity, and everyone dreams of moving to America to make the princely salary of a livery-cab driver or a street vendor selling purses from a bag in front of Bloomingdale's.
But Mali doesn't feel poor to me, weirdly enough. It doesn't feel hopeless. Every town ought to have electricity and running water and a health clinic and a free school, of course; I'm not trying to ignore their hardships.
Bamako is busy and alive and enterprising. The markets are lively; someone must be buying all the toys and socks and books and soccer balls and towels and scarves for sale. It may have open sewers lining every road, but everybody stays busy dashing around all day long, everyone has a mobile phone, and you wouldn't believe how good the baked goods are ndash; part of the legacy of being a former French colony is grand patisseries all over.
The hard thing is seeing how much more could be accomplished in Mali with some investment and direction and new skills. Everything is done by hand ndash; sweeping the streets, sawing wood at mills, pumping gas from a tank, mixing concrete, fixing walls. Just imagine what this city and this country could do with electricity and power tools and some American-style construction crews.
But they can't do it without some American-style investment.
7. AMERICA IN MALI
Everyone here seems to know someone in America ndash; a brother in Houston, a cousin in Washington, an uncle in New Jersey.
Some people tell us about the time they got a visa and traveled to America to work for a few months. Everyone gives us a thumbs-up sign when we tell them we're American. "America, c'est bon," they say with a smile.
Which is why it was so bizarre to see Osama bin Laden bumper stickers on a couple of motorbikes yesterday.
But I don't think it's a symbol of support for terrorism or Al Qaeda; I think it's a way of recognizing power.
Africa is a continent that has been shaped by battling empires, the slave trade, brutal colonial regimes and bloody civil wars.
It never had the chance for an Enlightenment or a Rennaisance, like Europe; it couldn't start fresh with a constitution and new ideas, like North America.
So the United States is a symbol of power here, just like Osama bin Laden is a symbol of power. An average Malian can deplore war and terrorism and violence, but still recognize that bin Laden is a man of influence who should be recognized for his substantial accomplishments.
It's a subtle point, and I'm not sure I'm making it well. But believe me, I'm encouraged that I see far more American flags around here than bin Laden stickers.
6.
MALIAN AIRPORT SECURITY
Malian airport security runs on magic.
That's the only explanation I can think of. The border guard who stamped our passports barely even glanced inside them, much less checked them against a computer.
Other guards forced everyone to put their bags through an X-ray machine ndash; but no one was looking at the display.
And when we flew back from Kayes to Bamako on a 17-seater, giving me my first overhead view of just how stark and empty the country is, we waited in line for a guard to wave a metal detector all over us.
Except it wasn't turned on.
None of its lights were flashing; it didn't even beep when he waved the wand over my camera.
So the metal detector wasn't detecting metal. But people still seemed to take it seriously.
5. MALIAN TV
I am transfixed by Malian television. The news shows endless tape of the kind of things we snooze through in New York: Politicians cutting ribbons, mid-level officials sitting at conferences about rural development, people giving speeches into scratchy microphones.
But the visuals are incredible. Men and women in full tribal regalia sing and dance in a village square to welcome the politicians. The officials at the conference are dressed like a mini United Nations ndash; some in business suits, some in the flowing robes called bubus, some in turbans wrapped so tightly around their heads that only their eyes are showing.
Camels walk in a line down the road. Dancers do backflips in front of bands of drummers. Fishermen cast nets on the Niger.
To a Malian, this is just background video for reporters to talk over; to me, this is like the Mali Travel Channel.
And that's not counting the local music videos, the soap operas, or the commercials. You haven't watched television until you've seen a man shouting in Bambara about the exciting new facial tissue he's just discovered.
4. FINDING TAFACIRIGA
The reporters in New York knew that Mamadou Soumare, who lost his wife and four children in the fire, was from a village called Tasirga. Or something like that.
No one could get a consistent spelling, or even a proper pronunciation. No one could get a straight answer on where it was; the maps didn't show anything close to a "Tasirga."
Naturally, our next job was to find it.
The elders in Gogui said they thought it was down one road and along another one, not too far away. Great, we figured ndash; we'll head over there in the morning, try to talk to Soumare's family, and be back in Bamako by nightfall.
Except the road kept getting longer.
We had been told it was halfway to Kayes, a major city in the west; we passed the halfway point with no sign of it. Mama started asking people at crossroads along the way; just a little bit more to go, they'd say.
At last we saw the sign for "Tafacirga.
" We pulled off the highway, down a sand trail into the village. We grabbed our kola nuts. We asked to see the chief.
He greeted us, had chairs brought to us, agreed that Debbie could photograph whatever she wanted in the village, and said he'd be happy to help us.
Except he'd never heard of Mamadou Soumare. And he didn't know about any fire.
And no one named Soumare had ever lived in there. And did we know there is another village with the same name?
It took hours to find the right one.
We had to stop for food, water and motor oil in Kayes; we kept heading west, Mama asking for directions all the time.
We pulled off the main road onto a dirt trail, and did fine for a while until our path turned rockier and more overgrown. We had to steer close around washed-out patches in the road, and eventually the road stopped cold at a crevasse in the red earth.
Mama and Yusuf each pulled out a knife. They figured they would just hack us a new path through the brush.
They did it so casually that this must be just one of those random things that befalls Malian travelers ndash; the equivalent of discovering that the F train is suddenly running on the A line.
Debbie did not take it casually, especially with the gas gauge bouncing at empty. We convinced Mama and Yusuf to head back to the last town; we bought more gas at a pump that a young man operated by hand, hired a local kid to navigate us along the crisscrossing dirt tracks, and kept going. We found it as the sun was sinking low on the horizon, pushing golden light and dark shadows into the village.
We rushed to meet the chief, a cloudy-eyed old man named Moussa. He welcomed us, blessed us, and gladly accepted our kola nuts.
And then, finally, we could do our jobs.
We finally learned the proper spelling of Tafaciriga from an elder who wore glasses and spoke English. We raced through the town as quickly as we could, profusely apologizing for being such fast-paced Americans. They brought us to Soumare's closest relatives, and showed us the house where he was born, and opened the gates of the cemetery to show where they hoped to bury his wife and children.
By the time we left, we were racing against time ndash; not just to make our deadlines, but to find our way back to the paved road. Naturally, we got a flat tire in the last dim light of dusk.
We found our way back to Kayes, where the hotel's Internet promptly bombed out.
Mama found the local Internet cafe, which was closing. Mama convinced them to stay open, but we had to share the room with local kids standing raptly around a monitor showing hardcore porn films. The truck engine wouldn't start.
My e-mail account was out of service. Debbie shot hundreds of pictures that day, and was only able to send four to the office; I had to dictate my story over an echoing phone line to Bill Hutchinson in New York.
But we were the only reporters to visit Tafaciriga.
And we made deadline.
3. SEEING MALI
The rainy season starts soon.
Until then, the landscape is empty. The four of us crossed bridge after bridge that didn't span any water; we looked onto distant horizons where the only sign of human life was the road in front of us.
It had to be at least 80 degrees outside, but the air was so dry and the wind so strong that I wore a sweatshirt.
I had a long red turban I had been given as a gift; Mama showed me how to tie it around my head, keeping out the sand and the sun.
We drove down new roads: Paved two-lane highways, with white lines down the middle and room enough for donkey carts and bicycles on the shoulder. It's primitive compared to a two-lane American highway, but it's opening isolated pockets of western Mali to the rest of the world.
Suddenly, with a road nearby, people can travel to see relatives or buy and sell at distant markets, We take our roads for granted in America. Mali knows to appreciate them.
We passed goats and sheep and cows and lambs.
We passed truck drivers kneeling on prayer rugs in the shade of their trailers. We passed trucks and buses and vans groaning under impossible loads. When a bus breaks down, the company doesn't call another bus to pick up the passengers; they sit outside and wait until it gets fixed.
One good sign was what I didn't see. When I took buses across Ghana and Burkina Faso, flocks of children would swarm to the windows at every police checkpoint and tollbooth, desperate to sell us water or plantain chips or packs of tissue. Plenty of vendors work the roadsides of Mali, too, walking along with towels stacked on their head or shirts lined up on hangers or fruit stacked neatly on a tray.
But in Mali, they don't seem to be driven by hunger or fear. They just look like they're doing a job.
Debbie and I had eight hours to prepare for this trip.
I was lucky: I had an unused Malian visa in my passport from a West African vacation last year. I had maps and guidebooks and mosquito netting and a spare prescription for anti-malaria pills. Debbie had to beg the Malian consulate for an emergency visa, barge into a clinic for a quick yellow fever shot, throw some clothes in a bag and race to JFK.
We left New York on Thursday night and arrived here at 2:30 a.m. Saturday.
Checking into our hotel in the middle of the night, we told the desk clerk why we were here, where we needed to go and what we needed to do. No problem, he said. The easy way he said it just made us worry more.
But sure enough, a lanky man with a wide smile named Mama was waiting for us in the lobby four hours later.
Mama is our lifesaver. He speaks English, French and Bambara, the one common language in a nation full of ancient tribes that each has its own dialect.
He thinks three steps ahead, always knows who to call and what to say, and accompanies us whenever we buy anything so we don rsquo;t get ripped off too badly.
He hired our four-wheel-drive Toyota Land Cruiser and a skillful, shy driver named Yusuf. He convinced the postmaster in the nearest town to Gogui to open his doors on Saturday night so Debbie and I could use his internet connection to file in time to make deadline in New York.
Traveling here isn rsquo;t easy; working while traveling is harder still. Mama makes it easier.
1.
THE CHIEF
It took a full day's drive to reach Gogui, just a few miles from the border with Mauritania. The land was endless: sparse grass, squat trees, a herder in the distance, a tiny village of mud huts and open fires flashing past our window every now and then. Repeat for 300 miles.
All we knew about Gogui was that Moussa Magassa was born there, and we could find it on a map. Magassa owned the building that burned, and lost five of his children there. Now we wanted to find his family, offer our condolences, and see how a fire in New York would echo in a village in the middle of nowhere.
But first, we had to greet the chief. Mali is a grown-up country, with a stable government and political parties and a civil service, but it still seems to operate on a chief mentality. Every office has a chief, and every department under him has its own chief.
Restaurants have chiefs, stores have chiefs, and it all comes from the same model of how Malian villages have been run for hundreds and hundreds of years The chief of Gogui was out of town. But his assistant, a wizened old man named Chechna Sacko, strolled into the clearing at the center of the town and stuck out his hand. We had picked up a bag of kola nuts for him in Bamako ndash; a traditional offering to a chief ndash; but before we even had a chance to hand it to him, he was thanking us profusely for coming all the way from America to pay our respects to the Magassas and to honor his village.
And then we followed him down a dusty path, between the high mud walls of each family's courtyard, until we ducked into the Magassas' doorway. Startled men jumped up off their rugs and offered their hands.
Women stared and waved at the sight of two white Westerners strolling into their courtyard.
Children flocked everywhere. My mind reeled. I like being a newspaper reporter; my notebook and pen are my license to walk up to anyone and start asking them about their lives.
But this was astonishing.
The family unrolled carpets and pulled out chairs, directing me to sit in one. Sacko sat on the rug in front of me.
I said through our translator, ldquo;I feel uncomfortable sitting on a chair when the assistant chief is sitting below me."
The assistant chief said, ldquo;But I want you to be there.
And I am the assistant chief.
So you have to obey."
He answered all our questions, then pointed out members of the Magassa family to answer more. He blessed me.
He blessed Debbie. He blessed the Daily News for sending us there.
The courtyard was so thick with people by this time we could hardly move.
Yes, there were horrible deaths in the family, but apparently our arrival in their village was the biggest event to happen in a long, long time.
The light was fading fast. Debbie headed back to the truck to start preparing her pictures while I was taken to talk to the oldest man in town.
When I came back, the only light I could see was Debbie hunched over her laptop hellip; completely surrounded by throngs of children, ecstatically watching her work.
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