The mafia and nouveau riche have been socially assimilated without rancour; they are the new entrepreneurs and are largely welcomed. A few were evident at the opera. The women were young and good looking in glittering jewellery but clothed in tasteless or poorly made dresses as though a last minute invitation had necessitated re-modelling the spare room curtains. Their men were stern and serious in olive green or black suits usually with matching shirt and tie. In the street, black leather jackets and fur hats were universal – at least amongst those walking. Amongst those incapable of standing on their feet were the vodka-sodden or pathetic elderly women – far more of the latter. At the Metro entrances huddled in blankets, perhaps with a small dog (all the better to prick a passing conscience) they held up a selection of home knitted hats or scarves. Widows’ pensions are pitifully small. Food takes 38 percent of the average budget and heating accounts for another 20 percent; there are few pleasures available on the balance.
We had not come to St Petersburg to eat well but nevertheless the purchasing power of these nouveau riche and the recent taste for foreign travel has spawned restaurants of world class with commensurate prices. We were content with the likes of borscht, herrings with dill and potatoes, beef stroganoff and delicious pancakes filled with redcurrants and covered in honey. Caviar of course was available at every meal; the prices seemed on a par with Belgravia.
We did not risk the Metro; not because it is the deepest in the world (needing to clear the beds of 68 rivers and canals), nor because it never surfaces, but because a previous subterranean excursion in Moscow had left us on the central line equivalent for six circuits before we recognised the right chandeliers.
On a Sunday, a few attend one of the many churches and several cathedrals of the Russian Orthodox faith. At 7 am, trampling up a snowy path, we went to St Nicholas Cathedral. In its low vaulted, icon hung, dimly lit interior, salvation was offered to a congregation who were largely poor and elderly. There was no formality of seated rows – chairs are not provided in a Russian Orthodox church, but a slowly moving tide of the penitent entered with frosted breath to bend a knee or buy a taper or two to offer to a favourite saint in one of the many side shrines. A bearded priest in heavily embroidered cope intoned comfort from religious texts while a middle-aged choir, muffled, fur-hatted, great-coated and warm-booted sang a capella in that incomparable harmonic so distinctive to a Russian Orthodox service and which brings such spiritual warmth. We understood not a word, comprehended nothing of the liturgy, were confused by the congregation as they knelt, prostrated or crossed themselves extravagantly but the cold, the delayed breakfast, the sense of intrusion, the incense from the smoking, swinging censers all had a powerful effect. We left uplifted and humbled.
On our only bright and sunny day we headed west along the edge of the Gulf of Finland to the Peterhof Palace. In a cloud of unpleasant exhaust fumes, we passed similar ill-maintained vehicles on the road to St Petersburg’s summer residences. Old dachas, clapboarded, snowbound and broken-fenced, were interspersed with the brick-built, clay-tiled dachas of the affluent new generation. But what romance there seemed to be in the broken bones of the original buildings! I pictured a booted father in high-buttoned linen shirt, a vase of daisies on a scrubbed wooden table, a balalaika hanging on the wall, carefree children, a smiling long-frocked mother and a shaggy dog. Such is the banal inheritance of Dostoyevsky or the films of David Lean. The palace itself stood two storied and immensely long, its terraces that overlook the Gulf inhabited only by lonely statues shielded from the rigours of winter by straw filled timber enclosures. The fountains were frozen, the canals drained, the cherry trees and larch bare. Nevertheless, it was easy to imagine the delights of summer, of sparkling water and illicit liaisons in pavilions of pleasure. A trio of musicians with a bugle, basset horn and clarinet, wigged and costumed in eighteenth century dress, played a Mozart minuet, stamping their feet to the metre as we slipped on the felt slippers to skid over the intricate parquet floors. Gilt, ormolu and marble were in accustomed abundance but somehow this palace had a lighter touch reflecting perhaps its summer use. At the Pushkin Palace we came upon the extraordinary, unique and overwhelming opulence of the famous Amber Room. The room glowed with the translucence of a million polished globules of pine resin set on the wall floor to ceiling in between rococo mirrors and flamboyant torcheres. It was not art or even attractive but it was designed to intimidate a visiting diplomatic dignitary and reinforce the dominance and wealth of the Russian court. It certainly knocked for six two 21st century visitors.
A piece like this on St Petersburg should mention art. Art in all its variations should be at the beginning, the middle and the end – there is no other sensible reason to visit St Petersburg and if you want to know about the city’s art and architecture, take a tour and buy a book or 20. But the really remarkable story, the one so extraordinary and unequalled that it will probably never be attempted again, is the prodigious programme of restoration carried out by a communist government starting in 1953 and now almost completed. During this time it has occupied the talents and energies of the most skilful artists and technicians of the Russian republics and consumed 90 percent of the government’s cultural budget for the whole nation. As remarkable is the voluntary effort of tens of thousands of local residents who shifted bricks and rubble, dug and dusted and worked all their spare time to restore their national heritage. The opulence of palaces of the 18th century imperial courts have been recreated from the roofless, smouldering and collapsing ruins left from the longest military bombardment in history and the 872-day siege of Leningrad from September 1941 to January 1944. What has been achieved is a miracle.
Mali
November 2002
‘My favourite thing is to go where I have never gone’ – Diane Arbus
“I am going to Mali.”
“To Bali, that will be wonderful.”
“No Mali. It’s between Burkino Faso, Mauritania and Guinea and twice the size of France.”
“Oh! That will be... interesting.”
At Charles de Gaulle Airport, smothered in a north European fog on a November morning, those at Gate 41 looked as though their trip might be interesting too. Chinese businessmen in dark suits, Malian business men in billowing robes of embroidered white cotton and wives draped more colourfully with a yard or two of matching fabric around their heads, a party of fit professionals with a mountain of bags tagged ‘humanitarian aid’, an assortment of tee-shirted twentysomethings in expensive trainers and efficient rucksacks and a few young Malians in sandals and bin liners. Some of those returning home recognised friends and embraced them; there were never fewer than six kisses.
The market at the Malian capital Bamako, spread its tattered stalls over a wide area of potholed streets and filthy drains, but no trader seemed too keen on business, preferring to squat on a ragged sack and swat flies. If there were any sales at all, aluminium cooking pots seemed the most popular and were sold in family sizes: the smallest was for a family of ten. The museum provided a cool retreat from the dust, sun and insects and a taste of the country’s anthropological jigsaw. Figures, masks and fetish symbols showed cultures that clearly lived in harmony with nature and had respect for human foibles. A two-faced headdress represented our public and our private face; carved chameleons showed hypocrisy and snakes, with their constant changes of skin, were the changing values through life. There were male fertility statues grossly well hung and women with breasts firm and pointed enough to be battering rams. Alarmingly our female guide, herself something of a siege weapon, told us that male circumcision was a job for a blacksmith and for female circumcision, his wife.
Before daybreak and by the light of torches, my group squeezed themselves into Landcruisers overloaded with camping equipment. Our guide was called Yaya, a giant of a man, whose looks were so primal that I expected him to drop suddenly onto his knees and knuckles. He was gentle, amiable and intelligent but nevertheless such was his wish to please that almost any qu
estion was answered true to his name – Ya, ya. The local team was completed with Mena the cook and two drivers. Our party was small and I looked them up and down with some apprehension. There was a hairy sack of a Scotsman, short on words in a shirt too tight and trousers too loose, who was inclined to range independently in search of birds with binoculars raised permanently to his eyes. As a balance, Brian from Essex had an answer for everything, usually uninvited or in the absence of enquiry he raised the question himself. Bearded, sandaled and multi-zipped he constantly drummed his restless fingers. He was the archetypal birder and carried four volumes of ornithological reference to check on legs, mandibles or scapular plumage. At breakfast (hibiscus tea and bullet hard eggs) he had finished the jam before others had even sliced the bread and regarded his wife as a porter. However, entirely self-effacing and fully aware of his image, he had a ready wit and was the fall guy every group needs. His wife Mimi, when not on portering duties, wrote up her diary on a minute by minute basis. It would have been hard to choose a less appropriate name and it was not her fault that she erupted in livid spots with each insect that bit her (and there were very many) but who was to suggest that shorts were available longer and singlets looser? Ray was the sparrow of the party and at a sprightly 73, he darted around helping with chores. “I do all the cooking and ironing at home you know.” And there was Christine, a large and capable lady from Northern Ireland. But stepping out ahead, arm occasionally beckoning us on, was our leader, Sinclair. Portly, labouring heavily up a steep slope on short legs, he was far removed from the usual professional guide. Carrying two suitcases and wearing a tie, I had mistaken him at Heathrow for one of those ill-equipped tourists whose only previous foreign holiday had been at Alicante, out of season. The suitcases turned out to include a full length tartan woollen dressing gown, a Churchillian boiler suit (mosquito proof) and a bath towel of tent proportions. He shouted at small boys who tried to sell him beads, conversed with the locals in good French, had a huge fund of stories, good and bad, and quoted chunks of Yeats, Houseman and Auden. During the day he carried a stalking telescope, a leather clad bottle of water (well, that’s what he said it was) and an Army surplus haversack full of books.
The road was straight and flat, the scenery dull and dusty, the inside of the Landcruiser cramped and sweaty and after a couple of days I contemplated the wisdom of the trip.
The Dogon people have a remarkable history. Originally pasturalists on the plains of the North, they resisted the pressures of Islam and resented its interference with their culture. Persecuted in the 16th century, they moved south across the flat, baked land to a point where the plain suddenly drops dramatically at the Bandiagara Escarpment, 650 ft (200m) high and 150 miles (240 kms) long. The erosion of this great sandstone cliff has caused huge slabs to fall off and among its boulder-ridden base, the Dogons made a new and impregnable home. Anthropologically unique, they have changed little since that great exodus 500 years ago. Self-sufficient, they grow millet and corn, herd goats and sheep and live in the harsh terrain in peaceful co-existence with nature, other neighbouring tribes (including Bongos, Bozos, and Troglodytes) and increasing bands of tourists who come to wonder at their strange houses and their way of life.
The Dogons are a sociable lot, have strong family ties and time on their hands. As they pass each other, “Hello,” is never enough. The standard greeting goes something like this:-
The eldest: “Aga po.” (Hello) “Seo.” (How are you?)
The other: “Seo.”
The eldest: “Oumana seo.” (How is your family?)
The other: “Seo.”
The eldest: “Ounou seo.” (How is your wife?)
The other: “Seo.”
The eldest: “Yahana go seo.” (How are your children?)
The other: “Seo.”
The whole routine is then repeated with the roles reversed. There are no short cuts or abbreviations. If there are more than two in the group, each needs the full greeting, so that two women passing two others on a narrow path block the way until all the obligatory pleasantries have taken place. That is before any discussion on the price of fish, the health of a friend or the group of westerners that have just walked through their back yards.
Their animist beliefs give rise to frequent ceremonies, employing much action and many masks. At Tireli, a village protected by the status of a World Heritage Site, the chief, with an entrepreneurial spirit that has been absent from his people for centuries, organised performances of these ceremonies. We caught a Thursday matinee. In his full length boubous, fluorescent green plastic sandals and pink tinted spectacles, the chief waved his fly whisk to urge on a couple of dozen villagers on an area cleared of stones and surrounded by huge boulders usually used for winnowing millet. Backstage right sat a number of elderly men who chanted like a Greek chorus and rattled various cans. Two goatskin drums at front stage left thumped out a syncopated rhythm and extravagantly costumed men and women, some on stilts but all grotesquely masked, stomped about in the dust. It was a good show. Whether this commercialisation of a 500 year old heritage will diminish its significance or produce dancers rather than millet farmers, remains to be seen. But in the meantime, the village might earn enough for a new school, their culture will be more widely spread and traditions will be kept extant. I congratulated the chief as I left and he beamed. “I think it went well today, don’t you?” Lloyd Webber might have said the same. An earlier visit to the celebrated guitarist Ali Farka Toure was not nearly so entertaining. From his bar in a dusty town, he handed out poor quality CDs in a listless fashion and charged extra for an autograph.
The River Niger rises in the highlands of Guinea 400 miles (650 kms) from the Atlantic Coast but eccentrically ignores the short route to the sea and flows off in the opposite direction, widening into an inland delta on the flat plateau of central Mali before realising its mistake and making a long curving sweep back to the sea through Nigeria. The river is already half a mile wide with 100 miles (160 kms) yet to go. Its slow moving and benign progress is reflected in the people who occupy its banks and several long and languid limbs steadied my steps along the slippery path to board our river vessel.
The pinasse, for that is what passenger boats are called here, was about a tenth of the size I had expected. In a single glance there vanished hopes of gin and tonics on the afterdeck, a snooze in a mahogany cabin or a deckchair by the rail with a citron presse. Secured to the muddy bank by a rope knotted in several places and approached by a gang plank whose two boards moved apart with the rhythm of the waves, was a brightly coloured craft with four rows of wooden seats, a cooking area aft and a hooped roof of woven palm. In size and design it was the sort of craft that might have been hired from just south of Magdalen Bridge for a pleasant afternoon with a jolly girl, cucumber sandwiches, a bottle of Bollinger and a tartan rug but as presented, Bogart might have been content to tug it through a swamp. As a vessel to travel up one of the great rivers of Africa it seemed entirely inappropriate. Nevertheless its hardwood construction seemed robust and barnacle free, the freeboard clear above the water. Two 50 gallon drums of petrol were secured in the bow, a mountain of provisions was strapped to the roof and the red, yellow and green flag of the Democratic Republic of Mali flew confidently in the breeze. Bogart would have been content to tug it through a swamp or shoot the rapids. On the raised stem, with the word ‘LAVATORY’ hung upon it, was a small enclosure that served to secure the modesty of the occupant; there was a hole to the water and I noted that accuracy would be vital. As a teenager, I had once spent a week with a Norwegian family whose house in the forest was served by a three-seater privy. With the fear that my hostess might arrive mid constitutional, I was constipated for a week. I expected to be similarly concreted for the next three days. Nevertheless, it looked as though it would be a breezy but enjoyable trip. But then I spotted the crew. The captain, or so he was addressed (an extravagant title for one whose only job seemed to be an ability to have one hand on the outboard motor),
had a right leg twisted and scarred as though it may have been mangled in machinery, two fingers were missing from his left hand and a genetic defect to his mouth and nose gave him the unfortunate appearance of having unintentionally encountered a brick wall. One eye suffered from river blindness. His name was Halith and since the ‘h’ was silent, his bizarre appearance was compounded by being called ‘Alice’. However, the maxim of never judging on appearances proved correct since Alice was skilful, helpful and resourceful and he was also the cook. He was accompanied by two boys whose job turned out to be that of continuous baling.
The shallow margins of the Niger were policed by pied kingfishers who took up station every few yards, undermining the banks with their nests. Herons stood patiently before lifting off with an insouciant slow wing beat for another less disturbed breakfast area. Harriers, goshawks, falcons, kites and the occasional African fish eagle patrolled the skies and sandpipers, stints, godwits, terns and plovers occupied the shoreline.
We stopped occasionally at a Bozo village whose people depended on fishing for a living. Medicine was frequently requested for a malarial child, river blindness or a suppurating sore but we could seldom help. The women had rings through their nose and coloured string tied through their ears. All day long they pounded rice or millet, washed clothes and pots, cooked and cleaned. There was little other river traffic, although occasionally a pirogue, heavily laden with firewood, was poled with great effort along the shallow river edge, or the twice weekly pinasse from Bamako to Gao (six days and nights, God help them!) and heavily laden with a commercial and human cargo, cast its bow waves to rock the fishermen. These were wearisome days, hot and dull, with a plank of a seat less comfortable than that of a third class railway carriage and I was paying a price that could have hired a whole steamer.
The Last Blue Mountain Page 16
