An Egg for the Cinquantenaire du Mali?

In Mali, September 22nd is celebrated as its Independence Day, and this year marks the 50th anniversary of freedom from French rule. This being the cinquantenaire, the country is in full celebration mode; in the capital city of Bamako where I live, there were tons of celebrations and events to mark the occasion. Fireworks, feasting, concerts, and parades were scheduled this entire week.

On Monday, a group of us went to a free “Mega Concert” that was put on by the major cell phone company in Mali, Orange. The streets were crowded beyond capacity as the excited Africans crammed together anticipating the Malian rap groups that were to come. The music was slated to start at eight, but as we expected, the real start was about an hour and a half later. And when it did start, the spectators chanted and sang along with the popular songs as we did our best to endure the sweat inducing heat. We made it through the first act and half way through the second before we decided that we should make our way home and to bed. 6 AM comes early after a long mega concert.

It took us a good 20 minutes to make our way to the back of the crowd. We must have been quite the spectacle; seven white folks amongst the sea of dark skinned Africans. Just about everyone at the concert who noticed our early departure had a comment or two about our tubabu (word in Bambara that means white person) group.  We provided them with a great deal of amusement!

Once we were free from the crowd and had walked a few blocks from the concert, I somehow was locked in a game of high stakes negotiations with a street peddler for two masks that I didn’t really want. He initially asked 6000cfa each ($12 USD) and I was at 1000cfa each and not budging. I was firm in my offer of “oeuf pour mask.” As I emphatically made my offer, the French speaking members of my party began to laugh. I thought it was a good price, but apparently no one else did. Eventually the man gave up as we could not come to a mutual price. I later found out that my offer of “oeuf pour mask” really meant “egg for mask.” As I had no eggs, it is a good thing he rejected my offer!