The Mitsubishi

The dismantling of my life here has started, if only at snail’s pace. Today I sold the venerable old Mitsubishi Keita and I bought in 2006 from the late ‘Bozo’, may he rest in peace, charming scoundrel that he was. Neither Keita nor I had ever bought a car before, so we were blissfully unaware of small details such as the ‘Carte Grise’, the registration /ownership papers which should always accompany a purchase of a car. Bozo said he ‘acted as agent’ for an absent  friend of his and gave us a piece of paper on which it said that  this friend was happy to part with his vehicle and that we were now the new owners. There was also a complicated and impressive signature and an official looking stamp which on closer scrutiny turned out to be from a Djenné hardware store with no connection to the  transaction whatsoever.

 But to start with we never knew there was a problem with the car and it served us well for several trips to Bamako where it was loaded up with air conditioners, pillows, and other necessities for the opening of our mud hotel. We must have been on some sort of special dispensation and accompanied by a friendly  angel guard because no one ever asked us for any owner ship papers at any of the checkpoints on the road and that is unheard of...

The Mitsubishi was subsequently used on innumerable trips to Mopti where it was filled up with beer and other liquid goodies not available in Djenné. By this time we had realized that we had bought a dodgy car, probably stolen. But it ran marvellously well and there is always some way around these problems in Mali. This time the solution came in the shape of Keita’s brother-in-law who conveniently happened to be the chief of police in Mopti.  All we needed to do was to call him on the morning of our Mopti trips and he would let the check-point gendarmes know that we were coming. As a thank-you for this favour we always remembered  to bring a couple of sacks of charcoal for the brother-in-law. 

The last time the trusty old banger was used to great advantage was in December 2014 when I served my stint as a haulage contractor: it was used for a couple of months to ferry  twenty labourers back and forth to the work site where they were clearing up the debris from a tree planting scheme that went wrong: see blog. 

Now the old Mitsubishi has finally left me and found a new home with Djenné’s best car mechanic who is aware of all the problems but who knows the car well and has looked after it for many years. There were two potential buyers. It turns out that the first ones that were interested went to see the above car mechanic to ask his opinion on the vehicle. And he said, helpfully,  that the car is  a wreck and not worth buying. Then he turned up soon afterwards himself with the required money in cash...

And what else? My days are long and uneventful here now- the most exciting things to report is that the Southern Red Bishop is back again- is it the same one as last season? He has become  my delightful chubby little friend which trundles around my garden like an over sized  red bumble-bee.

And that is not all: we have a little chicken that have adopted us. It seems to have no family of its own so it hangs around the studio and even stays with Petit Bandit in his stable.  

And Petit Bandit follows me around as usual hoping for a piece of bread or a melon peel...