Mali: The Tart and the Market

I wake up the next morning refreshed and relieved that nothing had slithered through my hair or crawled over my face during the night. Today the team is going to get the supplies needed to take to Mana. This includes a trip to the local market in Bamako, led by Michelle LeTarte, known affectionately as "The Tart."

Michelle, a research scientist from SickKids Hospital, is heading up the Kitchen Life Team, organizing meals around locally available produce and spices she stashed in her luggage from home. Tiny and tenacious, The (petite) Tart has made her check list and we fall in line to help carry items back from the market. Greg indicates there is only one real supermarket in Bamako and because it supplies the local embassies in the city, its quality standards are higher. We would be buying our meat there. Not chicken. Not fish. Beef - it was safest and best value for the money.

It's 10 a.m. and already the heat is oppressive made worse by a suffocating stench that clotheslines me in the throat. No Google search about Bamako prepares you for the smell. On the way to the market I discover the sources: open, stagnant sewers are at capacity at the side of the road. Sludge from body waste and carelessly strewn garbage blends with diesel fuel from furious vespas rifling through the streets. Makeshift market stands dot the street with vendors selling everything from fruit to pharmaceuticals. We turn the corner and arrive at the market a short distance away.

To the right, a man has tied up the feet of about 20 chickens who appear lifeless laying on the ground next to the road. They aren't; they've just sensed the inevitable or, like me, are just too bloody hot to move. But buyers want the chickens alive at the time of purchase, skinny as they are, I'm told. To the left there is a narrow path with too many peddlers on either side all selling the same produce. It's overwhelming but The Tart navigates us through, saying "Bonjour" to everyone she meets. Having been here before, she knows she has to be fair - there is safety in fairness - even if it appears excruciatingly inefficient in the 40+ degree heat: she will buy a little from every single vendor.

We stand off to the side welcoming any thread of shade we can find. At my feet is a stream of red fluid trickling out of the building next to me. I follow it to the meat market. Large slabs of meat and animal carcasses, each kissed by swarms of admiring flies, lay out on open, unfinished tables. There is no refrigeration, no one wearing plastic gloves. A parking section for vespas with the odd one ripping through the stalls is interspersed with the meat tables, diesel smell in tow. A small teapot-like vessel men use to wash their hands is located at the entrance reminding me there is no running water or washrooms. From tea pot to T-bone, the men are handling the meat.

The scene is a lot of new information to take in; every sense is on overload. Our group heads to the road to wait for The fair-but-inconvenient Tart, disappointed by air that seems no fresher there. And then, we spot him: a young man silently dragging himself down the street, eyes cast down, crossing the sewers and blood tributaries, hands and feet bandaged but not hiding the fact his flesh was rotting, parts disappearing. A curvature of his spine, evident as he crawls past us, explains his underdeveloped lower half. An injury? Disease? There is no way to tell. There is no dignity to how he is forced to move through the crowds. No one pays any attention to him. Except our group. We are grief stricken by the sight, feeling compelled to help the young man whose future would be brief. Of that we knew for sure. He glances up to us with an apologetic smile, his perfect teeth and smile a merciful gift to us.

We lug our bags of fruits and vegetables back to the guest house to the smiling (read: pitying) nods of local women carrying their heavy wares effortlessly on their heads. All I can think of is the man - no, a kid really - moving through the filth on his stomach. And an ice cold Coke. I comfort Gillian as she sobs back at the guest house. This is going to be much tougher than I originally thought.