© L.F. Paoluzzi
The 4,200 km long Niger River is the third longest river on the African continent. It rises in Guinea from the Fouta Djalon mountains, flows through Mali, Niger, Benin and Nigeria and ends in the Atlantic Ocean. In Mali, the Niger is the emblem of life, the only source of water in the country, without which there would be no survival.
The importance attached to the river begins with the poetic toponymy dedicated to it, with different names depending on the areas it flows through. In Ségou, it becomes Djolibà, the ‘blood that flows in the veins’; between Mopti and Niafunké, its stream opens out into Lake Debo, which in the Peulh language means ‘womb’; in Gao, it is called Issabere, the ‘great mother of all waters’. A giver of life, therefore, its long vein irrigates Mali for 1700 km, making otherwise arid lands fertile, providing hydroelectric power, fish farming and constituting an important trade route. Rice, millet, sugar cane, maize, cotton, sorghum and vegetables are grown along its banks. Excellent capitaine fish or carp are caught.
Cattle are driven to watering places or water is collected in jars. Clay bricks, made or fabrics, are dyed with the precious ochre of its bed. And goods are transported, in a continuous barter of raw materials between the north and south of the country. It is the hub around which the country’s entire social, cultural and economic life, as well as its history, revolves. Bamako, Segou, Mopti, Niafounké, Timbuktu, Gao and even Djenné, which stands on an island in the Bani tributary, would never have come into being if Niger had not watered their roots, even in the middle of the desert, giving rise to important empires, kingdoms and civilisations that have made the history of Mali great, allowing the current multicoloured mosaic of Malian cultures to settle there.
Even when the water level is very low, it is possible to travel along it in small pirogues or in the characteristic pinasses, particularly large wooden boats made in the shipyards of the country’s main river ports by expert craftsmen who have handed down their trade from generation to generation. It is a unique adventure to sail up the river in one of these boats, passing through craft villages around the tree-lined colonial town of Segou, the home of terracotta artefacts, and letting the small mud minarets of the Bozo fishing villages that enliven its silvery banks between Mopti and Niafunké peacefully float by, observing the silent hippos that colonise the sandy shores of Lake Debo, or stopping at the busy piers of Korioume, which serves the legendary Timbuktu, and the picturesque Djenné island, surrounded by the waters of the Bani river, all the way to the picturesque merchant Mopti harbour. Called the ‘Venice of Mali’, Mopti stands at the confluence of the Niger and its tributary the Bani, making it a vital commercial hub. It is the meeting point between the waterways coming from the north and those arriving from the south, giving rise to Mali’s busiest port and the country’s busiest river market. Surrounded by green rice fields, its urban agglomeration is inhabited mainly by Songhai or Tuareg traders, Bambara farmers, Bozo and Somono fishermen, Peulh breeders and Dogon naturopaths. A crossroads of peoples that makes Mopti decidedly fascinating, with merchandise of all kinds, from slabs of salt coming from the desert north, to tons of dried fish, from dromedaries destined for the southern markets, to firewood, coal and vegetables for the people of the north. Everywhere there is a riot of colourful fabrics and gold earrings, called kwoteani kanye, a typical ornament of the beautiful Peulh women with black tattooed lips.
But the Niger is also the greatest source of inspiration for Malian musicians such as Ali Farka Touré, who composed his own blues sounds, contemplating river landscapes in shades of silver, ochre and emerald green, to the vivid patches of traditional pirogues and the sparkle of their fishing nets, as they placidly parade past groups of women doing their laundry while singing and washing their babies, amid the slow flow of the waters.
