Saying goodbye to Mali

By Joan Baxter BBC, Bamako, Mali

Mali is ranked officially as one of the world's least developed countries.

There is a whole host of dismal statistics about annual income and childhood morbidity to prove it.

In Bamako, despite regular initiatives poverty remains

While Malians feel the crushing poverty every day, they also draw on their history and deep-rooted culture to help see them through.

Eight centuries ago, Mali was the heart of a great empire and civilisation that covered most of West Africa - at a time when Europe was deep in the Dark Ages

And the legacy of that empire is a social cohesion and Islamic culture, a strong moral bent and a complexity that defies penetration.

Two years ago the powers-that-be in Mali decided they were tired of the chaos of downtown Bamako, especially in front of the National Assembly.

For some reason, someone decided to build Mali's parliament right in the teeming, steaming and seething confusion of market stalls and clogged roads in the heart of the city.

Not exactly the best place to take visiting World Bank presidents and other very, very important persons.

Not if you want to spare them the reality of the crushing rural and urban poverty that has driven hundreds of thousands of Malians to the streets of the capital, trying to survive as petty traders.

Traffic lights

So, the authorities sent out the riot police who burned down kiosks and doused dissenters with teargas.

During the night, the traders retaliated by attacking the nearest available target - the traffic lights of Bamako.

Not a big story - as big stories go - not a war, or famine or coup d'etat.

But one of those little stories I prefer that offers a glimpse of the real problems and the bigger picture.

I interviewed the authorities who castigated the uncivil behaviour of the traders.

I interviewed the traders who said outright that the government would do better to build an appropriate central market than to chase them away only to put up expensive monuments behind fences.

For lack of anywhere else to go, the traders eventually crept back to their roadsides.

The only souvenir of the authorities' big clean-up campaign were those battered and broken traffic lights dangling like bits of angry sculpture from poles and wires.

It was just before the African Cup of Nations last year - in advance of another big influx of foreign dignitaries - that the authorities finally got around to repairing them.

Elections came and went and Mali got a new president who promised big changes.

Unfeeling authorities

A few weeks ago President Amadou Toumani Toure - decided - here we went again - that he wanted to clean up the city.

President Toure promised big changes

Same story, same broken kiosks and broken traffic lights - same report for the BBC.

An angry and desperate population furious with arrogant, often corrupt and unfeeling authorities who claim they want a clean city, but avoid tackling the real reasons for its filth and poverty.

Authorities who all too often have enriched themselves from state coffers - who cruise about in Mercedes and Jaguars - and then talk about indiscipline among the people, prattling on about fighting poverty.

Power

The fact that history was repeating itself - and that I was too - interpreted as a sign that it was maybe time that I left Mali.

In six years, Malians had taught me an enormous amount from Malians - about their fabulous history, their difficult present.

And I had seen for myself that the definition of a civilised nation is not one with the most money, weapons and power.

You could spend 100 years in Mali and still not know the country - but that does not mean you ever stop learning from it, and loving it despite its complexities, intrigues and its broken traffic lights.

Or because of them.