One bus had broken down.
It stood alone by the roadside, without military protection, while the heavily armed escort continued with the remaining buses.
Six buses had left Bamako-Faladié together early that morning. A pickup truck drove at the front of the convoy, another at the rear. Soldiers manned mounted machine guns, their weapons ready.
Their task was to protect around 300 people – women, children and men – travelling from Mali’s capital towards the north of the country, first in the direction of Mopti and, for some, even farther on to Gao.
Shortly before Konobougou, the engine of the second bus began to falter. Ségou was still around 80 kilometres away. At first they tried to tow the bus, but every attempt failed. The engine simply could not be persuaded to continue.
Some of the passengers got out.
Soldiers and bus drivers gathered in a circle and discussed what to do. Other soldiers kept their eyes on the bushes beside the road, old Kalashnikovs at the ready. Some of these weapons seemed like relics from another era, from the days when East Germany maintained close relations with Mali and provided military assistance.
The discussion between the soldiers and drivers became increasingly heated. At least one of the armed pickup trucks and half a dozen soldiers should remain behind to protect the stranded bus, some argued.
In the end, a different decision was made. The mothers with children and as many women as possible would be transferred to the five buses that were still running.
And so the unloading and reloading began.
Sacks of rice, containers of cooking oil and luggage were shifted from one bus to another. The luggage compartments underneath the buses were already full, so the sacks were piled in the aisles between the rows of seats.
There they served another purpose: they became additional seats.
Among them stood several moutons – rams. Tabaski, the great Muslim festival of sacrifice, was only a few days away. Rice imported from China could be bought more cheaply in Bamako than in the north. Locally produced rice had become almost unaffordable for many families.
And when a worker returned home from the capital with a well-fed ram, it also carried a certain meaning.
The animal was a valuable gift for the family and relatives, but it was also a modest sign of prestige. It showed that the man had found work in Bamako – work that allowed him to support his family.
Eventually, the convoy began moving again.
Five buses, accompanied by the military escort.
The vehicles rocked and swayed along a makeshift laterite track beside the main road. For kilometres before Konobougou, the actual road had been in such poor condition for years that normal driving was barely possible.
“Only a few more kilometres,” the driver assured us.
In reality, it took around two and a half hours.
Perhaps he knew better and simply wanted to reassure his passengers. Perhaps he genuinely believed that Konobougou was just beyond the next bend.
On journeys like this, time and distance seem to follow their own logic. A mobile phone with a clock and GPS does surprisingly little to change that. We would soon be in Konobougou, people said. And from there, Ségou was only another hour or so away.
If everything went well, we could spend the night at Ségou-Koro, at the military post shortly before Ségou.
There we would be safe.
The convoy could spend the night under military protection and continue at around five the following morning – first to Sévaré, perhaps even as far as Mopti.
Meanwhile, another military escort had been requested for the stranded bus. Surely, somewhere along the numerous checkpoints, at least one pickup truck could be spared.
Eventually, confirmation came from the command post in Fana. They would leave immediately and bring a mechanic with them. Within twenty or thirty minutes, one pickup would arrive, perhaps even two.
The sense of relief did not last long.
Suddenly, around a dozen armed jihadists burst from the undergrowth, shouting “Allahu akbar” and firing automatic weapons.
Within moments, the bus was surrounded.
Some of the men tried to find cover in the bushes. Others threw themselves to the ground. But it quickly became apparent that the gunfire did not seem to be aimed at the passengers. Shots were fired into the air or in directions where nobody was standing.
Even the tyres of the bus were left untouched.
Some of the attackers were not carrying weapons at all.
They were holding mobile phones.
They were filming. First, they filmed the armed men firing their weapons. Then they filmed the terrified passengers: the men and the few women who had been unable to find space on the five buses that had continued on their way.
Within minutes, it was over.
The attack had achieved its purpose.
They had the pictures.
Pictures of armed men, gunfire and terrified civilians. Material that could be edited, assembled and distributed through social media later that same evening. Not necessarily presented openly as propaganda produced by a jihadist group, but packaged in a way that could resemble a news report about yet another attack on the RN6, Route Nationale 6 between Bamako and Ségou.
The incident showed me how effectively fear can be manufactured through images.
Not only in Mali.
Similar forms of propaganda can be found in conflicts elsewhere in the Sahel and across West Africa. The decisive weapon is not always the bullet.
Sometimes it is the camera. A week earlier, I had experienced a very different confrontation in Bamako.
The setting was the National Museum.
“I cannot let you take these out of the country,” I was told, in substance. “If I approve the export of these Dogon stone figures, tomorrow I will receive a phone call from Tervuren asking why we in Mali are unable to protect our own cultural heritage. The figures stay here.” said the director of the Musee National in Bamako to me.
For the remaining objects – around 98 percent of our entire export list – we received the official permits.
The shipment, weighing around one tonne, was officially declared by the director of the National Museum as consisting of “copies” and was subsequently flown by Lufthansa Cargo via Brussels to Berlin.
The following day, a delegation from the association of Malian art dealers went to see the director. They wanted to discuss once again the refusal to grant an export permit for the Dogon stone figures.
According to what I was later told, the discussion was intense.
In the end, the stone figures were also cleared for export.
On my next visit to Mali, I was told, I could collect the heavy figures personally from the museum.
That visit never happened.
The attack on the bus described above took place later. By then, the security situation had deteriorated to such an extent that travelling through Mali, Burkina Faso or Niger as a European had become a considerable risk for me.
And so the Dogon figures are still waiting to be collected at the National Museum in Bamako.
The art and antiquities dealers who represented my interests at the time, under their now deceased president Diabaté, were not permitted to collect the figures on my behalf.
The museum director insisted that I collect them personally.
Two other, similar figures have nevertheless since made their way from Bamako to Lomé in Togo.
By bus.
This time without incident – and with the appropriate permits.
Meanwhile, Europe has continued to tighten its rules governing the import and protection of cultural property. For the art trade, this increasingly means that objects require extensive documentation, evidence of provenance and official permits.
The objective behind such rules is understandable. Cultural heritage should be protected against looting and illegal export. Given the colonial history of many European collections, questions of provenance, ownership and lawful export are entirely legitimate.
The difficulty begins when European regulations encounter a reality that has very little in common with the world imagined in European ministries, museums and administrative offices.
Years ago, I heard a museum representative being asked in a television interview how one could reliably distinguish originals from copies when objects were exported from Africa.
Her answer, in substance, was that this was indeed often difficult – and that therefore the rules had to be extremely strict.
That thought has stayed with me.
Because somewhere between Bamako and Ségou, the debate about protecting cultural heritage acquires a very different dimension.
There, people sit in overcrowded buses between sacks of rice, containers of cooking oil and rams being taken home for Tabaski. They travel along roads that, in places, can hardly be called roads at all. Soldiers carrying decades-old Kalashnikovs try to protect them from attack. A broken-down bus can suddenly become a serious security risk. Armed groups sometimes need only a few minutes to produce images that can later spread fear through social media.
When Professors McIntosh conducted excavations at Djenné-Jeno some twenty years ago, they had local people sort fragments of the excavated terracottas in front of the mosque in Djenné, and subsequently published a major report on their “sensational discoveries” in National Geographic Magazine, a widely read, mass-circulation publication not only in the United States.
The consequence was predictable: dealers and tourists from all over the world visiting Mali now knew exactly where to establish contacts for their cultural “souvenirs.” The very people who had only recently been sorting pottery and terracotta fragments for the McIntoshes had become tourist guides, helping to organize what amounted to a sell-off of Djenné-Jeno sculptures.
All too often, it is the vanity and self-regard of art historians, archaeologists, and ethnologists that gives the trade its real momentum once their discoveries receive attention in the popular media.
The most recent aria in this vein was perhaps the restitution of the Benin Bronzes, staged with all the “pomp, duck and circumstance” one could muster. It was a media spectacle that brought millions into the coffers of Western NGOs, provenance-research projects, and related initiatives. Meanwhile, the resulting interest in Africa and its people barely moved the needle.
Instead, we were told that “500 museums” in Africa were supposedly “waiting” for their “looted art” to be returned to them (Bénédicte Savoy).
Could the contradictions be any more glaring?
Sometimes I think that some of the European experts who make statements about African cultural heritage should travel this road themselves.
Not in an air-conditioned four-wheel-drive vehicle belonging to an international organisation.
But with a bus ticket from Bamako to Ségou. Sitting between sacks of rice, containers of cooking oil and a ram on its way home for Tabaski.
It might not make the debate about African cultural heritage any easier.
But it might add another perspective: the perspective of the reality in which these objects, their owners, their dealers and their stories actually exist.