Hitting Bottom

CLONKKK. End of elevator freefall, doors do not open. Eight in an elevator built for eight’s a tight squeeze and it’s getting tighter. And hotter. Papa wants to be at the controls but the man in between doesn’t understand his English-Mandinka, this being Dakar, a modern building with four elevators, two, now three, out of service. Papa finds the bell button and pushes it, but gets the same response as the other buttons, i.e., nothing. We’re stuck below Garage Level, at the very botto of the shaft, trying to get to the Brazilian Embassy. Yes, Bea’s wallet belt with passport, credit cards, a little cash, lens brush and the tape of the Obama t-shirt/“Goody Samedi” party is somehow missing from the cousins of Papa’s where we’re staying in the very neighborhoody neighborhood of Liberte 5. Kamaro found the lens brush outside the house. Bad sign. Bea had given me her iPod to charge last night so the wallet made it in the house. Yet the people where we’re staying are so utterly honest, guileless. Theft is out of the question.

Bea discovered the loss at 8:30am – I had just switched into my Obama border-crossing attire, ready to go to the Senghor Airport and buy tickets to leave for Bamako. Now I take Barack off and we head into town. First photos, then internet – alas, can’t find Bea’s passport copy on line, but the This Paper Works As a Visa On Account of There Is No Mali Consulate in Brazil document is still there on PDF, so we have that and a fistful of other ID in Bea’s other wallet to try for a quick new passport.

There’s always been an element of The Making Of in “Griot Trail,” and we’re certainly in that mode now – the living part of being on the trail has totally overtaken the art part. We didn’t take the rented YMCA camera into downtown Dakar so we could just concentrate on getting passport and tickets to Mali. But while downtown, I realize that Place de l’Independence, the town center, is the place to shoot the Senghor bites, and then on the way out of town, by the port, I see a giant billboard with a Senghor quote on it….

We’ll shoot these pick-ups tomorrow when we go back to town, walk up the stairs to the Brazilian Embassy and get Bea’s new passport. I’ve got the tickets to Bamako. Leave tomorrow at 4:30pm on Air Kenya. Ench’allah.

So while Bea and Karamo go to the police station to file the report that needs to be handed in to retrieve the passport, I’m thinking about how Karamo came on board, how he’s learning things from Papa that he would never have heard had they not been traveling together making this film. In a sense Part II, Bamako, and III, after Papa leaves, will include the generational handoff, the father to son ( now it could just as easily be to daughter) tradition of the griots, as part of the front story.

Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/