Bamako, Mali by Air

Today's exercise in better understanding the region in Africa that Michele and I will be going to (and I can't believe I haven't thought of this before today) was GoogleMaps. Using the amazing microscope-like power of today's satellite technology, I zoomed in to see the capital city of Mali, Bamako where I will spend the first three months training with the Peace Corps. I had read that the capital city had a population of 1.5 million people. To give some people perspective on that number, it is roughly twice the size of Atlanta, and 50 times the size of the University of Georgia (for you, Michele). Actually, (and this surprised the hell out of me) only 4 US cities have larger populations than Bamako (New York: 8 mil; L.A.: 4 mil; Chicago: 3 mil; Houston: 2 mil). It is roughly the same size as Philadelphia and Phoenix. A further contrast, the city of Paris, France has a population of 2 million.

So, wow. I'm really not going into the middle of nowhere like I first assumed. Granted, you can't zoom in as far on Google Maps to the rest of the country - Bamako is the only place you can zoom in to the point where you can see car and buildings (I'll keep searching to see if I can't find any of the other cities). From what I can see, Bamako is going to be a city of contrasts.
(Nerd alert: architecture lecture follows)


This looks as if it is one of the richer (relatively for Mali) neighborhoods in the city for several reasons, the most obvious being the pools in many of the backyards. I would assume that city planning is one of the few universal patterns you can find in every city in the world: the rich live near other rich people in the nice areas and so on with each class or income group living together - and pools often being the primary indicator (at least in moderate climates). On a recnet flight I took over France, England, Ireland, and the east coast of the US, I noticed that you never see a solitary pool from the air. They appear to be contagious in neighborhoods always popping up in groups. Near this location is a large concrete block of a building with fountains and large plazas laid out in front of it - my guess: a government building like the capital. Governments, for diplomatic relations reasons, tend to provide more money for making nearby areas look nicer therefore making the government look nicer in comparison. Also, this photo shows the grid oriented streets and a single house per individual plot of land - all signs of greater organization and more control in the location pointing to wealthier people in the area, especially when you consider the images of the rest of the city.


Here is a picture I am assuming is one of the poorer neighborhoods in Bamako. Dirt roads that follow the contours of the seemingly random growths of buildings rather than in a grid layout - this is what the vast majority of the city looks like. Cars can be seen in most commercial parts of the city, but not here. This area is more or less vacant of modern luxuries.

It will be extremely interesting to see in what part of the city the Peace Corps places us. But more on all of that later. I've still got a lot of the city to explore to really get a feel for it all. But, yeah, it still blows my mind. The bustling metropolis of Atlanta and the hours of traffic I sit in each week are the characteristics of a city half the size of Bamako.