Mali, with its traditions in the production of, among other things, textiles and wooden masks, is an Eldorado for those tourists who have a taste for ethnic art. The stalls bulge with masks, bogolan fabrics, glass bead jewellry and ornaments, ceramics and toys made from recycled materials. Ousmane is high up in the tourist market hierarchy of Bamako. His father was a trader in antiquities, and now he and his brothers run the family shop. He has several stalls in the market, and several warehouses full of items that he has bought in the course of doing his rounds of the villages. He also has many young boys at work on the collection, sale and production of "authentic objects". He himself often travels to Europe and the USA where he takes part in trade fairs. He has an extensive network of clients who come back to him year after year to buy items for their galleries and shops around the world. They know that the objects he obtains for them are of high quality.
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| Production of tourist art |
What looks to a tourist like an old wooden mask, used perhaps in a ritual masked dance in the Dogon region, can be the product of Ousmane's workshop, finished only a few weeks before it is sold. These masks are generally carved from other types of wood than the old ones were, and then the wood is coloured with shoe polish or other materials. Thereafter they are hung over an open fire in the kitchen in order to acquire the proper smell and patina. Now they are ready for sale.
As a tourist, one is "sucked" into the stalls with the promise that it is not necessary to buy anything, and everything is there to please the eye. Once one is inside, it is not always easy to get back out again without having actually bought a mask or some jewellry. It is difficult to orient oneself about price levels since the seller always answers questions of price with the counter question, "How much do you want to give?" To questions about whether an object is old, one will probably be reassured that it is. It is up to the buyer to evaluate the quality of the object and its age, and there are no guarantees.
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| Clothes and textiles for sale at the Bamako Market |
Whether Ousmane fools his customers is a question each person must answer for himself. Perhaps one answer is that he helps the tourists fulfill some of their dreams of taking something home, something that for them is a unique object. Everyone with a degree of knowledge of the tourist market in Mali today knows that there are not very many old masks still for sale. And besides, it is illegal to take antiquities out of the country.
Read more:
Abdoulaye - a Bamako Guide
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