The Mali Matrix:
The Bamako Brawl and Other Adventures of a Gold Runner
By: Kyle A. Foster

The Writer. On the Edge.
The gold deal clearly was not going down as we had planned. Pressure was rising from all sides. First, what we expected to be a week to ten-day in and out job had stretched into more than one-month with no end in sight. Second my wife and first-born newborn baby girl were waiting for me back in Yemen - and my wife was threatening to leave me, if she even answered my phone calls. Third, my seller-associates were jerking me around and it was becoming clear that they were not serious businessmen but jokers. Fourth, I was coming down with some unknown disease that I described to my boss as, ‘water ass’ (no further explanation) and I was trying in vain to combat it with various pills and anti-biotics. I was tired and sweating profusely like a drug addict in withdrawl. Fifth, my technology schemes were failing. My computer hard drive had announced that it was irrepairable and in the final stages of disintegration. I was sweating so much into my phone that it had gone into a coma and I had to take it apart and blast it with a hair dryer in the hopes that it would revive. The local internet provider was 128 slow and overloaded – when it wasn’t completely down which was about half the time. Sixth, my inability to communicate properly as one does within first world business conditions was leading my boss to question both my ability and my commitment to the project. Finally, I had slipped on a wet sidewalk and sliced my big toe open to the bone. I was a wounded, limping, sweating, ill, tired, lonely, frustrated and angry man. It may be more accurate to say that I was angrier than a caged grizzly bear in heat. I was a human time bomb ticking – and I was about to explode.
With all of these pent-up emotions and physical problems I couldn’t sleep one evening so I finally got out of bed with the idea that I’d get something to eat. The Mali-Africana had no room service and outside of regular meal hours the kitchen was closed, so I limped out onto the dark road and turned towards the flashing lights and thumping discos of Blah Blah Street. I crossed the street to ‘Snak CafÈ’ where I ordered a burger. As hungry as I was I could only stomach a few bites due to my upset stomach, my shot-to-hell nerves or both so I had the burger wrapped to go and walked back out to Blah Blah Street where I was immediately accosted by about ten different taxi-men. This didn’t help my mood because they all knew I lived less than one-hundred yards around the corner. I waved them off with a glare saying, ‘Helicopter, Helicopter, no taxi!’ and limped on. When in doubt let them think that you’re crazy.
‘I am really strung-out,’ I remember thinking. I am mean and I must look like hell.’
I turned the corner onto the dark, dirt road to my hotel and a few limping steps later four very large men stepped out from the shadows to block my path.
‘Take us to your room,’ the leader said in English. I had been told about this scheme. Local boys try to get into your room where they think they can get your money.
‘NO!,’ I responded with force giving each man a hard stare straight into the eyes.
‘You WILL take us to your room,’ the leader insisted.
‘NO.’ I affirmed, looking each man in the eye again, ‘I WILL NOT!’
I walked directly towards them trying not to limp, ducking between the middle two and intending to continue walking back to my hotel. Then I felt two arms wrapping across my chest from behind as if to get me in a ‘full Nelson’ lock.
In an instant my mind and instincts became one. I thought of my baby. I thought of my wife. I thought of my boss friend Raja back in Bangkok and how hard we had both worked for this project. I wasn’t about to let these goons come between me and any of that. Not on this night. ‘You must get out of this hold.’ I dropped straight down tucking my chin in so as not to give any angle they might hold on to and jettisoned the burger. ‘What have I got that they don’t have?’… ‘Baseball, you’re an American, you can throw, they can’t.’ As a boy I spent three years in the basement throwing baseballs at a small chalk circle drawn onto the brick wall. I can throw with accuracy.
Dropping out of their grasp I scoured the rock strewn road and grabbed two baseball sized chunks of granite and jumped back, taking aim at the closest man four feet away. Right handed, two fingers on top and thumb on the left side of the stone I cocked my arm back, took a step forward and threw my hand and elbow full force directly at the man’s face, launcing the rock at fifty to sixty miles per hour. The missle hit him directly in the face between the mouth and nose. He dropped straight down, instantly, into a motionless heap as if he’d been shot through the head. I pivoted, moving the other rock into my right hand and took a step forward launching the stone straight at the next closest man. This rock struck somewhere between the collar bone and the adam’s apple. He fell backwards onto the road clutching his throat with a look of surprise on his face.
Immediately I turned and scanned for the remaining two men. They were both backing away. One was backing directly towards a concrete wall. ‘Use your speed against him.’ I am not a big man but I can run the hundred in around eleven seconds and the mile in nearly four minutes so I rushed at the man backing towards the wall at full speed. I had forgotten about my toe. As I neared him and he backed nearer to the wall I thought of my friend, Micah Heibel, a University of Nebraska Fullback famous for his crushing blocks. I tucked my shoulder like Micah aiming it at my opponents chin and flicked my shoulder just as it came into contact with his jaw. His head whipped back hitting the wall with a sound like a grapefruit dropped onto the pavement. He slid straight down, arms spread wide.
All of this happened in three of four seconds. I turned around bursting with adrenaline, determined to finish the fight. The last man, the ringleader, was backing away, eyes wide with fright. I realize now that for all he knew he had just seen a skinny white devil kill three of his friends. At the time though I wasn’t in much of a mood for contemplation and so I launched myself full speed in his direction, not really knowing what I would do if I caught him. He turned and ran. I knew then that I had won the fight. This big goon was never going to outrun me. I jogged behind laughing and almost feeling sorry for him. I pursued him leisurely, easily keeping pace while stopping to pick up handfulls of smaller gravel stones which I threw at the ground three feet behind him ‘cricket style’ so the stones would bounce up in his face and keep him dancing. A block or two later he looked back in panic and realized that he couldn’t outrun me. Then he scrambled up into a tree climbing high into the upper branches. I stood at the foot of the tree picking up stones and pelting him with each one. There were no street lights and I could see only the whites of his eyes high up in the tree, big and scared like an owl. With each hurled stone I heard a ‘thud’ as the rock struck paydirt and the eyes would momentarily disappear, wincing in pain. I hurled an insult with each stone. ‘Wanna come to my room now, pretty boy? C’mon down here, how about a little manlovelove, sister? You better give up your life of crime because you don’t have what it takes!’
Finally, out of insults and beginning to pity the poor guy I left him in the tree and began to walk back, limping with purpose this time so as to shame him further. I was thinking about the first man I had drilled in the face with the concrete fastball at close range. The way he dropped lifeless and limp made me worry that I’d killed him. When I got back to the scene of the brawl the three were gone. This gave me momentary relief. But then I thought, ‘maybe he was dead and the other two carried him away. Or maybe he is dying somewhere right now.’
I had the hotel desk call the police and report my concern over the incident. The police said, ‘Don’t worry, no problem. Whatever you did, you did the right thing.’
The next morning the police called to congratulate me. The four were known as ‘Ivory Coast Mafia Boyz,’ the man said, and I had succeeded in kicking them off of the street – something which the local police had been unable to do in six months.
I had a meeting that morning with a potential sellers group so I put on my best shirt and suit and polished my shoes before going down for breakfast. When I walked out onto the street I noticed a new group of smaller young men with decidedly friendlier faces than had been there before. Someone let out a yell, ‘Mali Boyz!’ They all started to clap and cheer. One young man came up to me and said, ‘Boss, we want to thank you for giving us our street back. What should we do now, Boss?’
‘Thanks, I said, but I am not your boss. Just promise me you’ll all behave like gentlemen with honor. Don’t hurt anyone. And don’t pick on me!’ I laughed, pointing at the new leader. They all laughed. What else could I say to this group of poor young men faced with such limited opportunities? I wished them well and got into my waiting taxi. From that day on they all called me, ‘Boss.’ And I never had a problem on the street again…until the last day. But more about that later.
The thought that I might have killed my attacker still haunts me. At the very least he was knocked out cold and left in need of major reconstructive dental surgery. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I am normally not a fighter. In fact I am a peaceful kind of guy and that suits me just fine. I acted instinctively that night, when cornered. Normally, I would have run and they would have had no chance to catch me. I suppose that with my wounded foot my instinct that night was to stand and fight.
Land pirates like the ones that attacked me know the rules of their business when they enter it. I was lucky. But they picked on the wrong guy at the wrong time and that is a risk they will always face in their line of work. I sincerely hope that my attacker is alive and well, gumming jello and pudding somewhere in the Ivory Coast and saving money for dental surgery. I hope he is thinking about how to make an honest living. But I’ll be forever haunted by the possibility that I killed a man in Bamako.
Mukella, Yemen. May 2009