The Bamako Brawl

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 I'd been so long in Africa, if she even answered my phone calls. Third, my seller-associates were jerking me aroundand it was becoming clear that they were not serious businessmen but jokers. Fourth, I was coming down with some unknown disease that would prove to be malaria

I was tired and sweating profusely like a drug addict in withdraw. 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 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. I had never been in a worse mood in my life. I was angrier than a caged grizzly bear. 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.

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 Café’ 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.

‘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 demanded in a deep, booming voice. I had been told about this scheme.

Local thugs 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. 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 tossed the burger aside.

‘

What have I got that they don’t have?’… ‘Baseball, you’re an American, you can throw,

odds are -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 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 feinted a throw. The three remaining men kept coming towards me. I aimed at the next closest man, took a step and launched.

This rock struck somewhere between the collar bone and the adam’s apple. He fell

backwards onto the road clutching his throat, screaming.

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 as leverage 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. In a rush of adreneline 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 a matter of seconds. I turned around, bursting with adrenaline,

determined to finish the fight. The last man, the ringleader, was backing away, eyes wide

with fright. For all he knew he had just seen a skinny white devil kill three of his friends.

'Finish this fight. You must finish this fight.'

I launched myself full speed in his direction. Halfway there I realized I really didn't have a plan

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. He looked left then right and 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 his eyes would momentarily

disappear, wincing in pain.

'I'll kill you! He growled.

'Come on down and try, pretty boy!'

I hurled an insult with each stone. ‘Wanna come to my room now? 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. If he's dead, he deserved it. Whatever you did, you did the right thing.’

I spent a sleepless night endlessly reveiwing the fight in my mind as I tossed and turned in bed. In the morning there was a knock on my door. I had a phone call at reception, from the police.

'That's it,' I thought. 'I killed him.'

The call was from the Chief of Police. I picked up the phone, ready to surrender.

'I want to congratulate you. Last night you did Bamako a great favor. The four men you fought were Ivory Coast Mafia. They have lost face in Bamako now and are leaving in disgrace. Everyone is laughing. '

I had a meeting that morning. When I walked out onto the

street I noticed a new group of young men with friendlier faces than the thugs that had been lying about before.

Someone let out a yell, ‘Mali Boyz!’ They all started to clap and cheer.

I looked around in confusion. One young man came up to me and said, ‘Boss, we want to thank you for giving us our street back. '

I laughed and shook his hand.

What should we do now, Boss?’

‘Thanks, I said, but I am not your boss. Just promise me you’ll all behave like gentleme. Don’t hurt anyone. And don’t pick on me!’

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 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.

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