I haven't left the house much during the week. For one thing, I don't have a car. Even if I did, I'm not sure where I would go. I'm sure as time goes by I'll have more and more to do, but for now, a big outing is when I meet E. at his office, like I did today.

Yesterday afternoon it rained and rained, and today it shows: Our red dirt road has several new small ponds, which I skirt while I also keep an eye out for cars and mopeds. The side streets are so rough and pitted that drivers abandon all rules on them, zig-zagging from one side to the other to avoid a large bump here, a pothole there. Caveat pedes!

I walk over to the Route de Koulikoro, an artery in the northwest section of town clogged with pousse-pousse carts, mopeds, bicycles, lemon-yellow taxis, green bachées, shiny hulking 4WD trucks, and claptrap little European imports. The air pollution is astonishing.

But Koulikourou Road, detestable as it may be, is a good place to catch a taxi. I get one right at the corner, so I don't have to negotiate the narrow sidewalk between the road and the open sewer that runs along it, and tell him to take me to La Ministere d'Education, a landmark near E.'s office.

The sidewalks teem with activity. Men sell soda bottles of gasoline from wooden stands; women sell fresh bananas and peanuts, or cook beignets in pots of oil. On one block, mother after mother sits with her identically-dressed twins, accepting coins from strangers. Two men pull a steer on a rope. A donkey stands in the shade and blinks while its owner naps in the cart behind it. A barber has painted his tiny wooden coiffure shack with pictures of men's heads and hair clippers.

Men wear long boubous in pastel colors, or jeans and t-shirts. The women wear brightly patterned dresses and matching head wraps. Everyone carries their heaviest loads on their heads: women carry a cooler of water, or a bucket of mangoes, or a parcel of laundry. Many of them also have babies tied to their backs with wide strips of cloth. Men carry goods for sale: a rack of dangling soccer balls or a mountain of uncovered foam pillows. Some carry sewing machines on their heads, and scissors in their hands.

Over here a five-story apartment building under construction towers over everything else; next to it a lush nursery sells plants and potting soil. Across the street, sheep and goats roam the dirt field and pick through the garbage.

In front of the Azar Libre Service supermarket and Le Relax restaurant, young men in brown "Securité" uniforms and wraparound sunglasses wave cars in and out of parking spaces. They open and close doors for women, and lay cardboard on the windshields while the customers are inside. (We crack our windows a bit too. They've been known to shatter from the heat.)

Most of Bamako seems to run on this petty sidewalk commerce, and being in a car doesn't insulate one from it. At every stoplight young men wave plastic sheets of Ikatel and Malitel cards, to charge up your cell phone. Teenage boys peddle whatever plastic junk is in surplus: toy revolvers, alarm clocks, dolls, globes. Lately they have boxes of facial tissue, too. Women offer handfuls of limes. Boys clutch little plastic bags of cold water. More boys, with empty tomato cans, say something in singsong voices I can't understand and pluck at their threadbare clothes; they are learning humility by begging and turning the profits over to their school. A girl leads a blind woman to the car window; she also says something I can't understand. My driver drops some coins in her box and she smiles kindly in gratitude. But he waves away the windshield-washer with the squeegee, annoyed.

As I sat at the stoplight today, all these people came to the windows, and I shook my head gently at every one. "Non, merci." They moved on to the next car without a fuss. Only the Islamic schoolboys persisted a little, whining louder before they gave up.

After the circle, the road widens and the traffic eases. On the right is the Grande Hotel, where we stayed in May. On the left, just over a low wall, I see a dozen pairs of cobalt-blue pants drying on a thatched roof. We pass the Musée de Bamako, newly renovated and recently reopened; it's painted pink and white like a giant gingerbread house. The lawn is shockingly green.

At my destination, I hand the driver 1000 CFA and hop out. (According to Fanta, I shouldn't give him more than 750, but if I ask he'll say 1500, so I see it as a compromise.) The corner near E.'s office is even busier than the Route Koulikouro and I have to push my way through the crowd, trying not to fall in front of the bachées that barrel along this street. In the mid-1990s they were all painted green at the government's orders, but the drivers go to great lengths to distinguish themselves: They cut heart-shaped windows out, paint names (like "David Beckham") on the front in big white letters, paste stickers of Madonna and Osama bin Laden on the rear doors, deck them out in colorful party lights and, I've even heard, added sirens. They are rumored to smoke lots of marijuana and they drive like maniacs.

I slip in the front door of the office building and take the shallow steps two at a time. Just before I step inside, I pause at the rail and peer into the courtyard. The building guardien lives there with his family. In the quiet shade the men sit and talk and wash their feet with pots of water, and soon they will roll out their mats to pray.