Please get comfortable. With your drink of choice. I am enjoying some rum with bitter lemon.

In 1985, Mamady Kanta sold a parcel of land in the Badalabougou neighborhood of Bamako to Gustave Bongo, son of Omar Bongo, the President of Gabon from 1967 until his death in 2009. Gustave Bongo did not do anything with this new addition to his sprawling portfolio of global assets. He returned to Gabon and Mamady Kanta continued administering the land as if he still owned it.

Kanta rented the land to multiple tenants, including the Moroccan embassy, before a Brit and an Australian turned up and signed a ten-year contract with the intention of turning the property into a hostel plus restaurant plus bar. Of course, Kanta had no right to sign a contract with anyone. He was no longer the landlord. But he greased enough palms at the mayor’s office to keep up appearances. On paper, he was the landlord even though he wasn’t.

Over the next nine years, the Sleeping Camel became a successful business despite a coup d’etat (followed by temporary closure of the hotel), a French military intervention, terrorist attacks in Bamako, and the overall obliteration of the tourism industry in Mali.

Meanwhile, Mamady Kanta passed away without informing his children that he had already sold the parcel of land on which the Sleeping Camel now stood. As far as the children were concerned, they were entitled to the land as part of their inheritance. And, not content to administer the land collectively, Kanta’s children took each other to court in order to determine the rightful owner. Of course, the rightful owner was in Gabon and he almost certainly had no idea that Kanta’s children were spending untold amounts of money and sewing the seeds of their family’s destruction while fighting over a piece of land that he bought in 1985.

The courts designated a neutral brokerage agency to receive the Sleeping Camel rent payments. There was no longer any interaction with the family. As far as we knew, the courts had not yet awarded the property to one of the children. We sat in limbo, having no one to talk to in order to renegotiate the lease that was set to expire in June of next year.

And then a notarized letter arrived out of the blue. The letter said that the land had been purchased in April of this year by a man named Abdoul Aziz Mangane, a Malian business tycoon who has massive land holdings and a bullet factory. The land had been purchased from Gustave Bongo.

We were expecting a letter from the Courts. Or the brokerage agency. Or Kanta’s family. This didn’t make sense. Gustave Bongo? Abdoul Aziz Mangane? Who were these people? How was the land sold with absolutely no warning to the tenants of nearly ten years? Why were we not approached as prospective buyers?

When we called the brokerage agency and informed them of the letter, they were also confused. There must be a mistake. The courts haven’t made a final ruling yet. The brokerage agency told us to sit tight.

As more information came out, including a notarized copy of the sale document and the deed to the land itself, it became clear that the courts were unaware of the 1985 purchase. How were they not aware? Well now that’s a damn good question. This is the part that is extremely maddening, and that must be a serious understatement for the Kanta Kids who have been feuding for nothing.

Mangane, who likely has more resources than the Malian state and the Kanta Kids combined, tracked down Gustave Bongo and made a deal, bypassing the circus in the courts entirely.

At this point, we still didn’t know anything about our future at the property. We got in touch with one of Mangane’s many legal representatives to get a read on the situation. We learned that Mangane was traveling, but we were given an indication that he wasn’t interested in booting us from the property. Unfortunately, that was not accurate.

After many unsuccessful attempts at contacting Mangane, he showed up at the Camel unannounced. The meeting was brief. He wanted us off the property. For one thing, his dad is an imam and his family is on the more conservative side of Islam. Accepting rent money from a hotel serving booze? Not possible. More than that, he had plans to flatten the place and put up multi-story apartments.

After the initial shock wore off, we tried to negotiate. Negotiating quickly turned into pleading. I explained that we have 30 employees. Many of them have been with us since the beginning or close to it. I met my wife at the Camel. It’s Matt’s home. Nevermind all the money and sweat that Matt and Bill put into the place. When the initial contract was signed, the main building was flooded due to a tree that had fallen through the roof. There were no doors. There was no electricity. The property was condemned. They rehabilitated it.

No, Mangane had made up his mind. We were able to negotiate a few extra months. He wanted us out in six months. We stretched it to nine. He also gave us three months rent-free to give us some extra cash for the housing search. Hard to complain considering our original rental agreement was fraudulent. At the end of the day, this was just a business deal for Mangane, one that he’s probably made many times over.

So here we are. The search for a new place has begun. We’ve found at least one spot that we really like, but we are a ways off from coming to terms with the landlord. We have until the end of June July 2019 (we were given a one month extension) to figure it out.

We are trying not to hang our heads. With all that’s happened in Mali, we have been incredibly fortunate. We are certainly not ready to give up on this project. We have a lot of people ready to go to bat for us. Our clients are loyal, our staff more family than workforce.

And it’s not the first time the rug has been pulled out from under us. This is the land of constant improvisation. A friend in Cote d’Ivoire once told me “anything is possible, but nothing is certain.” He was talking about Cote d’Ivoire, but the sentiment applies to much of the region. We will find a solution. Inshallah.

By the way, have you seen any interesting properties in Bamako recently?