Ségou, the regional capital of Mali at the southern gateway to the Sahel, faces the Niger River. Over the past 30 years, the city has expanded rapidly, but the river remains a continuous space in its own right, as in the peasant villages nearby. This chapter investigates river-related activities at ‘the village in the city’ of Ségoukoura, the ‘village on the edge’ of Sé(gou)bougou and the ‘village on the outskirts’ of Ségoukoro. These three villages once comprised Ségou when it was the ‘multiple capital’ of the Bambara kingdom with the same name. Based on several surveys and interviews, this chapter proposes an in-depth cartography of practices and spaces along, across and between the Niger River in the three Ségou villages. By doing so, it aims to explore how the local inhabitation system deals with transformation processes beyond any rural-urban divide. In fact, water-related activities reveal how rurality is a constitutive part of the city and how this makes possible the co-presence of symbolic and productive dimensions in contemporary living practices.