more pics soon
Friday, May 12, 2006
Monday, May 01, 2006
On rentre de Mali
So we made it back to Wassadouuuuuu! Home sweet home, for the moment. We are oh so happy to be back doing the rural relaxation thing and not the overnight busses and broken-down train thing. Not that it wasn’t, um, fun. Just a bit taxing.
Let’s start at the beginning. The first day of our voyage we hopped a car rapide (large truck filled full with folks) to Tambacounda and then took a horse-wagon to the parking lot where one finds cars to the frontier. We waited several hours after buying the ticket to actually get moving, so that by the time we made it the 3-4 or so hours to the border it was already afternoon. The border crossing went smoothly, but afterward we were crammed into a neuf-place (station wagon that seats 9 people, not to say comfortably) for the journey to Kayes, which has the distinction of being the hottest city in Africa (though I’m not sure it’s any hotter than Wassadou).
We were enjoying the beautiful late afternoon scenery- golden hay fields interspersed with amazing baobab trees (with so much personality, they look like old men to me)- when the real adventures began. One of the neuf-place’s tires had broken, so we got out of the car to let the driver fix it.
We were making light of the situation and even enjoying the scenery when all of a sudden people started running and yelling. I got moving and realized that we were being followed by the most aggressive, angry bees I’d ever seen (‘Africanized’ killer bees anyone?). The strangest part was that they were going for people’s hair, which was bad for mike, as he has a lot of it now. I had somehow managed to escape without being stung, 
but looking back I realized that Mike was covered in bees. He was yelling for help but no one wanted to go near him. I looked around to see what the others were doing and ran over to swat the bees out of his hair with my hat- this did little to dissuade them. I realized that everyone had their shirts over their heads and yelled at mike to take his shirt off. Once he had it over his hair I managed to kill a few that were still inside the shirt just by whacking him on the head (this must have been a sight). We kept running (maybe a ½ mile or so) until the bees seemed to have disappeared.
Every once in a while we would get hit again, and then we would run again, but the real problem became how to get back to the car and change the tire, as all of the bees had gathered there.
A passing truck threw us a box of matches, and the other passengers started a fire to get the bees away from the car. I first thought this was a good idea, too, but soon realized that they had done nothing to contain the fire, which spread like crazy over the super-dry, brittle landscape (while we were in no danger from it, it certainly burned a good deal of the forest). As I seemed to be the only one concerned about this, I soon stopped asking people what to do and tried to focus on how we could make it to Kayes.
At one point a fellow passenger informed us that we would be sleeping there that night until we could fix the tire and move on. Let’s just say we weren’t overly excited about this prospect. We had stupidly not even brought any bug spray in our smaller bags or anything to put on to cover up entirely. Though we eventually made it out of there, this was not before we found a man lying completely incapacitated in the woods near the road- his face was covered in hundreds of stings, the stingers still there as evidence. A few of us started to pick them out but soon realized that this was useless given the quantity of stings. I was pretty terrified when I saw this, because I thought he was one of the passengers in the car who had just been incredibly unlucky; as it turns out, he was just some random guy who had been lying there and possibly the reason that the bees were so angry to begin with.
After some time we all piled back in the car (it was dark by then) with the semi-conscious stranger. Unfortunately, a ton of bees were still in the passengers’ seat, which made the hour or so that it took to get to Kayes extremely neurotic (we were trying to kill killer bees in the dark without turning on the flashlight so that the driver wouldn’t get distracted by the light and get into an accident, ayayaya).
The whole time we weren’t exactly sure how bad the situation was, if those bees’ venom was anymore dangerous than bees at home, etc. I figured I was ok, but Mike had been bitten up at least 5-10 times, with a few on the face near his eyes. In the end we made it to Kayes (where we were traumatized further by a taxi driver who kept trying to raise the price on us) and into an air-conditioned room where we tried to get a grip and go to sleep. (pic is of River in Kayes)
Needless to say, we weren’t overly excited to get back on the road the next day, but mike really wanted to get to Bamako and just stay there for a while, so we hopped the noon bus there. The 8-9 hour journey over the “improved” road took 15 hours en fete. We were at one point informed that we would again be spending the night on the side of the road, as there was a problem ahead. We rented a mat and got comfy. In fact we didn’t sleep there, and ended up in Bamako at 4am. After more taxi haggling we finally we made it to the Lebanese Mission in our guidebook, where we collapsed. Though the place was a complete dump we made good friends with the workers there. We even stayed another night, despite the lack of floor, bathroom that hadn’t seen a sponge, and abundance of critters (mostly lizards). Needless to say, we changed “hotels,” moving into a Japanese hostel where we met some more friendly folks.
We had the bonne chance of arriving in Bamako for an international percussion festival, corresponding exactly to the week we wanted to stay. This meant we got to see great music and dancing for anywhere from 0-1 dollar every day, and even met up with some musician friends from Dakar. They are a dance and drumming group from Louga, extremely nice and talented folks. It was cool to find them because we were actually missing Senegal a lot, and hanging out with them was a nice break from the unfamiliarity of Mali. The ladies of the group decided to braid my hair one morning, which seemed like a great idea. They did a good job, but it is so tight that it really takes some getting used to. Unfortunately I came down with a decent fever the next day, so having tight braids all over my head was a really bad idea. 
Fortunately, the fever wasn’t malaria (I took a quick, cheap malaria test at the local clinic) – I soon realized that it was some kind of stomach issue-related and rested a bit easier. Unfortunately, this hampered our travel ability a bit, and we decided not to move on farther than Bamako.
The capital city of Mali, Bamako was an interesting mix of things, certainly much more rustic than Dakar.
Few streets were actually paved, and the amount of poverty was much higher. At the same time the rich are perhaps richer, or at least the tourists, evidenced by several giant luxury hotels around the city. We found people to be a bit less overtly friendly and also less aggressive to sell things there than in Dakar. It was definitely hard to be thrown into tourist mode at first, as we had gotten quite used to living as residents in Senegal and not as “toubabs” with no clue as to the local language and customs. We learned a few words of bambara but obviously did not attempt any level of mastery. The percussion festival made our stay really nice, though, and I even made a hoop and danced a bit at one of the afternoon concerts. One day we hitched a ride on the local boats along the impressive niger river.
For our journey home we took the train, dubbed the “last great train ride in West Africa,” according to our guidebook (thanks pedz!). The guide describes the goreous scenery from the train and then goes on to describe its habitual slowness, crowdedness, and general tendency to arrive several hours-days behind schedule. Sounded like a winner to us, so we bought the tickets and showed up the next morning at 8 am, as told. Surprise surprise, the departure time had been rescheduled to 5:30 pm. At that point we had checked out of the hostel, and were carrying our ridiculous backpacks around with us. Luckily we had left 3 days to get back to Senegal from our 2 week visas, so the delay was not as dire as it could have been. After some debate we decided to lock our bags up and head for parts of the city we had not yet seen, a museum and botanical garden. When we made it up the hill exhausted, we found two young boys who were going to the nearby zoo. Curious, we followed them and payed the 25 cent entrance fee. It felt kind of like gawking at an accident- didn’t seem right but you couldn’t help but look at the wild animals in tiny cages a few feet (if that) from your nose. There were enormous dr. seuss-like birds that I’d never seen before, jaguars, lions, and hyenas. The kids led us around and then followed us out. They took us to the gardens nearby and then back to the centre ville, where we had lunch. In the end, it was a nice last day in Bamako, if a bit exhausting given little sleep and my accidental overdose on antibiotics- go me! (nothing serious)
The train was a whole other story. We started boarding maybe sometime around 8 or 9 and didn’t leave the station til 10 or 11. The boarding process was basically chaos mixed with chaos. The lady across from us went out and back on at least 5 times, bringing all sorts of odd containers onto the already cramped luggage rack (not to mention 2 kids who were too big to be riding in her lap but had no assigned seat per se). Both she and the elderly man across from us turned into friends by the end of the 2 day voyage, though. The man was so sweet; he kept translating into bambara for us when we wanted to buy food and drinks in passing towns. Mike and he shared many a cola nut (a sign of friendship here).
(Niger River in Bamako, sunset)
All in all, the trip was an adventure for sure. When we finally made it back to Tamba we waited in the station another 4 hours in the stifling midday heat for the car rapide back to Wassadou. I had never been so smelly and dirty in my life, or so happy to take a shower and eat che-bu-dien. Senegal bi neexna! (Senegal is great!)
Let’s start at the beginning. The first day of our voyage we hopped a car rapide (large truck filled full with folks) to Tambacounda and then took a horse-wagon to the parking lot where one finds cars to the frontier. We waited several hours after buying the ticket to actually get moving, so that by the time we made it the 3-4 or so hours to the border it was already afternoon. The border crossing went smoothly, but afterward we were crammed into a neuf-place (station wagon that seats 9 people, not to say comfortably) for the journey to Kayes, which has the distinction of being the hottest city in Africa (though I’m not sure it’s any hotter than Wassadou).
We were enjoying the beautiful late afternoon scenery- golden hay fields interspersed with amazing baobab trees (with so much personality, they look like old men to me)- when the real adventures began. One of the neuf-place’s tires had broken, so we got out of the car to let the driver fix it.
We were making light of the situation and even enjoying the scenery when all of a sudden people started running and yelling. I got moving and realized that we were being followed by the most aggressive, angry bees I’d ever seen (‘Africanized’ killer bees anyone?). The strangest part was that they were going for people’s hair, which was bad for mike, as he has a lot of it now. I had somehow managed to escape without being stung, 
but looking back I realized that Mike was covered in bees. He was yelling for help but no one wanted to go near him. I looked around to see what the others were doing and ran over to swat the bees out of his hair with my hat- this did little to dissuade them. I realized that everyone had their shirts over their heads and yelled at mike to take his shirt off. Once he had it over his hair I managed to kill a few that were still inside the shirt just by whacking him on the head (this must have been a sight). We kept running (maybe a ½ mile or so) until the bees seemed to have disappeared. Every once in a while we would get hit again, and then we would run again, but the real problem became how to get back to the car and change the tire, as all of the bees had gathered there.
A passing truck threw us a box of matches, and the other passengers started a fire to get the bees away from the car. I first thought this was a good idea, too, but soon realized that they had done nothing to contain the fire, which spread like crazy over the super-dry, brittle landscape (while we were in no danger from it, it certainly burned a good deal of the forest). As I seemed to be the only one concerned about this, I soon stopped asking people what to do and tried to focus on how we could make it to Kayes. At one point a fellow passenger informed us that we would be sleeping there that night until we could fix the tire and move on. Let’s just say we weren’t overly excited about this prospect. We had stupidly not even brought any bug spray in our smaller bags or anything to put on to cover up entirely. Though we eventually made it out of there, this was not before we found a man lying completely incapacitated in the woods near the road- his face was covered in hundreds of stings, the stingers still there as evidence. A few of us started to pick them out but soon realized that this was useless given the quantity of stings. I was pretty terrified when I saw this, because I thought he was one of the passengers in the car who had just been incredibly unlucky; as it turns out, he was just some random guy who had been lying there and possibly the reason that the bees were so angry to begin with.
After some time we all piled back in the car (it was dark by then) with the semi-conscious stranger. Unfortunately, a ton of bees were still in the passengers’ seat, which made the hour or so that it took to get to Kayes extremely neurotic (we were trying to kill killer bees in the dark without turning on the flashlight so that the driver wouldn’t get distracted by the light and get into an accident, ayayaya).
The whole time we weren’t exactly sure how bad the situation was, if those bees’ venom was anymore dangerous than bees at home, etc. I figured I was ok, but Mike had been bitten up at least 5-10 times, with a few on the face near his eyes. In the end we made it to Kayes (where we were traumatized further by a taxi driver who kept trying to raise the price on us) and into an air-conditioned room where we tried to get a grip and go to sleep. (pic is of River in Kayes)Needless to say, we weren’t overly excited to get back on the road the next day, but mike really wanted to get to Bamako and just stay there for a while, so we hopped the noon bus there. The 8-9 hour journey over the “improved” road took 15 hours en fete. We were at one point informed that we would again be spending the night on the side of the road, as there was a problem ahead. We rented a mat and got comfy. In fact we didn’t sleep there, and ended up in Bamako at 4am. After more taxi haggling we finally we made it to the Lebanese Mission in our guidebook, where we collapsed. Though the place was a complete dump we made good friends with the workers there. We even stayed another night, despite the lack of floor, bathroom that hadn’t seen a sponge, and abundance of critters (mostly lizards). Needless to say, we changed “hotels,” moving into a Japanese hostel where we met some more friendly folks.
We had the bonne chance of arriving in Bamako for an international percussion festival, corresponding exactly to the week we wanted to stay. This meant we got to see great music and dancing for anywhere from 0-1 dollar every day, and even met up with some musician friends from Dakar. They are a dance and drumming group from Louga, extremely nice and talented folks. It was cool to find them because we were actually missing Senegal a lot, and hanging out with them was a nice break from the unfamiliarity of Mali. The ladies of the group decided to braid my hair one morning, which seemed like a great idea. They did a good job, but it is so tight that it really takes some getting used to. Unfortunately I came down with a decent fever the next day, so having tight braids all over my head was a really bad idea. 
Fortunately, the fever wasn’t malaria (I took a quick, cheap malaria test at the local clinic) – I soon realized that it was some kind of stomach issue-related and rested a bit easier. Unfortunately, this hampered our travel ability a bit, and we decided not to move on farther than Bamako. The capital city of Mali, Bamako was an interesting mix of things, certainly much more rustic than Dakar.
Few streets were actually paved, and the amount of poverty was much higher. At the same time the rich are perhaps richer, or at least the tourists, evidenced by several giant luxury hotels around the city. We found people to be a bit less overtly friendly and also less aggressive to sell things there than in Dakar. It was definitely hard to be thrown into tourist mode at first, as we had gotten quite used to living as residents in Senegal and not as “toubabs” with no clue as to the local language and customs. We learned a few words of bambara but obviously did not attempt any level of mastery. The percussion festival made our stay really nice, though, and I even made a hoop and danced a bit at one of the afternoon concerts. One day we hitched a ride on the local boats along the impressive niger river. For our journey home we took the train, dubbed the “last great train ride in West Africa,” according to our guidebook (thanks pedz!). The guide describes the goreous scenery from the train and then goes on to describe its habitual slowness, crowdedness, and general tendency to arrive several hours-days behind schedule. Sounded like a winner to us, so we bought the tickets and showed up the next morning at 8 am, as told. Surprise surprise, the departure time had been rescheduled to 5:30 pm. At that point we had checked out of the hostel, and were carrying our ridiculous backpacks around with us. Luckily we had left 3 days to get back to Senegal from our 2 week visas, so the delay was not as dire as it could have been. After some debate we decided to lock our bags up and head for parts of the city we had not yet seen, a museum and botanical garden. When we made it up the hill exhausted, we found two young boys who were going to the nearby zoo. Curious, we followed them and payed the 25 cent entrance fee. It felt kind of like gawking at an accident- didn’t seem right but you couldn’t help but look at the wild animals in tiny cages a few feet (if that) from your nose. There were enormous dr. seuss-like birds that I’d never seen before, jaguars, lions, and hyenas. The kids led us around and then followed us out. They took us to the gardens nearby and then back to the centre ville, where we had lunch. In the end, it was a nice last day in Bamako, if a bit exhausting given little sleep and my accidental overdose on antibiotics- go me! (nothing serious)
The train was a whole other story. We started boarding maybe sometime around 8 or 9 and didn’t leave the station til 10 or 11. The boarding process was basically chaos mixed with chaos. The lady across from us went out and back on at least 5 times, bringing all sorts of odd containers onto the already cramped luggage rack (not to mention 2 kids who were too big to be riding in her lap but had no assigned seat per se). Both she and the elderly man across from us turned into friends by the end of the 2 day voyage, though. The man was so sweet; he kept translating into bambara for us when we wanted to buy food and drinks in passing towns. Mike and he shared many a cola nut (a sign of friendship here).
(Niger River in Bamako, sunset)
All in all, the trip was an adventure for sure. When we finally made it back to Tamba we waited in the station another 4 hours in the stifling midday heat for the car rapide back to Wassadou. I had never been so smelly and dirty in my life, or so happy to take a shower and eat che-bu-dien. Senegal bi neexna! (Senegal is great!)
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