Log in
Join travelers community
Your Profile
Logout
West Africa, Malta and the Balkans in 1999
Gao (MALI )
Bec2004-09-19 14:17:11
Displayed times (last time: )
Labbezanga
At the Mali border everybody got off and unloaded his baggages to have them searched but the crossing was otherwise uneventful.
Ouatagouna
The scenery was great with the desert on our right and the blue Niger to our left. From time to time we passed isolated mud huts and crossed villages that appeared deserted like this one.
Bad luck
The road was really bad and we got severely shaken most of the time as we made our way north going as fast as possible. Then it happened, a wheel fell off. We lurched violently to the left and the driver almost lost control before stopping. The bumps on the road had been so bad that the steel wheel had simply been ripped away from the bolts holding it to the axle as you can see in this photo!
Ansongo
We were lucky that the accident happened only a dozen km from Ansongo which apparently was the destination of some of the passengers. The others were familiar with the place and knew where to go but I was the only westerner aboard and the only one to ask where the hotel was. The driver, Sekou Boubakar, solved my problem by bringing me to his home through a labyrinth of dark streets. I slept very well on foam mattress placed directly on earthen floor of the room directly behind us in this photo his brother took of us with some of his children on the following morning.
From what I saw I gathered that Sekou and his brother lived in the mud house and that their wives and children lived in various reed huts built in the same compound.
The ladies ducked into their huts when I took out my camera but the children did not mind, on the contrary. It was interesting to see how these people lived in the privacy of their high walled compound (there was only one narrow door giving access to the street). In one corner, an open latrine behind a two foot wall was used
...
See photographs from:
Mali Gallery
