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Nov 13
I am now in Mopti, Mali. It took a couple of days to cross over into Mali and recover from a cold before starting a 7 day hike in the Dogon country with Mike and Sarah from England. The temperature here is about 36 degrees which means we get up at 6 and walk until about 10.30am. Then its all day sitting in the shade before usually a few more km after 3.30pm.

Mali

Stevemonty
2005-09-23 19:07:24

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really great, if you discount the food and the state of the toilets. Sitting all day watching the landscape slowly change from Sahel to desert and drinking cold beer on the roof while watching fishermen haul in their nets from their pirouges. Then stopping at towns like Niafounke (Ali Farka Toure's home town, for blues fans) for the chaotic transfer of goods off and onto the lower deck, 4th class.
Nov 29
The five days in the desert were great, whats most striking in the silence, only occaisionally broken by the desert wind or birdsong. After the first 2 days Karen & Herman had to return for their flight but Karel and I continued on with our Tuareg guides, Ibrahim and Mohammed who kept us entertained around the camp fire with nomadic Tuareg tales and wisdom.

Each day starts to drift into another, time doesn't mean a lot here and I remember it more by the passage of events. After sunrise we'd take breakfast of biscuits and marmalade then head off on our camels for a couple of hours before the midday heat set in around 11am. Then it's time to find a small tree or bush to rest in the shade and eat lunch. Food is quite basic, usually flavoured rice with a piece of dried goat meat. About 3pm we head off again and stop just before sunset when we've found a good sand dune to sleep on in our sleeping bags under the stars.

Half way through we collected water from a 2 donkey powered well. The donkeys are led away from the well which hauls up a leather pouch of water for feeding the cattle and goats. We took our turn and replenished our supplies with this lovely fresh water but freckled water after adding Iodine to make it even tastier.
The day after arriving back in Timbuktu Karel and I took the next weekly grand bateau for two days further East long the great river Niger to Gao. Resting in the shade or on the roof with a cold beer now watching huge red sand dunes and children running up to the top of them to shout 'ca va bien' at the top of their voices as fast as they can.
Gao is a pleasant Niger town that deserved more time to take in the ambience but with 3 weeks left I was keen to move into Niger and the home straight of my trip. I travelled onto Niamey the capital of Niger alone, I was told to be at the bus station at 7am, I don't know why as it took until 11am for us to finally get moving.

I'm so glad I paid a bit extra for a seat in the cabin. The road to the border is just a sand track with potholes everywhere. We also had to stop all the time to drop people off in the middle of nowhere, little breakdowns, police checkpoints to bribe and also to allow the driver to do his shopping. At one point I had the skinned rear half of a goat thrust into my face as he was trying to agree a good price for a leg, which got stashed behind me, unwrapped or cooked.

We arrived at the frontier about 10pm and I climbed into my sleeping bag and slept on the floor outside the bus. At 5.30am we crossed the border and eventually took a better tarmac road into Niamey, we arrived about 5pm, the entire journey took 32 hours.

But I did meet some very nice people on the journey including Phillip from Sierra Leone with whom I could have a good chat in English with. In Sierra Leone they also speak a language called Krio which was evolved by the slaves freed by British warships and brought to Freetown. Thus creating a language based on English to be able to communicate with each other as they were originally taken from different communities in Africa. Example Krio includes,
How are you - how dee boh dee
I am fine - boh dee fine
Thank God - ah tel god tenk kee