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One final spine-shattering ride across the border of senegal and into the western most part of Mali - Keyes (known as the hottest town in Africa). Over-exposed to heat and general deprivations, I was keen to make it to any form of luxury and so headed quickly onto the capital of Mali, which was a 600km train ride to the east. In Keyes, you can pick up the Dakar-Bamako express at 2am in the morning. But the train didn't arrive till 2pm that afternoon (yes 12 hours of anxiety in a train station I had been promised was full of bandits and thieves).

Mali stopover

Mark Davies
2006-03-28 16:32:38

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One final spine-shattering ride across the border of senegal and into the western most part of Mali - Keyes (known as the hottest town in Africa). Over-exposed to heat and general deprivations, I was keen to make it to any form of luxury and so headed quickly onto the capital of Mali, which was a 600km train ride to the east. In Keyes, you can pick up the Dakar-Bamako express at 2am in the morning. But the train didn't arrive till 2pm that afternoon (yes 12 hours of anxiety in a train station I had been promised was full of bandits and thieves).

We made it about 50kms out onto the savanah and the front train broke-down so we had to wait for a replacement engine. I went down to the restaurant car and met this young, charismatic nigerian called Efosa. It was great to speak english again. But here was another of these incredulous stories about young men in africa off to make their fortune. He had left nigeria two years ago to go to work in europe. But he got stopped by the UN at the mauritania/morocco border. So he spent 2 years cutting hair in the capital of Mauritania (I think by choice!). Now he was coming back down, and going up an alternative route, through the sahel and algeria and into a UN refugee camp in Morocco, where he was going to throw away his papers and pretend he was a refugee from Sierra Leone. We did discuss publishing this on the net, and he encouraged me to do so. He promised my 100% that this would get him work papers to Europe.

He was going to Bamako with no money, hoping to reach his sister in Holland and have her wire some down. It reminded me of the Gambian I met last week in senegal -- just 23 years old, the oldest in the family, leaving for work in Bamako with no friends or family there and only $5 in his pocket.

The train bounced ludicrously along the tracks through the dramatic western end of Mali -- thick with trees, the long-meandering senegal river and ...