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08.04.04

Overland Trip To Senagal 2004, Day 9: Foum Chour

Thomas Morgan
2006-04-26 12:04:28

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bush and palm trees around us. We walk on, we’re in Africa, a wild and unknown Africa, somewhere we may never come again and where few like us would dare to go. “Why are you going there ?” people back home asked when we said we were travelling through Morocco, Mauritania and to Dakar, Senegal. “To go” I would reply.

We walk through a small village, a hamlet really, just half a dozen huts and the usual smattering of goats and donkeys, some camels as well in the distance. Frenchy is overjoyed by every sighting of a camel and desperately wants to ride one. He thinks of taking a picture but they’re too far away. He’s taking pictures with increased vigour and regularity now. Like me he’s never been one to fill the classic tourist role, taking pictures in cheesy poses of commonly photographed places or things. But here is different, so different and surreal is our trip and location that it feels as if everything has to be photographed, as if we may not believe it later.

The track eventually runs to a town and a paved road, which, when we turn right on it, leads back to Atâr. I didn’t realise we would end up where we did – at the bridge near our camps, so when we get there it’s an immense surprise. We decide to head into town for a drink, Frenchy longs for a cold Fanta. I’d love a big bottle of Gatorade. The town’s busy, much busier than when we visited yesterday, but it’s morning now. We can’t find a café and decide to head back. I stop at a little shop and buy a carton of milk and a kilo of oranges. The day feels completed when we walk back but it’s not half so. We eat the delicious oranges, Frenchy showers, I later after baking in our tent, it’s wonderful.

Having had a sandwich for lunch, I started fighting a losing battle against my drooping eyelids in the afternoon heat. Why bother, I thought as I wandered off back to the tent for a nap. After about an hour I woke up absolutely drenched. ...