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Published: March 12th 2006
our beloved blue barges
each time i saw water ahead - i'd scan the horizon for the baby blue color of safety - relieved at the metal transport...Emerging from the bush:
We awoke in Niafunke with a plan for getting safely - forget soundly - back to Douentza (which now seemed like an imaginary haven - save the fact all of our stuff was there!).
The night before, I had asked the bargeman to find us someone to follow all the way back to ‘civilization’ - or rather - just to the other side of all of these tributaries (to give you an idea of the situation, we were but 75 kilometers from land, real land…but with tributaries to cross about every 15 kilometers)…
We met our ‘guides’ at the embarquement…and off we went, again, across the Niger River. Our ‘guides’ were just innocently passing through the region on their ‘125’ motorcycle - little did they know they were going to be spending the day with two slightly frantic toubabs. Poor guys - they took it well.
We spent the day whizzing down sand and dirt paths, on what most of the time felt like a Disney set. The landscape ranged from nothingness, to lush palm trees. In and out of villages - each time coming to a tributary holding our breath to spot
al-ee-oop!
and up it went! while craig and i were walking along the water assessing the situation, our 'friends' had already hoisted the 600 up onto the truck and were tying it down...craig was dubious...i just held on as the pick-up plunged into the (shallow!) tributary... the bright blue metal barges that would float us to freedom - and each time, finding one…though the locals continually insisted ‘no problem’ on getting the 600 Tenere across in a pirogue. No, thanks. We’ll pay our exploited $4 and keep our bike from the bottom of the river.
At some point, our two fellow motorcyclers stopped at someone’s house (theirs? who knows - the relations are always so unclear, the lines blurred - and it’s best not to ask too many questions in both the Senegalese and Malian cultures, anyways). They swapped their motorcycle to some guy, and hopped into a pick-up truck with nine other men. Craig panicked. I made friends with the driver and got him to PROMISE me we could continue on our motorcycle. He promised. And I trusted him. What choice did we have? For the past day, we had been at the mercy of the locals - folks who didn’t speak French, who rarely see a toubab, let alone a stranger, but helped us along the best they could.
The driver also promised that if we hit really bad sand, or had an unexpected water crossing, that he would manage to put
back on solid ground
me, with bike, almost out onto the main road...note: after 3 days in the bush - we'd only lost our license plate - and our heat guard (but at least that was in my hands...!) the bike onto the truck - with men, bags, tools, goats and all!
And, he kept that word, too. I started referring to them as ‘mes amis’ (my friends) - which cracked Craig up. But what else could I call them in my limited French vocabulary?
At almost sunset, we made it onto solid ground - got out onto the ‘main’ road - and knew our way back from there. I guess our original plan from two days before of continuing to the ‘next’ village of Tomboctou and coming home another way wasn’t so bad…
…we definitely came home ‘another way’ - no longer by the force of a 600 engine - but more by the hands and grace of the locals.
We pulled into our campement in Douentza right after sunset, as our faithful proprietor ‘Ogo’ was getting ready to send the police looking for us. We had a shower, took something warm to drink, and shook our heads at our fortune, and adventure. We still had some band-aids and about 10 bucks left. And a whole lot of stories - too many for here!
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