Hey All!! Wow…this is it…it’s all over…four and half months… or eighteen weeks…or one hundred and twenty-seven days… Man…Time flies. Though I am left with a few questions… How have I changed? What have I learned? Well, let me share with you a few of my reflections. A little warning, this last entry is pretty sappy… kinda preachy… really wordy…and openly honest…If you’re not in the mood, just skip to the paragraph at the end that starts with “So, in review…” its okay, I won&rsqu [View Full Entry]

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Here it is! The final gallery! Shots taken from...ummm...everywhere!! Check out this visual recap of my semester in Ghana...and Cote D'Ivoire...and Togo...and Burkina Faso... and Mali... Life is good ^_^ Enjoy! [View Full Entry]

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Now, roughly speaking we only had approximately one thousand kilometers to cross to make it back to the capital of Ghana…give or take a hundred K… and we had a little over three and half days to do it. So in theory, we would make it back with time to spare…even if you factor in long waiting times…which happened…Tro Tro and bus breakdowns…also happened…Loads of traffic…yup, that happened…Bad, bumpy roadways…of course that happened…Issues crossing the border…wouldn’t be legit if that didn’t happen&hel [View Full Entry]

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The Dogon is incredible… I’m not going to waste time trying to explain the awesome hiking adventure we had there. Words cannot do this magnificent beauty justice. So I’ll let my pictures do most of the talking! Our basic schedule from Sunday afternoon until Tuesday Afternoon composed of hiking the land, visiting the villages, meeting the locales, sleeping on rooftops, watching the stars and counting shooting stars, learning about the local culture, cursing the heat of the desert, occasionally riding horse carts, always dreaming about water, laughing at our guides eccentr [View Full Entry]

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Our mission for Saturday was to merely make it back to Mopti…judging from past experiences, that was all we could feasibly accomplish… and plan our next move from there. Earlier that week we had gotten the phone number of a reputable Dogon Country guide from the Peace Corp volunteers we had met on the bus to Ouagadougou. While we were still in Mopti, waiting to get to Timbuktu, I had called him to schedule a meeting time and place. Thus our plan was to get back to Mopti, and then find transport to Bandiagara, the location he had chosen to meet [View Full Entry]

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"Great! After sixteen long hours, we've finally made it to Timbuktu! Where are we gonna sleep?" That was the general sentiment that prevailed Friday at five o'clock in the morning. Our growing anxiety however was soon put to rest when we met up with a guy named Ali. Interestingly enough, I had actually talked to him on the phone in Mopti . Funny thing was we never discussed what time or where in the city we would arrive. So as to how he knew our exact time and place of arrival is still a mystery [View Full Entry]

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Man...and I thought the trip from Ouaga to Mopti was long... boy was I wrong! Sixteen hours... that's how long it took to reach Timbuktu. Sixteen hours cramped into the back of a Tro Tro filled with eight people in the back, four in the middle, three in the front, and one guy on top. Sixteen hours, of minimal water and no food. Sixteen hours of hot hundred degree weather amplified exponentially by the extremely close quarters. Sixteen hours of sandy Sahara dust blowing in through the windows. Sixteen hours stuck in a vehicle where no one spoke English. Sixteen hours [View Full Entry]

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The road to Mopti was...eternal? Yeah, that's a good word for it! Long and hot, dry and dusty. We soon found that the further north you go, the more expensive water got...which is kind of a "no duh" statement since we're traveling into the Sahara desert...hmmmm... At any rate, crossing the border was a pain, not because of any large amounts of paperwork, but because of the excessively spread out process of starting and stopping. We would drive for twenty minutes, and then everyone would pile out of the tro so we could have one guy check out passports. Then we [View Full Entry]

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the crowning glory of my West African experience. My ultimate adventure of epic proportions...the bank-busting, high-flying, sometimes frustrating, yet always exciting, triple country tour, affectionately dubbed, The Mali Finale! An escapade that spanned three countries, twelve days, and over twenty townships. How'd I travel? You name it, I probably took it. Private car, public bus, four by four trucks, cramped fifteen passenger vans, ferry boats, horse and cart, motor bike, camels, taxi, tro tro... Our goal was two-fold...Make it to the legendary Timbu [View Full Entry]

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While I slept most of the way to Ouagadougou from what I did see I noticed that the landscape of Burkina Faso was very similar to that of Mole National Park. Vast savannah grassland, dry and sparsley covered with various trees and shrubbery. As soon as we stepped off the bus, you could immediately tell you were in a different environment. The very air that greeted us was arid in nature and abbrassive to the touch. Despite the intial woes however, the dry heat was, overall, a welcome change to the over-powering humidity of the south. Though the lack of cool [View Full Entry]

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