As we entered Burkina Faso the border official stamped a one week visa in our passports. Naturally it felt a little restrictive, but it was a good thing, preventing us from dawdling and forcing us to pick up the pace. South Africa felt a whole world and too many thousands of miles away, and our aim to reach it often became clouded by the glories and distractions of the here and now. We’d given over a fortnight to Morocco and the Western Sahara, 9 days in politically dubious Mauritania, 10 to tiny Gambia, and even our sometime nemesis, Senegal, had eaten 9. As for giant Mali, with its absolute abundance of things to see, we’d taken 15 days. ‘This is good,’ we convinced each other, eyeing the modestly dated Burkina stamps, ‘we’ll just have to take
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