West Africa - Jan 2009

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For the last 8 months I have been on a sabbatical from travelling. During this time I have embarked on a number of random pursuits, such as a career and the like.

But all good things must come to an end. I can no longer avoid my responsibilities in life and I am responsible for getting my pasty white ass back to Africa.



Last time I left you, I was in Uganda, after several months travelling up through Africa from Cape Town. In my intentions of travelling overland to London, I hit a minor stumbling block in the form of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I’ll return to finish that final piece of the jigsaw at a later date, so my bit piece journey starts once again on the Niger River, as I head from Niger, to Senegal, along the river, via Timbuktu.

First things first, as a British citizen I required travel visas for both Niger and Mali.

But a word of warning - If you want to visit Mali, and are a resident in the UK, obtaining a visa is about as easy as securing a UK mortgage circa December 2008.

After much Googling I located the nearest Malian embassy to London. That would be in Brussels then. This was unfortunate, as I’d like to have visited in person, especially since I had left it so late in the day without organising my visa, so I rang them up to arrange the postal details for obtaining the visa:
“Bonjour - Do you SPEAK ANGLATERRE?”
“Non”
Oh. Does anyone there SPEAK ANGLATERRE?”
“Non”
Oh

My French is pretty much limited to Du Pan, Du Vin, Du Boissoin, and given none of these were going to help me past border control, I said my au revoirs and hung up.

I asked around my office at work if anyone else spoke French, but other than a few GCSE grade C’s, there was nothing to hand that would pass the most basic interrogation. I calculated that by the time I had paid for my passport to be sent recorded delivery both ways, plus the handling fee, I would be nearing £100. And according to Mr Google, I could get a day return to Brussels for £89. Add the visa fee, the small difference was well worth the peace of mind. So before I had time to say, “Sacre Bleu” I had booked a non-refundable return trip to Brussels.

I downloaded all the necessary forms and pre-requisites from the Malian embassy website. There was a checklist as long as Mr Tickle’s arm:
2 copies of the Application form - filled out in BOLD and in black pen. Check
2 passport photos. Check.
Yellow fever vaccination certificate. Check
Confirmation of accommodation in Mali. Check. For the first 2 nights at least, which tends to be sufficient.
Confirmation of onward travel. Check
Contact name in Mali. See hotel. Check.

Armed to the teeth with evidence that I was not an international terrorist, I left Wimbledon at 4am. 4 hours later I was still a few miles outside of Waterloo. But do not fear compadres, as this was Waterloo in Belgium, the municipality after which the famous Napoleonic battle is named.
I exchanged £100 for some Euros. When I went to Germany a few months ago, that would have gotten me about €130. Today it got me €97 - commission included. The pound was dropping lower than Harry Rednapp's cheeks. Not a good time to travel.

Another word of warning. The Malian embassy in Brussels is about 2 miles away from where the Google map on the website indicates it is. This set me back another 30 minutes, which I feared would put me to the back of a very long queue of eager tourists looking to secure their visa.

As it turned out, I was the first customer of the day. I got their full attention, put on my most innocent, enthusiastic, non-espionagic face, handed over my €30 handling fee, passed them a self-addressed envelope and a delivery fee for the safe return of my passport back to London, and set off on my merry way. Pleased with my mornings work, I went to Starbucks for free WiFi and an expensively skinny mochacinno with extra cream.

I do like Belgium. They speak Flemish and Walloon - two of my favourite languages. Well, some of them do. Most of the others speak French. Everything in Brussels (or Bruxelles) has to accommodate each of the languages too. It’s a bit like street signs in Wales, but with a few more vowels. And for a country no bigger than greater Los Angeles, Belgium bats well above its station. Housing the E.U, NATO & a number of other international organisations, they have given the world legends from the worlds of comics, cycling, moustached detectives and kickboxing movies.

Once I sent a few token work emails and had my caffeine hit, I set about trying to find the Brussels office of my company. I knew there was one, and I had even been so prepared to have printed off the address. Navigating the public transport network of Brussels is complicated. Their transport map is a colourful spaghetti-like mess, with the metro, tram and bus links not easily distinguishable. 2 trams, 1 bus, 1 train and a taxi ride later I found my office. And when I say I found it, what I mean is I couldn’t find it - I was aimlessly walking around NATO’s headquarters with a confused look on my face (trying to distinguish my confused look from my suspicious look), when a taxi driver picked me up and drove me the last 500 yards for a kindly €8. When you could buy a Euro for about 60p this would’ve been pocket money, but today the pound was at a record low, and €8 wouldn’t have even afforded me a frothy headed Stella Artois.

Still innocently unaware of the dilemma I had put myself in I happily carried on with my work, thinking all was rosey. Soon I’d be on my way home - job done. Or so I thought.


So at mid-afternoon I headed off to the Eurostar terminal. Ticket in hand I reached UK border control (in the Brussels station).
“Please have your passports ready”, the sign read.
Er, mine is an African embassy. Or even worse, in an envelope somewhere between Waterloo and Waterloo.

My immediate reaction was “Bumholes, Balls, Boobies” - if you’ll pardon my French.
Blind panic soon got replaced with a more focussed approach. Focussed panic.

Tram, bus, tram back to the embassy. My desperate looking face left little lost in translation. There was a friendly lady in the embassy, who spoke good English, and explained my dilemma to the secretary. The secretary rifled through the rack of passports (both of them) until she found mine. And as a bonus, the Visa had already been processed. She handed me one approved Malian visa and returned the €20 postage cash to boot.

Somehow, I had negotiated Brussels beaurocracy, and was ready to go. What could possibly go wrong?

A few days later, my Royal Air Maroc flight touched down in Niger. I had no such visa issues entering Niger. I just paid the fee on arrival at the airport (I think in hindsight I could have probably done the same for Mali, but have decided to suppress that thought)

On certain league tables Niger -pronounced "knee-cher" - comes top (or bottom depending on your spin) of the poorest nations in the world. Specifically GDP per capita. So rocking up to a Niger Hilton was not an option. Instead I opted for a windowless, fanless, lightless, mosquito-netless bedsit near the bus station in Niamey, from where I pick this trip up.

Arriving back in Africa only a 6-packful of months since I was last here, I expected to be able to continue with same savviness from where I left off. Not so. I was immediately aware I had become travel-rusty: carrying far too much in my backpack; speaking to everyone who spoke to me; thinking just because the days are hot the nights will be too.

I was also fair bit more tanned and toned back then in Uganda. The western weather and lifestyle had taken its toll since. The other noticeable difference was the way people approached me. Everyone was still friendly enough, but I was not commanding the same outright welcomeness that came with arriving in towns on my bicycle. I was just like every other tourist and I had to accept it. I was not special.

The hustle and bustle of African towns is still infectious. Not in Malaria-type way, but it draws you in and hypnotises you with its colours and noise. The heartbeat of activity is the central market, so I headed there first. Ordering a local delicacy, such as fish heads on rice, is a sure fire way to get back into the swing of things. And after chomping that down, I thought I'd treat myself to a slab of the local fudge that I seen plenty of about. Slightly moist to hold it was only at the moment it touched my lips that I realised it was not sweet confectionary, but brown soap. A disappointing dessert, but it’ll come in handy all the same.

The market stalls ranged from the appealing to the appalling. Beyond the bell-shaped curve of the appalling end of the scale were some of the fetish stalls - this is not your Max Moseley fetish, but local trades. Many of which were selling the skins, heads and dried remains of what I'd called your "zoo" animals - big cats, crocodiles, chameleons, turtles, monkeys, etc.

A number of things were exciting me about the trip ahead - visiting places with intoxicating names such as Ouagadougou and Timbuktu, trying out my new lightweight tent, and having a viable excuse to wear the same pair of pants for a week or two.

I did not stay in Niger long. Soon I was boarding the bus to the aforementioned Ouagadougou - pronounced "oo-wagger-doo-goo" - capital of Burkina Faso. I'd not taken the local buses often when previously in Africa, and I'd forgotten how chaotic they were. "Chaotic - yet they always seem to work somehow", some bright spark told me. This one didn't. The first bus could not start the engine, the second bus blew its gearbox about 10 kilometres outside Niamey, and the third would not leave until we picked up enough extra passengers to make it worth his while. People try to excuse incompetence here by using cliches like, "that's Africa time, man".
Er, no man, I'm well and truly on Tim-time and my watch is saying I should be in Burkina Faso, enjoying a stone cold shower by now.

Ouagadougou does not have a city like air to it, but that of a sprawling village, with few buildings more that a storey high. And there are no sights as such. Nothing to see, nothing to do - just my sort of town. I enjoyed those days, not being hassled by touts, relaxing, and sampling the local cuisine - ie. Local to Asia - like coffee from Vietnam, rice from Bangladesh, and even eating with a spoon that was “Made in China”. But there was no argument that the goat meat was local, as on a visit to the toilet round-back, I saw the cook holding the goat in a headlock with his left arm, while he slit its throat with one short, sharp halal-style slice with the other. By the time I had returned from the hole-in-the-ground the goat had been skinned and most of its limbs removed. 10 minutes later it was ……

From Ouagadougou I squeezed into in a Sept-taxi (a 7-seater Peugeat 409) along a dirt track to a lesser-used Malian border post. Proudly flashing my visa, I smoothly gained my stamp into Mali. Onward we travelled to the town of Bankass, yet another great place name. Bankass is one of the gateways to Dogon country.

They say the must-do thing to must-do in Mali is a trip to the Dogon country - whoever they are. I was reliably informed that the Dogon country comes second in the Top-10 things to do list for West Africa. Now, to me this is not a fact - it’s a half-fact. But no-one gave me the privilege of telling me number 1.

The Dogon are an ancient people who inhabit villages along a 150km escarpment, often in houses that cling limpet-like to the cliff face. By this point I had met a couple of travel companions, Sam and Jess, 2 English folks living and working in Uganda. From what I could gather they work for a telecom company that sets up free SMS services for sexual health advice. As this can be a taboo topic to discuss in public in Africa, the SMS service allows an anonymous and confidential route to information about STD’s. They explained that you simply had to text a key word to the number and an automated response would be sent with appropriate advice. Now, I can just about spell “H.I.V”, but I had to spell-check “Gonorrhoea” just to make the point that it may be a lot more problematic to text Gonorrhoea. But I was told that the system can account for spelling errors.

Between us we hired a local Dogon guide, Ousman, who took us on a 2-day hiking tour of a handful of Dogon villages. Their history and culture is fascinating. Prior to the arrival of the Dogons, the escarpment was inhabited by a pygmy group, called the Telem, who first built the barnacle homes on the cliff faces. The pygmies later moved on towards Cameroon and the Dogons settled in their villages. But they were too large to live in the houses of the pygmies (Cos they were Bigmies, perhaps?) and so converted the midget homes to granaries and beehives. Although we were supposedly here to learn about the life and ways of our Dogon hosts, I have always had an unhealthy obsession with all things pygmatic, midgetty and dwarfist, and I think I somewhat annoyed Ousman with my relentless queries about the pre-Dogon dwellers. Call it a mirage, but I’m convinced I saw a whole bunch of pygmies huddled together in a building. A school, I think.

Back to the Dogons. Traditionally a people of animist beliefs, but over the years waves of better-than-thou Christians and Muslims have done their God almighty utmost to covert them to the correct God. I pointed out that Dogon is actually No God backwards. No-one seemed to care. Each village tended to be split into living quarters, depending on their faith: The animist quarter; the Christian quarter; and the Muslim quarter. I pointed out there was a missing quarter. No-one seemed to care.

The Dogons continue to use many traditional ….. The women still pummel the millet with nothing more than a stick and muscles, and still colour their clothes with a natural indigo dye, from which the colour will run the first time it rains, is washed, or gets wet. So at the end of a long, sweaty day in the escarpment, many a tourist will unwrap their new headscarf, revealing an army of Smurfs. The same Ribena berry Westerners can be found bleating away at how disgraceful it is that women do all the work. And at first sight, this may appear true. The women farm the millet grain, pound it during the heat of the day, collect endless buckets of water from the well, and at the end of it all, prepare a meal for their menfolk. But on deeper inspection, I found out that the men pull their weight too. Maybe not the same manual labour, but they often have to gather in the village forum to sit, smoke and debate community politics, and decide who deserves punishment.

Continuing north out of the escarpment, I continued on the long, rough track to Timbuktu. Getting to Timbuktu is no easy journey - and I would be somewhat disappointed if it was. Its isolation is its big draw. That and the fact it has Tim in its name.
Mind you, now days Timbuktu has a new airport and so you can be there in an hour from Bamako, or 7 hours from London. But air travel aside, getting to Timbuktu is no easy journey.
Timbuktu is situated on the top bend of the Niger river where the Sahel meets the Sahara desert. It was established predominantly as a trading centre for the Touregs bringing salt from the north, meeting with traders bring gold from the south. Salt and gold was once traded on a one-to-one scale and you will still see these salt caravans en route. Caravans in this sense are a trail of camels and/or donkeys, not a 4-berth holiday home being towed to Skegness. With its strong Arabic influence, Timbuktu is the most noticeably Muslim of Malian cities. The way to tell if you’re in a strongly Muslim city is to shout “Mohammed”, and if 90% of the men turn around, hey presto. There are 3 main mosques in Timbuktu, 2 of which are not open to non-Muslim infidels like me. And as with most mosques in Mali, they are built from mud. This means that each year after the rainy season, they need rebuilding - or resurfacing at the very least. Surely one year someone will perk up and say,
“Er, really, we’re going for the mud look again this year are we?”
Have these people not heard of the 3 Little Pigs? They’d soon learn that a brick or concrete renovation would protect from the elements, save on the upkeep, and keep infidels like the Big Bad wolf at bay.


During my travels through Africa, I have seen a vast number of Premiership football shirts being worn by the locals - A mixture of cheap counterfeits and second hand shirts as charitable hand-outs from various NGOs. But it is invariably the same 4 teams being sported: Manchester United; Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. This has always depressed me and I vowed to begin the second wind of change in Africa. Armed with 5 old-school Spurs’ shirts in my baggage, I had decided I would give these to deserving Timbuktuites, hopefully pushing the first 5 dominoes towards Tottenham domination of the city. As it turned out, the shirts proved to be invaluable bargaining chips, so my altruistic gesture became superceded by my own personal gains.


I swapped the first shirt for a night in a hotel.
The second was swapped for a Toureg knife and camelskin wallets (I was going to ask for a souvenir mud painting, but suspected I would need it re-touching next year)
The third shirt for some souvenir Timbuktu t-shirts.
A fourth …
And the fifth got me back-door entry to the Festival of the Desert.

Le Festival Au Desert, as le French call it, is an annual music festival held deep in the Sahara at the village of Essakane. Packed full of West Africa’s pre-eminent bands, such as Salif Keita and …. , western tourists sprinkle the crowds. Entry for non-residents was a pound-pounding €130, so I thought a swap for a Spurs shirt was fair trade.

After the festival, I was a couple of days behind schedule and had time to make up. I would have liked to have taken the slow boat along the Niger river from Timbuktu to Mopti, but slow was not now an option.
These wooden boats that ply the waters of the Niger are called Pinasses. I hear riding a pinasse can be a long, hard experience and your backside aches for days after. Especially if you’ve not been on a pinasse before.

So instead I flew back to Mopti. A decision I was regretting as we hit the runway. An alarm started sounding from the cockpit, and the 30-seater plane hit the air again. As we circled the landing strip, I asked what the problem was. The explanation was not forthcoming, though rumours ranged from another plane on the runway to a flappage problem with the wings. Second time around we landed smoothly. I ran off to an internet café to pass on the exciting story to friends and family, only to catch the main news headline of a dramatic plane landing in the Hudson river. All of a sudden, a damp squib slapped me in the face.

From Mopti I took a short bush-taxi ride to Djenne, home to a huge mud mosque, which is the largest mud building in the world. Once again, my faith - or lack of it- meant I was not allowed inside. A night camping on a rooftop in Djenne, then onto Bamako for a few days, another Niger banked capital in West Africa.

In each of these towns and cities it’s impossible to escape from the constant attention of local kids pestering you. I wander aimlessly around African towns like the Pied Piper of Mali, with a stream of young followers.
“Hey meester, where you from?”
“Er, England. J’habite en Angleterre“
“Ah, David Beckham“

Why is it always David Beckham? I mean the guy is a great icon for kids around the world, but so is Charles Darwin and Sir Bertrand Russell, but rarely do they tell you how much they admire the Origin of Species or the works of Newton.


One of the world’s epic train journeys is that from Bamako to Dakar, in Senegal. But I missed the weekly departure of the train and so took a not-so-epic, but much more comfortable and faster, bus instead.
Crossing from Mali into Senegal at the town of Kayes, I leapfrogged the train, before allowing it to catch me up at the station at Tambakounda. I took the not-so-epic journey westbound for a few hours. Having ticked that box, I jumped off again a few stops down the line at Kafrine, and back on a bus to Toubakouta.

Toubakouta is set among the mangroves of the Petite Cote, one of the most idyllic, peaceful spots in Senegal. But I don’t really dig idyllic and peaceful, so ran around looking for flamingos and monkeys for a while, endured a long, quiet night in a wood cabin, then continued onwards to The Gambia.

Taking a ferry across the point where the Gambia river flows into the Atlantic Ocean, to Banjul island. The Gambia is a former British colony wedged into Senegal around the mouth of the Gambia river. Upon arrival I checked into a slummy hotel near the ferry port and spent a few hours in slummy Banjul before heading to the coastal town of Colores for the day, returning that night to crash out. With no mosquito net, I could hear the bloodsucking critters buzzing around me in the dark. And to make matters worse, I could feel the odd nip from the bed as well, and could tell it was riddled with bedbugs. Realising that “riddled” rarely refers to something pleasant (you never hear of somewhere being riddled with sunshine or someone riddled with gifts) I knew I was in for a night of bites, with nowhere to hide. But then a brainwave. I had portable sleeping quarters with built in mosquito protection in my backpack. i.e. A tent. So I erected the tent, tied the guy ropes between the bedleg and the door handle, unrolled my campmat and had a comfortable night of bite-free sleep.

...... TO BE CONCLUDED

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Photos

Plying the locals with Spurs Shirts
Timbuktu Hotspur

Comments

[Rich]

The Gambia
Why's it The Gambia and not Gambia? And what about The Yemen and The Lebanon? Why, why, why?

[Toolman]

Why, why, why
... and what about The Arsenal?