Holy Mali.

Salut from Bamako!

I have safely begun leg three of my adventure, here in awesome, sunny Bamako.  If Conakry was Disney World, this place feels like the lost city of Atlantis.  I liked it the first time and I like it even more now.  But it’s time to catch you up.

My days and weeks in Guinea were excellent; filled aith wonderful people, amazing scenery, the occasional good bite of food (emphasizing occasional) and not the least of all, an interesting and promising start on the project in Kankan.  Guinea is not by any means without its difficulties, and I am looking forward to the next few weeks.

We last left off in Kankan, where I finished up work on our project.  Sow and I brainstormed and came up with a plan that i think will work.  After having taken about 8 million photos, I am ready to get to work.  But for that, I need a computer.  And well, electricity, among other things.  I grew to really love Kankan, and by the end, I was impressing Sow by greeting all of the jovial acquaintances I’d met in the town. 

But, after three weeks, it was time to leave again.  I returned to Labe, this time in a private car, owned by some NGO that a nice lady named Madame Diallo told me about.  It just happened to be going to Labe the very day I had planned to depart.  Score!  It was smoother and about 3 hours shorter, but really, any way you slice it, that journey is just absolutely brutal.  At least we passed all of the military barrages pain-free and arrived in Hafia in a record-breaking 8.5 hours. 

It was a delightful few days back in Fouta, with the likes of my friends Pierre, Youssouf, Moussa, Lamine and Samoura all coming by to say welcome back.  Samoura even brought me a bag of fruit as a welcome home present.  On Christmas Eve, we headed into town, where we stayed with one of Maurice’s second families for the weekend.  We went to the longest church service ever, where, for three hours, we heard about le Divin Enfant, and the choir sang every verse to every song they could thing of, loudly, badly.  But boy, were they feeling it!  The service was kind of like a taxi ride - three times as many people as should have been in the church, most of whom were sleeping, and about 85 degrees.  You can imagine my excitement when I found out we’d be doing the same thing at 8am the next morning.

The second service was pretty much exactly the same thing as the first one, with one highlight: At the Offertory, all of the ladies of the church formed a processional, and did a choreographed shuffle-thing down the aisle to the altar.  They were all carrying a gift, everything from giant jars of Bama Mayonnaise to Nescafe to bananas to candles to oil to kleenex… The gifts were placed on the altar and the ladies’ heads got anointed with something.  I assumed it was some kind of food drive for the impoverished Labe-ites but no.  All for the priest.  Oh, Africa.

For Christmas dinner, we killed Lawrence, the rooster I’d bought at the market.  It was hard to watch (and listen) while Maurice stood on its wings and cut its throat, but it sure tasted good!  He had been making an awful lot of racket in the preceding days, so I wasn’t totally heartbroken to see him go.  Maurice and Angeline (M’s sister) prepared the chicken and I made the mashed potatoes, a dish Maurice assured me that NO African would enjoy or understand. The bowl was licked clean, thankyouverymuch.

We left the next morning for Conakry at 7am.  In complete contrast to my NGO ride, the journey was a comedy (?) of errors, cursed from the start.  First, I lost my phone.  Then, we witnessed an accident resulting in death-of-moto-driver.  After that, our car broke down.  Three times.  Then, the chauffeur broke down in tears.  We were put in another car, which then got a flat tire.  Next, we were drilled and verbally abused by drunken Guinean military personnel.  An 8 hour journey ended up at 17 hours, all of which was spent squeezed between three other people in the back seat of a Toyota Corolla.  Well, except the time we spent outside, pushing the car in the dark, in the middle of bandit-country.

We checked into our overpriced but comfortable hotel WITH A SHOWER AND HOT WATER (after 8pm) and departed the next morning for Ile Room, one of the Ile de Los, off the coast of Conakry.  We found a pirogue (giant canoe) and set out.  It’s a funny place.  It was about as close to a deserted island as I have experienced, with myself and Maurice being (literally) the only tourists.  After we had acted out all the scenes from Lost that we could remember, we spent the  rest of the time lazing about on the beach (alone) or walking on the rocks (alone).  Kind of awesome, kind of not, and by the third day we were ready for some conversation with people who were not each other  . 

We returned to Conakry on the 30th.  I wish I had lots to say about Conakry.  But I just don’t.  There’s absolutely nothing remarkable about this place.  It’s like all other cities in Guinea, but with more power and more people.  I wanted to take photos, but there was nothing that was particularly inspirational.  The Hotel Oceane is a nice retreat, a place we found on the second day back.  $40 a night gets you a cute little room with a door opening onto a pool and the ocean, a bar with reasonable prices and a friendly staff.  It’s in Ratoma and highly recommended by your favorite travel agent.

Three nights in Conakry and one flight later, here I sit in Bamako.  Today we hired motos and drove around to all the sites.  Malians are super-duper-nice, and except for the relentless guides and mosquitoes, they’re not too aggressive, and they’re really honest.  Last night, I bought phone credit and forgot my change, and he actually called after me to give it back.  Wowza.

I find myself looking around at everything in wonderment, nearly tearing up every time I see a working lightbulb or water faucet.  On the flight here, I met Nathalie, a French woman of Ivorian descent who lives in Fort Greene (what? yeah.) and we’ve teamed up to take Mali by storm.  We’ve both been traveling around Africa for some time so are no spring chickens to the craft of the African salesman.  We have been haggling our way to the best prices in Mali and have settled on a plan tomorrow that will bring us to Timbuktu in good time for the festival. 

It’s all for now.  Lord knows what internet in the desert is like, but I’ll try to give an update at some point. 

For now, it’s all love from Bamako, babes.

Mood: Itchin to get moving

Health: Mouth full of ulcers… any ideas? 

(sorry for lack of photos.  cybercafe = suck)

Advertisement