Making up for lost photos

Greetings from Sunny South Africa! 

I’ll tell you all about my harrowing and frustrating experience with the journey down at a later date, but as I’m finally on a computer with fast internet and an SD slot, I thought I’d throw up some photos for your enjoyment. 

This is Labe, the town closest to where Maurice lives, in Guinea.   It’s not particularly unusual or noteworthy, but it’s a pretty good example of what your average Guinean town looks like.  At every turn, people are selling everything from used car parts to dried fish to mangos to socks to sparkly bow-ties.

The markets are frenetic, chaotic, frustrating, difficult to navigate and a lesson in negotiating skills.  But with beautiful produce and colors like this, it’s essential that every visitor to West Africa visit as many markets as possible, even if you don’t need or buy anything.

Yes, this is a gas station.  But it’s not just a gas station.  This is THE Station-Bar, in Kankan, Guinea.  When someone says “Want to go to the Station Bar?” you might conjure an image of a charming railway station bar with martinis and a bartender in suspenders.  In Kankan, the Station Bar is this.  It is the Total Station in the center of town, the only place that has power all day, and thus the only place that reliably has cold drinks during the sunniest, hottest hours.  And by drinks, I mean Fanta or Coke, and the occasional Sprite.  It’s the hangout.  I went there at least once a day, usually more.  This is a photo of the petrol crisis that was taking place one day. 

Here’s Maurice at the Station Bar.  Nothing more to say about that, just thought it was a nice picture.

Mosque in Kankan.  With no power, the moon is your only street lamp.

This is the daily scene next door to Sow’s tailor shop in Kankan.  These old men lie there all day long every day, reading the Koran and selling bathrobes.  I love very much when a man comes by and tries on several bathrobes that are very clearly meant for women. 

Kankan, from one of the rare second story windows in the town – the Catholic Mission, the cleanest of Kankan’s accommodation options.  Though, like all the others, no power, no water.

On board Air Mali with Captain Miguel, my roommate!  Walid, the other pilot, left shortly after for France and never came back!

Sunset in Timbuktu. 

This is the Sahara, during the Festival in the Desert.  It’s the Maliymas camp from afar.  I was the little blue tent in the middle.

This was the main tent, where we spent most of our daytime hours, avoiding the sun, recovering from the night before,  drinking tons of water, eating couscous and chatting. 

Not a great photo, but this embodies the feel of a Tuareg band.  These guys are no-joke, with their turbans and bubus and electric guitars.  The only think missing is a bottle of Jack. 

The audience at the festival was divided pretty evenly between locals and foreigners.  This was taken at the small stage, set up at the bottom of one of the dunes.  Again, the colors! 

Camels, before one of the organized “camel races”.  I never actually saw anything that I thought looked like “racing”, though there was a lot of ceremonial parading around of cames and their Tuareg drivers.  That said, Mohamed, the Maliymas camelier, told me he got second place in something, so there must have been some kind of competition at some point.

The “race”.

Amadou and Mariam.  So cute, I can’t stand it.

Kind of blurry, but I love this photo of John, looking (nearly) convincingly Saharan on an evening camel ride.

The Dogon village of Begnemato, about two hours from Bandigara.  It was in this village that we passed the night on the roof of a home.

Desert suntan.  Note the masks.  You can’t throw a stone without hitting a Dogon mask in Mali. 

My house in Bamako!  OK, the house of Miguel and Nabil, where I stayed in Mali. 

In Bamako, every square inch of land that isn’t taken up by a building is being used as farmland.  This unfortunately dark photo was taken in central Bamako, on the banks of the Niger River.  They grow everything from onions to tomatoes to potatoes, but this area was all for mint, which gave the air a delicious aroma of mint tea.

The only photo I took of Ghana.  This is en route from Togo to Accra, in a shared taxi, where everyone got their own seat.  It cost about $7 for the ride.  Excellent!

Well, it’s noon now, and there’s a Windhoek waiting for me somewhere. 

Mood: Relaxed – happy as a Knysna oyster.

Health: About to get fatter.