Touba, Touba, Touba

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  Kayes, Mali
Thursday, December 9, 2010

Hello everyone!

Me and Sara eventually spent 2 weeks in
Dakar, resting from the first few months of travelling and the ordeal
of a night in sleeping in Dakar wierd, tiny airport. We spent four
nights staying with Carolina, a Spanish lady who works for Save the
Children. She was very friendly, although the NGO ex-pat world was a
little bit far removed from the Senegal we were expecting and could
afford.

We moved on to stay with Sherriff, a
Gambian living in Senegal as a correspondant for the French
equivalent of BBC World. He was well sound, with many an insight
into the region. He kept us up to date with the elections in Cote
D'Ivoire, told us about the state of democracy and free speech in
West Africa (Senegal has a very open and free press, on the other
hand Sherriff was arrested last time he returned to Gambia). He also
showed us a documentary about the eccentric Gambian president and his
method for curing AIDS. We later met people from the same tribe as
the Gambian president (Senegal and Gambia are pretty interlinked) who
really belived he'd cured AIDS, you can imagine how that's adding to
the problem in that tiny country.

Anyway, Sheriff lived in Yoff, which I
think is technically a different town from Dakar. It was a lot more
peaceful for us and we only ventured downtown to sort out visa shit
at the Malian embassy. Getting into town required using 'Cars
Rapides' which I can only assume is an ironic title, or a mistake for
'Pas Rapides' because these are rickety old mini buses that leave
sometime when full, sometimes they just leave and wait everywhere and
anywhere for any reason. They're pretty cool really though. There's
a lot of traffic in Dakar, but it's mostly some form of collective
transport and that's really cool. It's affordable, between for 5 and
40p and pretty easy to understand too.

Yoff was Kms and Kms of lovely beach
with minimum hastle. Inspired by hundreds and hundreds of Senegalese
lads, I spent most late afternoons running on the beach, doing push
ups and sit ups. Usually I feel a bit silly doing that in public,
but literally everyone on the beach was doing it. Yoff was lovely
and relaxing.

Dakar itself, for the record, is a
really sophisticated (in places) big French city. It's got an
expensive, famous nightlife, expensive restaurants, big houses etc.
It's also got massive slum areas, wonderful markets, amazing beaches.
Basically it's a mixed bag.After Dakar we had our first experience
of Senegalase transport over a long distanc in a shared shared minicar. We
arrived as instructed at 7am, first on the bus which leaves when
full. 7 hours later (!!!) we left Dakar for the 7 hour journey up to
Saint Louis, and it was pretty blooming rough. We thoroughly enjoyed
it though. The bus stops at every group of people selling things,
every possible new customer, police check and on many other
occassions for which I couldn't fathom the reason. Saint Louis is a
really beautiful town, it was very obviously built by the French,
lots of crumbling grand buildings. We stayed some nights with
Moustapha, more or less through CS. He's a teacher who was really
ill at the time. He let us come and go and gave us our first taste
of one of Senegal's variations on rice pudding, made instead with
pasta. It was pretty great.

Next we bussed to Kaolack, which boasts
the second largest covered market in Africa. It looks like the old
Bullring. Then on to Tamba where we stayed with a family Moustafa
hooked us up with. There's was our first taste of a proper
Senegalese home. Walled compund, bucket showers, very communal
living, and surprisingly, all centred around a TV in themiddle of the
courtyard, here we had more amazing rice pudding by the way. After
Tamba we headed to the boarder with Mali, with some trepidation
because it has a reputation. However, the first official people we
met chatted to us, gave us some sachets of water and showed us the
way to the boarder proper. On the way we met some blokes outside
the bank who offered us some dinner and then went through the
obligatory 4 or 5 hour wait for our bus to fill up with people
(despite a promise that it would leave tout de suite, obviously) we
made it to the boarder and they stamped everything and on we went.
On the bus we met some Mauritanian lads who bought us countless drinks
and snacks (I tried very hard to buy the bloke something but he
wasn't having it) and took us to their friends house in Kayes, the
first big town in Mali. Their house was just outside the city and
again a massive courtyard for a massive family, everyone sleeping
outside, under straw roofs. I'm pretty surprised that everyone had
mosquito nets, there were even spare ones for us.


Next day we headed out to find a
campement and ifnd out about the train to Bamako. By now we were
pretty fatigued from several consequtive days in very cramped,
sweltering minibuses (did I mention yet that Senegal and Mali are
really hot?), as well as having colds (confirmed by a doctor since we
were paranoid about malaria). So we've been resting in Kayes
(reputedly the hottest city in Africa) and tomorrow we get the train
to Bamako. I love trains and I couldn't be more excited.

I feel like other blog posts have been
packed with more events, but to be honest, since we arrived in
Senegal we have been a little less adventurous. Hitch hiking doesn't
seem like it will work, untill we get to Ghana where it's apparently
pretty common for small distances. We love these two countries so far though and in
reality every stroll through the market, trip to beach, bus journey,
border crossing, night with a family or even the wonderfully cool
nights we're spending now on the roof of this campement (i'm writing
now and will post it when I get the chance to nick someone's wifi in
the city), seem like a blessing. We have grand plans for more
touristic activities in Mali but at the moment we're learning and
experiencing so much just be walking around.

The best thing about Senegal was cafe
Touba, a coffee mixed with ginger and spices which helps take the edge
of the chill off those 35 degree winter days. Senegal's really
expensive for some things (accomodation if you can't get a CS hook-up, beer, clubs, etc.) but this costs around 7p. There's loads
of great food and snacks available on the streets for around the same
price, balls of fried dough, fish samosas and stuff as well as little
street food stands with rice and peanut sauce. Mali is very similar
but with many more places selling cheaper, bigger meals. Hence the
last few days me and Sara have really been catching up on our eating.
We've even been able to head back to veganism for a while, eating
mostly cous cous and beans (although also the occassional egg
sandiwch and coffee with condensed milk.)

On the subject of Touba, that's also
the name of the holiest city in Senegal. And, for some reason, it's
the word that Malian children shout in big smiling gangs, often
running along next to me and Sara, when we see them in the street.

The best thing about Mali, so far,  is the
constant invitations to join for dinner, for a drink or for a chat.
Life is a lot more communal and people seem to look out for each
other. Many people have taken the trouble to offer us sachets of
mineral water which is a God send to us sweaty tourists with our
delicate stomachs.

Finally, me and Sara have found through
CS a school in the south West of Ghana (near the board with Cote
D'Ivoire) to volunteer with for a few months. So we're pretty
excited and have a place to really mission it to, hopefully seeing
some things along the way.
I hope everyone's doing well at home, I wouldn't mind half an hour of fresh snowy air, although to be honest I'm not that jealous.

Jim.

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