Caution: this one has swearing. Bamako Sucks!
February 11, 2008
Waking up early is never my favorite activity. Waking up early to go sit somewhere and wait for another four hours when I could have been sleeping makes it even more painful a reality. Wake up early we did, nonetheless, because the guide book I swear we should have used as fire fodder told us to so that we could get a quick ride to Djenne – home of the “World’s Largest Mud Mosque”.
Show up at the taxi depot we did. We booked passage on a “bashay”, also known riding on benches in the bed of a crappy truck, (which is what the stupid guidebook to the most miserable trip in Africa told us to do) and then waited as taxi after taxi filled up and took off. Coming to a realization that we were going to be waiting for a long, long time for a very painful ride we asked for a refund so that we might instead get in a taxi and leave. Denied. Waiting, waiting. We finally got “full” and started to pile in. One thing about Mali is that we have to pay extra for baggage. As you all recall in the letter about leaving Cotonou you can bring however many sacks of crap you want without paying a dime more than your passage. Not so in Mali. I had to pay an extra 350F just to put my backpack on top of the stupid truck. This was the way it was with every single taxi in Mali, save the one out of Dogon, paying extra for one bag. I missed Southwest Airlines where you at LEAST got to keep one TWO check-ins, one carry-on AND a personal bag! So we paid – grudgingly – and I hid my cement sack under my seat. The Japanese dude in our truck could only yell obscenities at the terrible chauffeur and I have to say I admired his vigor. Instead, I cried silently as my spine was contorted to fit yet another fat lady on our bench where five were already sitting. After this experience I have sworn off jell-o molds – you don’t know what it’s like, but I do!! It’s not supposed to look like that! It’s supposed to be jiggly and blocky and however it lays most comfortably. So we all get in the truck and start to leave the terrible, terrible taxi gare of Mopti, Mali. Good Riddance.
15 minutes into the trip Liz and “Fat Lady” (henceforth known as “Devil” on account of her blue attire) began exchanging elbows with one another. This plays directly into ‘cramped car etiquette’. When everyone is smooshed shoulders to butt you don’t put your elbows down by your sides to give yourself a flesh wall of security against everyone else. Instead, it is more polite to put your arms up in your own lap so that everyone has enough shoulder room to take a deep breath should they, you know, need to breathe! This woman felt it was more than within her
right to lock down her elbows into Liz’s vital breathing space (aka into her kidneys). Elbows turned into snarls and snarls into outright “No, YOU’RE FATTER!” This woman had the gall to tell us to take our “Real Car” (meaning, we were white so what were we doing taking “public” transport instead of tooling around in our chauffeured Landcruiser like the rest of the white tourists?).
Offended, and rightly so, Liz gave a huffy retort with corresponding elbow and it turned into all out war. In an effort to spare my own internal organs I opted to sit on the floor of the bashay (on a tire that somehow made it into the seating area while all of our personal belongings went on the roof to “make space” for more people than could possibly fit to get in), with a kid on my lap. One kid turned into two and soon I was sleeping, sitting up, with kids on my lap – not my favorite lifetime experience, but it was better than hemorrhaging. Eventually, however, the Devil still wasn’t satisfied and the crisis resumed so I dutifully took the place of Liz and took some of the brunt elbow force myself. She was not kidding around – this lady was BRUTAL! I pleaded for just a little room and motioned to those sitting across from us (she was taking up the equivalent of two people on the other side!) right then, noticing that her kid, who was not sitting with “mama” but instead was on the other side of the bashay hogging up someone else’s lap space, began a Yak Attak. I was so thoroughly repulsed with this woman and her offspring I had not choice but to close my eyes and pray for death. Well, the yakking was fortunately short lived and the “fresh” air the open truck provided was something for which I was extremely thankful at this point. At least I wasn’t sitting next to the kid with eye pus (Erin’s left). Devil was unbelievable in her self-righteousness, however, as she somehow forced out the guy to her right, now perched on the back of the tailgate with his Saddam Hussein tissue, and claimed she could take all that space for herself instead of scooting over for all of us to reap the benefits of her maliciousness. “Look, this his HIS spot,” was her argument for why she couldn’t move over to give us a little more space. Somehow it didn’t register to her that the fact he was no longer sitting in his space was a valid reason for us to move into it.
The ride finally ended (about three hours later than if we had taken a taxi instead) after a really cool ferry ride and we all gave a big, sarcastic “Bye Bye” to the Devil when she got off before us. Even the other women who didn’t speak a lick of French could see what a grade-A douche-ka-bob this lady was. Our day was complete and we got out of the
bashay in the center of Djenne, in front of the crazy Monday marché and beautiful, huge mosque. Compared to the ride there, the “calm” crazy of the marché and our pretty uneventful lunch of beer, chicken and fried bananas were nothing great to write about. Yes, the mosque was large and I took as many pictures of the outside as a white, Catholic, woman is allowed. Then we waiting around for a bus back to the highway where we waiting another hour or so for a bus to take us to Bamako.
LATER THAT NIGHT
We were able to board a mini bus that had religious writing all over the sides. It was “safe” I suppose. Liz sat up in the cab (blocked off from all us others in the back) and shared snacks, stories and laughs with the chauffeur and manager all night while Erin and I smooshed up together in the very last row where the jump seat was and our only escape was blocked by the ladder up to the roof of the “van”. Imagine my surprise when only a few hours into our journey the chauffeur opens up the suicide back panels and asks me to drive. Apparently Liz had been touting my amazing stick shifting skills (of which she obviously would have no personal experience to speak) and the chauffeur was liking his option of sleep. In face of my polite decline (and my fingers were itching to grab that wheel, let me tell you) the chauffeur soldiered on for another couple of hours – refusing any of the normal stimulants such as cigarettes, cola nuts, coffee, ANYTHING – and finally crashed on the side of the road. Not literally, thankfully, but I was awoken to Liz at the back door telling us we might want to get out because we were “going to be a while”. The chauffeur had gotten out at a roadside stop at one in the morning in the hopes of getting a good green tea buzz, but instead fell asleep by the fire where Liz and I found ourselves shortly after watching the stars and talking about how we both remembered “that time when our chauffeur fell asleep on the side of the road in Mali and we sat up next to a fire with a bunch of random dudes under a sky full of stars, pouring tea from 6in high.”
The manager had eventually had enough of the white girls sitting around and sold us off to a city bus-turned cross-country trekker. We climbed aboard the bus and moved to the way back where I SOMEHOW got place next to the same guy on the last bus who somehow made his one seat turn into three as he slid out horizontally on the bench and into my “zone”, but only for a while as Liz begged me to switch seats with her, effectively over the hot, hot engine heat that was exhausting into the cab. I fell asleep immediately, whether from the fumes, the exhaustion of travel, or the cozy, BOILING warmth vs. the freezing winds from the window above and before I could count the number of seats our neighbor was taking up, we were in Bamako (eight hours later).
February 12, 2008
We got into Bamako’s city center, FINALLY, after being followed and harassed around the bus station. Somehow “no, thank you,” doesn’t bear the same power as it does in other countries. No one spoke enough French to understand when we said “train” at least 15 different ways. Nothing is more infuriating than trying to change your tonal inflections a myriad of ways you’d never before experienced and still not coming up with the right one. Searching, searching, and finally we found a taxi that spoke a language we could, too. We made it to the train station in Bamako. Then we couldn’t buy a ticket because it was closed. Lunch was then to be had across the street. White as we are, the server started to talk to us in local language (this actually makes sense because Mali volunteers are told to learn their local language because not many people speak French). This wasn’t so bad until he began to quiz me on things I could not have possibly known. This was due to the fact that I must have the most boring and recognizable countenance known to man. He thought I had been there just the month prior and was somewhat of a regular staple at their establishment. This isn’t the first, or the last, time that I would be mistaken for some other white skinned, brown haired, boring-looking girl. I could only hope this time my doppelganger was relatively attractive (compared to some of the other ones in Benin where I have fared quite poorly).
What needs to happen next? We looked for beer. For over an hour we looked. One man thought we looked particularly helpless so tried to help us find a bar. At first we thought, okay, the sooner we get to the beer, the better, but alas we found none. Thanking him kindly, we took our leave. Only he continued to follow us. And continued to follow us. At one point I went up to him and asked him to stop. Thinking that would work but knowing that it would not we continued then hid in an alcove as, sure enough, thirty seconds later he walked by in our wake. He caught sight of us glaring at him and that was finally the end of it as he took off running straight ahead. We spent another hour searching for beer before finally settling for water and dry, nasty pastries (that should never have been mentioned in our CRAP, CRAP, CRAP guidebook) in the heat of the afternoon. We’d walked so far that we had to a taxi back to the train station to buy our tickets now that it was open. Mission accomplished, we headed next door to use the toilet at the hotel only to find there was beer there all along. We sat there for the next three hours and got wasted. Bamako sucks.
Fully fed up with our experience we decided to go out and splurge ourselves at the grocery store (Fourni). HEAVEN! I felt a little like a jerk when I realized that the bank I had spent several hundred francs on taxis looking for earlier was right next door to the grocery store; but, by then it was closed so I felt a little better. Inside were so many lovely Lebanese, French and even American goods that I couldn’t help myself. I bought Pringles, a bar of Lindt dark truffle chocolate and some gourmet flavored cheese with saucisson sec! They had ovens and huge American-sized fridges and everything! It was quite a treat. We left feeling elated and yet, connected. Then the crap piled on again.
After hitting up a nice cyber café we were accosted by a Ghanian man looking for someone to give him money. While persistently claiming he didn’t want money he asked us for money to call his girlfriend and ask her for the answer to the secret question on the Western Union transfer sheet. First of all – if this ugly man had a girlfriend she surely was stupid enough to pick a question he couldn’t answer. Secondly – why would he ask us for money by telling us he didn’t money? Thirdly – was it necessary to scream “Fuck You” when his scam didn’t work on us and we politely declined to give him money afterall? No! And I didn’t appreciate him doing it an inch from my face. I don’t think I’ve ever come that close to hitting someone, but I certainly felt the blood boiling under my skin and out of respect for his stupid girlfriend declined to sock him where it didn’t matter (right in his ugly puss). Then we couldn’t find the Indian food restaurant we were searching for when sidetracked by the Ghanian Gerk. I was in a bad place and started eating my Pringles.
Instead, we got in a taxi and headed back to the area near our hotel where we could hopefully have some more luck finding a restaurant. We walked around for another hour or two down streets without names, numbers, or any sort of significant markings before finally finding the Thai place mentioned in our stupid guidebook. “We’re all full,” the snooty host said as he took in our appearances, the record spun quickly to a stop and all the other white folk looked up abruptly from their delicious-smelling meals to gawk. We can take a hint, but instead pointed to the empty tables and asked about a waiting list. Impassive and stern, the host somehow guided us out the door without a problem. I think it was the fatigue/hunger/general disillusionment with Bamako that made us as docile and easily turned away as kittens. This is how we ended up at the “Southwestern Eatery” Appaloosa –
where the black servers were forced to wear denim button-downs, black cowboy hats and the white ladies behind the bar looked like saloon whores circa 2001. I don’t know which “Southwest” this restaurant was supposed to represent but on the wall were license plates from Virginia (not even West Virginia) and Maine, the soundtrack started with Melloncamp and ended with five songs from the BeeGees greatest hits and the “black bean burrito” was stuffed full of red, marché beans. I got a migrane and we went home. That’s how it ends in Bamako. Bamako sucks.
February 13, 2008
The TRAIN was AWESOME!! We had to be shown our seats, sadly, though they were clearly marked. This meant that we had to pay a guy to do what we could have easily done ourselves (another sad result of everyone in Mali finding white women incompetent). One of the coolest parts of the train – apart from having a lot of space to stretch out – is that the bathroom is on the train. Not just that, the bathroom is a hole in the ground over the tracks! You can’t use it when the train is stopped, for obviously reasons, but it is fun as heck when you’re rambling and rolling along to watch the ground, too. Well, I got a kick out of it.
Two men came and sat across from us in our little “booth” and promptly spilled boiling hot milk on all of us. What a great start – and what the hell were they doing with hot milk? Grown men! They ask if we’re European. When we respond ‘no’ they then guess by nationality out of European countries. “Oh, you’re not European. You’re Spanish, then?” Really asinine. Finally we give in out of the pure pain of our conversation. It went like this:
“We’re from the United States” us.
blank stares as a response from Milk-Spillers.
“America,” us.
“Oh, right! But how do you speak French?” Milk-Spillers.
“Benin,” us.
“But how are you in Benin?” Milk-Spillers.
“Volunteers with the Peace Corps,” us.
“Oh, Dutch!” Milk-Spillers.
“No, American Peace Corps,” us.
“BUSH!” Milk-Spillers.
“No, we live in cities in America,” us.
“No, George Bush!” Milk-Spillers.
(believe it or not, Milk-Spiller #1 was the more intelligent just by the mere faculty of speech).
The trip was relatively uneventful, which was a nice change. We spent our time just lounging, sleeping, eating (I smeared bread in my chocolate moosh-pile; forgetting I was in Africa when I bought the bar of chocolate and took it on a hot train trip with me), and enjoying the scenery. Then night fell and it was time for our drunken companions to leave. There wasn’t really enough stop time on the train for the unscheduled ones (thank GOD!) so our companions called out to someone on the platform to catch their mountains of stuff they passed it through the cabin window. The only problem to this method was that the window was too small so they ended up spending more time trying to shove through the larger packages than it would have taken to just load it up on their backs and trek outta there. Oh goodness, the efficiency is alive and well throughout.
MORE TO FOLLOW LATER! I have real work to do now people!!!
Love you,
Allison Henderson
That address again for those “must send ‘ers”
Allison Henderson
B.P. 126
Azovè, Benin
Afrique de l’Ouest
PAR AVION
I appreciate and love everything you send me. Except crap. Don’t send crap. My house is little.
February 11, 2008
Waking up early is never my favorite activity. Waking up early to go sit somewhere and wait for another four hours when I could have been sleeping makes it even more painful a reality. Wake up early we did, nonetheless, because the guide book I swear we should have used as fire fodder told us to so that we could get a quick ride to Djenne – home of the “World’s Largest Mud Mosque”.
Show up at the taxi depot we did. We booked passage on a “bashay”, also known riding on benches in the bed of a crappy truck, (which is what the stupid guidebook to the most miserable trip in Africa told us to do) and then waited as taxi after taxi filled up and took off. Coming to a realization that we were going to be waiting for a long, long time for a very painful ride we asked for a refund so that we might instead get in a taxi and leave. Denied. Waiting, waiting. We finally got “full” and started to pile in. One thing about Mali is that we have to pay extra for baggage. As you all recall in the letter about leaving Cotonou you can bring however many sacks of crap you want without paying a dime more than your passage. Not so in Mali. I had to pay an extra 350F just to put my backpack on top of the stupid truck. This was the way it was with every single taxi in Mali, save the one out of Dogon, paying extra for one bag. I missed Southwest Airlines where you at LEAST got to keep one TWO check-ins, one carry-on AND a personal bag! So we paid – grudgingly – and I hid my cement sack under my seat. The Japanese dude in our truck could only yell obscenities at the terrible chauffeur and I have to say I admired his vigor. Instead, I cried silently as my spine was contorted to fit yet another fat lady on our bench where five were already sitting. After this experience I have sworn off jell-o molds – you don’t know what it’s like, but I do!! It’s not supposed to look like that! It’s supposed to be jiggly and blocky and however it lays most comfortably. So we all get in the truck and start to leave the terrible, terrible taxi gare of Mopti, Mali. Good Riddance.
15 minutes into the trip Liz and “Fat Lady” (henceforth known as “Devil” on account of her blue attire) began exchanging elbows with one another. This plays directly into ‘cramped car etiquette’. When everyone is smooshed shoulders to butt you don’t put your elbows down by your sides to give yourself a flesh wall of security against everyone else. Instead, it is more polite to put your arms up in your own lap so that everyone has enough shoulder room to take a deep breath should they, you know, need to breathe! This woman felt it was more than within her
right to lock down her elbows into Liz’s vital breathing space (aka into her kidneys). Elbows turned into snarls and snarls into outright “No, YOU’RE FATTER!” This woman had the gall to tell us to take our “Real Car” (meaning, we were white so what were we doing taking “public” transport instead of tooling around in our chauffeured Landcruiser like the rest of the white tourists?).Offended, and rightly so, Liz gave a huffy retort with corresponding elbow and it turned into all out war. In an effort to spare my own internal organs I opted to sit on the floor of the bashay (on a tire that somehow made it into the seating area while all of our personal belongings went on the roof to “make space” for more people than could possibly fit to get in), with a kid on my lap. One kid turned into two and soon I was sleeping, sitting up, with kids on my lap – not my favorite lifetime experience, but it was better than hemorrhaging. Eventually, however, the Devil still wasn’t satisfied and the crisis resumed so I dutifully took the place of Liz and took some of the brunt elbow force myself. She was not kidding around – this lady was BRUTAL! I pleaded for just a little room and motioned to those sitting across from us (she was taking up the equivalent of two people on the other side!) right then, noticing that her kid, who was not sitting with “mama” but instead was on the other side of the bashay hogging up someone else’s lap space, began a Yak Attak. I was so thoroughly repulsed with this woman and her offspring I had not choice but to close my eyes and pray for death. Well, the yakking was fortunately short lived and the “fresh” air the open truck provided was something for which I was extremely thankful at this point. At least I wasn’t sitting next to the kid with eye pus (Erin’s left). Devil was unbelievable in her self-righteousness, however, as she somehow forced out the guy to her right, now perched on the back of the tailgate with his Saddam Hussein tissue, and claimed she could take all that space for herself instead of scooting over for all of us to reap the benefits of her maliciousness. “Look, this his HIS spot,” was her argument for why she couldn’t move over to give us a little more space. Somehow it didn’t register to her that the fact he was no longer sitting in his space was a valid reason for us to move into it.
The ride finally ended (about three hours later than if we had taken a taxi instead) after a really cool ferry ride and we all gave a big, sarcastic “Bye Bye” to the Devil when she got off before us. Even the other women who didn’t speak a lick of French could see what a grade-A douche-ka-bob this lady was. Our day was complete and we got out of the
bashay in the center of Djenne, in front of the crazy Monday marché and beautiful, huge mosque. Compared to the ride there, the “calm” crazy of the marché and our pretty uneventful lunch of beer, chicken and fried bananas were nothing great to write about. Yes, the mosque was large and I took as many pictures of the outside as a white, Catholic, woman is allowed. Then we waiting around for a bus back to the highway where we waiting another hour or so for a bus to take us to Bamako.
LATER THAT NIGHTWe were able to board a mini bus that had religious writing all over the sides. It was “safe” I suppose. Liz sat up in the cab (blocked off from all us others in the back) and shared snacks, stories and laughs with the chauffeur and manager all night while Erin and I smooshed up together in the very last row where the jump seat was and our only escape was blocked by the ladder up to the roof of the “van”. Imagine my surprise when only a few hours into our journey the chauffeur opens up the suicide back panels and asks me to drive. Apparently Liz had been touting my amazing stick shifting skills (of which she obviously would have no personal experience to speak) and the chauffeur was liking his option of sleep. In face of my polite decline (and my fingers were itching to grab that wheel, let me tell you) the chauffeur soldiered on for another couple of hours – refusing any of the normal stimulants such as cigarettes, cola nuts, coffee, ANYTHING – and finally crashed on the side of the road. Not literally, thankfully, but I was awoken to Liz at the back door telling us we might want to get out because we were “going to be a while”. The chauffeur had gotten out at a roadside stop at one in the morning in the hopes of getting a good green tea buzz, but instead fell asleep by the fire where Liz and I found ourselves shortly after watching the stars and talking about how we both remembered “that time when our chauffeur fell asleep on the side of the road in Mali and we sat up next to a fire with a bunch of random dudes under a sky full of stars, pouring tea from 6in high.”
The manager had eventually had enough of the white girls sitting around and sold us off to a city bus-turned cross-country trekker. We climbed aboard the bus and moved to the way back where I SOMEHOW got place next to the same guy on the last bus who somehow made his one seat turn into three as he slid out horizontally on the bench and into my “zone”, but only for a while as Liz begged me to switch seats with her, effectively over the hot, hot engine heat that was exhausting into the cab. I fell asleep immediately, whether from the fumes, the exhaustion of travel, or the cozy, BOILING warmth vs. the freezing winds from the window above and before I could count the number of seats our neighbor was taking up, we were in Bamako (eight hours later).
February 12, 2008
We got into Bamako’s city center, FINALLY, after being followed and harassed around the bus station. Somehow “no, thank you,” doesn’t bear the same power as it does in other countries. No one spoke enough French to understand when we said “train” at least 15 different ways. Nothing is more infuriating than trying to change your tonal inflections a myriad of ways you’d never before experienced and still not coming up with the right one. Searching, searching, and finally we found a taxi that spoke a language we could, too. We made it to the train station in Bamako. Then we couldn’t buy a ticket because it was closed. Lunch was then to be had across the street. White as we are, the server started to talk to us in local language (this actually makes sense because Mali volunteers are told to learn their local language because not many people speak French). This wasn’t so bad until he began to quiz me on things I could not have possibly known. This was due to the fact that I must have the most boring and recognizable countenance known to man. He thought I had been there just the month prior and was somewhat of a regular staple at their establishment. This isn’t the first, or the last, time that I would be mistaken for some other white skinned, brown haired, boring-looking girl. I could only hope this time my doppelganger was relatively attractive (compared to some of the other ones in Benin where I have fared quite poorly).
What needs to happen next? We looked for beer. For over an hour we looked. One man thought we looked particularly helpless so tried to help us find a bar. At first we thought, okay, the sooner we get to the beer, the better, but alas we found none. Thanking him kindly, we took our leave. Only he continued to follow us. And continued to follow us. At one point I went up to him and asked him to stop. Thinking that would work but knowing that it would not we continued then hid in an alcove as, sure enough, thirty seconds later he walked by in our wake. He caught sight of us glaring at him and that was finally the end of it as he took off running straight ahead. We spent another hour searching for beer before finally settling for water and dry, nasty pastries (that should never have been mentioned in our CRAP, CRAP, CRAP guidebook) in the heat of the afternoon. We’d walked so far that we had to a taxi back to the train station to buy our tickets now that it was open. Mission accomplished, we headed next door to use the toilet at the hotel only to find there was beer there all along. We sat there for the next three hours and got wasted. Bamako sucks.
Fully fed up with our experience we decided to go out and splurge ourselves at the grocery store (Fourni). HEAVEN! I felt a little like a jerk when I realized that the bank I had spent several hundred francs on taxis looking for earlier was right next door to the grocery store; but, by then it was closed so I felt a little better. Inside were so many lovely Lebanese, French and even American goods that I couldn’t help myself. I bought Pringles, a bar of Lindt dark truffle chocolate and some gourmet flavored cheese with saucisson sec! They had ovens and huge American-sized fridges and everything! It was quite a treat. We left feeling elated and yet, connected. Then the crap piled on again.
After hitting up a nice cyber café we were accosted by a Ghanian man looking for someone to give him money. While persistently claiming he didn’t want money he asked us for money to call his girlfriend and ask her for the answer to the secret question on the Western Union transfer sheet. First of all – if this ugly man had a girlfriend she surely was stupid enough to pick a question he couldn’t answer. Secondly – why would he ask us for money by telling us he didn’t money? Thirdly – was it necessary to scream “Fuck You” when his scam didn’t work on us and we politely declined to give him money afterall? No! And I didn’t appreciate him doing it an inch from my face. I don’t think I’ve ever come that close to hitting someone, but I certainly felt the blood boiling under my skin and out of respect for his stupid girlfriend declined to sock him where it didn’t matter (right in his ugly puss). Then we couldn’t find the Indian food restaurant we were searching for when sidetracked by the Ghanian Gerk. I was in a bad place and started eating my Pringles.
Instead, we got in a taxi and headed back to the area near our hotel where we could hopefully have some more luck finding a restaurant. We walked around for another hour or two down streets without names, numbers, or any sort of significant markings before finally finding the Thai place mentioned in our stupid guidebook. “We’re all full,” the snooty host said as he took in our appearances, the record spun quickly to a stop and all the other white folk looked up abruptly from their delicious-smelling meals to gawk. We can take a hint, but instead pointed to the empty tables and asked about a waiting list. Impassive and stern, the host somehow guided us out the door without a problem. I think it was the fatigue/hunger/general disillusionment with Bamako that made us as docile and easily turned away as kittens. This is how we ended up at the “Southwestern Eatery” Appaloosa –
where the black servers were forced to wear denim button-downs, black cowboy hats and the white ladies behind the bar looked like saloon whores circa 2001. I don’t know which “Southwest” this restaurant was supposed to represent but on the wall were license plates from Virginia (not even West Virginia) and Maine, the soundtrack started with Melloncamp and ended with five songs from the BeeGees greatest hits and the “black bean burrito” was stuffed full of red, marché beans. I got a migrane and we went home. That’s how it ends in Bamako. Bamako sucks.February 13, 2008
The TRAIN was AWESOME!! We had to be shown our seats, sadly, though they were clearly marked. This meant that we had to pay a guy to do what we could have easily done ourselves (another sad result of everyone in Mali finding white women incompetent). One of the coolest parts of the train – apart from having a lot of space to stretch out – is that the bathroom is on the train. Not just that, the bathroom is a hole in the ground over the tracks! You can’t use it when the train is stopped, for obviously reasons, but it is fun as heck when you’re rambling and rolling along to watch the ground, too. Well, I got a kick out of it.
Two men came and sat across from us in our little “booth” and promptly spilled boiling hot milk on all of us. What a great start – and what the hell were they doing with hot milk? Grown men! They ask if we’re European. When we respond ‘no’ they then guess by nationality out of European countries. “Oh, you’re not European. You’re Spanish, then?” Really asinine. Finally we give in out of the pure pain of our conversation. It went like this:
“We’re from the United States” us.
blank stares as a response from Milk-Spillers.
“America,” us.
“Oh, right! But how do you speak French?” Milk-Spillers.
“Benin,” us.
“But how are you in Benin?” Milk-Spillers.
“Volunteers with the Peace Corps,” us.
“Oh, Dutch!” Milk-Spillers.
“No, American Peace Corps,” us.
“BUSH!” Milk-Spillers.
“No, we live in cities in America,” us.
“No, George Bush!” Milk-Spillers.
(believe it or not, Milk-Spiller #1 was the more intelligent just by the mere faculty of speech).
The trip was relatively uneventful, which was a nice change. We spent our time just lounging, sleeping, eating (I smeared bread in my chocolate moosh-pile; forgetting I was in Africa when I bought the bar of chocolate and took it on a hot train trip with me), and enjoying the scenery. Then night fell and it was time for our drunken companions to leave. There wasn’t really enough stop time on the train for the unscheduled ones (thank GOD!) so our companions called out to someone on the platform to catch their mountains of stuff they passed it through the cabin window. The only problem to this method was that the window was too small so they ended up spending more time trying to shove through the larger packages than it would have taken to just load it up on their backs and trek outta there. Oh goodness, the efficiency is alive and well throughout.
MORE TO FOLLOW LATER! I have real work to do now people!!!
Love you,
Allison Henderson
That address again for those “must send ‘ers”
Allison Henderson
B.P. 126
Azovè, Benin
Afrique de l’Ouest
PAR AVION
I appreciate and love everything you send me. Except crap. Don’t send crap. My house is little.
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