Dearest friends,
I have returned to Accra safe and sound after traveling for the past 52 days. This will most likely be the final post on the blog, so I will do my best to tell you about Burkina as well as talk a little bit about the trip as a whole.
I believe I went through three phases during this trip. The first phase involved being a tourist as I visited mountains and waterfalls in Togo, the Route of Slaves in Ouidah, and the Safari I took in Natitingou. I then began the next phase as a student of the world, where I wanted to do everything off the tourist track; to learn about different ways of life, different cultures and histories, different regional languages. This was when I stayed with a couchsurfer in Niamey, a peace corp volunteer in Malbaza, took the long pinasse ride to Tombouctou on a cargo boat, and stayed in the desert with a Tuareg friend of mine. When I arrived in Burkina, I reached a third phase that at first was difficult to categorize.
It took me two days to reach the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouaga. I departed Tombouctou at 3am, even though the 4 by 4 driver told me 4am and rudely awoke me an hour early. Regardless, a rough trip through the desert commenced at 5am and we finally reached Bandiagara in the afternoon. In Bandiagara we waited for a while for a "bus", which was essentially the back of a cargo van with the seats taken out and wooden benches lining the sides. I opened the back door to find that the bus was completely full except for the space on the ground on top of the tire, so thats where I sat for the next couple hours struggling to find a place to put my feet among the bags on the ground. It was nonetheless a funny image, a white person sitting in the midst of 20 or more Africans sitting on benches. I heard the click of a cameraphone from the women in front of me, so which I responded "Photo, cadeau cadeau" as all the little African children do. This much amused the rest of the bus. Nonetheless, I spent the night sleeping on the ground in Koro waiting for the bus the next day and finally arrived in Ouaga late the next day after about 2 days of travel.
Having finally reached Ouaga, I was tired. I had been traveling for quite some time to reach it. I wasnt really in the mood to go to the touristy areas of Bobo and Banfora which offered touristy things very similar to Kpalime, Togo and neither did I feel like staying in a small village in line with my second phase. Instead I spent the days in Ouaga, relaxing. I went to see movies at the French Cultural Center, meet up with Peace Corp volunteers to celebrate 4th of July, took myself out to a really nice dinner with steak marinated in bourbon. The third phase of my trip was very much like summer vacation. I had gone from tourist to student of the world and now just wanted to stay in one city and live the life as if I was on vacation. So to be honest, I dont have that much to tell you about life in Burkina or culture and history or really crazy experiences.
Nonetheless, my last night in town I went with a friend of mine to listen to his African drum band play. We arrived in this compound with a house and covered area with chairs. We sat and listened as 6 people enthusiastically played the drums. As they played, neighborhood children came and danced in front of the drummers. The older children banged their tomato cans that they use to collect cadeaus and the younger kids danced. Unfortunately, the conversation afterwards was interrupted by a large storm which came. The two french people that were there watching with me got out in time, but I didnt get to leave before the winds came so I was stuck in this tiny room with 8 other people to wait out the storm. As we came out after the storm, we were sad to discover that the covered area had all blown down and was now a mix of straw and wood on the ground. Such is the African rainy season!
Coming back into Ghana, I was amazed to be riding on the STC bus with air conditioning and a TV. It had been a long time since I had such amenities on a bus. Arriving in the country, I started seeing little things that to me are only in Ghana. Here are a couple:
1. 4 seats, 4 people: In Ghana you can take a tro tro in which four seats will actually be for four people. In every other country I went they would stuff as many people as possible into the small space. A taxi cab for 4 people in Ghana would fit 10 in Niger, the bed of a pick up truck sits 18 on wooden benches.
2. Wokaw hen: In Ghana its common for people to ask where you are going out of curiousity or to help you. In no other country did people ask me where I was going, the first comment was usually cadeau or do you need X.
After being here for so long I started to miss things that I didnt expect to miss. I have really missed understanding side conversations. Its frequent that I will be on a taxi or bus and everyone starts laughing or yelling about something I dont understand why or something strange happens and everyone starts talking about what happens but I cant understand the explanation even if its in French. I also miss not being the center of attention, everywhere I go because I am white everybody watches me or is curious, if I do something out of the ordinary everyone nearby notices. It will be nice to go back to being just a member of the crowd again.
This whole trip has really been a learning experience. Although it hasnt necessarily helped me figure out what I will do with my life, I have picked up some important life skills like knowing who to trust, trusting my instincts about a person or a situation, knowing how to get myself out of difficult situations in a foreign language, getting around in a brand new city and country. I have made some really good, life-long friends around the world. I have picked up some words in Hausa, Bambara, Tamasheq, and Dogon. I have some understaning of the life of nomads, of villagers in Niger, of the religion of Voodoo, of the African concept of time.
This journey has been a landmark in my life and I thank all of you for following me on this journey. I will see you all soon and I cannot wait to tell you all of my stories.
Best always,
Ben
Friday, July 10, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Mali-Diverse and exciting
Dearest friends,
I have so much to say about Mali that I actually had to outline this entry before writing it so Id be able to fit the important points. Mali is a huge country with Mopti as the capital of its heavily touristed section.
My trip began with the first night in an unusual hotel. Searching around for the cheapest hotel in Mopti, a generally very expensive place for tourists, I was given the name Bar Mali which wasnt in the guide book. Going there I found an extremely dirty and dark hotel, but with pleasant people. I was guided to my room in which the hall had a half broken wooden door which I was told to close when I came buy. The door divided about 6 rooms from the rest of the hotel and was about 6 feet high. I didnt quite understand its purpose because the other block of rooms didnt have a similar door. Regardless, the room had a working fan and a lock so it was great. I returned to the hotel around 8 or 9 and found the rooms in the hallway without the wooden door had a chair outside of every room with the door open and a nicely dressed woman sitting at the door. Apparently at night, half the hotel doubles as brothel for thirteen women that pay for the rooms until 1am. Obviously, nights there were a little noisy but it was a funny experience.
The next piece of the voyage was to Dogon country. This heavily touristed site is described by the guide book as being one of the top 10 places to see before you die. Its the home of the very culturally interesting Dogon people. Nonetheless, I wasnt particularly impressed. The location is quite beautiful because its nestled into the side of about a 1000 foot high cliff. I spent four days walking from one village to the next learning about Dogon culture, and learning a little bit of the language but this activity is heavily touristed. I did not really enjoy this experience that much and dont have too much to report about it, but because every single tourist that goes to Mali goes to Dogon, I had to at least tell you my thoughts.
Onto more interesting things. After Dogon, I took a pinasse ride up to Tombouctou, or as we spell it Timbuktu. I dont think Ive ever had such a mix of emotions. The whole trip was beautiful; watching herds of birds fly across the river at sunset, women and children washing bowls and clothes in the river, and bathing children who all shouted Toobaboo and waved excitedly as we passed. I went with my Spanish friend Millan who I mes in Dogon. The trip was to take 3 nights 4 days and we were in this maybe 20 meter long boat with hundreds of boxes of tea, bags of millet, and about 20 other people. Nights we slept on the boxes and bags. Our movement was about one meter between where we slept and the front of the boat where we sat for the best view except when it was too hot. As we traveled the water would frequently be too shallow so the crew, a family, would get out and push the boat in a circle until we could continue again. The small motor that powered the boat went about 35-50km per day perhaps.
The difficult part of the experience was being patient. You have no idea what is patience until you are at the whim on nature on a slow moving boat for a 300km journey without much time to spare. Especially considering that when we asked the captain how far it was he would respond with a distance that didnt make sense and there were dozens of incomprehensible stops. After 3 days on the boat it started to get to me because we had no idea where we were and it could be 10 days before we arrived given the wind, shallow water, stops, and slow speed. Not only that there was no way out because the villages we stopped at had no cars to Tombouctou to take. So we were stuck for who knows how long. On day 4, when we thought we were a couple hours from the end we were transfered to another boat because our boat ended its journey in Tonka. With this new driver and crew with an unknown number of days left it was challenging to be patient. In addition I started to get sick of eating a large portion of rice three times a day and only moving about 2 meters a day. So in essence this was the biggest test of my patience Ive ever had.
Nonetheless, there were funny experiences and good experiences. One night on the new boat while we were sleeping we felt something crawl over us multiple times, it was quite large and I felt 8 legs. I assumed it was a camel spider which can be about one foot or two feet large, telling Millan this he started to panic while I went back to sleep. I started to think about why it was called Camel Spider perhaps because it kills camels? So then I thought it wasnt a good idea either. Moving to the bamboo roof or the boat at 3 am we couldnt sleep anymore. We scanned the boat with a flashligh and about 10 minutes found out it was just a rat. Only in Africa would I remark, Oh Thank God Its Just A Rat, and go back to sleep, but we did.
Finally we heard the beautiful word Kouriome, the port for Tombouctu, on day six at about 2pm. I had overall clocked 120 hours on this small boat and was so glad to finally arrive. We really felt like explorers the whole way. tombouctou has a history of explorers who traveled fearing their lives and never made it to the fabled city. So having traveled similar to explorers I have quite an appreciation for how remote a place this is and how difficult it is to reach.
Meeting up with a friend of a friend, I arranged to spend 4 days in the desert with a nomadic people called the Taureg. The next morning, Al Halifa, my good friend for the next four days arrived with his two camels and took me to his house. This travel was not touristy as I stayed with Al Halifa and worked during the day with him, ate the same food, pumped water, and didnt pay for the extra tourist stuff. Al Halifa lives in a temporary house made of sticks and mats which stands up quite well to the Sahara dust storms and rains. Each day was similar and went something like this: wake up aruond 530, take two cups of tea and elewa for breakfast, locate the camels, feed the animals, break for the heat of the day to eat lunch, around 3 feed the animals again and come back in time for dinner. Now feeding the animals is not how it sounds. Halifa has 14 goats that roam the desert near the village. The first day we walked through the desert to some spot and sat down. Halifa lets out a high pitched EO multiple times and a kilometer in the distance I hear the response of goats. As he keeps calling they come to him at which point he takes his axe and cuts down part of a small tree and pulls it onto the ground for the animals to eat.
Now whats interesting is that because the Taureg are nomadic, they dont keep track of their ages or have birthdays. So one afternoon I had the strange experience of explaining to Halifa his age and birthday. He hands me a voting card that is in French, which he cannot read and barely speaks. I see the phrase date du naissane 12/31/80 and spend the afternoon explaining in broken French that this was his premiere jour, first day and that he is 28 and on this day hell be 29. He doesnt know the phrase birthday in English or French or Tamasheq so this was quite a strange experience for me, but particularly interesting.
Tombouctou, although synonomous with the end of the earth is actually the sister city of Tempe, AZ!!! When I got there and people asked me where I was from, I said Arizona and they said, do you know Tempe. I said, yes I am from there, how do you know Tempe! Voila!
Well, its down to the last week or so in Burkina Faso so I will keep you posted.
Best,
Ben
I have so much to say about Mali that I actually had to outline this entry before writing it so Id be able to fit the important points. Mali is a huge country with Mopti as the capital of its heavily touristed section.
My trip began with the first night in an unusual hotel. Searching around for the cheapest hotel in Mopti, a generally very expensive place for tourists, I was given the name Bar Mali which wasnt in the guide book. Going there I found an extremely dirty and dark hotel, but with pleasant people. I was guided to my room in which the hall had a half broken wooden door which I was told to close when I came buy. The door divided about 6 rooms from the rest of the hotel and was about 6 feet high. I didnt quite understand its purpose because the other block of rooms didnt have a similar door. Regardless, the room had a working fan and a lock so it was great. I returned to the hotel around 8 or 9 and found the rooms in the hallway without the wooden door had a chair outside of every room with the door open and a nicely dressed woman sitting at the door. Apparently at night, half the hotel doubles as brothel for thirteen women that pay for the rooms until 1am. Obviously, nights there were a little noisy but it was a funny experience.
The next piece of the voyage was to Dogon country. This heavily touristed site is described by the guide book as being one of the top 10 places to see before you die. Its the home of the very culturally interesting Dogon people. Nonetheless, I wasnt particularly impressed. The location is quite beautiful because its nestled into the side of about a 1000 foot high cliff. I spent four days walking from one village to the next learning about Dogon culture, and learning a little bit of the language but this activity is heavily touristed. I did not really enjoy this experience that much and dont have too much to report about it, but because every single tourist that goes to Mali goes to Dogon, I had to at least tell you my thoughts.
Onto more interesting things. After Dogon, I took a pinasse ride up to Tombouctou, or as we spell it Timbuktu. I dont think Ive ever had such a mix of emotions. The whole trip was beautiful; watching herds of birds fly across the river at sunset, women and children washing bowls and clothes in the river, and bathing children who all shouted Toobaboo and waved excitedly as we passed. I went with my Spanish friend Millan who I mes in Dogon. The trip was to take 3 nights 4 days and we were in this maybe 20 meter long boat with hundreds of boxes of tea, bags of millet, and about 20 other people. Nights we slept on the boxes and bags. Our movement was about one meter between where we slept and the front of the boat where we sat for the best view except when it was too hot. As we traveled the water would frequently be too shallow so the crew, a family, would get out and push the boat in a circle until we could continue again. The small motor that powered the boat went about 35-50km per day perhaps.
The difficult part of the experience was being patient. You have no idea what is patience until you are at the whim on nature on a slow moving boat for a 300km journey without much time to spare. Especially considering that when we asked the captain how far it was he would respond with a distance that didnt make sense and there were dozens of incomprehensible stops. After 3 days on the boat it started to get to me because we had no idea where we were and it could be 10 days before we arrived given the wind, shallow water, stops, and slow speed. Not only that there was no way out because the villages we stopped at had no cars to Tombouctou to take. So we were stuck for who knows how long. On day 4, when we thought we were a couple hours from the end we were transfered to another boat because our boat ended its journey in Tonka. With this new driver and crew with an unknown number of days left it was challenging to be patient. In addition I started to get sick of eating a large portion of rice three times a day and only moving about 2 meters a day. So in essence this was the biggest test of my patience Ive ever had.
Nonetheless, there were funny experiences and good experiences. One night on the new boat while we were sleeping we felt something crawl over us multiple times, it was quite large and I felt 8 legs. I assumed it was a camel spider which can be about one foot or two feet large, telling Millan this he started to panic while I went back to sleep. I started to think about why it was called Camel Spider perhaps because it kills camels? So then I thought it wasnt a good idea either. Moving to the bamboo roof or the boat at 3 am we couldnt sleep anymore. We scanned the boat with a flashligh and about 10 minutes found out it was just a rat. Only in Africa would I remark, Oh Thank God Its Just A Rat, and go back to sleep, but we did.
Finally we heard the beautiful word Kouriome, the port for Tombouctu, on day six at about 2pm. I had overall clocked 120 hours on this small boat and was so glad to finally arrive. We really felt like explorers the whole way. tombouctou has a history of explorers who traveled fearing their lives and never made it to the fabled city. So having traveled similar to explorers I have quite an appreciation for how remote a place this is and how difficult it is to reach.
Meeting up with a friend of a friend, I arranged to spend 4 days in the desert with a nomadic people called the Taureg. The next morning, Al Halifa, my good friend for the next four days arrived with his two camels and took me to his house. This travel was not touristy as I stayed with Al Halifa and worked during the day with him, ate the same food, pumped water, and didnt pay for the extra tourist stuff. Al Halifa lives in a temporary house made of sticks and mats which stands up quite well to the Sahara dust storms and rains. Each day was similar and went something like this: wake up aruond 530, take two cups of tea and elewa for breakfast, locate the camels, feed the animals, break for the heat of the day to eat lunch, around 3 feed the animals again and come back in time for dinner. Now feeding the animals is not how it sounds. Halifa has 14 goats that roam the desert near the village. The first day we walked through the desert to some spot and sat down. Halifa lets out a high pitched EO multiple times and a kilometer in the distance I hear the response of goats. As he keeps calling they come to him at which point he takes his axe and cuts down part of a small tree and pulls it onto the ground for the animals to eat.
Now whats interesting is that because the Taureg are nomadic, they dont keep track of their ages or have birthdays. So one afternoon I had the strange experience of explaining to Halifa his age and birthday. He hands me a voting card that is in French, which he cannot read and barely speaks. I see the phrase date du naissane 12/31/80 and spend the afternoon explaining in broken French that this was his premiere jour, first day and that he is 28 and on this day hell be 29. He doesnt know the phrase birthday in English or French or Tamasheq so this was quite a strange experience for me, but particularly interesting.
Tombouctou, although synonomous with the end of the earth is actually the sister city of Tempe, AZ!!! When I got there and people asked me where I was from, I said Arizona and they said, do you know Tempe. I said, yes I am from there, how do you know Tempe! Voila!
Well, its down to the last week or so in Burkina Faso so I will keep you posted.
Best,
Ben
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