The Africa Diaries: Timbuktu

I found the following statistic on Wikipedia: 

A 2006 survey of 150 young Britons found 34% did not believe the town existed, while the other 66% considered it "a mythical place".

Well folks, it's a real place.  Not terribly easy to get to, but very real.

Again, as seems to be common in so many of the places we went, you're either blown away by the colour...

or blown away by the almost absence of colour ...

And oh, my, goodness, is it hot!

It's also poor.  Really really poor.  It's not uncommon for families to live in structures like the one in the picture above.  There is no bathroom.  No running water.  No electricity.  The children probably don't go to school.  There is no healthcare system.

I brought a long piece of material in Timbuktu, so that I could wrap it around my head in a turban type setup,to keep the dust and sun out of my face while riding/driving around.  The material was the traditional blue/purple colour that the Tuareg people commonly wear.  The colour was so non-set (I'm so undomestic that I don't even know the word for this) that if you touched this material with your hand, your hand then turned a very deep shade of bluey/purple.  Our guide organised for someone to wash the material for me to get all the dye out of it, so that I could wear it without looking like a smurf.  It cost me $1.  When the man who did this gave it back to me, he showed me his hands which were stained deep deep purple, and asked me for more money as compensation for his crazy blue hands.  Our guide told me not to give him any more money since $1 was a fair amount for the work he'd done.

I took the guide's advice and didn't give the man anything else.  Not even one more dollar.  One lousy dollar.

Sometimes I'm so very ashamed of myself.

Anyway *deep breath in and deep breath out*, Timbuktu is at the edge of the Sahara desert...

... and one of the things that Allison really wanted to do, more than almost anything else on the entire journey, was to spend the night in the Sahara.

I was totally unconvinced, and knew that there weren't likely to be flushable toilets in the desert, and also knew that there was no way I'd be able to go an evening, night and morning without needing to go to the toilet.  But I did it anyway.  And it was amazing (I seem to use that word a lot, but I'm not great with describing how great something is, so you'll just have to put up with it!).

The transport ...

The structure that we could have slept in if we weren't idiots who decided to sleep totally under the stars.

The young boy who brought us here spoke no English, and only a little French.  We spoke very little French too, so communication was difficult.  However, when I asked where the toilet was, he waved his hand over in this direction...

He was gesturing towards the sand, not the structure in the distance.

Gulp.

So it was kind of a strange evening.  We were sitting very close to the family who lived at this encampment, but it was quite obvious that we weren't invited to join them.  Fair enough I guess - they probably weren't getting a lot of money for the pleasure of our company, and they didn't want their privacy invaded.  The younger children came over and we chatted (in a non-talking kind of way) for a while, and then it was time for dinner (which is a whole other blog post) and bed.

As soon as we lay down I needed to go.  Number 2.  Worse nightmare.

Luckily it was dark, so I didn't need to worry about being seen, however I also couldn't see anything myself.

Soooooo... off I went.  I stumbled a little way from the edge of the camp/living area/garden (I'm not really sure what you'd call it), dug a hole in the sand and did my business.  Then, because I'm a good westerner, I tried to bury my toilet paper in the sand.  In the dark (I didn't want to use my head torch because I didn't want to draw attention to what was going on).  It was a disaster.  I probably ended up not burying anything and getting poop all over my shoes.

Yuckity yuckity yuck.

BUT, a big big moment for me.  My first poop outside.  In the desert.  In the SAHARA desert.

I ran quietly (well as quietly as you can in the dark when you're tripping over things) back to Allison and excitedly told her of my achievement.  Strangely she seemed totally unfazed.  Odd girl!

Anyway, that was a huge moment for me and I was happily imagining how I'd relay the exciting news on to Dan when I fell asleep.

The night wasn't hugely restful.  We were woken by a screaming demon donkey that was rampaging through the encampment.  It scared the absolute bejesus out of us.  We're probably pretty lucky it didn't run right over the top of us since we were lying in the middle of a great open space.

I woke up again a bit later needing to go to the toilet AGAIN (I know, why can't my bowels just co-operate and seize up when I need them to?).  When I lay down afterwards I heard the sound of a car which I thought was kind of strange, being in the middle of the desert and all.  Then I noticed a small moving light overhead which I realised was a plane.  And then I realised that the sound I could hear was the airplane, probably up at around 35000 feet in the sky.  That's a long long way away.  It must have been very very quiet for the sound to travel that far.

Anyway, we were woken up by the father and son who came to give us some bread and to get us and the camels ready for the journey back.

(I think you'll agree that Allison and I are ultra-trendy travellers.  What an effortlessly elegant look we're both sporting).

Something you might not realise about camels.  They're very uncomfortable.  Particularly when you're in a hurry and they're moving along at pace.  We tried to take lots of pictures on the walk/trot back, but most of them turned out slightly blurry, so you'll have to believe me when I tell you that it was again, a magical experience.

So, that was it for Timbuktu.  We headed back to Sévaré to ready ourselves for the next leg of the journey.  Dogon Country - probably the most interesting and beautiful part of our whole trip.

(Again, credit must go to Allison for the photo's in this post.  She obviously has a much better camera than I do!)

The Africa Diaries: Mali - Bamako to Timbuktu

We arrived in Bamako, the capital of Mali.

Mali is hot.  Well, so was Ghana, but Mali is hotter.  Much much hotter.  The kind of heat where you can feel your skin get tighter on your body as you start to dehydrate and shrivel up.

Bamako wasn't much fun, though it's a fairly pretty city.  It was colonized by the French at some stage, so there were lots of wide, tree-lined streets and some beautiful buildings.  But the most striking thing that I remember about Bamako, was the children who loitered around the bigger intersections.  Armed with baseball bats and sharp, machete, beat-your-head-in-because-you're-not-from-here type implements.

We didn't stay long.

We took a day long bus journey up to Sévaré which has nothing at all to recommend it, other than being right between Bamako and Timbuktu.  There were no toilets on the bus.  It was my first big test.  I didn't wet myself (success).

The next day we hired a driver and his car, and drove to Timbuktu.  Timbuktu is on the edge of the Sahara, so things were dusty.

But the journey was amazing.  Yes it was bumpy and hot and long and our car broke down.  But it was still pretty amazing.

The whole trip, not just this bit, was a study of contrasts.  There was so much beauty and magic...

... and there was also so much rubbish.  Everywhere.

There were long open roads ...

... and open spaces ...

... and pure magnificence.

And there were vehicles piled high with belongings.  Where the expectations of a vehicle far surpassed the actual capacity.

And so amongst all this beauty and craziness, my real African toilet experiences began, though thankfully these ones weren't too traumatic.

The first wasn't really a big deal.  Just a squat on the road behind the car (hoping that I wasn't visible from the rear view mirrors).  Now it doesn't seem like anything, but at the time it was.  Particularly since I had to look up how to ask "Please stop the car here as I need to use the toilet" in my French phrase book, though I think that what I actually said was "Stop now Mister.  I go to the toilet".  No wonder he stopped so promptly.  

My second experience was a sign of things to come.  We'd stopped for some food at a small town, and I asked Baba (our driver) where the bathroom was.  He took me to an open air toilet which was pretty much just a walled off area with a hole in the middle.  I squatted and did my business, but about 1/2 way through, the door (i.e. piece of corrugated roofing) swung open.  Baba (who was standing outside waiting for me), nonchalantly came over and quite calmly closed the door, ignoring my great big moon of a bottom (and everything else) that was on display.

Baba was pretty cool.

Anyway, we finally reached the Niger river, and a few miles over the other side was Timbuktu.  We crossed in a barge boat which provided both entertainment (while watching them cram as many vehicles as possible onto the barge) ...

and more colour ...

and endless magical moments to remember (though thank goodness for camera's, because I'd forgotten most of this before going through the photo's!)

We drove a few more miles, and then... Timbuktu.  It really does exist.

Credit to Allison for the majority of the photo's in this post.  She takes a much better picture than I do.

The Africa Diaries: The beginning is always easy

Off I went to Accra, the capital of Ghana, armed with my Lonely Planet guide and a 6-pack of toilet paper.

I mentioned before that I hadn't met my travelling companion before.  I'd met her (now) husband a couple of times, but had only had a few email exchanges and one phone conversation with Allison.

So we met.

And we look so similar that we could be sisters.

Or (as was so kindly pointed out by a horrid ratbag), I could be her mother!

Weird!

Anyway, we started planning our travels through West Africa.  Allison seemed totally unconcerned by my fixation with only going to places that had good working toilets, so I decided to just let myself live for the moment, and to take the good with the bad (the very, very, bad as it turns out, but you'll have to wait for a few more posts until we get to that fun story).

The plan was a 3 week journey that would start in Bamako (the capital of Mali), go on to Timbuktu (yes it's a real place) and the Dogon Country (where they still practice voodoo), and then down to Burkina Faso, where we'd spend some time in the capital before heading out to a small town, Bobo-Dialosso, a few hours drive away.

The capital of Burkina Faso is called Ouagadougou.  This is pronounced Wagga-Doo-Goo, which for the Australians among you shouldn't pose any issues at all!

Before we flew to Bamako, we headed up to a town in the middle of Ghana called Kumasi.  We'd both been tempted by the promise of a reconstructed Ashanti village (which looked rustic and pretty in the Lonely Planet guide).  Unfortunately we never found the village (or anyone who'd ever heard of it before).  What we did find however, was a market.  A HUGE market.

This doesn't do justice to the size of the market at all, but I love the 2 guys nonchalantly doing business while standing on the top of a van.  Colourful!

It wasn't a totally wasted trip though.  We had a tour around a dusty museum featuring a few even dustier royal Ashanti trinkets. We rubbed shoulders with lots of European travellers who'd come to Kumasi for one of the Africa Cup (football thing) games.  And I started to fool myself into thinking that the toilets in Africa wouldn't be a problem.  Most of the toilets that I'd come across so far were Western.  And while they may not have been very clean, at least I didn't need to engage my thigh muscles (too much).

Backpacking in Africa?  No problem.

Yet.

The Africa Diaries: Comfort Levels

Something you may not have known about me.  I have a toilet phobia.  

I’m not scared of going to the toilet.

Or looking at a toilet.

Or cleaning a toilet.  Erm, actually, yup, I am a little scared of this one.

Nope, my toilet phobia is that I must, at all times, be within easy access of a nice, clean, sit-down, push a button to whisk away all the badness, toilet.

It’s mainly due to this reason that I haven’t done much backpacking.  Because I KNOW how much I hate having to use gross, smelly, ‘I’m the one millionth person to use this’ toilet.  And you’re right - I’m pretty awful at festivals too.

ANYWAY ….

A few years ago I had the chance to do some backpacking around West Africa.  We’d just moved to Canada from the UK and I was totally bored and very fed up with winter and snow and the cold and the general miserable greyness that was January in Newfoundland.  I didn’t know the person I was going to go backpacking with (we have mutual friends), but that wasn’t my main concern.  Nope, my main concern was the toilet facilities.

I did a bit of reading and found that (surprise, surprise), a lot of places that we were planning on going to favoured the ‘squat over a hole in the ground’ style of toilet.

Eeek.

"No problem" I thought, "you have to push yourself beyond your boundaries in life, otherwise life becomes boring and mundane".

So this is the adventure that I’m entitling ‘The Africa Diaries’, though it should really be called ‘What Happened When Liffey Had To Poo In The Desert’.

Literary genius! ;)

A letter to Sharon

I went to university with a girl called Sharon.  Sharon is excellent.  In fact, I didn't realise just how great a friend she was until we didn't live in the same country anymore.

Anyway, Sharon is about to have a baby.  Her first baby.  A little boy.  And even though I haven't seen Sharon in around 10 years, I wish I was there.  I wish I was there to spend the last of her non-mummy days together.  And I really wish I was there when the baby comes.

But I won't be.  So I thought I'd write her a letter instead.  And then I thought, well, this is really a letter that applies to anyone who's about to have a baby, so why not put it out there, and maybe it'll help someone else too.

Hi Sharon

Before Kalani was born, so many people gave me advice.  "Oh, you'll never get a good night's sleep once the baby comes, so get lots now", "Make the most of this time before the baby comes because you won't have anytime to yourself for a long long time" etc. etc.

And I ignored all of it.

I smugly thought that my baby would be the best, sleepiest baby in the whole world, and I would handle this motherhood thing without raising a sweat.  What a joke.  Now I really wish I'd listened, really listened to some of what people said.

So this is a mixture of advice I did receive, and some I didn't, and you definitely don't have to even read this or take it to heart or anything, but I really want to pass it on, so just humour me, okay?

1. It's going to hurt.  Quite a lot.  Take the drugs when you're in labour and then DEFINITELY take the drugs afterwards as well.  They (those medical people) know what they're doing.  They don't want you to be in pain either.  So take everything you're offered.

2. Everyone says to sleep when the baby sleeps, and instead you'll try to do stuff - like washing or cooking or having a shower.  Don't.  The beginning is hard, and you'll feel like your insides are about to fall out of your 'bits' (and if you have a c-section, then your abdomen is in all sort of pain and coughing is the least fun thing to do in the world).  This is one of the ONLY times as a mother that lots of people will offer to do stuff for you.  So let them.  Let them do everything they can to help, and try to have at least 1 nap a day.  Because that little bundle of gorgeousness probably won't let you sleep at night.

3. (This was the thing I found the hardest) If you breastfeed then you spend a LOT of time just sitting around.  This can be so hard, particularly if you're used to being up and doing things.  Try really really really hard to enjoy it.  Seriously.  Just be happy to sit and not have to do anything other than just be (and feed your baby obviously).  Watch TV.  Watch lots and lots of TV, because when he gets older (with K it was around 4 months), he's going to start to realise that there's a lot of bright lights and loud sounds coming from over there, and you're going to have to stop watching tv whilst breastfeeding (though the good news is that later on Dora and the Backyardigans will become your best friends when you realise they cause all noise and movement to stop in your otherwise crazy toddler).

4. Don't worry about your weight.  You won't be thin again directly afterwards, and you might not be for a while. This sucks.  A lot.  But one day you'll get there.  The mental and physical energy that you expend in worrying/doing something about this is NOT worth it.  You have way too many other things that are sucking up your energy at the moment - why add something else to the list?

5. Another thing that everyone says is to enjoy them when they're small.  All I could think was "Are you f-ing serious?  This sucks - I'm not getting any sleep and everytime I cough I wet myself and he just won't stop crying.".  BUT - they are so sweet when they're small.  And they don't talk back.  Or move.  You can put them down and just leave them there without worrying that they're going to get into the cleaning cupboard and poison themselves.  They're so innocent and beautiful and wonderful.  Really enjoy his newborn charm.

6. Join mummy/baby groups.  They're not for him, they're for you.  So when you're having a really bad day, you can say to another mum "I'm about to lose the plot - I only slept for 2 hours last night", and she'll reply "Me too".  And that Sharon, is a wonderful moment.  When you realise that it's not just you.  That you're not in this alone.  That when you're up at 2am nursing or changing his diaper, there are a million other mum's who are doing the exact same thing.  Seriously - please do this.  It will save your sanity more and more as he gets older.

7. This is almost my last point and it's maybe the most important.  Don't be too hard on yourself.  It'll probably be really tough but it really does get better and you're going to do an amazing job.  Yes you'll have bad days, but you'll have good ones too.  Really good ones.  The kind of day where you just think "Holy crap - did I CREATE this adorable little human being?". 

8. When people give you advice just let them (*cough* - I guess this kind of includes me!!).  People LOVE to give advice to expecting/new mum's.  It makes them feel like they're really helping you (yup - this totally includes me).  Let them.  You don't have to listen to anything they say, but you'll make their day - maybe even their week - by letting them think that in some small way, they're there to help you deal with the chaos that is a new baby.

9.  And finally, please take lots of pictures and send them to me.  I cannot wait to see him and I hope that one day I'll get to meet him too.

Good luck Sharon.  I really do wish I was there with you because you're about to have the most amazing wonderful adventure ever.  Tough but awesome.  Enjoy it.

All my love

Liffey