The Africa Diaries: I Predict a Riot

(If you've missed any of the previous posts about Africa, then you can find them all here)

After a day-long journey by car, we arrived in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.  The main (European) language in Burkina is also French, so we were glad to be travelling with Kay and Mikael (Mikael was a local so obviously didn't have the same communication issues that we did).

We found a hotel, booked in (there were Western style toilets - yay yay yay!), met a French woman who was teaching in Cameroon, and went out for a night of posh nosh and good music.  Unfortunately we didn't find the good music (which was a massive shame, since I'm a huge fan of lots of different African artists) but we did find the posh nosh.  We noshed and drank wine (ahh.. wine).  I went to the super super posh toilets as many times as I could without it seeming like I had a bad stomach.  It was a great night.

The next day we parted company, and Allison and I went for our last journey together - to Bobo Diolasso - a small town a few hours bus ride away from Ouaga.  I can't even remember why we wanted to go there in the first place - there were probably some lovely monuments/museums/artifacts that would have been interesting to see - it's just that when we happened to be there, so did a riot.  With riot police.  Right outside our hotel.

To begin with, things looked like this ...

 .. and then 'things' deteriorated quite quickly to this ...

.. and what we found most distressing was this type of thing - where dozens of school children had to run past the riot police and the fires and the danger, just to get to safety ...

... doesn't it make our journey to work/school/daycare/the grocery store/wherever, seem wonderful.  Safe and assured and wonderful.

On the plus side, we met a few of the other people who were staying the same hotel as us ...

... and one of them (the guy with the blue turban) is very very good friends with my 2nd cousin (who I'm not close to, but it just shows how small the world has become).  I also experienced the effects of tear-gas for the first time.  It wasn't that close to where we were, but it was bad enough to cause tears (thus the name - duh) and coughing and general discomfort.

Soo - we did venture out that night in Bobo since the rioting had stopped, and everything seemed calm again, and we 'discovered' a bar with some mediocre music and some truly great interpretive dancers.  We were befriended by a boy who must have only been about 18.  He was very nice, even though he thought I was Allison's mother!  Ratbag.

And that was it.  The next morning I got on a bus to head back to Ouaga, and Allison went on to another town in Burkina where she got caught in the middle of another riot which meant she spent 2 days shut inside her hotel room, hoping she'd make it out alive (which she did).

Once back in Ouaga I caught a plane back to Ghana where I had a few more days of Africa before heading back home to Canada.

The Africa Diaries: Dogon Country (below)

(If you've missed any of the previous posts about Africa, then you can find them all here)

All our adventures so far in the Dogon Country where at the top of the escarpment, and now it was time to descend.  To descend down this ...

... over great big rifts that fall down to ... erm, I'm not sure what was at the bottom because it was so far down you couldn't see the bottom!!  And these flimsy looking sticks are what you use to scramble across the big gaps ... 

I was wearing birkenstocks (which were the only shoes I'd brought on the hike with me), and they were totally useless.  They kept falling off and making me slip, so I ended up taking them off.  And while the next picture is in the shade, the vast majority of the walk was NOT in the shade and the rocks we were walking over were hot.  Very very hot.  My feet did not thank me.

But then we reached the bottom and had lunch here ...

... gazing back up the cliffs where we'd come from.

I'm not a big soft-drink/pop drinker, but I have never been as glad to see a coke as I was that day.

We rested for a while, and then continued on.  Not much really happened (to do with toilets or otherwise), so here's a few piccies ...

It was very very cold at night.... and very very dark.  Thus the attire.

Blacksmithing Africa stylie ...

Water collection... 

On our journey through the Dogon Country, we met an amazing Irish woman, Kay, and her guide Mikael.  They were both a lot of fun, and also on their way to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.  We arranged to travel down with them (for a price of course) which was a relief, since neither Allison nor I spoke French very well, so getting through the border without a visa may have been a little bit of a challenge!!

Photo's by both Allison AND Liffey in this post! *very smug photographer*

The Africa Diaries: Dogon Country (above)

(If you've missed any of the previous posts about Africa, then you can find them all here)

Both Allison and I had read about the Dogon Country and how incredible it is, and so had arranged for a guide to take us on a 3 day trek through some of the villages.  

Since I was now an experienced toiletier (yes I realise I just made that word up, but it's my blog so I can if I want!), my initial worries about this trek were now mostly gone.  I still had my toilet paper, but after my desert experiences, I felt like I could handle ANY toilet that Africa threw at me.

Hmmmm.... sometimes it's not wise to think that you're better than a continent.  Especially one like Africa.  She didn't waste any time in laughing right back in my face.

Before we continue, I'd like to introduce you to a very common sight in Mali.  

You might think this is a kettle.  You're kind of right.  It's actually the Malian version of toilet paper...well, more like the contents of the kettle are the Malian version of toilet paper.

So, we'd just started our trek, and had stopped at a very small village for some lunch and so our guide could take a 3 hour nap.  The village was perched right at the top of a cliff.

I needed to go to the toilet, so off I went with my toilet paper and the kettle (I'm not really sure why I even took the kettle with me in the first place - I think I just wanted to 'fit in' with the locals - because my pasty white skin and boring clothes weren't clue enough that I wasn't from around there!).

The toilet had 3 walls, a door, no roof and a hole in the middle of the floor.  I could see through the hole that underneath the toilet was a small 'collection area' that opened out into the open air, so the waste could just run down the cliff side.

Nice.

And very breezy.

Anyway, I did my thing and then tried to clean myself up afterwards.  (If you're not into toilet stories you might want to skip ahead a little since this is kind of yuck).

I wiped and put the toilet paper down the hole.  I wiped again and went to put the 2nd piece of toilet paper down the hole.  Both pieces of toilet paper flew up into the air.  There was a serious updraft happening and my dirty pieces of toilet paper were flying around the cubicle like dancing puppets with grossness smeared all over them.

Arrgghhh.....

I very very quickly finished cleaning myself up and then tried to catch the paper to put it down the hole but it just wouldn't stay down.  Every time I caught a piece and stuffed it down the hole it just came back up again.

Yup, that sound that I'd initially thought was the wind was actually manic laughter... from a very smug continent.

And then I had a brainwave.  I grabbed my kettle, caught a piece of paper and used the water in the kettle to weigh the paper down enough to make it go down the hole.

Result.

I disposed of the rest of the toilet paper, checked myself for 'dirt' (there was none - Africa isn't that mean) and left the toilet... a lot humbler than when I'd entered.

So after THAT I was ready to get going.

The villages of Dogon Country are above and below a 150km long escarpment (ginormous cliff face) and are surrounded by nothing but stone and dirt, but yet there is still beauty everywhere.

And lots of lots of gorgeousness ...

And the wind at the top of the escarpment is crazy.  That's not product (or anything else) in Allison's hair!

We were privileged enough to witness a Mask dance that a fellow traveler had organised and paid for.  Amazing.

I really wish you were there to see it too, because while these photo's are wonderful, they don't let you feel the ground shaking from the drums and the pounding of the dancers feet.  They don't let you taste the dirt that's been stirred up into the air from the dancing.  And they don't let you smell the sweat and the dirt and the air and the heat and the ... the Africa.  It makes me cry to remember it.  Happy happy tears.

***

So once again, thanks to Allison for some of the pictures included in this post (though quite a few of them are mine *smug*)

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.