Kita-ween 2008

Our first Malian trip was a success! During our first 3 months at site we are allowed only to travel within our region, so we decided to take a trip to Kita, together with six other friends. The easiest, most direct route would be by train. We constantly heard all the stories of theft and derailment but we decided it was a must do one time while in Mali. Why not cross it off the list early? How bad could it really be? We've traveled pleanty in the 3rd world. So we bought tickets and made our way to the train station where we found our seats, or better yet remnants of our seats. They were literally the coil springs. Yes, we sat on coil springs for about 10 hours. It was a bonus that the cushion and leather was still there for us to recline against.

At 10 hours the train stopped for a longer period of time than normal. We thought the employees were just eating and praying so we were worry free. And then we departed and got about 200 ft where we stopped, the tracks were moved and we pulled back into the station on a different set of tracks. It was about then that we prepared ourselves to sleep on the train for a night. We were in a small train town with no roads and no motos.

But 2 hours later a sotorama - a hollowed out van with benches, the main mode of transport for short distances in Mali - arrived out of nowhere. We ran over and demanded to know where they were going. Kita rang from the man's lips so we jumped in expecting his 1 hour quote to take 3 hours on a horribly bumpy dirt road. But after 1 hour and 15 minutes on the smoothest dirt road we've ever been on we arrived safely in Kita.

Kita was fun and low key. We did a lot of sitting around, talking and catching up. We did climb a hill outside on the edge of town one day, which was fun too. And we dressed up - see previous posting. The day before we were to return home we went to the rail station to buy our tickets. We were informed that the train was still not running as the track that was broken, having prevented us from getting all the way to Kita, still had not been fixed - Dooni, Dooni - Slow, Slow.

So the only way home was a by bus - and what a journey that was. 25 hours door to door to go 550 miles. Our bus was quite scary and our seats were worse than the train. While all the cusions were in tact, they were not properly bolted to the floor and they were reclining on the seat behind them. That is until they sold that seat to a Malian and then our seats were reclined onto a Malian's lap. He would just lift us off him, change positions as needed and gently lay us back upon his lap. He spent 9 hours like that! Thank goodness he only had to go half way to our location.

At about 11pm the bus hit some potholes going really fast. We lost street cred when one of our friends said to the bus driver Dooni, Dooni - slow, slow. It took us until 6am to get our credibility back, but we mananged. Maybe it was that us tubobs stopped the bus after more potholes at high speeds and it sounded and smelled like the bus broke in 2. Needless to say we spent a little time on the side of the road while the bus was getting fixed that night. After it was "fixed" we started out again - but never got over about 15 miles per an hour. At 6am we coasted into town going about 5 miles per an hour. Just another 3rd world travel story to add to the books!

We are off to site!