Moved

We have moved. No longer do we dwell on the edge of the desert. We now live in the capital city of Mali, Bamako. There are trees around our new house! Needless to say, this is a big change. While we will miss our families in Yelimane, we will not be missing the oppressive heat and frequent sandstorms. We recognize that Bamako will be hot and also has sandstorms but right now it is rainy season and those problems are a few weeks off. Hey, if you can't lie to yourself to whom can you lie?

Here's some pics of what we leave behind:




















For the benefit of our European friends:

















And for those of you out there in mummifying cat land who are wondering...

Cote d'Ivoire

Now, from time to time we all have bad ideas but rarely do the stars align in such a fashion as to allow our worst of ideas to come to fruitition. Sometimes, just sometimes, you find yourselves very close to the war torn border of northwest Cote d'Ivoire and more rare still are the times when you decide it would be a good idea to cross that border.


Let's rewind a moment to the safety and relaxation of the beautiful beach in Sierra Leone. This was where the idea was hatched. Maybe we were doubting our out of date guidebook, which had been researched five years earlier (turns out the new edition comes out this month!) or maybe we were just getting cocky. We all laughed about how wrong our book had been thusfar. We figured that the war in Cote d'Ivoire must be over by now since we hadn't heard much. Why would our security advisor have told us it was o.k. otherwise? We joked about how funny it would be if Steve was our head negotiator with the rebel army on his birthday. What a gas that would be! So we decided to cut right through Sierra Leone and Guinea to Cote d'Ivoire on our way home. We could cross another country off the life list and besides, what could go wrong?


Fast forward back to the Cote d'Ivoirian border. It is, ironically, Steve's birthday and he is immediately approached by the rebel commander, making him our de facto head negotiator. Turns out "what could go wrong?" is that the rebels are still fully in control of large parts of the country. We are heading to their capitol and they are not sure why we would want to go there (if we are neither spies nor diamond runners, as we claim), much less why we are sneaking in the back door. Touchy situation.


The bad roads just became the last of our concerns.


So we headed up to the rebel headquarters to explain our situation. They ended writing permission for us to procede through their territory right into our passports, giving them all the official rebel rubberstamp! We also got a laissez-passe from the rebel commandant, as you do, for safe passage which we were instructed to show at the numerous checkpoints (about fifteen) we would encounter between there and the Malian border. Looked like this: Worked like a charm!

We headed to the town of Man, surrounded by gorgeous hills. We checked into the only hotel left standing that was not a rebel headquarters. It just so happened to have the best chinese restaurant we'd all been to in a year! Turns out they are fighting for some pretty scenic areas. We went to a really cool waterfall that used to have a fantastic restaurant and bar at its base but is now returning to the jungle.













On the bizarre side, we stopped at the edge of a wood on the way back and a bunch of locals clapped and yelled and made noise until a monkey came out to find out what all the fuss was about. We fed this wild monkey bananas. Surreal.



Our time was coming to an end. We hopped on an incredibly crammed massa (a twenty passenger van that held thirty passengers on this day) and headed for the border. It was hot and dusty and Mark had a man named Abdoulaye sitting half on him all day but at least we got to pre-pay our bribes. Who says the rebels aren't accomodating.

Ludicrous footnote: when we returned to Mali we wanted to make sure we were legal so as to avoid hastles down the road when we had to get our visas renewed or something. So few tourists have come through there in recent years (read: none) that the Malian border guards had no idea what to do. They ended up turning to the page in our passports that the rebels in Cote d'Ivoire had written on and transcribing that onto the next page, changing the placenames. That is how we were granted safe passage from the border to Bamako, through completely safe territory!

Sierra Leone

So, after a couple hours of Mark and Steve being detained for a money changing mishap and Sam and Natalie being hounded during that interval by a crazy man named Barack Obama who wanted to give them some of his incredibly valuable diamonds and make them both his wives, we were in Sierra Leone. The only catch was we had no visas. Predictably, we all had a long, uncomfortable sit down with an immigration officer who we ended up giving a gift for a temporary stamp in our passports. We would have to proceed to immigration later to pay the full visa price under penalty of arrest. Having already been arrested enough for one day, we promised we would do so and then moved on. We were in.
We hung out in Freetown, another powerless capitol city, for about five days to get that straightened out. It was quite nice. While it was too dangerous to stray far form our hotel at night, there was no need. The street sellers had the world's best fried chicken. Sam had chicken every night while Mark ate his bean, hot dog, omelette sandwiches. Delicious! We also hit a really cool and surprisingly well run chimpanzee sanctuary in the hills above Freetown.











We finally got our visas and moved on to the point of the trip: the beach. We went down the peninsula to the town of Tokeh and found that the beach was completely deserted.
Just up the road was the touristy priced River no. 2 beach, also deserted. We stayed in the functioning fishing village near River no. 1 and were rewarded with better prices and great fresh seafood.

It was the life. We just hung out for days eating petite barracuda, crabs and beer, playing cards and taking walks along one of the nicest beaches on the planet. No complaints. Well, maybe a larger hole on the latrine would have been nice but...

After that we headed inland in search of monkeys. We found them at the Tiwai Island wildlife santuary in the middle of the Moa river. It was a cool little eco-tourist spot. We did a dawn walking safari and were rewarded by finding monkeys crashing through the forest canopy above our heads. Alas, we did not, however, spot the rare and elusive pygmy hippos which live around the island.



Afterwards, we were off deeper into the jungle on any and all manner of rediculous transport. We were headed through diamond country for the Guinean border again. This was a slightly unnerving tour through areas truely devastated by the war. Shells of buildings and towns left behind, amputee and war wounded housing complexes started by NGOs. We made it to the river border near dusk and had to not just bribe our way back into Guinea's but bribe our way out of Sierra Leone. Fabulous part of the world!


We crossed the forest region of Guinea and it was on to Cote d'Ivoire.

Guinea-Conakry

Ah, Guinea...what can we say? We were welcomed to the country by a nice woman in the airport wanting a bribe. Steve was singled out at customs. At this point in our travels this was a novel concept. In the latter stages of our trip we could look so confused and clueless that the briber would often become frustrated enough that they would allow us to pass without giving up any money, this, however, was Steve's first experience with bribery on the international level. He played the part quite convincingly since he really did not understand what she meant by "gift for me." It was funny because we ended up simply picking up the bags and walking away. As a girl we met at the Peace Corps house later that week said when she arrived from the airport (she was arriving from Moscow, where they know a thing or two about demanding a bribe), "that's not how you demand a bribe!" True.

There are many third rate dictatorships in the world but this one is particuarly creepy. Each evening the new president comes on t.v. in his red baret and fatigues looking remarkably like Chuck from the Riverbottom Nightmare Band complete with entourage of cronies (although Chuck is well known enough to Muppet fans that he need not where a nametag) and speaking with a similar frightening tone. This may be completely normal for the Guinea PCVs but for those of us from Mali, it was a bit unnerving. Granted, most people don't get to enjoy his nightly rants without a generator due to the fact that the country he is running has no power, including the capital. There are plenty of drugs and humans trafficked through his territory, so at least something is coursing through the country, if not electricity.


Natalie and Sam being sufficiently creeped out by his nightly speech:











We quickly decided that Conakry was not a place that we would like to hang out in too long, although the Peace Corps digs there were first rate with a sweet beach bar close by. We tried, unsucessfully, to get our visas for Sierra Leone straightened out. We also checked out the town a bit in the daylight hours.





We had been to the coast in Dakar but it was too cold and near Conakry was too dirty to swim. In fact, we had been warned against even touching the water unless we didn't mind contracting any flesh-eating diseases. We preferred to avoid that, if possible.






We needed to swim! So we headed out to the islands off the coast. It was pretty eerie on our way out there in our pirogue because there was a ship graveyard on the way out. Apparently, people pay to trash their ships there and the Guineans sink them just off shore. It made for a pretty cool boat ride. Finally, we had reached a beach where we could swim.

We decided we'd had enough subtle, or not so subtle, police and military intimidation and we headed for the border of Sierra Leone, sans visas. Steve and Mark ended up being arrested at the border trying to exchange money at the frontier but they were released a few hours later. No story there; on to Sierra Leone...

Senegal

After many months in Mali we managed to get out and see some of the surrounding countries. We did this because the hot season was upon us and the north Kayes region was heating up well over 100F everyday. There are only so many baths one can take to cool off before one goes crazy. We heard Dakar was cooler this time of year, so we jumped on a bus with our friends Natalie and Steve and headed for the coast!
We arrived at the border of Senegal a few hours later and then the next thing you know...

...we were sleeping on the bus at the border (instead of 100km back in comfortable beds). That was a treat! The next day we got sold off to a mini-bus, which the guy tried to tell us was better than a big bus (o.k.?) for the remaining 700km to the coast.


Did we mention that the road is mostly loose dust due to construction and, with all the windows open due to stifling heat, we were throughly caked in dust upon arrival. Thanks Gana Transport!

This is Steve and Natalie, by the way. They are pictured on our first and, besides the Air Brussells jet, best form of transport. We noticed that, no matter how good or bad the transport situation, it always seemed great during the first twenty minutes. Obviously, this photo was taken during the first twenty minutes of our trip from Kayes to Dakar. Their smiles were not quite as broad thirty five hours and forty minutes later upon arrival. They were just as dirty as us but showered first and avoided documentation of their filthiness. Fortunately, there would be plenty more chances...

What to say about Dakar? After so many months in Mali it seemed like we had been teleported (albeit, in the world's slowest and dirtiest teleporter) to another planet. It was fantastic. So modern, so clean, so electrified! All of a sudden there were great restaurants and cool little cafes to hang out in and galleries to go to, all hosted by our fantastic friend Brandon, a Fulbright scholar who swings through Kayes on occasion. Needless to say, we were overwhelmed. We'll spare you all the descriptions of our wonderment at things like trashcans and pavement and drinkable tap water. If you are a PCV you know what we are talking about, though.

A couple of highlights.

We made the quick skip across the bay to the Isle de Goree. This is a an old colonial outpost which has parleyed some cool architechture and some inflated claims of importance in the slave trade into World Heritage Site status. All in all, a really neat island which has been overrun by stray cats, hippies and tourists, in that order. Makes for an interesting day trip.


There were no cars at all on the island which made walking around and enjoying the slow pace of life really nice.




Picturesque, complete with cell tower palm trees.








The good thing about the upper part of the island being a hippy commune it is a big open air art market all the time. There were some fantastic paintings and masks on display.





The occasional surrealist found object as well...





Then it was off to an interesting (read: terrifying) visit to the Dakar zoo. Not unlike the Bamako Zoo,the patrons were allowed far too close to the animals but at least in Dakar the closeness of the animals was inadvertent.


Sometimes the cages were broken.









Sometimes they were simply left ajar.






The cage in the picture happened to be the cage of a rather large (six feet long!) monitor lizard. This was a bit disconcerting, as when we spotted it feeding on a carcass behind the pen! We were the only ones who noticed it, too. The zoo was filled hundreds of tasty little school children and the four of us. We were far from relaxed after the beast fled into the undergrowth, even less after we reported the escapee to the authorities (who seemed to be unphased, or at least well practiced, by this turn of events) and still less later when they sought us out to explain that it had been recaptured but would not allow us to see it until later in the day (we saw them blocking up holes in the walls as if to keep something in as we left!). Mark stopped short of holding small children in front of him as bait with which to distract the lizard but just barely...










Fortunately, we flew away to Guinea (in our last comfortable travel seats for weeks) later that same day, leaving the monster behind to feast on what it would.

Back from Vacation

We have returned safely from a rigorous lap of west africa. We will post some pictures from that trip soon. Just a note to let everyone know we are still safe and still at the height of fashion, as these matching his and hers "Barack Obama" sandals attest to...

A Word About the Queen

You'd be surprised how much of one's free time can be spent in the sweltering heat dreaming of the beads of condensation dripping down a PBR can (o.k., maybe Jackson Hole workers might not be surprised). At 115 degrees, the bars could be serving chilled donkey urine and it wouldn't be that bad. As the case is, its not that far off. There is only one home grown beer in Mali, Castel. This is the flagship of the Malian brewing industry. That is to say it is the entire Malian brewing industry. It will not be winning the Golden Boot at your neighborhood beer festival, needless to say.

Why fumble through a search for the right words in an attempt to describe the taste when the "Beer Manifesto" website has already summed it up so succinctly? Their review, in its entirety:

"The national beer, brewed in Bamako by Bramali, is Castel, a dark straw lager with grassy nose, porridgey, corn-like aroma, and some rotten cabbage that manages to remain unobtrusive."

Finally, someone has captured the essence of this nectar. Let's take a look at that beauty:


Looks tempting, does it not?

She is known as the "Queen of Beers," although the glory of her reign is greatly diminished, if it was ever glorious at all. The Queen is a fickle mistress who does not suffer a glutton lightly. She has been known to exact her revenge on her subjects the next day in the most offensive gastrointestinal fashion. Sometimes just two or three bottles can have a move grave effect than an entire night of downing pitchers at your local bowling alley!



Her ad campaign is absolutely fantastic. It appears that the idea is to send Castel table coverings to all the bars and hope that they use them instead of the competitor's (Flag beer) table coverings. The writings on these tables are what's great. Our favorite is "nothing succeeds like success." There is no way to refute the truth in this statement. Denying her logic is impossible, condordance the only option. Brilliant!

At any other time Castel would not be worthy of marinating your brats in. This, however, his is no ordinary time. It speaks volumes that one can hear a chorus of angels break into "Hallelujah" opening a bottle of one of the world's worst beers. It says that one lives in West Africa...
possibly as a Peace Corps volunteer.