Bamako, Mali... The Hard Way (overland)

I am finally here in Bamako, Mali... after 50 + HOURS ON AND OFF A BUS FROM DAKAR!!!

My goodness, let me elaborate on the experience...
I arrive at the Gare Routiere Pompiers bus terminal at 1600 (at the ticket guy's suggestion) for a 1900 departure. Why 3 hours you may say, well let me explain... So in the meantime the bus was supposed to be loaded, passengers stake claim to their seats, and all can enjoy the ever-warming and dust-filled afternoons. What happened were random rants from the guys loading luggage, sniping people for a $10 baggage fee that was not even mentioned when I bought the $50 ticket (remember that $50, I'll explain later). Once I (mistakenly) claimed a seat by a window in the middle of the bus, I got to wait not 3 hours, but oh yes 4+ hours as time clicked by before we ultimately rolled out of the bus station after 2000. That extra hour or so meant I got to enjoy another couple of trips to one of the most disgusting bathrooms I've been in, and that includes those in Turkey and Uzbekistan... :) That said it was time for the road trip!

But wait I forgot to mention again how bad Dakar's roads and traffic are; so that said we ultimately entered the open road after 2+ hours negotiating horrid traffic and skanky roads...

By this time it's almost 2300 and I am realizing the middle seat and the woman I was sitting next to caused my legs much consternation, and me and my 6' frame are squirming between positions of leg-numbing discomfort to simply an awkward positioning. This becomes more evident later... Once we are on the road we stop periodically for fuel and provisioning, and the usual jovial chatter in Wolof and French starts to subside as we prepare for our FIRST night enroute... I get to spend the next 7 or so hours in a strange delirium of sleep, squirm, wake, stop for a break, and repeat...

Once I woke up we were well clear of Senegal's urban areas, and the African landscape you see in National Geographic filled my field of view as the sunrise welcomed us on the road... Endless views of the African Sahel, thousands of Baobob trees, random beautiful birds, herds of goats and occasionally cows, etc. On a side note, the thing I started noticing is the role that plastics play in Africa; they are discarded much like the normally fast decomposing and bio-friendly products their cultures were accustomed to using since time began... well what that means is that once you approach most villages, towns, and cities, you immediately notice a prodigious amount of trash littering the streets and scattered all over (plastic bags that purified water is sold in, soda bottles, you name it, anything plastic or for that matter any trash it seems...) On the road you alternate between the open, raw and wild landscape of movies and magazines to the modern-day phenomenon of waste disposal in rural "developing" nations... As the trip progressed I noticed this in almost every town, village, and most importantly the cities... enough of that thought, though, on to the rest of the trip.

We were making respectable time as we approached the Senegal border, around mid-day on day #2 (about 18 hours into the trip). Then, we hit our first road checkpoint/gendarme station...

I won't explain each of the checkpoints but summarize in this paragraph... it goes something like this. You approach the border, stop and turn off the bus. All the passengers disembard, and passports and vaccination records are collected. Then you wait in the stifling 40+ degree eastern Senegal/western Mali heat, in the shade if you are lucky, until the gaggle forms to collect your paperwork. Depending on your passport and how the gendarme is feeling, IDEALLY you collect your passport, get on the bus, and you're on your way. Well, the way it really works is the gendarme agent looks at your passport, asseses your level of wealth, and then promply and assertively 'taxes' you to pay him to get through the checkpoint; this 'tax' is called douala in local terminology; I call it corrupt and tax without any representation whatsoever. In my case being the only American passport on board, I was demanded to pay anything from 5000 to 10,000 CFA PER CHECKPOINT, which is roughly 9-18 US dollars. Next the 3 Nigerians had to pay as much as 2000 to 5000 CFA, and most everyone else from Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mali, or Burkina Faso paid 1000-2000 CFA. If you challenge or cannot pay the gendarme, your passport goes promptly to the bottom of the pile, you remain in the ever growing gaggle to get your passport and documents back. Most people paid what they could, were helped by others if they could not pay; I refused to pay. The Nigerians could not pay, as they were really short on money. What this means is that this ordeal goes on if you are lucky for only 30 minutes, but if you are not lucky this goes on for 2-3 hours, PER CHECKPOINT... combine that with gas and rest stops, and you get the picture for how the trip is going.

The second night we stop in Kayes, Mali; I think we are stopping for the routine 2-3 hours and a driver switch. Well, the driver and road crew break out cots and go to sleep just outside the bus, sleeping under the Malian stars. The passengers disperse to who knows where, and with my tent and "camping" gear stowed securely on top of the bus, I sleep 5 hours between a wooden bench and back on the bus seats in around 30C weather... that was the SECOND NIGHT!

By this point my when we are driving my legs are telling me I should have chosen a spot on the bus where I could stand occasionally without hitting the luggage rack above me, and my head is telling me that it's hot, it's the desert, and I'm getting dehydrated much faster than normal so I have to stay on top of my water intake... Then we hit proverbial rock bottom...

After one provision stop I asked one of the few english-speaking passengers about how much time we had to Bamako. It was 1200 or so, he estimated 2100... wow, 9 more hours... by map it didn't seem like that long based on the decent time we make when not bogged down at the gendarme stations. Then the man said the road from here to Bamako "is bad". Hmm, okay, we'll see then... Then I know what he meant, FOR THE NEXT 7 HOURS!!!

The road was the kind of dirt road to take when you are driving in the woods, dusty and textured like a washboard... the exception being that this road was like this for OVER 80-90 MILES OR SO (100+ KILOMETERS) . First off the bus was barely serviceable for the road, but after about 6 breakdowns between villages (and thus water and food provisions) sometimes spaced 1.5 hours apart, you feel really isolated, comforted by the fact that there is plenty of eastward/westward traffic hazarding the only road to Bamako, Mali from the western part of Mali. Keep in mind April is the hottest month of the year prior to the rainy season that floods the Niger river and provides much needed rainfall to the very dry country, especially the Sahara region which is just north of the Malian Sahel... so each breakdown we would disembark to enjoy the 40 - 42 C heat during the day, only to enjoy the "cool" 30-35 C breeze once the sun went down... our last breakdown kept us stationary for 2.5 hours or so before I could tell that the very patient Africans were starting to get antsy, all this about 36 hours into the journey... and at this point there is still another 40 km of road like this, which shakes the bus so much that things occasionally fall from the luggage rack, but most importantly shakes the chassy of the bus so much that the shocks and struts, various enine parts, and exterior panels come loose. Also, I forgot to mention that so much luggage was loaded on the bus in typical local fashion, that the roof of the bus sagged such that it split the paneling above our heads and looked as though the ceiling could cave in; that happened within our first hour on the road!

Once we cleared that last breakdown, all sights were set on the bus surviving the road for the next 40 km (2 hours) before the next village with provisions and the road becoming concrete again... This was the start of the third night of the trip...

Once we arrived at that village it's prodigiously littered streets were like an oasis of sorts, with everybody hitting the local merchants for much needed food and drink. The road smoothed out again to concrete, and we just had to complete the 2+ hour trip to Bamako, with the odd rest stop/road checkpoint to contend with...

All told it took us over 50 hours (2000 Saturday to 0200 Tuesday) to travel from Dakar, Senegal to Mali. Economically speaking, that's a value of about $1.00 an hour, which is about the quality I got. Alternatively, I could have spent the $350USD (about an hour) to fly from Dakar to Bamako like my new American friends chose to do, but I chose to go overland the cheap and local way...

Would I do it again... ??? We'll see how I feel and how the travel budget is doing when I double back from Ghana to make my way back to Dakar at the end of June...

I do know that Ghana, as I'm discovering, is super-cheap, as is Mali, so that is very good. My impressions of Dakar were not the most favorable, but I am refreshed and rested somewhat, and initially impressed by my first sentient and lucid day in Bamako. :) I will probably rest up here, get my visa for Burkina Faso, visit the famous Dogon country around Mopti, then go overland enroute via a week in Burkina Faso for about one month in Ghana... For all the pain we experienced on that bus ride, I know that years from now I will look back and laugh as I recount to some other young traveler about life traveling overland through French-speaking West Africa!!!

:)

Once I get the photos prepared, I will post-edit them to this post, or just create a new post to supplement this one...

Enjoy,

Living the dream,
Chris