Gas stations in Benin are faaaancy!

Gas station in Mali:

Gas station in Benin:

Move over Franzia, you have a new competitor for class...

We partied like it's 1999 (e.g. we still aren't legal)

They say it’s better to get malaria when you are still in Africa than when you return home.  The doctors can easily diagnose it and the cure is readily available for less than $10.  After the three-day course of Coartem treatment (and some pampering in a nice-ish hotel), Juan is almost as good as new.

Next up: getting to Burkina Faso.  After waiting all day at a bus station in Sevaré, we eventually found a beat-up Italian bus rescued from the 1970s to take us to Koutiala.  We had some debate over whether to go via this border town to Burkina Faso, simply because there were reports of bad roads and bandits along all three land entries from Mali…  Not reassuring.  Still, we were free from African Trails!  Arriving well into nighttime we were grateful for the taxi man who knew our hotel and only charged us double the fair price ($2 instead of $1).  Bon année, taxi dude.

As an aside, I’m firmly in the habit of saying I’m from Mexico.  Not only does this seem to make people friendlier and elicit surprise and wonder but it usually makes them assume I’ve got less money to throw around.  It’s only once that an electrician who studied Spanish ages ago asked me to speak with him (he understood none of it) and another time a guy quizzed me about the 1986 Mexico World Cup (I just nodded enthusiastically and said Mexico was tres super).  So when we rolled into Hotel La Chaumiere and introduced our Mexican selves to the proprietor, he immediately responded with a wide grin that his name was Besame.   Whether that was a reference to the song, Besame Mucho, or a sly request for Tia to kiss him we’ll never know. 

After showering off the dirt caked into our skin from the day’s travel, trying to establish with the hotel owner if there would be any dancing or singing that evening (he replied no to both), we camped out under our mosquito net to watch the Russell Crowe remake of Robin Hood.  The only good thing about that movie is that, because of its length, we actually stayed awake past midnight to ring in 2011.  Rockstars.

Thank you, Africa, for your many gifts

There was a computer game I used to play back on the Commodore 64 called Heart of Africa.  You played this pixellated adventurer who wandered across the entire continent through desert, oasis towns, tribal villages, and rain forests in search of a Pharaoh’s tomb, keeping a journal along the way of events that happened to you.  If you wandered too far from cities you inevitably died (yet still somehow recorded this fact in your journal).  And not your run-of-the-mill sort of death either; it had to be something exotic and horrible.  Starvation, eaten by a lion, jungle fever, army ants were all ways to kick the bucket.  Understandably, it led me to have a dire view of the African continent.

Now that I’m saddled with malaria for the second time in a couple of weeks I’m beginning to understand that it was all true: there are some truly unpleasant things you can catch here.  Seriously, take a second to read about this disease and it will scare the crap out of you; little six-cell parasites are camped in your liver and gobbling up your blood!  Your whole body aches—it hurts to breathe, laugh, or burp.  You burn with fever and feel cold despite being in the middle of a desert.  You’re too tired to do anything except sweat in bed under a mosquito net.  Lonely Planet says that 10% of people who contract the disease die from it and, despite realizing that these are probably people who don’t have access to decent medical care, I’m quietly convinced that I will have a new mutated version and they’ll airlift me back to the States where the doctor (who is Rene Russo) tells me from behind a plastic wall that there’s nothing she can do. 

Anyway, we’ve had to separate from the African Trails tour to spend some time at a hospital in Sevare and have packed up all our belongings.  The truck is going to spend a whopping two days in Burkina Faso and then drive straight down to the Ghanan coast to chill on beaches for two weeks.  Wondering again why we’ve paid these jokers so much money to show us “real” Africa, there’s a fair chance that we won’t even bother to catch up with them again.

Goodbye truck.  Oh, how we'll miss you.

Award for Best Thing to Say to Recovering Malaria Patient goes to Sherry from Alaska: “If there were a 7-11 here I would buy you a Slushee of your choice.”

You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool

After an uneventful two-day trip up the Niger river from Djenné to Mopti, we made final arrangements in Bandiagara for a trek to Dogon country.

Isolated from the world until the mid 20^th century, the Dogon people are considered to be one of the best preserved African cultures.  They’ve built picturesque villages of mud houses alongside a cliff face and tours lead you down the escarpment, from village to village, along sandy footpaths and past irrigated onion paddies.  Over three days, we slept on auberge roofs that catered to Westerners (i.e. provided cold beer) and took tours through the various villages.  Each time we would approach a village, children would run out to greet us yelling, “Ça va!  Ça va!” and take hold of our hands.  At first it all seemed pretty innocent and only uncomfortable when one of them hanging on my arm happened not to be wearing any clothes, but then we realized that a few were asking us for a petit cadeau (small gift), a bonbon (candy), a bouteille (water bottle), or a chemise (shirt).  We eventually decided that the cuteness did not outweigh the kid germs plus harassment so we tried to keep our hands otherwise occupied after that (Tia was much better at it than me).

The hike wouldn’t have been hard if it weren’t for the parching heat.  People were spread out over a kilometer between the self-dubbed “hard core” hikers at the front and the others who were just happy to keep up with the donkey cart (or ride it).  I stuck with the impassive guide hoping that if I asked enough questions he might actually start describing some of the surroundings.  Every time he passed anyone in a village he’d say, Po, u say yo (“hi, how are you?” in Dogon), which kicked off a succession of similar greetings, all ending in say yo and often chanted in unison if more than two people were involved, which roughly asked after your father, your mother, your family, your village, and so on. Proud to say that after a few tries I managed to get people to go through two or three rounds with me, while smiling broadly at my ineptitude.

Best accomplishment was buying a cool Dogon shutter that this super nice guy sold to me at a bargain price of 8,500 CFA ($17). He was the only seller who didn’t badger or harass and nodded politely when I said I’d consider buying later (after the crowd of hawkers cleared). Once we closed the deal I said, Vous ette tres juste avec moi et vous ette tres joli, which aside from saying he was very fair with me I also apparently said he was very nice-looking…  Hope he didn’t get the wrong idea giving me that discount.

Sean, the young Brit, got yelled at (and almost chased) by these women for taking a picture of them grinding millet.  Kola nut to the rescue. 

Stop stealing my, um, white-ness?

On a small island cradled by the Niger, sits the city of Djenné, considered one of the most important cities in Muslim academia with people traveling from throughout the Islamic world to live and study here.  After taking a barge across the Niger and crossing a precarious-looking mud bridge, our truck lumbered into the city, stirring up a cocoa-colored dust and scarcely squeezing past a number of the multi-story, mud buildings.  We found our way to the roof of Le Campement and from there had a clear view of women bathing themselves with water pails, topless.  Tick the box on another sight seen…  Amy told us about a Nigerian writer who caustically wrote that every Western guide book of any African country must include a photo of women with bare breasts.  While he was clearly pointing to a Western tendency to sensationalize and stereotype an entire continent of varied peoples, there’s no doubt it still catches you by surprise and suddenly reminds you of something important you forgot somewhere else.   

The next day the whole group took tours through the city, starting with the highlight of the region: the Djenné mosque.  As the largest mud building in the world, it’s impressive to behold.  It needs to have additional layers spread on it every year to avoid melting into the ground.  From the outside (entrance forbidden to non-Muslims) our guide described hundreds of pillars in the main foyer supporting the roof.  Each pillar represents a distinct lesson for a person studying Islam and the last pillar’s meaning is known to only a privileged few.  Later, we passed by the grave of the virgin girl buried alive as a sacrifice to bring good fortune to the city on its founding in the 11^th century.   Her family, we’re told, has reaped a tithe from every harvest since.  Sounds like it worked out for everyone except the girl…

The city streets surrounding the mosque were filled with Islamic schools and children writing Arabic on clay tablets, some of whom would run up and grab our hands and then run away laughing.  One of our tour guides confessed that he used to do the same to white tourists when he was little because he and his friends believed that it would make them turn whiter.  To which Reena, the British-Indian eye doctor, later remarked, “Then why are they touching me?” 

Lastly we wound through the Djenné market, boasted as one of Africa’s largest.  Huge piles of dried fish didn’t entice us to take our wallets out, but we did buy some scarlet and white colored kola nuts.  They’re naturally caffeinated (one of the original ingredients in Coca Cola) and have been used as currency throughout the region for centuries, particularly in the Dogon country where they are sometimes preferred over money.  Our guide was happy to receive one as a gift at the end of the tour and happily chewed on it with the few teeth he had left.  Probably better than giving him a Coke.

Joyful reunion...

Before rejoining the tour in Bamako, Mali we stocked up on duty-free candy and wine in anticipation of lots of self-medicating.  Upon rejoining we soon realized that the one thing we agreed with Farron before leaving (i.e. which visa he would do first in Bamako) had changed.  So within ten minutes of our arrival we had to make independent plans to go to the Ghanian embassy.  Gosh, it’s great to be back…

Meanwhile, Max, who had not been feeling well for the last days in Dakar, went immediately to a nearby clinic where he tested positive for a fairly severe case of malaria and was immediately hospitalized.  Since Africa can make a hypochondriac out of anyone, we began to feel inexplicably tired and achy and, after some debate, decided to assuage our paranoia and get ourselves checked out as well.  Bet you can guess the result.  Positive.  Well, mild case for me actually.  Tia (despite having stronger symptoms) turned out to be negative but the doctor believed that our malaria pills might have skewed the test.  So we’re off of alcohol for three days (why now?) and on to our new friend, Coartem.

That didn’t stop us from cruising around Bamako, though!  Motorbikes whizzed by like swarms of bees and we often felt we’d plunge into the Niger if we weren’t careful.  We paid a visit to the National Museum for a cruise among Malian artifacts, spent a night out dancing at a Russian karaoke bar where we met a particularly racist Texan, saw Tomani Diabeté (still just as good the second time) and his younger brother at Le Diplomat and haggled with a Malian woman in the frenetic vegetable market where even our poor French was of no use and we were reduced to bartering for carrots and onions using hand signals.