Bus trip to Bandiagara

Just got back from Mali. I was kicking myself for not bringing a journal or something to write in while I was gone- I guess I didn’t consider that I would have much down-time while I was in Dogon. However, I now know that the intense afternoon heat necessitates a long after-lunch break--- a time when most of the other ladies wrote and thought. I sat and stared, read the French dictionary, and slept. Walked a bit around the villages and crawled around on big rocks. It was only a 9 day trip, but it felt like months while we were there.


We left around 6 am last Friday (the 6th?) taking taxis to the parking lot of the stadium (aka bus station) where we waited and waited, forked over the CFA 22,500 ($45) for the trip to Bamako. The ride was supposed to take 2 days: 1 day to the Senegal-Mali border, and 1 day to the capital of Mali. I was gloating over my Spartan pack: my smaller bike-bag from Portland filled with good camping/bus food (thanks to my mother and her great care-package), Steripen, French dictionary, Mali guide book, bottle of bronner’s soap, and an extra pair of flip-flops (in the event that my good pair would blow-out while hiking) and 2 small dresses that I had made here in Dakar. Climbed on the bus and took off just after day break.

Eastern Senegal is awesome in the original sense of the word, and a little sad. I soon realized that I could anticipate a village or town by the presence of trash along the roadway and stuck in shrubs, mainly black plastic bags that are given with nearly every purchase. Very flat, dry. Beautiful old baobabs, 1000+ years old, often leafless. Black plastic tumbleweeds, water bottles, half pairs of shoes, rags. Huge fields of trash with the occasional miser digging for something useful, hunched over in the hot sun. Herds of goats and cattle eating cardboard and plastic.

In Koalack the bus stopped to drop off and pick up, and the already-full bus added about 10 more passengers. The new passengers sat on water jugs in the isles, paying less for their seat-less trip. We sighed heavily, annoyed that our 2 day trip would be so cramped.

English is as good as a secret language here! Walking through busy market streets, we speak freely about the vendors and our own lives, no one understanding but us. We left Kaolack complaining about our water-jug neighbor, but moved onto normal conversations that young women might have: boyfriends and lovers, mistakes, school, the future. Several hours in to the trip our seat-less neighbor looked down and alerted Julia, “You’ve dropped your water bottle.” In English. I was embarrassed at our behavior and tried to act nonchalant. We never apologized nor asked what he might have heard… Just moved on.
We all introduced ourselves. His name was Aliou and he was traveling with his childhood friend, Omar, from The Gambia (where they speak English, doh!) to Libya where an older brother had promised jobs. We became good friends and worked as translators for each other, as they didn’t speak any French and we didn’t speak any Wolof.

The highway system in Senegal doesn’t really exist. It once did, apparently, but now the roads are a network of giant potholes and in many parts, simply gravel. I couldn’t help but sing to myself, “the wheels on the bus go off and on, off and on…” We stopped very often to fix flats, repair engine parts, bathroom breaks, passenger exchange.

Towards evening that Friday the bus broke down in a small village about 40 km west of the Mali-Senegal border. We were told it would be an hour or two until it was fixed. Four hours later they said the same thing, 10 hours later the same thing again… Around 2 in the morning most folks gave up and started looking for places to sleep in the village. Some people offered their front porches, floors. The bus driver didn’t want us to go far in case he actually fixed the bus in the night. I slept in a crouching position on the bus while the others slept on someone’s porch.
17 hours later, the bus was fixed and we were off again.

We didn’t reach the Malian border until 6 o’clock the next day. The border patrol did a quick survey of who was on the bus and announced they were ‘closed’ for the evening. More than likely, this was a result of seeing all of the white folks on the bus (who could surely afford a little grease for the engine). After an hour or two of the bus driver and our Gambian friends arguing over the situation, we agreed that everyone on the bus could pay CFA 1,000 each to help the kind patrolmen allow us through the border. I’m not sure if I saw any of the Africans fork over any money, but we did. We were more annoyed that it took several hours to come to this agreement than the actual cost of the bribe, which equated to about $2 per person.

We drove through the night into Mali. I awoke just before dawn to see the sun rising over the beautiful, rolling Malian mountains. Everyone was sleeping on the bus. Sheep and cattle were grazing in the distance fields. We passed many small mud-hut villages with naked babies running around and tall, thin women carrying buckets and baskets of food on their heads to market. At that moment, I though that southwest Mali was the most beautiful country in the world.

We drove another day and got into Bamako in the early evening. Gave a too-quick goodbye to Aliou and Omar, regretted that we couldn’t continue traveling together. Within a couple hours we had found another bus that would take us to Bandiagara- the base camp for most folks hiking Dogon territory. At the last minute 2 Malian women stole my and leah- beth’s seats, removing our bags with which we had reserved our places (standard practice), forcing us to sit in the very back of the bus, above the engine and where all the dust settles. We argued and yelled, almost started a fight with 2 aggressive African women who argued ‘that they paid the same price as us’ for the seats and deserved to sit wherever they wanted. I regretted I didn’t know how to say, “fucking thieving fat bitches!” in French, and promised myself to look it up in my dictionary ASAP.
For some reason, the bus stopped every ten minutes to pick up passengers, exchange cargo. It was extremely slow moving and very frustrating. It was 110 degrees in the back of the bus, smelly, and the gentlement sitting by the door refused to leave it open because ‘the cool air makes you sick’ (fucking Africans and their health superstitions!). There was no ventilation, let alone air conditioning, and the fumes from the engine started making me Leah Beth and I feel nauseous. I don’t think I can properly convey how bad this situation was. I couldn’t put my feet on the ground because the engine block was directly below me, the floor was melting the soles of my shoes. I couldn’t put my bag down there because the heat would ruin my electronics. I sat with my knees to my chest, balancing my bag in front of me. I debating my choices: stay on the bus and throw up or pass out from over-heating and engine exhaust or get off the bus in the middle of rural Mali and hope to find a ride in the morning. In our sleepless delirium, running out of water, aching to open a window or door for fresh air, Leah Beth and I thought we might actually die on that bus. I begged the other girls to let us all get off and camp on the side of the road and flag a ride in the morning, but they thought it would be better to just stay on the bus. Somehow I eventually fell asleep with my head in my lap and woke up soaking in my own sweat in the morning.
We finally got to Mopti, Mali sometime on Monday. Exchanged buses again, this time for a mini-bus with a dozen sheep on the roof-rack. A 2.5 hour car ride later (and many sheep drop-offs), we were in Bandiagara. Looked down at our feet, black from soot and dust, ankles swollen from lack of movement. We took photos of our ‘cankles’ and flagged a ride for a hotel.
We stayed at a youth hostel at the end of town for CFA 3,000/ per person. Took long, cold showers and washed our clothes. I was positively elated. Propped my feet up to help my swollen feet and ordered a large beer. We had lost a day of hiking due to bus break down, but we had made it to Bandiagara and our guide was meeting us that evening to discuss logistics and price for hiking. We all fell asleep giggling.