Hitchhiking and Hippos

Except no hippos. Damn!

So I finished my training, and then went through training about starting a tree nursery.  This was interesting for me, but not really for blog readers.  So on to more interesting things.

After training I made my way to Manantali.  I was fairly sick of paying for crappy Malian transport, and dealing with their sheisty employees... So a friend and I decided to hitchhike.  Brilliant! Everything fell into place just about perfectly, though the adventure did involve LOTS of walking in the heat and humidity.

We left Bamako in the afternoon and took sotrama to a little town called Kati. A sotrama is an old van that has been gutted and fitted with some wooden benches.  The sides have been creatively cut up to provide windows, the tops properly reinforced to so all manner of shit can be strapped to the top, and usually the back doors are tied shut.  The advantage of these is they are cheap! Usually 100 to 500 cfa (20 cents to a dollar) to go a pretty good distances, and you don't have to haggle like with a taxi, and there are generally enough people on that the operators don't try to rip you off.  The bummer is that they are crowded and hot.  Usually they fit 20 to 25 people in the back depending how many kids there are.  They go on a fixed line like a bus, so you just ask people where the line is in order to go to, say Kati for example, you go there and yell "Kati!!" at every passing sotroma until one going to Kati stops.    We were told by another volunteer to go under a bridge at what turned out to be a very busy and harrowing intersection, and eventually flagged one down.  I've taken them many times, but I still think they operate in a very strange way at least seen through the eyes of me, an outsider.  There is a driver...who drives, and a guy that 'sits' in the back with the passengers and collects fares and makes sure the number of people in the back does not exceed the capacity which is painted in a creative manner on the side of the van.  By sits I mean this guy dangles out of the open side door and yells the destination to any unlucky pedestrian who happens to be in earshot.  If they show a sign that they want to go this guy slams on the top or side of the van until the driver notices and pulls over or until everyone has a bigger headache than the one they started with from all the exhaust.  As you can imagine, they generally overshoot most of their clients by a fair amount so they have to hustle to get in.  Oh, and the guy who hangs out the side always jumps off before the van stops, and waits for the van to start up so they have to run and jump on while the van is moving.  This is for fun...obviously.  We made it to the big traffic jam that is always around the toll booth at Kati.  We pulled off towards the end of the line, with plans of continuing until the end.  They were sitting waiting to fill the rest of the van, and I decided to get out and wander...and buy bread.  I randomly decided to flag down the first car  I spotted.  Brilliant! I asked where he was going he said Kita, and that's where I was headed, and he said I could go with him.  So I ran and grabbed my friend and our bags and jumped into his Land Cruiser.  He is a veterinarian who apparently also dabbles tree planting and hotel management.  The best part is that he and his associate were stoked to have us aboard, were very nice, and had AIR CONDITIONING!!! We followed a big truck he had hired with a bunch of trees in it so it wasn't as fast as it could have been, but still faster than a bus.  It was evening when we got to Kita and he said the road to Manantali would be pretty empty so he put us up in his hotel for the night... FOR FREE! It was awesome, and super nice of him.  There is a peace corps house in Kita, but unless Kita is your "regional capital" you have to pay 5,000 cfa a night to stay.
The next morning (July 3rd) we walked out of Kita...and walked, and walked.  Maybe for two or three hours before a guy picked us up.  There were very few cars along the way, and the ones that pulled off before that either were turning off soon, or wanted money.  This guy took us to the turn off to Manantali.
Now for the long part of the day.  The road to Manantali is 104 kilometers of really, really not maintained dirt road, and there are very, very few cars on the road. We filled our water bottles at the pump at the intersection and started walking.  It was now approaching noon-ish.  We walked for about an hour or so when some construction workers picked us up in their beat up pickup that was somehow still running, and took us about 15 km.  Then more walking. I don't know how long, but it was long.  Eventually a bush taxi (another converted van) came by that was filled with bags of rice and other goods instead of people.  We haggled a ride to a town 40 km from Manantali for 1000 cfa each.  After I finally fell asleep on a bag of rice we got a flat.  The passenger rear wheel blew, so they took the driver front wheel off and put it on the back, and put the mostly destroyed spare on the front as there was less weight in the front.  I started drifting off again, and they broke the rear axle or at least the seal blew.  They took out their bag of spare parts complete with bearings covered in sand and other equally useful things, and went to work.  My friend and I decided it was time for lunch.  Part way through lunch another bush taxi came by that just happened to have been chartered by the other Peace Corps volunteers from Bamako.  They had left Bamako at 6 am.  Two of the volunteers...volunteered to ride on the roof (a place coveted by me, but beggars can't be choosers) and we crammed in the back.  A few hours later we made it to Manantali.

Manantali is a peculiar area.  There is a huge dam that you see as you start down the treacherous road to the town.  This dam provides the power for much of Mali as well as Senegal and Mauritania? maybe.   At the base of the dam is a sort of traditional village thing, and a few km down the road is the "city" where all the dam workers live.  This little city has paved roads, flushing toilets, and has none of the usual heaps of burning trash everywhere.  The Peace Corps house is in the city right on the banks of the river there.  This is an "unofficial" peace corps house which means that it doesn't get the same funding, and cleaning crew, but also no administration keeping track of those who stay there and what goes on which bodes well for those people who are looking to celebrate with the things that are not entirely Peace Corps "approved" if you will.  There were a lot of people there, so they also rented another house that you could stay in for a small fee.  I chose to do this one night as the couch in that house was much cozier than sleeping outside in my little bug hut.  I was able to swim in the river, float down in tubes, and I even saw some monkeys including one with a baby clinging to the under belly! though unfortunately no hippos.  We had hamburgers and fireworks on the Fourth of July which was awesome!! And the river is so, so beautiful there, and the feel of the little "city" is very un-Malian, so it felt like a real vacation, like I was at a campground in Florida or something.

I left on the 6th after spending one last day relaxing next to the river.  My friend and I picked up another friend for the hitch to Kita.  We started walking early, and walked once again for a few hours.  Eventually a truck stopped and only wanted a little money so we hopped aboard.  This was a large U-Haul sized truck, that had "Poisson" written on the side, which for those of you who don't know is the French word for fish.  We climbed into the back, and were immediately blasted by the smell of old fish.  Luckily, they were hauling all sorts of other things at this point such as peanuts, motorcycles and furniture, but oh man, that smell was gnarly!!  Thankfully, they left one of the doors open so we didn't suffocate, and we were rewarded a 3 hour dust shower (from all the dust blowing in off the truck).  Luckily, after 3 hours it started raining which made the road even sweeter, but less dusty.  By the time we rolled into Kita after 6 hours in the back of the fish truck, we looked like hell.  The driver decided he would not take our money after all.  Oh yes, and starting that morning I was struck with a nice case of diarrhea which I gulped drugs to counterattack, and was able to stave off any major disasters while in the back of the truck.  I managed to procure a free night at the house in Kita by using some vague wording with a higher up.  It was actually all legitimate, but sometimes finer details are best left out of some conversations.
The next morning I gulped some more anti-diarrhea drugs and hit the road again.  More walking with one of the friends, the other stayed in Kita.  Eventually we were picked up by an accountant with a nice car with A/C and made it Bamako in the late afternoon.  We grabbed some dinner, I arranged to have some of my stuff sent to Sikasso on a the full Peace Corps transport (it can only seat 8, but you can put all sorts of baggage on top in classic Malian style).  Then we hit the road again.  It took us 3 sotramas to get out of Bamako on the road to Sikasso, and by this time it was rather dark.  Eventually, a car full of young guys picked us up and took us to the nearest toll booth where they told the workers there where we were trying to go, and we had to clarify and say for free... Just to be a little more ridiculous.  After half an hour or so a bus came by and the workers convinced them to let us ride in the aisle for free to Bougouni (which was the final destination for my friend, and as it turned out for me).  The bus's brakes were not good, every time the driver used them, the entire bus smelled like burning brakes...not a good sign.  We got into Bougouni a little after 11pm and my friend went towards the unofficial Bougouni PC house.  I tried convincing the bus to let me ride on to Sikasso for free...on the roof.  They declined.  So the bus left and I started walking.  Around midnight I reached the edge of Bougouni, and stood at the edge of the end of the street lights and peered into the darkness.  I sat there for 20 minutes or so debating what to do: I could either keep walking and probably not get picked up and sleep in the bush in my fairly uncomfortable mosquito net or call my friend and sleep in the Bougouni house in a bed. Exactly 0 cars passed me so I called my friend, and got directions to the Bougouni house.  The next morning (today the 8th) I caught a quick ride to the edge of Bougouni, then another to the next toll station, then quickly caught another in an air conditioned Land Cruiser all the way to Sikasso.  We had a lengthly conversation about religion, and by that I mean he told me about Islam and tried to convert me.  Since my language isn't great I understood about a 20th of it, but I got the main points: Allah loves me, and Jesus was a nice guy, but not the son of god.  We listened to people chanting the Koran the whole way, but the guy gave me some delicious pain au chocolat (a chocolat croissant), some sesame crackers, a coke, and a ride so no complaints.  He was very happy that allah put me in his car and was stoked about what a good muslim I was going to be.  He also told me that my beard is handsome, so he goes into my good book for sure.

I was going to head to site today, but ended up helping another volunteer work on her bike (by that I mean diagnose the problem and then break it a little more in an attempt to fix something that just needed a new part in the first place).  So here I am, writing an extremely lengthly blog post that will surely get me flogged if anyone in PC admin reads it.  So, if you are in PC admin then this entire thing is fictional.  I'll post again another day.  I'll for sure head back to site tomorrow, though I wish my tummy would calm down some.