Last week was our spring break and I went with Marge and Lizzie to Kayes, Mali. It is a small city about an hour inside the country. We were thinking about trying to get all the way to Bamako, the capital, but decided that with only a week off we wouldn't have enough time in the city to really make it worth while. It turns out that Lizzie's host dad is from Kayes and still has some family and friends in the city, which ended up being very lucky for us. We met his childhood friend Ibrahima and their family, along with their granddaughter, Adji, who is about our age and married to Cheikh, Lizzie's host dad's grandson.
We left Dakar Saturday morning, we got to the station at 7:30am and were told that there was a bus leaving at 8, so we bought tickets and waited. We boarded the bus around 10 and then sat for a while before driving across the street to switch buses and then sit some more and then go to the gas station and then finally leave the city around noon. The ride to Kaolack, the first larger city, was fine, although we learned very early on that the bus only had 2 windows on each side that actually opened, which was not at all good. But after leaving Kaolack it is about a 6 hour drive to Tambacounda, the last major town/city before hitting the Mali border and the road is absolutely awful. There are so many gigantic potholes that the bus had to drive like 10 miles an hour and spent a good deal of time driving in the sand along the side of the road because you could go faster than if you were actually on the road. We got to Tambacounda probably around 10 or 11 at night and stopped for dinner etc and then continued for a few hours to the border, which we discovered is not actually open when it is dark, so we slept on a sheet that some nice man gave us from about 5am-7am and then sat around for another few hours before we wre actually allowed to enter Mali. We ended up getting to Kayes around noon and tried to find a hotel that was recommended to us, but it was too expensive.
So we called Ibrahima, who sent Cheikh to get us, and we went to Ibrahima's and then decided to stay at the youth hostel we'd read about that was about $6 per night per person. We all took much much much needed showers before heading out to search for food. Cheikh came at night and took us to a pastery shop with AC, which was amazing and then we went to bed around 9 because we were all beat, but then woke up at 10 when Cheikh and Adji brought us a cooler with ice in it, which was extremely nice, it was absolutely great.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were all spent in similar fashions, so I won't go into detail about each day and just give you a summary of all of the things we did. We spent a lot more time in the ACed pastery shop when we were trying to find a tourist office that we were told about so we could figure out how to visit some waterfalls that are about 15km outside of the city. We never found the office and never got to the waterfall. We did however, go with Adji twice to the river, which is vrey shallow and we walked halfway across to little islands so that we could swim and bath in water that was a little cleaner than the water along the edge where there were just tons of people doing laundry and taking baths. We also spent a lot of time in the great market, it was a lot different from the markets in Dakar where there is a section for food, a section for fabric, a section for housewares etc, here they were all just all over the place. We all agreed that the fabric in Mali was a lot nicer and prettier than that in Senegal. We decided this was because it is all made in Mali and then they send the less pretty stuff to us and keep the good stuff for themselves. One night we went to the end of a dance competition, it was sad because we just got to hear them announce the winners, but it was still fun to see how excited everyone got. It was different neighborhoods in the city competing against eachother. We did get to see a little dancing though as we left the stadium, people were celebrating outside.
So we left bright and early Thursday morning, at 5am and figured this way we would avoid having to wait at the border for so long since we would get there once the sun was up. We thought the trip was going to be a peice of cake because the bus actually left on time and all of the windows opened, but this turned out to just be false. We did get through the first part of the border just fine, but then ended up waiting just inside senegal for about 3 or 4 hours because some of the people who had to declare things at customs decided to disappear for a while. Then on that wonderful road between Tambacounda and Kaolack our bus broke down for about another 3 hours and we overheard someone say that the company was going to send us a new bus from Dakar, which was about 6 or 7 hours away, so it was great that the bus got going again. However, at the next town we came to we got stopped at a police checkpoint, and the entire cargo on the bus was checked, which took another 2ish hours. To top it all off, I got kind of sick, and I'm not really sure why. I first pooped in a "bathroom" at the border when we were stuck there for 3 hours, although it was really a shower and I decided that I would just consider my shit punishment for the border police making us sit there for so long. It got subsequently worse as time went on, and I'm not sure if this has happened to anyone else, probably not any of you in cushy Europe, but I had the unique experience of PEEING OUT OF MY ASS! Literally my shit was the consistency of pee, it was pretty horrible, especially because once in a while I would feel like I had to barf instead and couldn't decide which would make me feel better. The guy sitting next to me on the bus also almost got into a fight with another guy who said he was really sitting in that seat and refused to move. There were also 2 Nigerian missionaries on the bus on their way to Gambia and spent a lot of time trying to convert us, all the while I just sort of want to die. It was horrible in the best way possible.
We got back to Dakar around 6:30am on Friday, which was Senegalese Independence day, and saw some of the preparations for the parade as we taxied back to our houses, but then fell asleep and didn't even get to watch it on tv. We were all disappointed to learn upon waking up that the fireworks were the night of the 3rd...
All in all it was a lot of fun, and I was glad we could all laugh about the situations we got ourselves into, and that none of us died from the heat, and that Mali has the best mangos ever!
Spring Break themes:
1. I feel drunk, but really I'm just hot.
2. Even the wind is hot!
3. Take me to the river, uhn uhn uhn, throw me in the water!
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