wish you were here

Your views of a place, your perspective of life in a place are often determined by where you are coming from. In a sense your point of arrival is often shaped by your point of departure.

Hear! Hear!

In this case, our point of departure was Gao, in Mali. This was one of those dusty, hot Sahelian towns. The streets were lined with high walls that appeared unfriendly, they appeared to shut the world and the heat out. We traipsed up and down those streets at midday in an attempt to find a bus that was leaving within the next 24 hrs. No one walks outside at midday in this part of the world. The streets were quiet, everyone was escaping the midday heat, reposing behind those high walls. The town had a frontier-town feel. This may have something to do with the Taureg rebellion and spates of banditry during the 1990’s. As foreigners we were expected to register with the police upon arrival. We thought this may have been an attempt at a bribe, but in fact, this was a genuine security procedure.

Our point of arrival was Niamey, the capital of Niger.

So whilst I was sitting on that human-livestock carrying truck, from Gao to Niamey I was thinking to myself - Why are rural and nomadic people fixing up a corrugated and/or straw lean to structures on the outskirts of every town and or city we pass? I think it has something to do with choice.

The city provides the city dweller with choices! The peri-urban dweller has more choices compared to his or her rural contemporary. So although life can look dismal on the outskirts, this dismal spot puts more choices at ones disposal - opportunities to work, to marry, to study, to eat. We came to this realisation when we reached the capital of Niger, Niamey. After weeks of getting to Timbouctou, then trying to get out of Timbouctou, and then travelling 350 km beyond Timbouctou, to a place I do not look upon fondly, called Gao, in heat, that can only be described, as the earthly cousin of the fires of hell, I rejoiced. I rejoiced because suddenly we were faced with variety and choices that until recently we had been denied. Due to the simple rules of competition and accessibility, the prices of commodities decreased drastically in the city. Suddenly life became more affordable again. We relished in this, and headed off to one of the city’s pizzerias. We ate oven-baked pizza which included the most measly splattering of cheese and ham, but we hounded the pizzas down like it was our last supper.

Our experience of Niger was once again, probably not a well-rounded view. Firstly we did not venture beyond the capital and secondly, we stayed at the Mission Catholique in a country that is predominantly Muslim.

We planned to go to the ancient trading town called Agadez in the heart of the Nigerien Sahara. I really wanted to immerse myself in the spectacular dunes of the Tenere Desert and the beauty of the surrounding Air Mountains. We had heard that this area was rife with rebel activity and opportunistic banditry, the causes of which I shall not relate here. A short discussion with an Austrian-German couple has taught us not to make widely known our opinions on political situations in foreign countries when we still need to travel through them to get home! The walls have ears, and eyes! We had heard these stories since we arrived in Mali - ‘Its dangerous for tourists – the bandits are in cahoots with the guides, you know ’, ‘Watch out for the rebels between Gao and Niamey, oh and the rebels between Niamey and Agadez, oh and from Agadez to the Libyan, Chadian and the worst yet, the Algerian borders. Watch out’. We had also been told by the police authorities in Gao, ‘Don’t worry about the rebels, they have no cause against you, against tourists. Besides, you are women. Rebels have mothers too, they will not harm women.’

So, filled with all these conflicting pieces of information, we made some enquiries. Well, in retrospect I felt a bit silly enquiring about camel treks and 4x4 desert expeditions in the middle of the hot season, not only because camel-trekking in the Sahara in the hot season is unbearable, but because, I should have rather been asking about the whereabouts, safety and health of the Chinese uranium executive that had recently been kidnapped by rebels/bandits in the Agadez region. In retrospect, I understood why the potential tour operator was hesitant to sell us a 4x4 expedition due to this recent incidence.

We put our decision to give Agadez a skip down to two things, Bandits and Budget. Even if we would have been able to get to Agadez (which was later reconfirmed as an impossibility by people who actually did try and were turned back) we probably could not afford the tours that we needed to take to see what we wanted to see… and to be honest I was pretty damn done with dust, heat and desert! Tropics here I come!!! Jogging across a bridge over the Niger River, which we had followed for weeks, we bid farewell to the orange-green waters, lifeblood of the desert…it had been our guide and we would miss it. But we were off to greener pastures (excuse the pun!).

So we headed south back into the tropics, back to the mosquitoes, back to the humidity, south to Benin. BLISS! I Love green! Our first stop was Abomey, in the region of the Dahomey kingdom. The hostel was a gloomy place. Damp. The dining room reminded me of Helen Martin’s Owl House, with eerie looking Vodun inspired stuffed sculptures overlooking the fully empty, dimly lit dining room, where nobody had dined in weeks. We whizzed around the town with our guide, a rather eccentric local elder and Vodun initiate, on the back of Suzuki 100cc motorbike. As we proceeded from one ruined red-earth palace to the next racing past phallic looking fetish sculptures dotted en route, we got a peek, albeit, small peek, into life in southern Benin. We bumped into a procession lead by dancing men dressed in colourful pink haystacks. These were the night guardians, or night police, called Zangweto. They were followed by scores of identically dressed women, singing in unison, followed by a navy blue ‘gendarme’ pick-up truck driving through the red dusty streets of Abomey. Perched on the back of the pick up truck was a rather obese man, shirtless, reclining in a cream plastic-leather sofa surrounded by woman swatting flies from his face. This was an important chief arriving in town. We briefly stopped, absorbed the scene. I suppose the scene struck me because it seemed so ordinary, part of everyday life, and yet surreal, like something out a Hollywood movie.

I was ecstatic to be back in the tropics! It just felt more like home than the hot dusty desert we had come from. The people were friendlier, more jovial and relaxed. I could relax and enjoy myself and had a great time whizzing around on the zemi-jons (motorbike taxis), 25kg packs and all! It really is as if the tropics opens people up…its stuffy inside so people go out, they socialise, they sing, they dance. It strikes a great contrast to the much more shy and reserved people living closer to the desert where the heat and sun is just so unbearable that you need to reserve your energy for the most mundane and ordinary tasks.

I think the most interesting thing about the Vodun religion is how it has been transformed and adapted as the religion was taken to the New World, to the Americas and to places like Haiti, the Carribean and Brazil. In Benin and Togo, there are many who still practise the Vodun religion, and when the Afro- Brazilian slaves returned to Benin they mixed Vodun easily with other religions, like Christianity. It appears similar to the way elements of animism are mixed with religions such as Islam in parts of West Africa, for example, in Senegal. In Ouidah, another Vodun stronghold in Benin, according to our guide Raphael, it is not uncommon for church goers to attend mass at the Basilica on Sunday morning , request the intercession of the saints, and similarly invoke the assistance of the Vodun spirit world through a fetisher or traditional priest at the Python Temple opposite the Basilica. So after Sunday morning mass at the Basilica, we walked across to the Python Temple, and squeamishly donned a slimy sacred python around our necks and shoulders.

We ambled around Ouidah, Benin’s Voodoo capital, chatting to people, joking around with kids, dancing in the streets. Another place famous for its geographic role in the transatlantic slave trade, we decided to walk the 4km stretch between the town and the beach, which slaves would have done (after months of walking to get to the town!) before boarding slave ships for their arduous and torturous trip to the Americas. A beautiful walk, peaceful and serene, foilage-lined dirt paths, glistening waterways, swaying palms…it was difficult to imagine that so much ugliness and hardship had happened in such a stunning place.

For me, an instance that really encapsulated a vivid part of Beninoise history was to see the Brazilian-Portuguese influences in the capital, Porto Novo. The Afro-Brazilian slaves who returned to Benin settled in Porto Novo. The returned slaves wished to assert their identity and break from the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Portuguese slave traders, so they defiantly converted to Islam. In Porto Novo I was fascinated to see that the local mosque was apparently modelled on a Brazilian church, an almost exact replica of a church in Bahia, Brazil.

Heading along the coast we made our way to Lome, the capital of Togo. After World War I the League of Nations split Togoland between France and Britain, being split between the French controlled Dahomey kingdom (Benin) and the Gold Coast (Ghana). Emmylou’s Dad asked us if there were any remaining influences from the days when Togoland was a German colony. Well, all we can say is a big, ‘Yes’. We ate Wiener schnitzel and drank Weisbeer Radler for a week.

It was at this stage that I truly disqualified myself as a vegetarian…I wolfed down schnitzel after schnitzel, unashamedly enjoying every last cranberry jam-tainted bit of it! We spent a week speaking to Germans and Austrians (Needless to say between the French, German, Afrikaans and English I was getting rather tongue-tied!) about our and their experiences through the West of the African continent, the merits and demerits of public and private travel and the pros and cons of volunteer and aid organisations. Heated debates and traumatic events later they dropped us off on the road out of Togo to Ghana I their 2 tonne Magirus truck, converted into their home for the next year while they travel. After many good-byes and thank yous we headed back to Ghana, or as we like to call it, with no small amount of disgust in our minds ‘Fufuland’.

Arriving back in Ghana to catch our flight from Accra to Addis Ababa, from West Africa to East Africa, I felt like I had new eyes. Walking down to the Makola market along Kojo Thompson, the walk we had taken on our first day in Ghana, it felt familiar, it felt less foreign and most of all , it felt less threatening. Instead of noticing the open sewers and the rubbish-strewn streets, as I noticed upon my arrival 4 months earlier, I became aware of the infrastructure, the supermarkets the forex’s, the food emporiums frequented by herds of hip teenagers, the array of restaurants. Suddenly Ghana @ 50 years of independence, looked to me like it was more progressive, more positive and going places.

As were we!! We reminded ourselves again that it’s all about where you are coming from and with that got incredibly excited about taking a plane again, and most exciting of all…aeroplane food!!! It felt like we were going on holiday to another world…and we were not disappointed!

Simone: Arriving back in Bamako, we felt obliged to haul ourselves away from our cabin-of-a-room at the Maisons des Jeunes, and to go out for a night on the town and find some local music. So we headed to a spot described in our trusty guidebook as the ‘best bar in Bamako’. We found a small scattering of French expats, Peace Corps types, South African and Australian looking gold miners, slung over the bar, peering into their beer glasses. So we headed to the next spot called the Bla Bla Bar. We savoured our expensive Jameson and cokes. We humbly obliged when the well-dressed guy to our left (Max) offered us a couple of drinks. He was apparently the DJ at the swankiest club in town - would we like to go to the club? Sure, so we headed out to watch the Bamako jet-set, break it down on the dance floor to contemporary African pop, swooshing a lot of booty, checking themselves out in the wrap around floor to ceiling mirror. Needless to say, we did not overstay our welcome. Since I was doing all the chitchat in French and I have no ‘ring’ on my finger, I knew we could only have so many free Jameson and cokes! So we got a taste of the high life.

Simone was shaking her booty left right and centre with the best of them, while I, as prude as could be (“it had nothing to do with the absolutely kak music!”) sat quietly sipping my Coke and pouring all the free shots of Jamesons into Sim’s glass… hee hee she doesn’t even know this! Needless to say, Max soon gave up on me and moved on…(Emmylou)

Our time in Mali can best be described as budget shoe stringers, winging it, and living it up, enjoying the goodwill and generosity of others. And, truly, if we had not enjoyed their generosity, we would have had far less memories and stories to tell. I prefer to call it appreciative bumming but I must say it sounds pretty good the other way!

Our next stop was Djenne, to see the adobe architecture and specifically the Djenne mosque. I had seen plenty aerial photographs of this town, surrounded by green and blue, the Bani River giving life to this settlement in the middle of the hot, dry Sahel. We had come in the dry season and so there was not a drop of water in the river. The river was just a sunken basin of dry, hot dusty earth. Djenne has maintained its unique mud-architecture over the years and thus it is now a World Heritage site. This means that tourists such as myself can come and ooooooh and aaaaaah over these beautiful buildings. And once-was and kind-of-still archaeologists like me can see the world famous Jene Jeno site after which the town was named...and try to resist the urge to knick some of the millions and zillions of engraved pottery shards lying around in huge mounds!!!

We befriended Kadija, a necklace seller, at the Monday market. Or should we say Kadija befriended us! She offered to take us around the market and, being the inspired amateur filmmakers, had the foresight to think that this little interaction could well lead to the ever- illusive interview opportunity. Kadija, being the inspired probably-not-so-amateur necklace maker and seller invited us back to her place (a small room in a compound that she shares with the other wives of her husband) where we all settled in for an afternoon of beading and general girly chitchat. It is not often that we get the opportunity to interact with women in West Africa because as tourists we are always met by and guided by men…women seldom if ever have jobs outside of their domestic duties and even then it is hard to find one that speaks any French as almost none of them get the chance to go to school. The afternoon we spent with Kadija was truly one of the most memorable experiences that we have had…we got the opportunity to discuss marriage, sex and men…and for a change from a woman’s perspective. It is fascinating how once you get down to the basics in life, no matter who you are or where you are from…men are all the same!! (Kidding, but it does make a better end to the sentence than some soppy, predictable “there are more similarities than differences” go-hug-a-tree - although I do hug trees – we-are-the-world lecture) Kadija gave us some great tips on how to woo your man which involves beads around the waist, incense and good lighting…check the instalment after Zanzibar to see if these tricks are universal

Kadija invited us to dinner with her family – her husband, husband’s other wife, two gorgeous daughters and a young guy (? Don’t know but he fetched the fish). We tucked in - right hands into the enamel bowl, picking out mushed-together balls of rice and pieces of Caipitaine, the local river fish YUMMY! and since we were the guests, Kadija’s husband ensured we got the best pieces by placing them carefully on our side of the bowl. After dinner, over sweet tots of Chinese green tea, he explained to us that the local people of Djenne want to modernise, they want to build their homes with cement bricks. The mud architecture is hard work. People must re-plaster the walls after every rainy season. This is known as ‘crepissage’ - crudely translated as ‘pancacking’, layering the walls with a mud plaster. Due to the longer dry season, there are less trees, thus there is less wood available in the vicinity for construction. The local people are finding it a burden to carry on building in this traditional way, both financially and practically. It is a catch 22 situation because tourism is also vital for many people in Djenne. By this time it’s getting pretty late and it’s clear that everyone is tired so when invited for a last tea, Sim and I ever so naively accept the offer forgetting how long tea can take around these here parts…2 hours and 3 shots of home brewed ceremony-style Mali tea later we finally say our good nights and wonder back to our place. Navigating Djenne’s maze of mud-brick homes, making sure not to step in any sewerage (again) or trip over a goat line in the pitch dark is quite exhilarating in a slightly-giddy-too-much-tea kind of way...getting lost is the least of your worries!

Our visit to Djenne was sweetened by enjoying the generosity of some French tourists. This French quartet consisted of a hotshot Parisian lawyer who spoke the Queen’s English, a logistics company manager and wheeler-dealer, and a football star who played in one or other Football World Cup for the French team. These guys were on a goodwill mission donating medical supplies and ambulances to a couple of Malian villages. They were on their way back to Bamako to meet the president who was thanking them for the ambulances. We have to say a big thank you to Jean, Jean-Pierre, Yves and Dominique for making our stay in Djenne more comfortable, and spotting us some good food and a night or two in the hotel room, instead of sleeping on the roof in the evening downpour.

We then headed to Pays Dogon and hiked along the Bandiagara Escarpment for a couple of days. This is one of those places listed on one of those ‘top-ten-things-to-do-before-you-die’. And rightly so! Incredible scenery! Never-ending plains of sand meet a 200km escarpment of greenery. Nestled in the escarpment, the Tellem and Dogon people built mud granaries, tombs, and stores, in the safety of the cliffs. The dramatic cliffs reminded me partly of the Cedarburg Mountains and the Grand Canyon, with steep ravines and rock formations like fingers into the sky. Arriving at Nombori village, on the last evening of our trek, I was over come by the feeling that I had succeeded; I had made my dreams become a reality. That felt good. That felt like a real accomplishment.

Pays Dogon was perhaps the first time that we were truly wow’ed by the magnificence of a place during our travels and it did feel like a great achievement. We went slightly loopy from either the heat, the excitement or general larium-induced insanity laughing, singing and dancing our way along the Dogon escarpment…this is where it finally hit us that we were exactly what Laurence (our producer) warned us NOT to become…two silly girls going through Africa! Luckily we had an ace guide, Amadou, who took great care of us, making sure that we ate and rested between 11am and 3pm when the temperatures reach above 45 degrees Celsius and helping us after our slightly mental shopping spree in one of the small villages where we bought 3 double bedspreads and jingle jangles (you can all wait in anticipation to see what a jingle jangle is) off the locals…with still 2 days of hiking left! Our last night in Pays Dogon, under the stars with the plains below us and the cliffs behind Amadou and I ended up discussing the problems of the world till late...in French!

After all that roughing it on the hike, we headed to Mopti and stayed at a rather nice backpacker hang out. This was the spot to organise our trip up the Niger River to Tombouctou. We were soaking up our cold cokes and relishing the multiple flavours of the vegetable soap with fresh bread, when a rather posh sounding British gentleman recognised Emmylou’s South African accent…

I was asking for cigarettes in BAD French so would have to say David has a pretty good ear! So…David, having friends in SA and knowing a bit about it came and joined us while we had our dinner. Chit chat, bla, bla and “I have chartered a private pirogue up the Niger and since I will be feeling pretty conspicuous by myself on a boat with a cook and a captain for 3 days would you girls like to join me?” (OH MY GOD!!) Before Sim can answer I jump in and say, “I cannot answer for Simone but I will most definitely take you up on your offer!” I think for once Sim did not mind to be travelling with an impulsive, outspoken and generally talk before I speak friend (it could also be called confident, spontaneous and generally talk before I speak depending on how you look at it). Lucky for us David was a truly fantastic guy and the three of us laughed our way down the Niger to Timbuktu (there are many spellings and I still do not know which is the right one), through the desert and out again… possibly the only thing that kept us going in that godforsaken place.

It was like living in the lap of luxury relaxing on the pirogue heading down the Niger River to Tombouctou. The designer-pirogue had a kitchen area, from where the cook served us three delicious meals a day, a central lounging area, and right at the back there was a ‘toilet’. And, yes, we certainly felt privileged to be on this pirogue, rather than the alternative, which would have included, more chickens, goats, people, mangoes, babies, and fresh produce...and since the water was low because it was hot season any boat carrying so much shit probably would not have been able to move! We stopped at Bozo fishing villages, waved to Fulani herdsman herding their cattle to the waters’ edge, visited more riverside villages and more mud-mosques. It was surreal to be once again living out a dream of mine. Surreal, but nice.

We arrived at Korioume, 17km east from Tombouctou. Since this was an organised tour, there was a 4x4 ready to pick up our English comrade to whisk him off to his pre-booked hotel. He invited us to join him; we humbly obliged and hopped up into the 4x4. Once again we were relieved that we did not have to haggle for a taxi fare with some unscrupulous taxi driver.

Tombouctou is on the edge of the Sahel and the Sahara. Although the dust-ridden town feels like it is in the middle of nowhere, it is not quite in the Saharan desert as one may think. There are certainly no breathtaking dunes anywhere in the vicinity. It is a bit like a sandy Karoo town with lots of turban wearing Taureg people. Some of these turban wearing Taureg people were genuine-looking Taureg people and some looked decidedly less genuine-looking Taureg people / trinket sellers. It was not unusual to have a turban-wearing male youth sidle up to us and say, “I wear a black turban. I am a Tuareg”. To which I hastily replied, “I wear these nylon hiking/trekking-styled beige trousers [with secret pick pocket proof pockets]. I am a South African.” Since a large portion of the male adolescents, which we bumped into on the streets, proclaimed to be Taureg guides - ‘just in town for the day’. Since the Taureg are traditionally nomadic people, who generally live beyond the confines of a formalised town, we started to regard some of them with suspicion. With the midday heat so intense, so unforgivable, so fiery, up to 44 degree C (I would say closer to 48 or 49 considering it was 42 in Bamako and this was a HELL of a lot hotter!), neither of us were in the mood to entertain any idle chitchat.

Lucky for us, our newfound British comrade had pre-arranged a visit to a ‘real’ Tuareg encampement, with a 2-day camel expedition thrown in. So, as if we had not already overstayed our welcome, we decided to join our newfound British comrade on the camel trek. Arguably, this 2-day camel expedition was falsely advertised as a camel - trek ‘into the Sahara desert, to see the dunes’. Well, as I said before, more Karoo than Sahara.

Poor David, he was sooo keen to see some dunes but every time we crossed another small hump of scrub-covered sand we would torture him and say “No worries, the big dunes are over theeere… gesticulating wildly into the mirage-ridden distance”. Needless to say as you have probably already got the drift, there were no impressive, golden yellow sweeping dunes to speak of ANYWHERE and after 3 hours of steering our camels to miss what we thought were desert speed bumps, only to be informed that we just missed the ‘dunes’ we had spent hours to find, the three of us were more than happy to settle down to a dinner of decidedly farmyard tasting rice – right hand in, make small ball, chew (try to show the host you are LOVING the meal)…actually after weeks of spaghetti with vegetable stock of some kind, the farmyard taste was great just ‘cos it was different!

We spent the evening chatting to Sandy (yes that really is his name, he promises!) our Tuareg host and leader of the Tuareg community in the area we stayed at. It was quite an interesting conversation with questions and answers from all sides and people were actually LISTENING to each other… very refreshing! We sat this way, chatting well into the evening on Persian-type carpets laid out for us on the sand outside our Tuareg tent, leaning on handmade leather Tuareg pillows… all very other-worldly. As the sun went down and the moon came up the family came and bid us goodnight and proceeded to settle down for the night. Unlike what we had expected, they did not head off to the adjacent tent however, but rather all just lay down, scattered arbitrarily (to the outsider’s eye) over the sand on some blankets. We tucked ourselves in for a blissful night under the Saharan starlit sky… but the bliss was not to last! In the wee hours of the Saharan morning we were woken by wind, rain and inevitably LOTS of sand… a storm in the desert! Before we realised what was going on, Sandy’s son had herded us into the kitchen tent and tried to sand-proof it for us. Gritting our teeth, literally due to all the sand, we went back to sleep. As I lay there watching the sand and rain sweep past the tent opening I noticed that the family had not budged from their resting spots. Small lumps of sand-covered Tuareg were still scattered out over the sand, they had simply pulled the blankets over their heads and nodded back off into Tuareg La-La Land! As Sim and I often say “Its all relative!” but we were proud to have brought rain to the desert!

From the 11th century, Tombouctou was a strategic trading town at the edge of the Sahara, where gold, slaves and ivory were traded for salt, as part of the trans-Saharan trade between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean. The town became a centre of Islamic learning, and legend has it, that foreigners, or ‘infidels’ were not allowed to enter the city. The European adventurers and explorers spent about 300 years attempting to reach this legendary city. The successful ones even disguised themselves as Taureg, some studied Arabic, in order to infiltrate the city. Most of these explorers did not live to tell the tale. What the guidebook fails to mention is that today, as the first successful explorer, Heinrich Barth discovered in 1853, was that leaving Tombouctou was harder than arriving in Tombouctou. He narrowly escaped with his life. Our exit from Tombouctou paled in comparison to Heinrich Barth’s, but nonetheless it is a tale to tell….

So we’re all packed up and ready to head out of Timbuktu, excited really. We’ve settled as comfortably as one can onto the back of a bakkie, no shade in 40 plus degrees, in anticipation for our adventure. We had chosen to let fate decide and got on the first vehicle that could get us out of there, no matter the route it was to take… as fate would have it this would be the long, hard route along the Niger River to Gao. So… 9am/ 38 degrees: Leave the hotel on the back of the open bakkie. 9.30am/ 39 degrees: Drive back to the market to pick up more people for the journey (I swap my turban which was giving off enough fake indigo colouring to turn a pool purple). 10.30am/ 43 degrees: Bakkie finally leaves the market only to pick up more passengers… we are now at around 5 people on the back. 11am/ 45 degrees: Pick up more passengers (7 on the back) and repack the entire bakkie to fit on a bed and two bicycles as well as 5 mattresses. We are now no longer sitting IN the back of the bakkie, but carefully balanced on top of a load of goods. 12pm/ 48 degrees (still no shade) Picking up a goat (for meat) and some spaghetti which will be our dinner. Now 10 people in the vehicle and we have been sitting there for 3 hours. 12-1pm driving around town picking up more people and goods. 1.30pm/ probably by now 50 degrees: Bakkie breaks down and we haven’t even left Timbuktu yet!!! Sim and I reassess our situation and decide that fate is trying to tell us something… you had the intention, you tried, you were patient, but get the bloody picture already and GET OFF!! So we fight our way off the bakkie, having to unpack most of it to get to our packs (something no transport organisers are ever happy to do) and even get most of our money back! We hitchhike back to the market and then walk back to our hotel. Everyone there is flabbergasted to see us “But you left 5 hours ago!” So despite our best efforts at adventure and ‘living on the edge’ we head off an hour later to Douentza in a 4x4 across the desert at dusk with a driver that really should enter himself for the Paris-Dakar Rally…cruising across the golden sand, giant ball of fire setting over the horizon, clanging Malian beats vibrating through the air, this was one of my most memorable and favourite trips… I smiled all the way.

We knew we had reached a whole new level of ‘intrepid traveller’ when we tried to leave Gao, a town another 350km further down river than Tombouctou. The culinary delights of Gao were limited in our opinion, so we resorted to sardines on bread. We were starting to feel travel weary. Our travel options were seriously reduced. In fact there were no options. Just one option – a transformed cattle truck come human-cattle truck. I had seen these types of transformed trucks before. I remember them, passing on the roads, and would literally thank the good Lord that I was not in it. I would stare deep into those windowless trucks, and see lots and lots and lots of eyes. There always seemed to be more pairs of eyes compared to the possible number of seats. The guidebooks always have useful suggestions like ‘don’t travel at midday in the hot season’ and ‘don’t travel at night’. We can laugh at these suggestions now. Weighing up our one and only option in Gao, we knew these snippets of travel advice were useless. So we bunged into the truck and endured the ride. A 14-year old Nigerien school boy called Hussein (actually Sadam, but Sim says “same vibe” and “honest mistake” in one breath), befriended us as a self- appointed guardian, and proceeded to practise his English with us for the following 40 hours to Niamey, the capital of Niger.

No doubt this was the epitome of hard-core travel in West Africa (even more than the 38hour Bamako-Dakar drug-bust, breakdown, security escort trip)… so much so that we didn’t film a single snippet between Douentza (before Gao) and Niamey, we were just too tired, too hot and too exhausted to do anything vaguely creative or feel in any way inspired. We ate sardines out of tins, slept on the gravel next to the bus, tried to conserve our water and sweated non-stop together with 70 other poor sods in 40plus degree heat for 3 days. I must say, some people get adventure and plain slog confused and I was not going to do that again!

Emmylou : Entering Mali from Burkina at sunset, the earth becoming drier, baobab trees more numerous. The image of a great ball of orange lava hanging over the brown wide Niger River, peering through the dusty dryness, felt to me as though we had finally reached West Africa, the place of myths and legends…this all changed the second we landed in Bamako! As usual we arrived at night and had no clue where in the city we were…if there is one piece of info in the LP that you can count on has changed it’s the location of the various bus company stations…so as usual we were somewhat ripped off in the taxi department, but by now this we expect at least on first arrival.

Our couple of layover days in Bamako we stayed at a slightly crummy place with lots of football watching males outside in the courtyard glued to a TV screen most evenings…where were we supposed to unburden our creative minds? Tired of the constant personal space invasion I headed to a nearby internet café to lose myself in a world of letters and stories, aided by my ipod, self-exorcised from the world outside. In a moment of changing tracks I heard someone speak English and whipped around to meet Luke, a Polish American, who had been travelling solo from Morocco and was now hanging out with some other yanks and a couple of Chileans in Bamako…besides them he had also picked up a puppy, Afrika (how predictable but damn she was cute!), along the way in Senegal…a cadeau from a small boy. Luke was just as happy as I was to meet someone who spoke English and within 5 minutes I had agreed to babysit Afrika for a few hours and meet up with the group later for a swim. As soon as Luke left I thought, shit!! I just got conned and stuck with a dog! Sim was not surprised in the least!

As it turns out Luke had knyped just as much as I did thinking “I just left my dog with a complete stranger!” Funny how being in a foreign country where people speak a different language makes you trust anything or anyone vaguely familiar. Anyway, we all hooked up later and decided to go for a swim…now this was a great experience! Its about 38 degrees Celsius and its around 6pm…we all sweating our chops off and decide to head to the swanky 4 or 5 star hotel across the road from the very much less swanky Maison des Jeunes where the group were shacked up. Luke and I amble nonchalantly into the reception area, order a couple of beers (both for Luke) and ask to speak to the manager…couple of minutes later we have 6 VERY happy tourists swimming around in a huge pool, all to ourselves, in the dark, next to the Niger River… stunning!!! To say the least we all felt very spoilt and impressed with ourselves!

Luke invited us to hang out in Bamako a few more days and Sim and I considered it. We didn’t get to hang out with other toubabs (Bambara for white person) often and it was refreshing to have other people to chat to for a change… waking up next to the same person every day who is NOT your proposed lifelong partner gets a bit much sometimes! We left the decision to the last moment, literally, until we actually boarded the bus for Dakar the next morning we were still undecided…but the road was calling and we had had enough of Bamako.

Simone: We dodged hastily through the capital of Mali, Bamako, on our way to Dakar.

The bus trip from Bamako to Dakar took 38 hours…

Emmylou: …seven of which were spent sitting next to the road in a middle-of-nowhere kind of dusty little town…only about 100m of tar road along its main route… watching the ‘mechanics’ of the bus (some lady called them the equivalent of ‘skerminkels’) trying to fix the tired, battered and bruised engine with a 3inch thick, metre long steel rod… not the most delicate of operations! We waited and waited, not for the bus to be fixed as no-one knew how long that would take. The obviously quicker, more efficient solution was to get another bus to come and fetch us…a bus stationed about 5 hours drive away! Oh, and since we had lost time due to the breakdown, we were now passing through bandit area in the dead of night, so, enter rifle-touting gendarme for your protection…hmmm… he did little more than chat with the skerminkels and snooze from time to time. Nonetheless, we felt more secure just knowing we could fire back…even though I doubt there was anything even contemplating firing at us in any way!

Simone: The 38 hours included “Douane” (custom check points) at the entrance and exit to every town/settlement/encampment along that 1420km stretch of dirt track, detours and potholed tarmac from the one capital city to the other. Some of these custom check points were official and others looked decidedly less official. We decided that army officers that were wearing second-hand cameo; that mildly hinted of angry-western-youth-nineties-styled fashion; did not always classify as official army uniform!

Emmylou: …an entire uniform was not a requirement either, just one article of cameo allows for qualification, be it a cap, shirt or just a bandana of the sort!

Simone: The custom officials would check the luggage of the “commerçants” (commercial traders). The officials would unpack all their merchandise and confiscate the ‘illegal goods’. The one not-so-official official confiscated pornographic DVDs and some packs of shrimp cocktail sticks. Apparently the female trader had not declared all the packs of shrimp cocktail sticks to the not-so-official official, and hence he was obliged to confiscate the extra packs of shrimp cocktail sticks. So no doubts who was in for an evening of pornography spiced up with a side serving of shrimp cocktail sticks! Another female shoe trader headed back into the bus to stuff about 30 pairs of sandals under our seats so the not-so-official official could not count her incorrectly declared merchandise and extort her for all she and her shoe business were worth.

Emmylou: …never mind the fact that the shoe trader in question implicated me in the scandal by asking me to stack the shoes under the seats so that she could keep a look-out for the cameo… I can see the headlines now “STOOPID SOUTH AFRICAN CAUGHT IN SINISTER SHOE SWINDLE!”

Simone: The real incidence that took the cake was the marijuana drug bust.

Emmylou: …here I was not involved!!! At all!!! Hanging on to the side of a beouf-truck with my skirt hitched up to my knees, I was leaning over inspecting and happily discute’ing the price and size of the cattle. Squashed rather uncomfortably but impressive none-the-less with their beautiful halfmoon horns and geometric ownership markings, these guys were off to Dakar with their handlers hanging breezily over them in fishing net hammocks… great transport option if you ask me! Around these parts you pay the same for a steak sauté as you do for coleslaw salad…beoufs everywhere!!!

Simone: The one official-official got onto the roof of our bus, headed straight for wheelchair of our handicapped bus companion, (Emmylou: whom we had kind of befriended over the last 30 hours of travel, which happens inevitably when you sitting in the same row of seats) proceeded to slice the wheelchair seat open with his pocket knife, only to discover packets of marijuana that literally poured out. The poor sod and his wheelchair were removed from the bus.

Our experience of Dakar, perhaps, is best described as a bit skewed, a bit lopsided. We had received info that the ‘Budget’ hotel accommodation options in Dakar, as recommended in our trusty LP (Lonely Planet for those not yet in the know), were of the brothel variety. We met some Peace Corps workers who actually stayed in one of these budget hotels. They confirmed that, although they had not witnessed any obvious brothel activity, they had resolved to sleep in their tent in their room in order to escape the bed bugs and fleas! So as I said, our view of Dakar, may be a bit skewed and a bit lopsided, because we stayed on an island, called Isle de Gorée, just off the coast of Dakar. Okay, we are wimps, but for the same money we stayed in a beautiful hotel, renovated with pastel hues, rooms with matching bed linen, bath towels and little soaps in the bathroom upon arrival, and to top it all, bedside lamps with bedside switches!! Ah, ‘tis the small things!!!

Emmylou: (Hands up who can guess what book Sim’s been reading…hint, same author as Angela’s Ashes.) We knew the Isle would be the place for us when the fact that we were African Residents cut our ferry price in half!! Naturally we had to show proof of this little fact but we didn’t care… we were African and could prove it! Woohoo! We were sooo excited to be on a boat, not a bus, near the sea, not a river, and in temperatures of less resemblance to HELL…getting off in Dakar I had actually been COLD! Can you believe it, I had completely forgotten the sensation! Goose-bumps!! To say the least we were ecstatic to be on the island and it became our home-sweet-home more than once.

Simone: Isle de Gorée was one of those ex-slave trading islands. This is a favourite stop for African Americans who return to the African continent to find their ancestors, and to walk back through the Door of no Return at the Maison d’Esclaves. The island is swarming with school children on school outings, official ambassadorial visitors, tourists, necklace sellers, more necklace sellers, Rastafarian wanna-bees, some more authentic Rastafarians, contemporary scrap-metal artists living in old deteriorating underground forts etc etc etc.

After soaking up the fineries of life in a capital with functioning infrastructure and appreciating buildings over 2-storeys high, we were ready to move on.

Emmylou: Well actually we thought we had missed all possible festivals in the whole of West Africa (one more thing the LP sometimes gets wrong is festival dates…check out before you head out or don’t!) and found out at the last moment that we had just managed to be in at least one place at the right time…the international St Louis Jazz Festival was happening and we could make it.

Simone: We went to the world famous St Louis Jazz Festival. The official part of the festival was called “in”. The non-official, or fringe events were called, “out”. Then there was us, on the “fringe of the fringe”… or the “in-between”. We went to one of those dark, smoky type bars which felt more like we were in New Orleans than Senegal. There were all sorts of international Jazz stars who apparently performed there over the years as depicted by the signatures graffitied on the walls of the bar. None of them played that night we visited. The $11 JD& shared Coke did not sustain us past the local band who dabbled in a bit of elevator music. It was midnight on a Saturday and we heard music coming from somewhere beyond the Jazz Festival. We went to investigate. A Marabout (spiritual leader) was about to arrive for a Muslim prayer meeting at the edge of town. Some young female devotees invited us to join them. We ended up joining them on their prayer mat, drinking green tea, eating dates, discussing life and religion in stilted French, waiting for the Marabout to arrive. By 2am the Marabout had not arrived and the pious were already rolled up on their prayer maps snoring away. So the less pious, that’s us, retired to our cabin-of-a room for the night.

Next stop we headed for Casamance.

Emmylou: …but not without spending some quality time on our favourite island!

Simone: The Casamance is a region in Senegal just south of the country called The Gambia and north of Guinea-Bissau. Look on a map, check the geography, it is true! The area was apparently plagued by separatist type rebellions in the eighties and a spate of carjacking and general banditry in the more recent past. All we experienced were lazy days on long sandy beaches and a bit of island hopping. The biggest danger and annoyance of all was the constant propositioning by young Gambian males and the swarming pestering batik sellers. No, I am not American, nor French. No, I do not want to see your batik stall. No, not even for the “pleasure of my eyes”. No, we are not twin sisters. No, I do not want to eat coconuts nor peanuts. No, I do not want to go to the discothèque with you tonight. No, I do not want to “stay with you”. I would then dig my nose into my novel, Anne Robinson’s autobiography, “Memoirs of an unfit Mother” (UK Weakest Link lady), and ignore the fact that the young male/batik seller was dropping his rods to go for a dip in the ocean. No, I don’t want to join you for a swim!!!!

Emmylou: …but Sim is sky blue toighty speedo was OH SO SEXY! The most bizarre part of the swimming thing is locals here do not swim, they can but they don’t, so our friend Gambia (his name and his country) was really just trying to impress the ladies… that would be us… and we were NOT impressed! My response was a simple ‘I DON’T SWIM!’ Our ‘friend’ Gambia was our constant companion while we tried to relax at the beach in Cap Skirring. Simone being very brave actually attempted a bikini tan session but quickly changed her mind when the peanuts, coconuts, batik, swimming rendevous propositions started… so the only tanned bits are our faces, arms and feet… luckily the only bits anyone will see in a photo!

In Cap Skirring we met Swissie (Simon) a young Swiss (surprise!) bloke travelling through Senegal solo for about a month. Since we were so excited to meet someone who could speak English and just someone else to speak to in general - Sim and I so in tune by now that we think the same stuff at the same time no matter how random so it gets bit boring talking to each other all the time – that the three of us decided to hang out and travel together for about 2 weeks to Isle de Carabane and then back to Dakar. It all started out well, a nice relaxed pirogue trip up the river to the Isle, stopping to check out smaller islands along the way, pretend to be interested in the birdlife and learn a little something about Casamance spirituality (One thing you learn while travelling around here is how similar traditional spirituality is across Africa, even with the influence of Islam or Christianity – who have been and still are fighting for souls in Africa, I tell you it’s a war! - in many ways it continues to retain many elements of the original belief system and its not that different from home) when on a scouting trip to check out possible abodes Swissie gets nailed by a stingray! Yes, same as Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter! – the ray was probably a bit smaller but no-one saw it so we stick to Steve’s size so that Swissie can boast back home (don’t tell anyone!) Now for those of you who don’t know from zero to pissing a bowling ball, being stung by a ray rates right up there! We had locals sucking the venom out of his sand and mud soiled foot while others tried to figure out how to use a special venom extractor which of course had never been used before and no-one had the faintest idea how it worked. So between holding Swissie’s hand, reminding him to breath and calling the Department of Health back in SA (that would be the hero my pops) I also had to try and read French instructions and instruct in French… luckily the French chick that runs the auberge pitched up and at least you didn’t have a Anglais nincompoop like me trying to understand Francais… step one to saving someone’s life is understanding the instructions of the life-saving device! What I could do, and did, was pump Swissie full of Myprodol (pain killers used for post operation recovery) … no reaction after the first two but the third, together with complete exhaustion from flailing about madly, crying and having difficulty breathing, knocked him out finally… he slept like a baby. Myprodol, I swear by the stuff!

So Swissie survived, just, and the following couple of days on the Isle we took it VERY easy reading, writing and Swissie mentoring Simone’s photographic passion… he really inspired her! Now every time we feel uncomfortable about filming or taking a pic we just think of Swissie and click away. We headed back up to Dakar via boat, sooo nice it actually had a restaurant with wine, a deck you could stroll on and beds…to be enjoyed in that order - throw in some silly singing and dancing and snoring a bit later – got it on film, no worries!

Back in Dakar we braved the big bad city and really enjoyed it… the shopping the most!

Simone: Since the bus trip there was so eventful we thought we would give it a skip for the return journey and decided to try the train. Arriving at the Dakar train station we enquired about the train timetable. The ticket office was closed and the security-guard-type-looking character looked at us as if we were mad enquiring about a timetable. Okay, tell us which day the train will depart. More strange looks. Okay, which week will the train depart? Eventually, he replied and told us the train had not returned into the Senegalese borders yet, thus he had absolutely no idea. We resolved that we would indeed have to take the bus back to Bamako. The return journey was similar, except without the drug bust, without the bus breaking down, and without the armed guards escorting us along a part of the road where rebel factions were protesting the Malian election results. The bus trip took exactly the same amount of time. One wonders how?

Emmylou: We really enjoyed Senegal! Think by this stage we finally getting into the travelling and over the initial culture and lifestyle shock. We easing in and don’t feel intimidated or bothered anymore, we don’t worry about what people call us or where they might think we come from…always get it wrong!

Simone: When the Senegalese ask, “Ca Va?” (How are you?) they give the response “Senegalesement” , which loosely translates as “Senegalese – ly”. I like that… That sums up my sentiments!

Emmylou: …It became our response too for a while, until we hit Bambara-speaking-land in Mali and it meant absolutely nothing anymore. Oh well, this is the nature of travel, just as you get into a place and learn how it all works, get comfortable and relaxed, its up up and away to your next destination to be disorientated, slightly confused and usually tired for the first few days.

Emmylou - Well, shortly after our last posting we earned oodles more hardcore-travellers’-brownie points waiting for our bus at the Kumasi bus station (Ghana) for our bus to Ouaga (that’s short for Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso) We waited for 10 hours! I was surprised to find that I could quite easily sleep on a concrete bus station platform, avoiding mossie air raids and the bright lights of all the wrong buses that arrived during those 10 long hours. This was not a great way to start to a 15 hour bus trip to Ouaga. We made a pre-departure rule not to arrive in a new town at night. This has become somewhat of a joke really... despite our best intentions it seems all buses always arrive at night, no matter where you are going.

Arriving in Ouaga we survived the obligatory taxi haggle to our base camp, in the heart of Ouaga commercial area...commercial in this context would mean vegetable sellers on top of bike repair shops on top of petrol-per-the-bottle sellers on top of internet cafes. One thing you notice about African cities, once you settle down long enough to brave walking slowly through the streets, not letting the chaos and heat get to you and learning how to dodge cars, trucks, bicycles , all at once, sans the safety of a pavement, is that trade is everywhere, all the time. It appears to the visitor that what is sold, where and by whom is seldom in anyway ordered or predetermined. Nevertheless, you can find anything you want at anytime of the day or night. You just have to ask, someone will find what it is that you are looking for - whether it is cell phone sim card, soap or cooking oil.

Emmylou - You know you have reached a Francophone country, yes!!!!, because everyone is parlez-vous'ing the Francais.

Simone - In our first few days we struggled to communicate some rather basic ideas and many requests got horribly lost in translation. For example, the time when Emmylou went out to buy a Burkinabé simcard for her cell phone, and much to my amusement, she returned with soap! Things have improved since then! Another example was when we were looking for benzene for our MSR multi-fuel cooker to cook ourselves dinner at the backpackers one evening. This cooker is an American product used for independent backpackers such as ourselves and it is suppose to function off varying fuels whether it is petrol, diesel, kerosene, benzene. This is ideal for travelling in Africa where you don’t know what fuel you can get on the road. We ventured out and asked some locals for ‘benzene’. Received plenty looks of bewilderment. We eventually returned to our backpackers, “Le Pavilion Vert”, with the fuel bottle filled with a substance used to power the local mobylettes, aptly called “mélange”, directly translated as “mix”. The small gathering who had assembled around us, including Selvyn the barman, the French-expat donned in safari styled shorts and his female Burkinabé companion, proceeded to debate whether this potent fuel would blow us and the “Le Pavilion Vert” up in flames once we hooked the fuel line up to the cooking device. After much debate, it was decided that the unidentifiable “mix” that we had bought was not suitable for the task. The French-expat insisted we returned this substance to the petrol station and that we rather request “petrol à bruler”. We took our chances, not knowing better, and changed the fuel on the Frenchman’s advice. Returning to the “Le Pavilion Vert” with the new fuel, Emmylou proceeded to hook the fuel line up to the cooker. Suddenly the peanut gallery quietened and dispersed for fear of being implicated, should disaster strike. Fearless Emmylou (of the boer- maak-a plan ilk), lit the match, and voilà …..no problems. We cooked an excellent dinner that evening with ingredients we’d bought from the local market that afternoon.

Emmylou- Bicycles, mopeds (or mobylettes as they are called here), motorbikes, you name it, anything that moves is on the streets of Ouaga! Even the ‘wheelchairs’ for the disabled are more like locally made mini-vehicles. These vehicles would be more recognisable in the unconventional section of the Cape Town Argus Cycle Tour race than on the streets of a bustling capital, but here these vehicles fit in perfectly, making us two plodding tourists envy the most unfortunate individual, flying past along with the rest of the traffic. It is no unusual sight to see a couple on a moped with baby squeezed in ever so safely between them and a toddler tied to the back of the lady passenger (ala SAffa style as we see so often at home). Something I am sure many of you could imagine, but to see how easily it is done and how it is done by everyone, regardless of status, money or gender, is quite amazing.

From Ouaga we headed on to Bobo-Dioulasso (Bobo), described as a travellers' favourite in our trusty LP, and Simone and I tend to agree. The town is smallish, so easily navigated on foot . Well, except for us, since our home base, Casafrica, was only a sweltering dusty 20 min walk from the centre, past the Peugeot factory and across the railway lines...what we do to save money!. In Bobo most of the roads are tree-lined and some even with pedestrian walkways!!

Simone - One could picture a slightly scaled down version of the Champs-Elysee, walking down Bobo’s Ave de la Nation - the avenue framed neatly with trees, the train station as the focal point in the distance at the end of the avenue…interesting to see how even the smallest city is shaped by its colonists!

Emmylou- In Bobo we had our first taste of West African music...hmmm? Unexpectedly, but in hindsight not surprising, we enjoyed the streetside bar, chilled, electric jazzy, bluesy, reggaey stuff more than the wailing Africa-cum-pop attempt at blending traditional African sounds with urban edginess of some of the local bands. The tight, white jeans, wife beater vest, leather waistcoat, cowboy boots and black shiny plastic sunglasses of the slightly overweight, hourglass-shaped front man did not help their image!... but we did find the Frenchy expats amusing.

Simone - We treated ourselves to a concert at the local Henri Matisse Cultural centre, the equivalent of a Alliance-Française. We had the opportunity of hearing the combined sounds of the Malian pianist, Cheick-Ti Diane Seck with a group of local musicians. It was quite a scene watching the master musician at his piano draped in his colourful boubou directing his fellow musicians on the stage. Some of the performers were most amusing characters, like the YMCA - fashioned-griot (praise-singer)-sounding male performer, gyrating across the dance floor, competing for floor space with the lead guitarist / jester (for lack of a better description) dressed as a male-nun with a khaki-coloured skirt and a red polar neck, who eventually stripped down to a Zulu-warrior type outfit towards the end of the show, this was further drowned out by a couple of female ‘doo-wop’ singers who couldn’t tell the difference between an A-sharp and an F-flat. This cacophony of sounds and rhythms were sometimes audibly conducive and sometimes not, but the concert certainly did not fail to entertain, truly an instance of cross culturalism. We are however still on the look out for the sounds that have made West African music world famous…..

Emmylou -To say the least we had fun and a lot of laughs in Bobo and we came away with some personally chosen fabric and locally crafted clothing. Although the long road was calling we decided that we had to head off in search of some nature and culture, "raw and untouched" (ha ha!) so we headed out to a small village of Tengrela just outside Banfora. The area is known for its natural beauty which includes lakes, geological rock formations and waterfalls... Sim and I headed straight for
water!!! Jumping on a mobylette we zoomed off in search of adventure...to help us along we refused to take a map or use the services of a guide!

Simone- It was a scene from the film “Motorcycle Diaries” about Che Guevara, as Emmy drove us around the rice fields on a brakeless mobylette, me screaming “Bonsoir” to the woman in the fields, a couple of near collisions with children and donkeys, wind in our hair, racing ahead of the darkening clouds, and of course it was obligatory to film ourselves in full flight!!!

Emmylou - AAAH cool waters and elevation! Its strange how a bit of elevation makes the world of difference... West Africa is very flat, the topography and the buildings, which means you seldom get any chance to view your surroundings, you are always in them, a sensation which often borders on claustrophobia. Good views are hard to find and in Tengrela we found some great ones, while chilling out amongst cascading waterfalls..a pleasant respite from the always forty-something degree heat out here in the saHEL(l). To balance this luxury..just in case we might get too spoilt and soft.. we showered out of buckets under the stars, just across the wall from grazing cattle ,we sometimes
were left wondering whether what we assumed to be a showering space was in fact a toilet/urinal... (a hole in the ground means different things in different places!), pulled our water up from a well and squatted over the cockroach-ridden long drops, as one does in these parts. As we were to find out, this option is often much wiser than attempting to have a flushing, water borne sewerage system which inevitably fails and there's no-one who really knows how to fix it!

After some days of filming, lazying and swimming we decided to head off to the sticks to find some "culture" and culture we found... in the shape of a five and a half hour minibus ride over bad gravel roads to get to the middle of nowhere, in Burkina, a place called Gaoua. OK, so its not really in the middle of nowhere, but it sure is off the well-trodden track! On arriving in Gaoua, Sim and I unanimously agreed on our first splurge which included a shower and toilet in our room and each our own bed!!! You really learn to appreciate the small things out here on the road in our piddly budget (which by the way we are struggling to stick to...you have no idea how delicious a coke, or five, can be in this heat and dust!!).

Simone- Although this Hotel Hala was completely overpriced in terms of value for money, we took it in, soaked it up, and enjoyed all the niceties, not because they were luxuries in themselves, but because we had been deprived of the basics, like running water, functioning toilets , linen on the bed, hotel soap and towels!!!!! Deprivation reminds the world of plenty about the world of lack. We devoured the baguette sandwiches which actually contained cucumber and salad!!!!! Scurvy delayed.

Emmylou- There is no tourist infrastructure out here in Lobi country but, thank the good lord for he does exist! If you know someone who knows someone, which they always do, you will be fine! So in Gaoua, Abou was our saviour...as much as they are available here. He was our guide for two days exploring what we affectionately and with a mild amount of grimace call Lobi country...without a guide you cannot cope out here. Sim and I do not like being told where to go or what to do and not being in control of our own destiny, at least not when we're paying!!

Simone - The Lobi, according to the borrowed-photocopied pages of the Bradt guidebook, are the “fiercest and proudest” inhabitants in Burkina Faso after suffering under a “merciless repression” under the French colonial administration back in the day. Apparently, the Lobi elders banned their people from following the ways of the white man. So until today the Lobi have maintained a way of life that is still very traditional, living in fortress like adobe homes with dark maze-like interiors.

Emmylou - So, after purchasing enough food to feed ourselves, which includes Abou, and the villlage we were to stay at for the night, we headed out into the bush on our mopeds to explore.

Simone - Well, after stopping a couple of times to realign the faulty brakes and dubious wheel alignment.

Emmylou - Now, this is what we wanted to see and what we asked for, in theory, but being escorted from minute rural village to minute rural home...through the central public living spaces as if these people are subjects in a museum or gallery made us both most uncomfortable... constantly being asked, with a mild amount of disdain, why we are not ferociously capturing all this "culture" on film. Although we saw amazing and most interesting local architecture and got to see some people living a truly rural and still very much traditional lifestyle...which they cling to staunchly and proudly amidst the influence of Islam, the experience was strange and surreal and I think we will consider twice before we take on a visit of this kind again.

Simone - Since Emmylou is the chief filmer, I have become the chief photographer….. by default. Emmy reminds me that my interest in architecture often restricts my photographic eye since all I see and all I take photos of are the buildings and materials of the structures I see en route. This often paints a very static image of a place with photos that rarely contain close ups of people. I shy away from taking pictures of people. I once heard, whiles travelling on another trip through Morocco, that some Islamic people believe that a photo can take away your soul. I tend to respect that. Taking photos of people is so voyeuristic. I sometimes felt like an indiscriminate tourist in a zoo, snapping away.

Simone – Burkina Faso looks as if it is on that ‘one-of-the-poorest-countries-in-the-world’ list. However, things are happening here, things look like they are moving. It’s the small things ….like the fact that the roads are being fixed. There are numerous bus companies which compete for business, thus providing much better services to the public, compared to Ghana’s public bus service. I suppose the thing I enjoyed most about Burkina Faso is the relaxed friendly way of the Burkinabé themselves; life is “tranquil” and there is always time to “exchange ideas” and drink Chinese green tea, lots of it !!!!!!!

After our first couple of days in Accra, stocking up on West African visas, we headed to Cape Coast where we explored the two main castles used for exporting slaves to the New World in the trans- Atlantic slave trade during the 15th & 16th centuries, now both recognized as UNESCO world heritage sites.

We found Cape Coast a bit overwhelming. This is probably where we got our first bout of “culture shock”. One does not really get used to the open sewers and the associated gagging and nausea as one walks down the streets. Every second day there is "lights out" which is basically part of some sort of electricity load management scheme. Not too different from Cape Town! Apparently the hydro-electric power generated from the largest man–made dam here in Ghana is sold by the government to the neighbouring countries, leaving Ghanaians with power only every second day. Or, another take on the story, is that the neighbouring countries like Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso have built their own dams further up the Volta River, leaving the dam here in Ghana with insufficient water for the hydro –electric power. There appears to be a fare amount of news coverage regarding alternatives such as nuclear power. Either way, it means limited electricity is commonplace. The water supply is also erratic. One can fully expect to be in the shower, fully soaped- up, shampoo lathered into our one’s hair, and without fail, the water will cease to run. At this point one feels rather foolish to have anticipated otherwise, and the best solution is just to laugh!

There are numerous posters and billboards announcing Ghana’s golden jubilee, celebrating 50 years of independence from British rule when Ghana was previously called, Gold Coast. The slogan on the billboards displayed around the capital reads, “Championing 50 yrs of African excellence”. Yet, as the fans stop in this intense midday heat, the gas lamps come out of the kitchens, and the generators splutter up, one wonders! The ruling political party’s slogan is “so far so good”. I suppose this is a positive outlook .Ghanaians meet life with a laugh. They are quick to smile and laugh at you, as an “Obruni” (a white person) and themselves as well. So I suppose they truly take ‘so far so good’ to heart.

On the streets the Ghanaians always want to stop and have a chat. The list of questions are always the same, and after a while, rather tiresome to be frank. The first question is “Are you a volunteer?”. Most the “Obrunis” in Ghana are here on a mission of benevolence and goodwill. We met 18 year old volunteers from Manchester working in the rural northern parts of Ghana setting up computer facilities for the local school, which in their opinion, has little chance of sustainability once they depart. We met Scandinavian student doctors going to Togo to discover a new vaccine for some or other tropical disease, Dutch optometrists dishing out free glasses to the local people and plenty American Peace Corps workers. Thus, it is no surprise that Ghanaians express disbelief when we announce that our mission in Ghana is purely for tourism. We do not launch into a discussion of our mission to understand our native continent, as white Africans and that we are amateur film makers etc etc. The second question is always, “Are you married?”, and lastly, “Which country?”. Once they learn we are South Africans we often get a doubtful look, and we then say “Sorry, no green card!”. The exchange then ends with a big smile and we are welcomed as fellow Africans! Of course these exchanges are usually with men, as the women appear to be busy doing real work !

The culinary delights of this ex- British colony have taken time for our palettes to become accustomed to. I cannot say that either of us have become fans of the maize- based dish, Fufu, drenched in red, spicy, hot sauce, called light soup, served with fish, chicken or, at times, other unidentified pieces of meat. Emmylou has noted that there is not a large adult dog and cat population here in Ghana? Emmylou once ordered a seafood stew at a local restaurant in Tocarardi. Well, poor Emmylou suffered through two bites before declaring that the numerous whole crabs in the stew were indeed rather off-putting. In all honesty, it looked like a dish out of the TV series “Fear Factor”. The part I enjoy most about the Ghanaian culinary experience is eating with your hands. Or should I rather say your right hand….. only. Apparently the left hand is for other necessary bodily functions.

It is interesting to see how Ghana is a real mixture of influences. Hip-hop, 50 Cent, and every form of Christianity mix together easily with animist traditionalist religious beliefs, Kente cloth and the wearing of protective amulets. It is interesting to see that all the street stalls and shops are named after bible verses or Christian sayings, for example, "God is Able Hair salon" is a common sight. One is forced to say a prayer when stepping into a pirogue (a dug-out canoe) called "Don’t loose hope, Keep on praying”!

After the first week of this ‘culture shock’, we decided it was necessary to retreat to the palm-studded beaches along the coast. We spent a week at the Green Turtle Lodge, a British expiate run eco-lodge. The nearest village is called Akwidaa, west of Accra. Well, it is closer to the Cote d’ Ivoire border than to Accra. You won’t find it on a map. Here we were treated to the luxuries of western life like honey drenched French toast for breakfast, Pina Colada cocktails at happy hour, lazy days on the beach working on our tans, even a little body boarding in the surf that can best be described as ‘dangerous’.

Sweating our way north we headed to Kumasi, the city of the Ashanti king, on another one of those bus trips that feel like forever-and -a -day. We took this trip shortly after our first bout of the traveler’s tummy bug. The night before I had my head out of our little tent in the middle of the night during a typical tropical downpour and electric storm, regretting the chicken curry I had had that evening. So quite coincidently, whiles we were on the bus, Emmylou and I watched the same gentleman sitting in front of us disembark and buy himself a meat (?) kebab at a sidewalk stall. When he boarded the bus again, both Emmylou and I thought how delicious the food smelled and envied this man for having a true Ghanaian stomach, tough enough to take any kind of meat you could throw at him, and secretly wished we too could enjoy a tasty warm morsel. Not mentioning these thoughts to one another, we sat back, took some bites of our

cold rice hoping that our tender stomachs could at least handle that. Our envy was not to last, however, when the gentleman fell truly ill just a few minutes later. So we are sticking to rice baby!

We did our first film shoot in Kumasi and interviewed the Director of the Centre for National Culture. We were also afforded the most interesting experience of going to a chief’s funeral and seeing the embalmed three month old body lying in full chief regalia and make –up. We danced around the body with the fellow mourners. I don’t know if the mourners were in greater shock or us! In all honesty, as amateur filmmakers we have a lot to learn. We are struggling to whip out the video camera and start shooting, “cinema verite” style in the market place! It feels voyeuristic and imposing. Each time we want to film, we have to carefully orchestrate the scene, get permission from all the relevant parties and participants.

So that brings us to the end of our Ghana experience and I agree, “ So far so good”. We are now heading for Francophone West Africa and our first stop is Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. So here is to French keyboards and hopefully to a couple of croissants along the way!