Three weeks later and back in the same internet cafe...

Quick overview of what I've beeen up to since I got bored of writing this last time. So I spent a day chilling out here, think I was pretty exhausted, walked all along the beach, turns out to be not so nice when you get into the fishing part. On my return I bumped into  an Aussie and a Brit who changed the course of things to come... Keith and Tamara (assign the nationalities yourselves, not hard) were volunteers in St Louis, my planned next port of call, but had come to Dakar to visit before Tamara flew out and Keith went to a festival in a (mini) desert. We went out to see the legenedary musician Suleyman Faye, 60 in Jan and going strong and attempted to do a motorbike tour of Dakar, but the guides never turned up. So we spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around the pretty island of Goree just off the coast of Dakar instead. And then I spent an unpleasant evening throwing up. But I figure one evening of that after ten weeks of travel, well, I was due it. Glad I've not had anything worse. Still, many thanks to Tamara and Keith who kept me company and well supplied with water, coke and toilet rolls!

One of the projects run by the organisation they were working with was working in a Talibé centre. The Talibés are young boys, I think probably from about 5 years up to being teenagers, who are in religious training from the Marabouts (local religious leaders). They live in Doras, houses together where the Marabouts supposedly look after them. The kids are always out on the streets hassling people for money, or going into houses asking for clothes. None of this is for them, it goes to the Marabouts. The work the volunteers were mainly doing was providing first aid for these kids. There were stories of them having huge infected wounds, and nobody had done anything. I find the whole thing pretty hard to get my head around. The kids don't go to school but they can sing prayer calls and recite parts of the Koran. They are always dressed in shabby old ill-fitting clothes.

Whilst we were waiting for the ferry to Gorée, we had a drink of (flat) coke in a cafe, and one of these kids came over, with his tell-tale yellow bucket, asking for money. Not wanting to send him off with cash for the marabout, Tamara gave him her coke. He looked uncertain, clearly knew this wasn't allowed, but eventually took it and hid uncerneath the next table. The proprietor came out, and before we could stop him, had shouted at the boy, who left the coke and ran off. We tried to invite him back, but he looked to scared and humilitated to come back. The proprietor seemed annoyed with us, explained the situation with the marabouts (yes, we know, that's why we gave him something to drink), implied that we were ignorant tourists and claimed it was all the parents fault. Perhaps, but why should that mean you bully this boy? We paid for our drinks and left without finishing.

The next day, feeling (somewhat) recovered from my episode, I jumped on the desert festival bandwaggon - quite literally - and headed to Lompoul. It is a strange small desert where, from the top of the highest dune, you can see the surrounding non-desert land. We stayed in a tent village and ate delicious meals in a beautiful Mauritanian style tent. I felt incredibly colonial and wouldn't have been surprised to see Poirot popping up to solve the troubles of the khaki-clad, bush-hat wearing colonial types. The music was like nothing I have ever seen, the only way I can think to describe it is "mysterious". But it was fantasic to see a guy dressed in full desert robes and Tuareg scarf, standing in front of a traditionally costumed guy - feathers and all - playing an electric guitar. Fortunately it was a cloudy day so it was not too hot during the day and not too cold at night.

I continued onto St Louis, as originally planned, on the Sunday. I stayed in a ridiculous hotel, with a pool and pretty much nobody there, hot water and my own little beachside hut. I really had expected to rough it a bit here. St Louis itself is beautiful, full of pastel coloured buildings, like someone dumped a bit of the med into Africa. It stinks of fish, but that is a pretty common occurrence here. I hung out with the volunteers that Keith and Tamara had worked with and it was really nice to be part of a community. From St Louis I took trips to the reserve de Gomboul where I held tortoises and chased warthogs, and to the parc national de la langue de barbarie - a pirogue ride between the mainland and the spit that comes around from the other side of the island of St Louis.

From St Louis I planned to break up the journey to Gambia (although I reckon it might have been possible in one day, just) by stopping in the town of Thies, which boasts an apparently world famous tapestry factory. And not much else. It was Muslim new year when I arrived, however, and everything, including the tapestry factory was shut. I got an early night and an early start the next day and arrived in Banjul by 2pm. I had been told the Gambian customs officers were pretty... thorough, shall we say, and so I was pleasantly surprised when at the border the customs guy just stared. "Do you need to see in my bag?" I asked. "Whats in it?" was his response, and when I said jsut clothes and normal things, he nodded me onto the next office where they served me tea and asked me to stay for Christmas. But it was after the ferry trip to banjul that they really kicked in. Hot, sweaty, tired, so close to my hotel, I had to stop and empty EVERYTHING from my bag. They wanted explanations of every drug and medicine I had with me. I will forever be haunted by the memory of having to explain the purpose of Canasten through mime.

Eventually, however, I did reach the world's most depressing hotel, low ceilings, dim lights, holes in the walls and swarming, I do mean swarming, with mosquitoes. I lit a whole packet of mosquito coils (I think thats 10) and nearly choked myself. I spent the afternoon wandering around Banjul, which is possibly the nicest capital city ever. Its about a quarter of the size of lincoln, and has a terribly English feel about it, not hindered by the cricket pitch in the centre. Take out the insane vehicules and you'd have a rather warm, coastal version on Midsomer. On a hint from the guidebook I visited the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital, where you can  do a tour. Highly uncomfortable experience. I was impressed by the range of facilities; everything from a CT scanner to a physiotherapy ward to a blood bank. But I wouldn't want to be treated there. The blood bank has no staff, and a coca-cola fridge to keep the blood in, the sterilising unit was closed, the guy mopping the floor of the surgical theatre had left the doors wide open, one of the two people working in the path lab had gloves on - but they were filthy, the x-rays were developed hanging outside pegged to a washing line and the radioloogist was wearing a suit which suggested he was preparing for nuclear war, the doors to the morgue were broken and you could see the tables, but thankfully no bodies as it was a Friday afternoon, so all the staff were at the Mosque.

After visiting the national museum's entertaining displays of colonial photographs and watching a guy make silver-plated rings I headed off to the tourist coast. I took the public transport which was like a nicer, cleaner, more comfortable version of the ghanaian tro-tros. And cost one hundreth of the price of a private taxi. I cannot comprehend this. Stopped to ask a Gambian lady for directions, turns out she had lived in Leeds. Lovely. Walked the last leg of the journey from the cash machine to the hotel ( I treated myself to something in the Lonely Planet's "midrange") and a guy pulled up alongside me to offer me a lift because he doesn't like "to see women suffer". Poor young Toubab lady, obviously can't manage her own backpack. No thank you, I'm enjoying seeing everything. But, as usual, he didn't listen to what I wanted and cerb-crawled, insisting, until I told him he'd cause an accident. The traffic laws, well, they seem to exist in Gambia, and be enforced, I like it. If you're in the passenger seat of a taxi without wearing a seatbelt the police will stop you and fine you over 100 pounds.

Having chased him away two ladies called to me from across the road. They were very pleased with me. They had walked for miles from the big market back towards their place of work and had asked the guy for a lift, and he had apparently said that he didn't take passengers. He did however, park up down the road and chase me to chat to me, which gave me an opportunity to yell at him about his racial discrimination in only taking white girls and not Gambian girls in his car, and for lying to them.

The hotel I stayed in is run by an English couple totally committed to responsible tourism, they are currently building an eco-lodge and learning centre in a little village in the south of the coastal strip. The village has apparently become the first in the world to impliment their own tourist code. This threw me into a world of expats and other Europeans trying to make a positive impact in Gambia. I met a fabulous Dutch couple, Ellen and Fred who have been working on and off in the Gambia and Fred is currently working on an efficient and hygenic solar powered mango dryer. Anyone who can understand Dutch should check out their website:

http://www.stichtinggambiaproject.nl/

They recommended visiting the Gambia is Good farming project which is trying to encourage well planned crop planting and otherenvironmentally sensible techniques so that, for example, farmers inland can benefit from Gambia's tourist industry by  producing the crops that the hotels want to buy in - e.g. cherry tomatoes. Dan, one of the top guys at the farm, kindly gave me a lift on his bike to the Kim Kombo distillery down the road which grows the majority of their own crops they use to make the liquers, gets you tiddly and then sells you fantastic selections of their delicious wares!

This was the day I really began to see the depth of Gambian generoisty; perhaps I jut hit lucky on this day, alternatively, there is more of it in Gambia than in any other of the West African countries I have visited. And there's plenty of it there. I bumped into a guy on the way to the bus stop who put me on the right bus and made a big deal out of ensuring that the driver took me to the right place. Dan, at the farm, went out of his way to take me to the distillery, waited there for me then took me to the bus stop. When I got off the bus I asked for directions and a guy told me I needed to get a taxi to where I wanted to go. I thought he was just trying to make money out of the Toubab so I told him I didn't have much money, I'd rather walk, could he please just give me directions. He practically shoved me in a taxi and gave the money for the ride to the driver, refusing my attempts to give him the amount back. The driver then went beyond his usual route to ensure I got the next connection. When I arrived at the last stop and was taking the short walk back to the hotel a guy sidled up alongside me. I put on my usual, its-dark-and-I'm-on-my-own pace and face but he was persistent and told me that if I came by to his cafe the next day he would give me a coffee for free. When I arrived back at the hotel I was informed that there was a package waiting for me. This was from Vera. I had bought a Sandwhich frim Vera in the street and we had got chatting as she's from Ghana. She took me to her church, made me a dress (and then went home and adjusted it because I'm "not like the skinny English girls", I am, apparently "a good, fat girl".) fed me lunch and then, having excused myself with a headache, turned up the next day at the hotel with food for me to make sure I was ok. She had been there again that day and had this time left me a dinner of fish and fried yam, clothes she had made for me and my parents, two pairs of shoes and a wall hanging. When I tried to give her a gift before I left the Gambia, she tried to pay for it.

Other activities included spending an afternoon walking along deserted beaches and scrambling over rocks to get to the next town, visiting a monkey park with a lovely dutch couple and getting a guided tour round the botanical gardens. The tour was all very.... nice, until the guide was showing me the medicinal gardens and stopped at one particular tree. "This one is good for curing AIDS". He announced. "For what?" I said, thinking I must have misheard, this was an intelligent guy. "AIDS." "AIDS?" I tried to reconfirm. "Yes, AIDS." In response to my progessively less and less gentle explanation that AIDS cannot, as yet, be cured he told me that the news about the tree had been told to them by their president.

Dear Mr President of Gambia, all your people seem to love you. I can't think why when you say things like this which can only harm them, and when you make your personal beef with the Senegalese president public by mouthing off at him in the papers and nearly causing some serious security probems.

I happened to be leaving Gambia the same day as Fred and Ellen, and our end destinations in Senegal were about 20km apart. So aftersome uncertainty about the security of the situation, they offered me a ride inthe back of their pickup. Only it had no back doors. But actually it was more comfortable than a sept-place taxi (yes, it may have 7 seats, but this bears no relation to the number of passngers that will be in it), and probably safer than most ofthe buses that have their doors hanging open and people hanging out ofthe back. Was quite significantly dusty though.

Eventually I arrived at the little town of Toubab-Dialo on Senegal's "Little Coast". It was undeniably beautiful, but my feeling on arrival were that I was not, as the guidebook had said, staying in a backpacker's haven, but a family resort, and that was not somewhere I wanted to be for Christmas. I tried to find a church to visit on Christmas day - but there were none, only several mosques. But in my search I stumbled across a lovely Gambian girl, Edwina, whose mother, who she was visiting for the holidays, owns a beach restaurant and rents a few rooms. If anybody ever wants to visit the Petit Cote I would thoroughly recommend Chez Baby, right on the beach, with some of the nicest and cheapest rooms in town, and excellent food - which she insisted on feeding me, every day, in vast quantities.

Eventually Edwina and I discovered a midnight service out on the main road and decided to head up to it. We arrived there and met a wonderfully kind missionary lady from Brazil, Ana, and her 7 year old totally multilingual daughter, Emily. The power went out for the service, but that kind of added to the Christmas atmosphere, although that's very different from any midnight mass I've ever been to!

I spent the next few days hanging out with Edwina on the beach, eating Tiemboudienne - the Senegalese fish and rice dish - served by Baby (her mother) and getting to know the inhabitants of the small village, so much so that when the power went off one afternoon and all the guys made the most by going to play football on the beach I was left babysitting. fortunately kids here are MUCH better behaved than English kids so I just read my book whilst they sat quiettly. Tehy seemed happy enough.

From The Little Coast I headed back to spend a few days chilling out on Gorée again. The harbour, being enclosed is great for swimming, with none of the huge waves and strong currents that the open beaches had, and the water was surprisingly clear. From there I headed back to Yoff, where I wrote my last entry. I have spent two days literally wiating to come home, passing the time on a gorgeous beach, and Yesterday I visited Dakar, including the crazy huge monument that has cost an insane amopunt of money, upset the majority muslim population by having a majorioty naked lady, and upset everyone else, by just not being that nice. As the lady in the hostel said, "it has no soul". That and from a female perspective I find it repugnant. if the monument represents the resurgence of Africa, then with women and children in the role the monument puts them, its not going to be resurging anytime soon.

So now I am hopefully a few hours away from home, desperately looking forward to it! Although this has been fantastic, unforgettable, rollercoaster that has zoomed past, its made me realise something that I would have vehemently denied before - England is home, and I'm a home bird.

Senegal makes me happy

I am a chicken, it turns out, who likes a bit of luxury from time to time, and sometimes gets sick of "adventures". I could have taken the bus from Bamako to Dakar, a 36 hour journey (plus minimum 10% extra for breakdowns) on a bus with seats in the aisles on roads that would be better  described as holes bridged (occasionally) by dirt, through areas the FCO says not to go, arrive at who knows what time ( but probably in the dark, buses only ever arrive places in the dark) into who knows where in a city described in the rough guide as needing "a degree of mental preparation" and then have to find my way, constantly hassled by "guides", with my big backpack to somewhere overpriced and rented by the hour. Alternatively, I could get up leisurely in Bamako, have a nice breakfast with the crazy brits taking motorcyles overland to cape town and back, go to the airport, read my book for a couple of hours whilst I wait for the clean, punctual little aeroplane to take me safely the hour and a half to the organised airport outside the city centre where I can be picked up and taken to a nice hostel in a calm area with enough daylight left to walk the 500m to the beach. So a chicken I may be, but a pretty smart one I think.

The flight was slightly surreal, it was with Kenya airways, so they were speaking English (of a quality rarely acheived outside of Eton - and, I suspect, with a politeness rarely seen in it). But flying between two Francophone countries the majority of the passengers were French speakers, leaving me pretty confused as to what I should be speaking. I am fairly sure I was served my chicken gristle in off-white gloop by the butler from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, with a badge labelling him as "Edwin".

Once satisfactorily installed and chilled out in the lovely little hideaway of Via Via in the small but lively fishing village of Yoff, about half an hour from Dakar on the North of the Cap Vert peninsula, I went for a little explore. There is not the same sense of poverty here as in other parts of West Africa, though I have yet to see what the more rural areas are like, and I'm not for a second suggesting that poverty does not exist here and that people aren't desperate. The shops are in actual buildings that you can enter and are well stocked with display cabinets brimming with patisseries and everything from batteries to body lotion. Fresh fruit is sold in big marketstall type stands arranged colourfully to show off the variety available. This is a stark contrast to previous places where fruit is bought from a pile at the feet of a woman sat on a wooden stool and you either by bananas from her,or oranges from the next woman.

I wandered through the streets (actual roads) past yellow taxis and horsedrawn carts, between pleasant and well-maintained appartment buildings, musing at the difference it makes when its sand beneath your feet not orange dust. The town slopes gently downhill until you can hear the sea, and the main road sneaks away to the side. The sun at 5.30 was still warm, though low enough in the sky to cast an orange glow over everything, and the sea breeze was pleasant to almost chilly. There is an extra hour of sunlight here (which baffled me for a while and caused me to wonder if there was a time difference) and the sunset lasts nearly an hour, not just 5-10 minutes. I knew I was near the beach when I turned the last corner as, unfortunately I could smell it. But that did not prepare me for what I was about to see. Coming around the side of the building I stopped dead. Ahead of me was the sea, to the right, some beachside shacks serving drinks and playing drums, and directly in front of me was a crowd of middle aged men in their underwear, covered in sand... wrestling. I took a moment to take in the scene and noticed that to the left also was a group of about 40 slightly younger men, dressed in football kits, and in a square formation jumping backwards up the slope of the sand with their hands behind their backs.

Beyond them, as the beach opened out, were more young men, jogging, jumping tyres, running around circles, doing push-ups, sit-ups, strange circuit-training type exercises. Three girls in their late teens jogged past at the edge of the water where the sand was hard. A white guy with a surf board wandered around. Some guys jogged along the waterfront, knee-deep, struggling to maintain some speed. It was like the biggest, prettiest, coolest gym ever.

Westward along the stretch of coast, the sun was setting over the onion dome of the Layen mausoleum, and the land stretched round towards the almost covered causeway leading to the small, green, Isle de Yoff.

For the first time in a few weeks, I feel like I can wait to go home.

Brief trip to Mali

I had planned to spend the best part of a month in Mali, but Al-quaeda have been running around and the government got scared. So I called my Dad to ask him to check the FCO advice on the internet, and apparently basically all of Mali is  no-go zone. I think its just that my Dad looked up what was there and decided he wanted to go too. One day Dad. But for now, I'm skippping it.

After my awesome time in Western Burkina I was not looking forward to coming to Bamako, capital of Mali, as no guidebook or other traveller was exactly complimentary. But I sat down on the bus next to a nervous looking law student who was moving that day to Senegal and had his Mum waving him off. Made me feel kind of stable. And the woman behind me started throwing up, and I got to be the one to take her temperature, give her tissues and chewing gum etc and I felt no longer like the one who needed looking after.

Aware of my optimistic first impressions of Ouaga and how I'd been disappointed I decided not to like Bamako, even crossing over the brightly lit bridge across the niger with a friendly taxi driver and good, well surfaced roads. I arrived at the nunnery (these are GREAT places to stay) and Sister Jeanne, who is shockingly friendly and speaks flawless English welcomed me in to a very clean, secure place. I went to the cafe literally oppositte where they welcomed me, sprayed me with mossie repellent (very necessary here) and handed me a small beer and a huge plate of chips and sheep, and when they didn't have change, just gave me all my money back. The fan in the room didn't work and there was traffic noise. Enough reason to continue not to like the city. The next day I had a lovely breakfast, again, just across the road, and was joined by two lovely french women, one who took me in her taxi to meet her friends and find a surprisingly cheap plane ticket to Dakar, and the other who invited me to have dinner with her. But at lunchtime I had to walk for at least ten minutes to find the tomatoes I fancied putting in my laughing cow sandwhich, bought from the sweet lady with the shop on the corner with the lovely little child. There's dust in the dity 'la poussiere'. Not as much as the guidebooks that I have now butchered to weigh less suggest, but still. And the taxis are expensive, even as much as 2 pounds to get from one side of the capital to the other. And the well stocked bookshops with friendly staff in the big air-conditioned hotels serving cheap fresh fruit juice don't happen to have the senegal guidebook I want. But they do have others.

I found a good reason not to like Bamako. I went out of town to the big market where the locals go to shop. Its immense, dirty, swarming with flies, I stepped in some vile greenish liquid streaming from under the meat section, I accidentally stumbled into a horrid public toilet, and I nearly got run over several times by people reversing motorbikes through the tiny lanes between the stalls. But nobody hassles the white girl there, they're all to busy getting on with their own lives. And its so interesting. And there's a woman in the corner making amazing crumpet-like cakes on a griddle. And I've never seen so many vegetables in one place in West Africa - beetroots, chives, ginger (that was so fat and un-rooty I thought they were stones), big, fresh lettuces, carrots, yams, chillies piles of oranges taller than people.

So I think I kind of like it, after all. Still, I'm looking forward to chilling out by the beach in a little fishing village in Senegal.

Adventurizing

Just spent a fantastic week around the lovely town of Bobo-dioulasso in the south of Burkina Faso. Compared to Ouaga, its incredibly green. From this town I took an hours bus ride to Banfora, as much of a tourist hub as exists in Burkina, and for good reason as the surrounding areas are something pretty special.

I took an early morning bike ride along a dusty path past ox carts, donkeys, people on motos and the occasional unicef 4x4 which makes everyone stop to cover themselves from the dust, to lake tangrela in a beatiful and very rural village full of stereotypical mud huts. I took a pirogue ride on the lake. I knew that it was possible to see hippos, but that wasn't really my objective as the lake itself is beautiful and apparently you have to be there at sunrise to see thelm, and also they're the biggest killers in Africa. But I did see them. I was pretty terrified, but also pretty impressed, big pink toothy mouths sticking out of the water with a hige shadow underneath showing the sie of the beasts.

That afternoon I went with some swedish girls I'd met to an amazing harmattan-formed rock formation which has incredible views over the flat land below. I don't think Ive ever seen such a vast expanse of land. Hard to really comprehend the size of the land mass that is Africa. We also went to see some really stunning waterfalls; we made it there an hour before sunset and were splashing about on the warm rocks as the sky turned orange over the surprisingly green landscape.

The following day all four of us, a guide, a driver and our bags piled into a battered old merc to go to the village of  niansongori at the corner of burkina where cote d'ivoire meets Mali. We climbed a huuuuuge hill to see a village that had existed tehre since the 14th century and had been deserted in colonial times when the French had eventually persuaded them life might be easier if they didn't have to climb a huge cliff face every day to get water, or harvest crops. It was pretty special. We stayed in a eally chilled out campement at the bottom of the hill with no electric or running water, just hammocks, mud huts, stars, and more couscous than anyone could ever eat.

I'm heading to Mali tomorrow, but because al-quaeda have decided to spoil my fun ,its just a stop off on the way to senegal.