Zebrafish

Thursday Oct 31

Feel ill today with a bad cold but have decided to travel because there is a good quality bus today and it only leaves twice a week. At Kora in Mali we rested at a Dogon style hotel for a couple of hours. I drank 1.5 litres of water with rehydration salts, two paracetamol and lay down with a wet neck scarf over my forehead.

Felt better after resting and eating chicken cous cous. We took a pick up truck for one hour to the village of Bankass. I left most of my evening meal and went to bed early.

Friday Nov 1

Rested a lot today, finished reading “Atomised” and started “A passage to Africa” by the Sri Lankan born BBC journalist George Alagiah. I took a walk around Bankass a very tranquil Malian village. Goats and children roamed around the red sandy streets amongst functional, simple, smooth mud red Malian homes. Larger buildings are built with a wooden grid frame and so have protruding wood on the building exterior.

I passed a couple of pools where cattle were grazing. Skinny starved looking cattle with huge bones appearing behind their heads like camels. Pools are deliberately created where people excavate mud to build their homes. Lots of people are pleasantly surprised to see me and call “Ca va & Bonjour”. Many want to shake my hand especially the children although one child that approached me offered his hand then lost his nerve and ran away screaming.

People are sitting under roofs of dried vegetation propped up by tree trunks and large branches selling their wares in the market. The mosques here look amazingly old in design. They share the same mud architecture built with wooded grid frames but have large smooth rounded turrets. There is a petrol station here that consists of a glass filter pump above a drum of petrol, beside it is a hand painted sign saying “Texaco, essence, seche”.

Saturday Nov 2

It’s always better to get up just after dawn after the malarial mosquitoes stop biting. By 10.30am it’s too hot to do anything until about 3.30pm. The midday temperature is about 37C and dry.

We travelled from Bankass to the first village on our hike. From the hotel we sat with our packs on a basic horse drawn cart for about 10 to 12km along a sandy road that had recently been improved by a German aid organisation. We passed nomadic cattle grazers that trade with the Dogon people and fields of millet a diet staple here that is used to make cous cous, bread, cakes and beer.

We took a walk around the village and were shown how bark of the Baobab tree is stripped and made into rope and how the furry shaped fruit pods and leaves are both used in the manufacture of sauces and soups.

High up in the cliff face are the remains of mud homes built by the Telem people. These people were pygmies. Unfortunately none of them exist nowadays but it is thought that they probably used the forest vines to climb to the cliff homes for safety. Nowadays this area is still farmable but dry and not far from being desert. But in times gone past was once covered by tall forest.

The Dogon culture stretches back to the 11^th century and is really fascinating; luckily our guide is very knowledgeable. We rested for a while in the men’s meeting hut, a place where important discussions take place. There is only enough room inside to sit down but this prevents arguments from getting too heated. Perhaps they should adopt one in the White House.

We rested away from the midday heat for several hours and I learnt how to play the West African game of Aware. This is a two-player game involving moving seeds around a board and removing them when four on are the same spot. Its quite challenging and can be played anywhere by making holes in the dirt and collecting seeds as counters.

In the afternoon we ascended the cliff via a river gully then steeply scrambling rocks. We met a Japanese couple; the man had been travelling for 1.5 years and was planning on stopping after three years. We slept on top of the roof that night under a full clear black sky, no moon, and no streetlights in the Sahel. Magical.

Sunday Nov 3

Had a bad first nights sleep out in the open but beautiful none the less. We were taken for a quick tour of the village where we were shown thin mud escape hatches built into huts designed for breaking through if attacked. A women’s period house where menstruating women have to spend a couple of days each month and are not allowed to mix with other people. Only other women or their children can visit them at this time.

We also saw the special home reserved for the eldest man in the village. This man all is in charge of all religious ceremonies and a young virgin girl brings his food each day. You also have to be careful where you tread, as at one point there is an unmarked pile of stones that signifies a place where sacrifices take place. If anyone walks on this spot by accident they have to pay for one black goat to be sacrificed.

We walked back all the way we’d come the previous day and then along the bottom of the escarpment to the village of Teli. After lunch here we visited the old dwellings and grain stores perched high up under the cliffs, this provided an amazing view. We walked onto Enni and visited the traditional weekly market there. I feel pretty exhausted from the heat and having to drink iodine treated well water. I also have to limit my spending on luxuries as I gave my spare cash to the diabetes sufferer, so no beer only iodised water and tea for me this week.

Monday Nov 4

Better night sleep tonight although at one point my mosquito net took off while still attached to some string above and looked like a ghost flying in the air. We continued walking along the sand tracks northeasterly below the escarpment. After 10km we started ascending a gorge and through a landscape reminiscent of Northern Australia or Utah in the US.

We stopped for the day by late morning as the heat was starting to build up. I played a type of draughts with one of the locals. This version of the game is played on a bigger board and with bizarre rules that seem to allow you to move pieces with the same combined power of a bishop in chess.

We walked around some rock formations and down to a natural source to wash and rest. In the evening we watched the sunset from the cliff top and the flat expanse of the Sahel below. Our guide Idrissa took us to meet the local hunter man/doctor. On the outside of his wall was a collection of monkey skulls that he’d trapped and he demonstrated his ancient flint lock rifle by pouring water down the barrel and then firing it and creating huge amounts of smoke in the process. Mike, Sarah and I played scrabble again in the evening and I lost again, Sarah is one of those scrabble addicts.

Tuesday Nov 5

Caught a beautiful sunrise in the morning then trekked up and over the plateau. Met Idrissa’s family in a village along the way and saw people harvesting onions in terraced paddy fields. There is a lot of water here and white lilies growing on the surface of the pond contrast against the reds of the landscape. During the lunch stop we saw women with huge pots of indigo dye made from plants and ate fresh mango.

In the afternoon walked down through an amazingly tall narrow rocky gorge, steeply down to the Sahel base of the cliffs. The cliffs here form a sort of circular auditorium with the sand hills and you can hear the local market sounds reflected from several km away.

At the market in the evening I bought guava, grilled goat ribs wrapped in paper and sat on the large roots of a tree drinking millet beer with men in the dark. It’s so dark I found it almost impossible to differentiate black faces which made it even more confusing trying to speak in a foreign language to someone when you’re not sure who you are sitting next too.

Wednesday Nov 6

We followed the base of the cliff in the morning and afternoon and stopped for our usual midday rest between 10.30am and 3pm, when we played the usual scrabble. In the afternoon we passed by a sacred crocodile pool. The Cliffside dwelling scenery becomes more dramatic the further northeast we go but also the tour companies more frequent. So far we haven’t come across anyone else trekking and so the experience feels more the better.

We’re all getting a bit fed up with rice, cous cous and pasta twice a day but I quite like the doughnuts we have with strawberry jam for breakfast and try to build my carbohydrates up here. Mike has had diarrhoea for a few days, but the colds that Sarah and I had have both gone. The heat still exhausts us all and I had an embarrassing heat rash a couple of days ago. The villages are built next to the cliff face under the remains of the Telem dwellings; here you can hear human voices and animal sounds from the village emanating from the cliffs like ghosts.

Thursday Nov 7

In the morning had a walk around this scenic village with granaries built high into the rocks. Quite a few Spanish and French tour groups for middle age people are here too. We walked along the base of the cliff for another 5km in difficult sandy tracks then stopped at a nice Dogon hotel as the temperature became unbearable out of the shade.

We stayed in the village and in the afternoon we walked high up in the village and saw an elderly tortoise kept by the villagers to test food for the chief because traditionally they are worried about food being poisoned. Now the wet season has passed but you can still see small waterfalls running over the cliff tops creating a passage of green vegetation over the red top of the cliff above us. From here we can see tomorrows route out to Sanga cut into steps going steeply through a natural fault line in the cliff.

Friday Nov 8

Mike was very ill in the morning with stomach cramps and diarrhoea; I think it has probably got worse from the amount of sugar in his tea that is feeding the bacteria. We waited around a couple of hours until he felt better then set off mid morning after the heat had already started to pick up.

We ascended steps laid up through the gap in the cliff and followed it towards Sanga. At the top and right next to the cliff face was built a primary school and nearby a grid of specifically placed sticks and stones used by the wise men for divination that many of the local people consult.

Children in Africa seem to grow up and become responsible for themselves much quicker than those in Europe. For one they start working as soon as they can to help the family. But are also left alone to work with dangerous tools such as knives and razor blades that if were given to a child of a similar age in Europe would almost certainly end in tears and court cases.

At Sanga we sat around for a couple of hours for the bus to the village of Bandiagara. The 4WD or “quatre quatre” overheated on the rough 40km trip and we found a little shade under one of the trees nearby. We stayed in Bandiagara that evening and had to wait for 2 hours for our next meal of cous cous to arrive. After a week long of trekking when you’re hungry the pace of life can be really irritating here sometimes.

Saturday Nov 9

Swamps and the two rivers of Bani and Niger surround Mopti. For that reason it’s slightly cooler here but there are also plenty of mosquitoes at night. Mopti is known as the Venice of West Africa, which is probably true but first before trying to imagine it please remove all images of Venice from your mind and think only of gondola river transport. We took a very beat up taxi to Mopti and arrived at lunchtime after the driver had stopped along the way to strap bundles of wood to the roof and then drop them off at his home. There aren’t many hotels here and relatively many tourists so we walk around a bit until we found the Hotel Fleuve.

The centre of Mopti is really annoying at first because you always have at least one hanger on trying to sell you something, offering a tour, asking for money or even worse wanting to just help you.

Sunday Nov 10

Easy morning Mike cooked boiled eggs which we ate with baguette then played cards until after noon. We ventured out for lunch but had problems getting food partly due to the Islamic festival of Ramadan and because people fast during the daytime. We wandered onto le grand bateau that leaves to Timbuktu later in the week where we met the captain on board who gave us a little tour. I arranged a deal for the next day where I would buy a first class ticket direct from him at the correct price to avoid being ripped off at the ticket office.

Monday Nov 11

We waited two hours for a shared taxi to Djenne to fill up and then after some serious discussion agreed to pay the extra £2 each for the empty seats. Along the way we picked up others and were reimbursed and we sat in a Peugeot 504, 10 of us including the driver. The car crawled along at 30mph and had to stop at several police checkpoints. We then had to wait at least an hour for the car ferry crossing to Djenne. Overall to travel about 90km took about six hours.

We met two cyclists travelling from Bamako to Timbuktu on fully equipped mountain bikes but carrying mostly water. They were eating in villages along the way for 25CFA or about 2.5p for a meal, this compares to anything between 1000 to 3000CFA or £1 and £3 that we pay in the cities.

We had to take our shoes and socks off to cross onto the ferry. There was one crazy and eccentric half Lebanese English woman who was paranoid about getting her drawings and feet wet and forced her way into someone’s Mercedes, she did turn out to be a successful and good artist and had paintings exhibited in the BP portrait awards in London.

Tuesday Nov 12

The grand mosque in Djenne is the largest mud built building in the world but looks slightly smaller than in the photos you see as most of them are probably taken with wide-angle lenses to fit everything in from the market place in front. We took a look in at one of the mud cloth printing houses where there were very striking patterns using basic repeated symbols.

I said goodbye to Mike and Sarah after two weeks travelling together. They’d been great people to trek and travel with but I’m looking forward to my independence again as it is always much easier to meet people when you travel solo.

Finished reading “A passage to Africa” by George Alagiah a really interesting book about contempary African politics and how it is reported in the media. Then braved the midday sun to visit a nearby restaurant where I met two friends from California whom I’d travel with for a couple of days. I then walked around the island of Djenne by myself. This is one of the oldest cities in West Africa and the narrow mud streets with overflowing sewers are both wonderful and disturbing.

Met Karel and Herman from Leuven in Belgium and joined them in the evening at a nice courtyard hotel for fish and cous cous. I would go on to travel with Karel for the next 2 weeks. Later we were joined by the Californians and shared tonic water and beer.

Wednesday Nov 13

We all met up in Djenne square and took a 504 between all of us westerners back to Mopti. We missed the first ferry across the river Bani as our driver returned to the post office in town. The taxi was a state. The doors opened only from the outside and nothing worked except of course the engine. Even the rear view mirror had to be carefully balanced sideways to stop it swinging about.

Back in Mopti we took chips and tonic water on the street and ate them overlooking the river. Mopti can be quite a good-looking town from some angles. The tree-lined boulevard following the river is shady and relaxing. The cynical would say the French planted the trees and they may be right but this has been a major trading port for many hundreds of years on the confluence of the Niger and Bani rivers.

From the riverside bar we hired a pirogue for a 2.5-hour tour along the river visiting two fishing villages along on islands in the middle. Eric from Sweden with whom I traded books for “Mali Blues” by Lieve Joris joined us on the boat tour. The two island communities were very interesting and notably clean, probably due to the proximity to the river. People there seemed a bit aggravated by us because our guide whom we’d paid for the tour did not give any money to the community there which should have been agreed by him.

Thursday Nov 14

Karel, Herman and I took omelette and coffee on a street bar then walked into town. We met loads of people in the Dogon patisserie that served as a bit of a morning travellers meeting place. Spent 1 hour on the Internet then after a dispute about the ½ hour rate I took another ½ hour to make things simpler. Rules here can be clearly illogical here at times.

Spent the early evening buying supplies for the boat trip to Timbuktu then we met up with some of Karel and Herman’s friends at their Tuareg friend’s house where we shared a generous dinner of meat, veg and chickpeas with bread. We all said our farewells as the ship pulled away. Everyone waving in the newly dark evening made an exciting African send off, the sort of crowds waving at a boat that we don’t see often in the modern days of aeroplanes.

Later that evening we assembled on the boat roof and drank beer under the stars while the Niger passed slowly by around us. Spoke a lot to David from Cordoba in Spain. He was previously a lawyer but had quit his job in February to become a writer; he now works in a bar to pay his bills. He is not published yet but has now written two novels, 40 short stories and poetry. We talked about inspiration for books and music.

I swapped my first class ticket for second class in a dorm room with my new friends from Belgium, joined by their University friend Karen whom we met up with in Mopti. But tonight we took our mattresses up and slept on the roof. However it was not such a good decision as it was chilly, the boat engine vibrated my pillow and mosquitoes bit my hands.

Friday Nov 15

Breakfast for 2^nd class and above is served in the salle de manger and consisted of almost fresh bread with processed cheese. We spent the day lazing, reading and talking to others in the shade side of the boat. The Sahel passes by slowly by on each bank. We look up to see a village or some green trees or just stare with and without thoughts at the peaceful but hard simple life on the bank. I had bought some fish hooks in Mopti to have a go at catching our lunch. We devised a rod using fishing line, nuts and bolts for weights and an empty mineral water bottle as a reel. But the ship was moving too quick and all it did was bounce along the surface.

Spoke with Richard from Austria who had worked in Dussledorf, Barcelona, France and Warsaw in banking. But he’d now decided to quit in order to study fine art and was quite happy to be a waiter for the rest of his life to pay the bills.

Fourth class on the lower deck is stacked with sacks and baskets of food for selling to the towns along the Niger, many people live permanently on the floor in 4^th class travelling up and down the Niger with their floating markets. People are gutting fish and cooking food over charcoal. In the afternoon we stop briefly at Niafounké the hometown of Ali Farka Touré the great Malian blues guitarist. At night we stop at another village and one of our sister boats that was making the return journey pulled up parallel to us, music blasting out from the roof speakers. People jump across the boats with sacks of rice while those on the bank transfer huge wooden logs onto the lower deck. I suddenly feel very tired and slightly delirious so I go to bed and sleep.

Saturday Nov 16

Feel weak and tired today. I struggle through plain stale bread and warm sweet milk for breakfast and go back to bed. At lunchtime the European travellers organise a baché, an open wooden framed minibus into Timbuktu. Eight of us stay at the same place and there is a good communal feeling between us after the boat journey.

We’re all hungry so wander into town. After messing about with police registration in this remote area of Mali we finally eat and escape the outside heat. There are lots of people offering souvenirs and camel rides and is they can be very annoying. Sand runs through the streets of Timbuktu soft and deep, walking in it is the equivalent of wheel spin on a car wheel and the reflection gives everything brilliant snow whiteness.

I feel faint and feel as if I’ve got a fever on top of the daytime heat. I have to lie down on some chairs in the restaurant for a while to feel better. I then decide to go back to the hotel and sleep for a few more hours. In the evening we eat together in an empty restaurant with Xmas decorations and under a green light so as not to attract mosquitoes, the food was bad but the company good and I feel a bit better.

Sunday Nov 17

Karel, Herman, Karen and I book a camel trip into the desert, Karel and I for five days and the other two for two days as they have to get back to Bamako to catch flights home. The rest of the day was uneventful and relaxing apart from when I had to hitch on the back of a motorbike into town to give Lucas our Swiss friend his extra large Swiss penknife. In the afternoon I wandered back into town wearing my Tuareg indigo headscarf to visit the Internet café and the old mosque that is still used today, an ancient place with a strong feeling of ritual and spirituality.

I manage to walk about mostly inconspicuously in my headscarf and get into a conversation in French with a young Tuareg called Hamay. I join him in his tent on the edge of town for Tuareg tea. It’s a friendly encounter and I buy two necklaces from his for a very fair price. Timbuktu is a sand coloured one or two-storey town with both narrow and wide sandy streets that lead north to the routes into the Sahara. On the busier streets open sewers flow into puddles across the street.

It’s a quiet town especially during the dry heat of the day but the mornings and evening shadows give it back a romantic exotic Saharan atmosphere. Biblical or scenes from the Koran are on every street, children playing, donkeys, goats, camels, women walking to market, sun filtering through dusty streets and by evening fall men sitting in narrow streets singing Islamic songs.

Monday Nov 18 (and five days in the desert)

An early start saw us mounting camels on the northern edge of Timbuktu. Our guide an elderly Tuareg called Ibrahim who had a kind handsome face took I believe was two of his sons with him. Our camels were tied to the tails in front of them and we formed a small caravan heading off across sparsely vegetated sand. Goats and cattle sometimes scattered around looked strong and healthy here.

After a couple of hours we stopped for lunch at Ibrahim’s family tents. Under the shade of a prickly tree we ate rehydrated goat meat in sandy bread rolls. Two of the children had a hand held blackboard and we taught them some basic reading and counting. The desert is a silent place; the only sounds are of the occasional wind and birdsong.

The landscape changes subtly with different ratios of sand, grasses and sporadic bushes. But during the day always intense heat which between 11am and 3pm forces you to take shelter under the shade of a small tree or bush. Moving our mats around as the midday sun slowly turns west. That evening we found a nice smooth group of sand dunes to lay our mats and sleep on.

It’s a full moon this week, you can’t see many stars but the desert is lit by a bright grey light, which soaks out colour and makes the grass like bushes look skeletal. Ibrahim told us various Tuareg proverbs and stories of the Western Sahara including the droughts of the 1970’s and the subsequent plight of the Tuareg at this time to find ways to survive, stories of the first travellers at the end of the 1960’s and how a Spanish group had paid for eleven of them to visit Barcelona.

He had found Barcelona very interesting but extremely noisy and busy. He is a man of open space, wind and concerns about the health of his animals and people. He hated the car journey that he has to take to Bamako the capital and the petrol fumes made him sick, but loved the aeroplane flight because of the quietness and absence of smell from fumes. Five more Tuareg’s were originally invited but many turned around when they saw their first aeroplane in the sky, some had not even been in a town like Timbuktu before.

Some scientists now believe that the 1970’s drought in the Sahel area south of the Sahara stretching from Senegal to Ethiopia may have been caused by fossil fuel pollution from Europe and North America affecting the weather patterns over the North Atlantic Ocean.

Tuesday Nov 19

Afterwards the days seem to blend into each and time becomes more distinguished by thoughts and events than the punctuation of a clock. The diet is wearing one us, just rice, pasta or cous cous with dried goat meat, sweat strong green Tuareg tea traditionally served three times in small glasses after being poured many times from a small teapot on wooden coals.

Wednesday Nov 20

Mid-morning we stopped at a well to get water. Here Herman and Karen returned with one of the guides to Timbuktu and Karel, Ibrahim, Ahmed and I continued on. At the well water is drawn up in a loose leather bucket and splashed out onto a concrete trough for the animals, cattle and donkeys. Two donkeys are attached via rope to the well and are charged back and forth every few minutes to lift water up.

Thursday Nov 21

We pass by a new well being built, circular concrete laid very deeply. A man is lowered down to work at the bottom on a seat by a four man tug or war method. We are feeling more comfortable of the camels now that our muscles have adjusted, we’ve learnt to let our bodies relax and rock with the camel’s movement and my bum has also started to get used to the discomfort. From now on we are allowed to steer our own camels.

Friday Nov 22

We head back to Ibrahim’s camp for lunch and meet his family again. We go over to the well and let the camels drink after five days. It’s good to wash our heads, after five days in the desert in the same clothes we really smell. We get back to Timbuktu and after showering we head to Restaurant du nord for pasta and vegetables and tinned pineapple juice that tasted simple and wonderful. There was nothing else to do and we were extremely tired so went to bed at 8.15pm in a spare room at a friend’s house in Timbuktu.

Saturday Nov 23

Had a lazy morning of bread and coffee and wandering around back streets of Timbuktu, sightseeing and searching for photos. Sent some postcards and waited in the Grand Marché to get rammed into a baché with about 23 other people including 2 babies. We meet the grand bateau once again and are pleased to get a 2^nd class cabin to ourselves. My two friends from Mopti Mark from London and Brook from Canada are also here. After spaghetti we sit on the roof drinking beer once again under the stars.

Sunday Nov 24

It feels good to be back on the boat with a full day of relaxation and reading ahead. Spent most of the day on the upper deck in the shade and talking. Mark is travelling for a year in Africa. He has been editing the BBC’s “Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy” website, which works like an interactive Earth guide and was editor of Acorn computer magazine. He was travelling with a palm pilot and foldable keyboard and had a strange, highly developed sense of humour.

Brook the Canadian was 26 and looked very cool and laid back with his shaggy beard. He’d travelled and mountain biked quite a lot and had been in China for 1.5 years teaching English and learning Mandarin. The riverbanks here are more desert like; there are some huge red sand dunes and small dotted mud villages. At one point children were standing all along the crest of a giant sand dune shouting “ça va bien” as fast as they could. We stopped in a couple of villages to sell goods. The boat also acts as a floating market; the traders carry their baskets of fruit and vegetables across the ship’s drawbridge. There is then about an hour of trading, lots of individual noise combining into a rich soup, colourful clothes including turbans and general chaos and fun. During the early evening a couple of pirogues pull aside and we anchor at the bank to sell vegetables and buy freshly caught fish in plastic blue buckets.

Monday Nov 25

A relaxing morning talking and watching the dunes as we float past before docking in Gâo, the last large town in the remote north east of Mali. We take a nice relaxed guesthouse about a 2km walk away, mud huts on the edge of town. As usual people trying to help and earn a bit of cash immediately follow us.

After changing a traveller cheque we took a great lunch. I had “Capitaine” or “Nile Perch” fresh from the Niger with tomato and onion sauce with frites, salade verte and several glasses of guava juice, the best meal in weeks. Gâo has great Sahel ambience; we wandered around the petit marché accompanied by Solomon, there is always at least one hanger on. We saw storage rooms for the different slabs/grades of stained salt and boat makers busy making canoes for £400 from Baobab bark brought from upriver.

I bought my ticket for tomorrow’s daunting bus ride; there has been very little information available on this trip about this bus journey. The Lonely Planet guidebook was a little out of date and the UK and USA had issued warnings about road travel in the North and East of Mali over a year ago. But I’d been asking locals for the past month and everything appeared to be OK. Or rather I had had no bad reports; just that it was a difficult journey. After dinner surrounded by white bunny rabbits we had a farewell drink with Karel, Mark and Brook in the yard.

Tuesday Nov 26

I arrived on time at 7.15am at the bus station and joined the people sitting on the floor outside the bus type lorry. After an hour my rucksack was loaded and I started talking to a local boy, he was in Gâo studying a computer banking system at college and another man Philip a diamond entrepreneur from Sierra Leone. We had to wait until 11am for the bus to finally leave and then it kept stopping every 5 minutes to buy food, get petrol, talk to people and deal with police checkpoints. Then just outside Gâo we stopped another 40 minutes because a bird had got trapped in the under carriage.

Speaking with Philip we talked about his people the Krio who speak a creole version of English. The language developed between the freed slaves in Sierra Leone centred on the capital Freetown, as there were many people from different backgrounds needing to find a common way to communicate. Typical examples are:

How are you - ow de bode

I’m fine - bode fine

Thank god – ah tel god tenk-kee

Because the British freed the Krio he tells me there is a lot of respect for the British there. Traditionally there was a lot of favouritism with the Krio under colonial rule. Philip was a student of political science and well travelled in West Africa and some parts of Europe. He was clearly angry with Africans being corrupt when it comes to money; his intelligence seemed to frustrate him here.

At sunset we stopped at a small town on the Niger for praying and food after the day hours of Ramadan. After an omelette, Philip shared his dinner with me. With his two Liberian friends we ate ground cassava mixed with water and sugar that he called African cornflakes with some good fried fish. Small children begged with bowls as we ate and when I’d finished I let the eat the rest of my food.

The bus drove on through the evening, eventually stopping around 10.30pm near the border. After coffee my fellow travellers complained about having to spend 750CFA or 75p to sleep on a straw may outside and went into the bus. I took my sleeping bag out onto the stony ground and slept next to my daypack. The road on the Mali side is just sand through semi-desert. The track often splits in several places where giant potholes have become bad and sand piles up between the two wheel tracks.