Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Dakar - Brother, can you spare a dime?"

This morning I was woken by the sound of exploding canons.  Probably the only thing on this planet that could have aroused me from my comatose slumber.  April 4th is Senegal's Independence Day and today saw a big official celebration of Abdoulaye Wade's inauguration as this country's new President in the Place de l'Indépendence, which is a mere stone's throw or canon's roar away from my apartment on Rue Felix Faure.  Part of the festivities included the firing of a succession of these big guns by the Senegalese army, who were obviously wholly indifferent to the hung over plight of the city's foreign revelers due to their irreverent exertions from the night before.  Waterloo was already well underway in my head.  Extra firepower was not needed.

The day before had been proceeding innocently enough. Queuing quietly outside the CBAO bank with best intentions to further plunder my ever dwindling travel reserves, I heard that odious "Psssst" sound that West Africans overuse to grab someone's attention.  "Eh Monsieur, vous n'avez pas 500 francs pour moi par hazard?"  I turned around wearily, the words "No I don't bloody well have 500 francs for you!" already formed in my head and ready on my lips.  "Vous ne me reconnaissez pas?" the man asked further.  Normally I would reply "No I haven't the foggiest notion who you are - if I held a competition to identify the person most unfamiliar to me, you'd be in with a fighting chance".   However, this time, I did actually recognize the stranger, clad in flowing white robes and sandals that stood in front of me.  Unbeknown to myself, Pa Kane, expert table tennis maestro and old pal of mine from my student days in Lille in 1992/93, had been observing me, doubting his eyes and wondering whether I was indeed that loud and boisterous lady-killing Irishman he knew years ago in France.  Pa was obviously unaware that these bizarre co-incidences happen to me with such regularity that what would be spooky in the extreme to most, is for me quickly becoming a run of the mill feature of globetrotting. It turned out that Pa had returned to his native Senegal three years ago and was now working in the very bank from which I was hoping to get financial relief.  The world really is becoming smaller.  After swapping stories about mutual friends, we had a Coke and Pa showed me how to play the African game of "wouré", which is not altogether dissimilar to backgammon.  As lady luck would have it, two girls from the US were visiting a friend of Pa's and they were not averse to the idea of leaving their Senegalese hosts for a night and heading out on the town till all hours with a strange Dubliner.

Ejim, a Nigerian-American and Ramona, a Mexican-American, turned out to be great fun and needless to say the lads were suitably impressed when I turned up with the two New Yorkers in the "Blue Moon" café later that evening.  All in all, we were quite an eclectic bunch.  The Danes were there as ever, Preben, with his pecks straining to burst out of another skimpy t-shirt, Rolf with his new Senegalese girl, Jackie, in toe, Nina, the English energizer bunny (I'm pretty sure she's sponsored by Duracell), her new beau Nabil, the Lebanese guy who owns the "Iguane Café", the bi-lingual alcohol-free funny man that is Lamine, Laurent the French-speaking federalist from Canada, Robin the swimming maestro from the States, Stéphane the Frenchman, a.k.a. "Monsieur Ciclo" and my Senegalese pals Tidiane and Sophie. A suggestion was made from a highly irresponsible corner to buy a bottle of tequila.  Horrible memories of Féile '92 in Thurles and overdosing with my mates on nine tequila slammers on a summer Sunday afternoon came flooding back.  Salt and lemon city and vague recollections of passing out during the Bryan Adams gig emerged from my subconscious.  With some serious arm-twisting on my part, the Latino flavour was dropped for a Slavic twist, and a bottle of vodka was produced instead.  From then on it all wentsignificantly west.  Ejim, Ramona and Tidiane got down funkily on the dance floor.  I got down awkwardly. Chat up lines were tried out.  I thought I was doing well with my "Hey baby, are you free tonight, or will it cost me?"  But Rolf stole the show with his "Hi there, fancy coming back to my place for some magic? We make love for a few hours and then you disappear!" More arm waving and pressed flesh ensued as we toured Dakar's hotspots and myself and the Yanks were in a bit of a state by the time we fell into "Jackson Burger" around 5:00am, where we suddenly encountered Preben, who had mysteriously disappeared earlier in the evening.  "Where'd you go?" I inquired.  "To the casino in the Café de Rome," the luckiest gambler this side of Las Vegas answered.  "Why'd you leave a nightclub heaving with eligible "punani" to play blackjack?" I continued, eager to understand his illogical course of action.  "I needed the money," was the classic reply.  Well, at least one of us can now spare a dime.

Gav (4 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Saint Louis - Alhamdoulilahi!"

I was sorely tempted to surreptitiously produce my camera and steal a quick snap of our sorry vehicle. But the Gare Routiere Pompiers in Dakar, or any heaving Senegalese taxi station for that matter, is probably not the best place in which to start waving around your camera.  The hordes of sellers, street kids and bumsters swarming around me already had me down, despite my rucksack, as a millionaire philanthropist.  No need to confirm their suspicions and encourage more hassle and hard sells.  It was a pity though, as our seven-seater Peugot 504 bush taxi really was a wreck and to capture an image of it for eternity on film would have proved a prized trophy indeed.  I paid 2,800 CFA (plus 1000 CFA for my luggage) for my place in the moving scrap heap.  Its bald wheels and rusty battered paint-scraped exterior served only to give a clue as to the total state of wanton decay of the inside of the vehicle.  Nothing in the automobile worked.  Not the fuel gauge, not the windscreen wipers, not the door handles.  Seatbelts, fans and wing mirrors were optional extras obviously considered an unnecessary extravagance by the car buyer.  Tarnished pieces of metal protruded from beneath the seat covers.  A layer of filth and grimehung undisturbed over the dashboard like moon dust. Legroom proved elusive.  To tell how fast we were actually traveling proved tricky, as the speedometer remained stuck on zero.  But I'm pretty sure that the CD in my Walkman was revolving at a quicker pace than parts of the car's engine.  I drifted off to a song by Faithless - "So take a pace back; Face facts; It's your decision. You don't need eyes to see; You need vision".  I closed my eyes and tried very hard to visualize a luxurious air-conditioned TGV speeding through the French countryside.  All to no avail.  So, unable to magically transport myself to a cooler faraway land, I resigned myself to my fate.  I sat there motionless and sweaty, uncomfortably sandwiched between two larger than life peanut-munching, banana-chewing African mamas, as we trundled northwards along the main potholed road for four hours, towards the old colonial capital of Saint Louis.  On the back windscreen of the car were three stickers.  One of Madonna, in her "Like a Virgin" days.  One of Bob Marley, in his "No woman, No cry" days.   And one of a young Pope John Paul II in his "No women and still a virgin" days.  "Alhamdoulilahi!" or "Thanks be to God" was carefully painted across the back bumper of the vehicle.  I didn't quite perceive what it was the driver was particularly thankful for, especially given the sorry state of his pride and joy, but at least we got to our destination in one piece - which is probably more than can be said for the taxi, which at one point had to be held together with a serious length of thick rope.

In dire need to restart the circulation of the blood in my legs after the journey, I opted to walk into the centre of town, rather than take an orange and black city taxi.  With the 25 kilos of my life contents piled on my back, I pounded my way across the Pont Faihderbe to the island of Saint Louis.  Originally constructed to cross the Danube and transported to Senegal in the late 19th century, the seven sections of the huge metal bridge oddly reminded me of New York.  When I arrived at the Hotel de Louisiane at the northern end of the island, I was crushed to find out that they had no rooms available.  I suddenly felt like I was partaking in a cruel nativity play.  But Omar, one of the lads in the hotel, kindly offered to rent out his tent to me for 4,000 CFA and I jumped at the offer.  He was, after all, doing me a favour, and I was less than overly keen to start looking for another hotel as a cool starry night was falling quickly.  Furthermore, the following morning he set me up in the nicest room in the hotel, a little wooden cabin, with a dinky round porthole which overlooked the River Senegal, which cost 13.000 CFA (19.50 Euro) with breakfast.  The room that is, not the porthole. In the distance I could see a line of tall palm trees, which marked the border with Mauritania, a mere three kilometers away.  After a refreshing shower, I made the 15-minute walk into the center of town.  I had been told to pay special attention to for the fin de siècle architecture and colonial feel to this, the former capital of French West Africa.  Saint Louis certainly does have a 19th century feel to it - but more of a Dickensian quality.  Okay, there are no pea-soup mists or singing chimney sweeps, but Christ, it has squalor and poverty in abundance, especially on the Langue de Barbarie peninsula.  The hustle and bustle of fishermen, street vendors and destitute children, mixed with the wandering herds of sheep and goats and gangs of scrawny flea-ridden dogs to produce a heaving, decaying, crowded, polluted mess.  The occasional statue to a former French governor or a beautifully crafted archway, provide the only clues to the former glory of this jazz town.  I retreated across the Pont Mustapha Malick Gaye to the Hotel de la Poste, where I sat reading the Irish collective novel "Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel" in the Safari Bar, surrounded the mounted stuffed heads of antelopes, bison and other wild game and by paintings of scenes typical of the "Scramble for Africa".  All very colonial, really.  Naturally when I produced a 10,000 CFA note from my wallet, eyebrows were raised. There is an annoying shortage of coins and small denomination notes in Senegal, which often renders the cash dispensed by banks absolutely useless.  The rest of my stay in Saint Louis was spent wandering aimlessly around the sandy streets of the island and once again bumping into people I know from Dakar, like Bruno and Sara, with the usual sleepless consequences.  But having spent a significant amount of time in Dakar and having toured around the Casamance, it was interesting to venture up here to Saint Louis, to see how life in the northern region compares with other parts of Senegal.  But now, like the Littlest Hobo, it is time to move on again and see where the road leads me.  Rest assured that even if my travel budget does not grant me enough hours in the cyber cafés to respond to all the encouraging e-mails I have received, they are all eagerly read and are very much appreciated.  Nice one.

Gav (7 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Mali - No stone walls and the grass ain't green"

"Now as I tumble down highways Or fill the overcrowded trains, There's no one to talk to in transit So I sit there and daydream in vain; And behind all these muddled up problems Of living on a foreign soil, I can still see the twists and turns in the road And the square of the town that I left"

Thus the sound of the anthem of many an Irish emigrant, "N17", rang in my ears.  I had to restrain myself from singing along with the Saw Doctors.  Our train had pulled out of Dakar at 11h15 on Wednesday morning (75 minutes behind schedule) and here we were at Kidira in eastern Senegal, still waiting to cross the Malian border, at 15h00 the following day.  What I had thought would be my last day in Senegal had been spent effortlessly floating in the warm pink waters of Lac Rose, ten times saltier than the sea, and one hour to the north of the Senegalese capital.  The round trip by bush taxi cost 20,000 CFA (30 Euro), but this was acceptable given that out taxi was surprisinglyintact and that the the price was shared between myself and two English friends, Will and Nina.  A final meal with the Dakar possee in "Le Medinoix" was followed by the final episodes of Series 5 of the hilarious US sitcom "Friends".  I've put myself through a bit of a "Friends" marathon the past few days, so don't get freaked out if I start blathering on about Chandler, Joey, Ross, Rachel, Monica and Phoebe for no apparent reason.

What in fact turned out to be my last day in Senegal was spent swealtering in my couchette aboard the Mistral Internationale.  The price of my bed in the dusty four-man sleeper was 49,000 CFA (65 Euro).  But when I saw the decrepid state of the so-called first class wagon, a seat in which cost 35,000 CFA (52.50 Euro), I had no qualms about departing with the extra few sheckels.  Second class just is not an option for a western tourist, unless you are trying to prove something.  Something like your madness or strong affinity for overpowering pungeant odours.  On the winding journey through Senegal, the "express" train seems to play a crucial role in local commerce.  At each village where the Mistral International stops, goods are exchanged, deals are made and vibrant scenes a plenty are to be witnessed.  The further away from the coast we snaked, the hotter the temperature became, till the gauge reached 45° Celcius in Kayes in western Mali.  It was hot enough to boil an egg.  If you had an egg.  And Sally O'Brien, and the way she'd look at ya...

Sorry about that - just a bit of Celtic heat nostalgia.  Our slow progress eastwards (you could tell we were going east as the Muslim passengers aboard laid out their prayer mats in the same direction as towards which the train was moving) was accepted with shrugged shoulders by my fellow travellers.  Most wealthy businessmen, those who would be likliest to raise a voice of complaint, choose to fly between Dakar and Bamako.  And given the importance of the frequent stops at each small hamlet en route, the mounting delays are accepted as par for the course.  I shared my basic, but adequate couchette with Mamadou, a Muslim from Congo-Brazzaville with whome I had several interesting and eye-opening discussions about European, particlularly French, economic neo-colonialism in Africa.  We were also accompanied by a Malian woman, whose 17 month old baby daughter was terrified by me, having never seen a white man before.  It was only after I offered her a vanilla buscuit that her fear was for the most part dispelled.  There were three other non-Africans on the train - a French couple and an adventurous Japanese lad, all of whom were resigned to the fact that Thursday would not see our arrival in Bamako. 

Travelling in the relative cool of the early evening was more pleasant, especially in Mali, which offered a more varied and mountainous landscape and a sky peppered with luminous clouds the colour of Gin and Tonics.  Underneath this heavenly firmament, I read a lovely story about the creation myth of the Miwok American Indians.  According to their tradition, men were created by one sun, called "Ouatou", and women by another, named "Comme".  The two suns had an arguement about whose creation was better, and eventually the sun who made man struck the sun who made woman, scattering thousands of pieces of light about the sky.  Comme became the moon, who spends half the month gathering up her lost pieces of starlight, only for Ouatou to scatter them again, returning her to darkness.  I nodded off dreamily and woke only as we were pulling into Bamako just before dawn on Friday morning and I managed to haul myself and my rucksack to the Hôtel du Fleuve, where I took a badly needed and much appreciated hot shower.  I feel mildly human again as I hide out in an air-conditioned cyber café, waiting for the Comme to leave the centre of the sky and the high Sahel temperatures to subside.  A spot of soft Irish rain wouldn't go a miss.

"And I wish I was on that N17, Stone walls and the grass is green, Traveling with just my thoughts and dreams, Traveling with my thought and dreams..."

Gav (14 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Bamako - Calm before the desert storm"

Over two months have now elapsed since Saint Valentine's Day and my departure from Europe.  My solo stint today draws to a close and I don't mind admitting that I'm quite chuffed at having stuck it out.  My English buddy, Tiff, is due to arrive in Bamako tonight (hopefully with lots of dollars and a couple of CDs!) and a hot hectic rush around Mali and the Ivory Coast looks on the cards in the forthcoming fortnight.  April is apparently the hottest month in Mali.  Every country I visit seems to get progressively hotter and I still haven't seen a drop of rain hit African soil.  I reckon that I should be well baked by the time I hit Oz.  These past few days in the Malian capital I've tried to keep cool by frequently submerging myself in the pool in the Hotel de l'Amitié and sinking a few Castle beers with Marco and Michelle, an Australian-Canadian couple I have repeatedly bumped into in Senegal, the Gambia and now Mali.  Many gripping games of suspicious quality of pool have been played in "Le Campagnard" bar, and some fine Lebanese cuisine has found its way to the inside of my stomach walls.  But this travelling hiatus will be abandoned in approximately one hour when Tiff touches down and we set sail de nouveau in the morning. After our combined adventurous exploits, I'll probably spend a few days recovering from heat exhaustion on my own again in either Côte d'Ivoire or Ghana.  Then I'll fly to Kenya on May 5.  Two days later, my two-month Dragoman trip from Nairobi to Capetown gets underway and I'll be accompanied by 20 fellow Westerners en route.  There'll be no more time then to prop up bars on my own composing dodgy melancholy Irish poetry!  I'll continue to write my travel log in the meantime as always, though you'll probably have to wait till the third week in May to witness the fruits of my labours, as Pierre-Yves, my homepage manager, is taking a well-earned rest far away from the amazing world of computers.  So fear not my silence - hopefully I won't have fallen off the planet and no doubt my scribblings will make a miraculous reappearance in four weeks - three countries later.  Till then, I bid you all adieu and await a bountiful supply of post via the old e-mail.

Gav (17 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Mopti & Djenné - Along the Niger Route"

Apologies for the temporary termination of transmission, but I'm back on the Web now with a few stories or twenty to tell from the past couple of weeks.  So settle back, put on the kettle and get comfy - because this might take a while..  Tiff's timely arrival in Bamako was met with a heavy night on the tiles in "Byblos" and a subsequent morning spent wondering why the hell we drank so many G&Ts (Gavin & Tiffs).  Given that we had a mere six days to explore the Malian hinterland, travel by public transport was not a realistic option, unless we wanted to spend half of our stay in sweaty transit.  As luck would have it, an Italian travel company, Azimut, was situated in the Hotel du Fleuve (18,000 CFA a night), so Tiff and myself handed over a princely ransom of 325,000 (500 Euro) each to hire an air-conditioned 4x4 Toyota Landcruiser, a driver, a guide, five evenings accommodation and bed and breakfast.  Diesel, extra guides and taxes were also included in our deal.  So by 15h00 we were pulling out of the grotty capital in style in the company of our young guide, Djbril Keita and our quiet unassuming chauffeur, Kasim.  Our route followed the course of the legendary river Niger, through the old colonial outpost of Ségou to the ancient imperial city of Djenné, situated on an island in the river Bani.  We arrived at our destination, Le Campement, around 23h00, having only had to stop four times en route (not bad by African standards - once because of a tyre blow out, once for fuel, once because the engine packed in and once to be ferried across the river Bani in what seemed to be a floating gift shop.  This method of water fording proved to be the slower of two alternative methods of traversing the Bani, the quicker being to wade through the river carrying a Vespa.  A sumptuous meal of chicken and chips (a novelty for Tiff having arrived from pasta land) was followed by another sultry dream-filled night.

I guess that being on the road one sees so many new and interesting things that come the wee hours, though one is physically wrecked, one's brain is still trying to filter and process all the new images and information of the day.  Over-active synapses Tiff calls this.  Of course he did have another explanation, concerning hormones, Freud, and the fact that one hasn't had any "sweet loving" (as Chef from South Park would say) since the last Millennium.  But I like to dismiss this "under-active loins theory" as mere idle speculation.  So over-active synapses it is.  Anyway, this ability to not only dream more, but also to recall one's nocturnal images, is coupled with an enhanced memory when on the road.  Having so much free time on one's hands with very limited access to television, videos, cinema, theatre, concerts or the horde of other distractions which Europeans use to fill in the empty hours of each day, means that one spends a lot more time thinking and reflecting on past events.  In the time since I left Europe, memories I had presumed long lost have come flooding back to my consciousness - forgotten events, smells, tastes, places, emotions and names (which is really good as I'm terrible with names).  Therefore, travel is not only to be recommended for gaining new life experiences, but also because it helps one to recall old life experiences.  This need not be a serious as it sounds, especially if you're not travelling alone. Tiff and I spent many hours of our journey to Djenné recalling old childrens' TV programmes that we had watched 20 years ago on the BBC - Bod, Bagpuss, the Mister Men, Mr. Ben, Battle of the Planets, Cheggers Plays Pop, We are the Champions, Swop Shop, Grange Hill, Dr. Who, It's a Knockout, grandstand, the Dukes of Hazard,  Starsky & Hutch the list went on and on.and on.  Tiff even managed to successfully name all five teddy bears/dolls from Play School!  It's hard to describe, but the feeling one gets when one rediscovers old shared memories (even if they're silly memories) makes one aware that whatever you are doing with your life now or at any given moment, no matter how important it may seem, it is just a part of a process - the continuing march of your life cycle.  We then got into a heavy discussion about free will versus destiny, where we agreed to differ - I'm perhaps a bit too fatalistic at times.   We did manage to see eye to eye on one thing though - that we had both really watched far too much television as kids!

Yet again we woke early.  I find it much easier to be up and about at 7am in Africa, than I ever did in Europe.  Probably because I don't have to head to school, college or worse still.the office.  We were given a guided tour around Djenné by Djbril and Kola, a knowledgeable local.  Or rather, Kola brought us around the town, pointed out buildings of interest and informed us about local traditions and lifestyles. Djbril, on the other hand, was his usual mute nonplussed self, occasionally giving a lethargic shrug of his heavy shoulders and basically looking too cool for Mali.  We would get to know Djbril a lot better in the days to come and we grew to like his company, even if we could only make out about half of what he was saying at any given time.  He's start out a sentence brightly enough, but the words would soon trail off into an incoherent bored mumble.  He was later to prove to be a good man to have on your side when trouble was brewing.  But during those first 48 hours, he did give out the distinct impression that he'd altogether prefer to be shooting hoops on a basketball court or romancing one of his many lady friends, than to be traipsing along the Niger with us.  If we wanted information, it was up to us to ask - proactivity was not his forte.  Alas, we were not permitted to enter the historic 11th century Sudanese-style Djenné mosque, which dominates the town.  Non-Muslims are no longer welcome inside its sandy brown mud-brick walls since an Italian advertising company filmed scantily clad women there.  I can't see why they just didn't ban Italians.or scantily clad women for that matter. But we were informed that the inside is, in true Islamic fashion, simple and practical.  Each year before the rainy season, the whole town comes together to renew the mosque by spreading a layer of new mud over its exterior.  This is all completed in one day and is, by all accounts (or Kola's at least), a sight to behold.  Sounds a bit like Woodstock to me.again without the scantily clad women though.  We passed by a Koranic school where young boys were lovingly and obligingly copying down verses from the Koran.  Once again, severe physical punishment (similar to that which I saw in the Casamance), the likes of which is normally reserved for donkeys, was meted out to those insolent pupils, who did not make the Islamic grade. Midday was spent in the shade - the soaring Sahel temperatures oblige complete inactivity, on the part of Westerners at least.

After lunch we drove further north-east to Mopti (this time with only one lengthy breakdown en route!), the town where the rivers Niger and Bani meet, and the centre of Mali's burgeoning tourist industry. Burgeoning that is, before March.  April is, we were told, reserved for masochists and lovers of sun-stroke.  This probably explains why the only other travellers were all Spanish, obviously having spent many years in training on the Iberian peninsula for the extreme heat of the Malian climate.  No sooner had we weaved our way through the madding crowds of salt-sellers, fishermen, mango growers and trinket peddlers, than I found myself haggling over the price of a Fula (Peul in French) shepherd's hat.  The eager vendor was seeking an exorbitant bounty of 25,000 CFA (42.50 Euro).  I was having none of that.  Remembering all I'd learned from the famous haggling scene from Monty Python's "Life of Brian", I battled him down to 10,000 CFA (15 Euro), a price below which he would not go and above which my budget could not stretch.  I now just have to convince Tiff that for the sake of the preservation of ancient Malian artefacts, it would be most prudent for him to take this wonderfully crafted, if totally useless, piece of tribal headgear back to Turin with him for safe keeping.  Somehow I can't see myself winning over the ladies in Sydney if I'm sporting the voluminous headwear of a Fula shepherd. I'm sure he'll understand this and see sense, especially as it turns inside out for easy packing! More hard-nosed commercial acumen (ooh matron!) was required on our part to secure our place on a pirogue with a horde of Catalans and a 90-minute passage down the Bani and Niger waterways.  We only handed over a quarter of the sought-after sum of 20,000 CFA (30 Euro), making it patently clear that our abject poverty and sudden incapacity to speak French, would make any attempt by the pirogue bandits to gain more money from us, an act of the utmost futility.  Sorted (cue West Country accent, Tiff). Our first stop was on the river Bani, where we visited a Bozo fishing village, which had obviously seen far too much tourism.  Groups of kids ran after us shouting "Toubabou bonbon" or "Toubabou Bic", while women, with children strapped to their back in the practical traditional African fashion, asked if we wanted to take their photo for several hundred francs.  It was quite sad to see a small settlement so obviously financially corrupted by the influx of rich Western tourists.  We set sail again past Mopti and made for the famed river Niger, where we stopped at an island on which several Tuareg women made a living from selling an assorted paraphernalia of exotic "treasure" from the desert.  Unfortunately for them, their souvenir hut was lit less brightly than a Welsh mine shaft, so even if one had been keen to buy a trinket or two, darkness would have precluded any sales.  The Tuareg are physically striking and very distinct from their sub-Saharan neighbours.  Their skin colour, a cross between Berber and black African, is almost akin to that of sub-continental Indians and their eyes, hair and blue clothing are quite unique.  As the sun dipped below the horizon, we were already sailing back to Mopti, past a plethora of small motorised crafts, pirogues pushed along by men with long poles and the occasional boat armed with a giant sail of Viking long ship proportions.  Mopti is consequently often justly referred to as the Venice of the Sahel.

And with that, we were on the road again with Djbril and Kasim, to the Motel de Sevaré (12 kilometres from Mopti), where Tiff and I gleefully watched Manchester United succumb to Real Madrid in the European Champions League, a result which means that my team, Arsenal, are the only English club left in Europe.  So Lorcan, to answer your guestbook question; no, I haven't given up on "the Bummers" just yet!  A quick supper of rice and chicken (we'll start growing feathers soon) and then it was early to bed.again. The next day was to see our bidding a fond farewell to the Niger and the bustling markets of Mopti, as we moved further eastwards inland.to Dogon Country.

Gav (19 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Dogon Country - It's life, Jim, but not as we know it"

Strapped for cash, the Malians could only afford the basic savannah landscape, which went on for hundreds of kilometres in each direction, interrupted occasionally by sparse settlements of mango-vendors. Such was the scene that greeted us as our 4x4 left the surprisingly intact road to Mopti and headed cross-country towards what seemed to be the middle of nowhere.  It's little wonder that the first European didn't reach Dogon Country until the second half of the 19th century.  It's just so "Dogon" hard to find! Please allow a moment of silence for the untimely death of that pun.  Seriously though, it's not in the middle of nowhere - it's well beyond that.  Each way we looked, we saw the same endless barren view.  A breakdown in this part of the world could have proved "quite literally fatal, mate" (insert voices of Harry Enfield & Paul Whitehouse characters "Smashy & Nicey).  I slipped in and out of consciousness while listening to Macy Gray and the excellent soundtrack to "The Beach" on my Discman, while Tiff busied himself with "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky - an unorthodox choice of holiday reading it might be said.

Our fist stop in Dogon Country was at midday in the village of Songo, where the only people working seemed to be the wool and cotton weavers, plus our guides. The thermometer was pushing the high forties as we climbed up a rocky overhang to the place where the young male adolescents of the area are circumcised and enter into manhood.  Circumcision is very important in Dogon culture and a large ceremony takes place in Songo every three years when 200 boys between 10 and 12 years old are initiated together.  The cliff walls surrounding the area where their foreskin is removed was decorated with paintings of snakes, crocodiles, scorpions, lizards and other animals.  Dried blood could still be seen on some of the rocks where the initiated had sat.  Female circumcision is still performed down below in the village and in many remote areas of the Sahel, though nowadays it tends to be a less overt rite, since the banning of the practice of clitoral mutilation by the Malian and other West African governments.

Leaving Songo behind, Kasim drove us further across the Dogon plateau, and it was late afternoon by the time we reached the Bandiagara Escarpment, a 300-metre high cliff that extends 150 kilometres through the Sahel to the south-east of Mopti.  The Dogon first arrived here in 1300 AD and avoided any contact with the white man till the late 19th century.  Most still follow their traditional Animist religion, although a third are Muslims, and a smaller minority still are Christians, both of the Roman Catholic and the Evangelical Protestant persuasion.  All seem to get along famously side by side - another example of West African religious tolerance.  Our appearance at the top of the escarpment was greeted by an impromptu choral recital by a bunch of kids eager for pens, sweets and plastic mineral water bottles.  The second Tiff and I passed by them empty handed, the singing stopped.  Another example of the negative influence of tourism, alas.  We hiked down a trail through the escarpment with Djbril leading the way, passing a man who was incredibly carrying a tree trunk on his head as he ascended the cliff face!  He was followed by a group of women, who also had various heavy bundles of clothes and food carefully balanced on their heads. We rejoined Kasim at the little village of Banani, where we were to spend the next two evenings sleeping on the roof of the encampment, beneath a starry Malian sky.  Even at midnight the temperature never dropped below 25° Celsius, but no matter how hot it got in Dogon Country, at least it was dry heat and shade always offered some welcome respite, something which would not be the case the following week in the stifling humidity of the Côte d'Ivoire.

After a filling breakfast at 06h30 the next morning (sleeping late in Dogon Country is not a possibility given the insomniac machinations of cockerels, donkeys and local Imams crying out from the makeshift mosques), we were joined by Sérou Diangounou Dolo, our Dogon guide from the town of Sangha, who was to lead us through the maze of villages along the escarpment. As we climbed higher up the cliff, we got a truer view of the harsh beauty of the Dogon countryside.  The escarpment dominates over everything.  Once again, I recalled scenes from old Westerns and half expected a band of Apache braves to be hiding behind the next rocky outcrop.  Sérou pointed out the various symbols, totems and fetishes in each Dogon village that we passed on the walk to Ireli.  We could only gaze in wonder at the homes of the Dogon ancestors, the Tellem carved out of the cliff face a Millennium ago, when the climate was kinder and trees and vines crawled up the cliff face making access to its higher reaches easier.  The abandoned homes of the extinct Tellem are now used as burial chambers for the Dogon dead. Funerals are very important in Dogon culture.  Big feasts are held with masked dancers, stilt walkers and large helpings of millet beer.  Sounds a bit like a colourful Irish wake.  It was fascinating to learn about the Dogon and their Animist beliefs.  Sérou and Djbril, who is Muslim, got into one or two heated debates over their respective religions.  Sérou accused Djbril of being a fake Muslim as he ate pork and drank alcohol, while Djbril claimed that Sérou didnt worship god at all, but Satan.  As a questioning roman Catholic and a lapsed Anglican, myself and Tiff remain quietly neutral, even if I felt more akin to Djbril's point of view.  Dogon beliefs, such as telling the future from fox trails and pouring millet beer over their fetishes (domes of hard-packed mud) are to pray for fertility, health and good harvests, are just too unfamiliar and weird for me.  I've seen less bizarre ceremonies in episodes of Star Trek.  If two or more Dogon males want to argue over the finer points of politics, religion, cosmology or philosophy, they leave their circular, conical thatched houses and make for the "Togu-na", where they must remain seated due to the low roof of the hut.  The Togu-na is purposely designed thus to prevent heated discussions from degenerating into arguments or fights.  Perhaps more pubs back home should adopt this low roof technique.  Each time Sérou passed another Dogon, they started a charming greeting ritual, an edited version of which follows:

Ou sevo (How are you?) - Sevo (I'm fine) Omana sevo (How's your family?) - Sevo (They're fine) Guni sevo (How's your house?) - Sevo yapoo, oo (It's fine thanks, and yourself?) Repeat ad infinitum.

In the full length salutation, each person asks after the others brothers, sisters, cousins, chickens, donkeys, dead grannies etc.  So you can just imagine how many times we had to say "Sevo" (pronounced say oh é) as we passed through each village.  Each time we afforded ourselves a surreptitious giggle.  It sure beats the cursory nod of the head and muttering of "Howya" that passes as a greeting in Dublin.

After pottering around the escarpment and losing litres of bodily fluid, we joined up with Kasim again, and he dropped us to the main village of Sangha, where it was market day.  Markey day is held here once a week, but the Dogon week has only five days.  Hundreds of people were milling around selling dried fish, animals, soap, fruit, clothes, millet beer, fly ridden meat and what not.  All hell broke loose when a fire started in one corner of the market and the locals rushed to put it out.  I got a glimpse of just how helpless one is when caught in the middle of a heaving panic-stricken melee.  We passed by the home of an Ogon, who is the oldest man in the village.  Sérou said that the Dogon live long lives and claimed that his very own grandmother lived to the ripe old age of 125!  No wonder funerals are used as an excuse for a massive ballyhoo then.  The Ogon lives alone (lets face it, his kids, let alone his wives are probably well dead by the time he graduates to be Ogon) and never washes.  Not washing is probably another reason he finds it a tad tricky to come by flatmates. Instead he is cleaned by the tongues of the many snakes who share his house, the largest hut in the village.  Yes indeed, Dogon traditions really do owe nothing to the alien incursion of Christianity and Islam.  The heat eventually proved too much for me, so we retired to Sérou's house, where he showed off his shotguns and the books about the Dogon Country that his father, a village elder, had helped several Dutchmen to produce over 20 years ago.  We met the old man himself and once again Tiff was struck by the open friendliness, not only of the Dogon, but of the West Africans in general.

A thankfully relatively cool evening found Tiff, Djbril and myself discussing football and women (hey, lads will be lads, even in the far side of nowhere) and reflecting on all that we'd learned about the Dogon.  That's another reason why not travelling alone is so much easier - you can share experiences and opinions and don't have to hold everything inside.  If any one of you is tempted to visit West Africa, I would heartily recommend a trip to Mali in general, and to Dogon Country in particular, though perhaps earlier in the year.  It really is another world. Theirs is a unconventional way of life - hard working, full of toil, but with a sense of honesty and community long lost by people in the West.  Tiff and I lay on the roof of our encampment looking at shooting stars and satellites and trying to identify strange faraway constellations that we'd never seen before. It's little wonder why the Dogon place such importance on the starlit patters of the heavens.  This is their television, their global canvass, their outlook to other worlds, where the spirits of their ancestors reside.  It is indeed life, Jim, but not as we know it.

Gav (21 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "San - Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind"

By 8am we had breakfasted, repacked and were driving away from Banani, up the rocky winding roads back to the plateau and away from Dogon Country.  We had a long journey ahead of us (just how long Tiff and I were blissfully unaware) back to Sevaré and then westwards to San and Ségou, where we were due to overnight.  A ten hour drive in all, the first part of which was over seriously rough terrain.  Before 10h00 it was still possible to leave the windows open and the air-con off.  And with the Malian blues sound of the blind couple Amadou Bagayoko & Mariam Doumbia and the Ivorian reggae beats of Alpha Blondy blaring from the car stereo, it was a pleasant journey through the African wilderness.  The serenity of the occasion was broken, however, when we broke down once again. Fortunately, an Austrian couple were passing by and they towed us to Sevaré, where Kasim set about repairing our sickly chariot.  After a spot of lunch with Djbril (or "Gerbil" as Tiff started to call him), we were off again, this time under our own steam.  As the afternoon ambient temperatures skyrocketed outside, tiff and myself felt its tiring effects and we both dozed off in the back of the Landcruiser.

The first inkling I had that something was not as it should be was when we were awakened with an almighty bang.  Then the windscreen shattered into pieces and sprayed us with glass.  This was no tyre blow-out.  We were off the road.  Tiff and I ducked down, closed our eyes and hugged each other for dear life as for 30 seconds we careered over rocks, through scrub and bushes and flew into tree branches.  We had no idea how close a call it was until we saw the car from the outside.  With hindsight, we exited the vehicle far too slowly.  It never occurred to us until much later that the engine might have exploded.  Mercifully, apart from sprayed glass cuts and bruised ribs, Tiff, Djbril and my good self were pretty unscathed, but Kasim had some nasty abrasions on his right arm, with which he had tried in vain to hold the windscreen intact.  So out came the first aid kit for the second time on my African journey and we disinfected Kasim's wounds and bandaged his arm.  It was only then that we fully realised the total amount of damage that the 4x4 had taken.  A van which had seen us speed off the road arrived and its occupants proclaimed that it was a miracle that nobody had been killed.  It was only down to Kasim's driving skill that the Landrover didn't topple over and roll.  Slowly Tiff and I pieced together what had happened.  As we approached a bend in the road another vehicle was coming in the opposite direction.  Therefore, we had to take the turn at too wide an angle.  The 110kmph speed at which we were travelling proved too much and we dropped two metres down off the road for a real Africa overland experience!  I think Tiff was still a bit in shock when the size of our escape became apparent, while I was giddy with excitement.  I insisted that we take photos of the wrecked Toyota for posterity (and for the web page).  I believe that while we all make important choices, we do each have a destiny and somehow I knew that my fate was not to perish in a car crash in some Malian backwater.  So while Tiff counted his lucky stars, I just thought about what a great story the accident would make.

Kasim stayed with the vehicle, while Djbril, Tiff and I hopped in the back of a passing pick-up to head to the next town, San.  There, Djbril went to get the police and to send a truck to pick up Kasim and our wrecked 4x4.  Tiff and I each took a shower and washed away the glass splinters and decided to have a drink to celebrate our lucky escape.  I think we had earned it.  By the time Djbril finally returned with Kasim and two Malian soldiers, Tiff and I had polished off a decent amount of booze, were a tad plastered and were heavily engrossed in an old documentary about the Spanish Civil War that was on the telly in the Hotel Relax.  The gendarmes quizzed us thoroughly about the incident and the lads were relieved to hear that we didn't want to press charges against Kasim for what had happened.  Hey, we're not Americans!  We were just grateful that his skilful manoeuvring of the car had prevented us from rushing headlong into a Boabab tree.  By the time Djbril, Tiff and I climbed aboard a bus from San to Ségou, the Gordons had kicked in big time.  So for the three-hour duration of the trip, our African fellow travellers were treated to a drunken sing song by the two toubabs.  We jovially rattled off a bizarre selection of songs with a motoring theme such as "Cars" by Gary Numan, "Drive" by the Cars, "I Like Driving in my Car" by Madness, "The Ace of Spades" by Motorhead, "Mmmm" by the Crash Test Dummies and of course that all-time road-kill favourite, "Crash" by the Primitives.  For when one has a close call like we did today, one is just happy to be alive and kicking.  "There you go, way too fast; don't slow down, you're gonna crash."

Gav (22 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Bamako - Here Comes the Rain"

A somewhat subdued pair of travellers looked around hassle-free Sérou the following morning with Djbril. We stumbled across a Bambara wedding and in the resplendent crowd we spotted some of the most beautiful, tall and slim women we'd ever set sorry eyes on.  The young ladies of West Africa have the bodies of lithe catwalk models, while the men folk look like they have been chiselled from black marble. The physique of European is quite pathetic by comparison.  When we got back to Bamako in a replacement Landrover, we wangles 50,000 CFA (75 Euro) each out of Axel, the Italian owner of Azimut, for all the delays caused by the car breakdowns - not to mention the crash on the road to San.  Getting money or customer service from Italians is like trying to draw blood form a stone, but our Torinese training served us well and in the end he begrudgingly coughed up the cash.  As we headed to the airport with Djbril, I saw the first rains since I was in London in February.  A tropical storm, complete with fork lightning, started to brew, which was more than a bit disquieting, especially as we had to fly through the gathering clouds.  We got our passports stamped, discovered that we should have confirmed our tickets to the Ivory Coast (for some reason all Air Afrique tickets, whether bought or not, must be re-confirmed 72 hours prior to departure), paid some airport tax and then bit adieu to "Gerbil", our trusty easy-going sidekick.  On our way to the gate we discovered that our flight had originated in Dakar and was heading onto Johannesburg after dropping us off in Abidjan. So aboard we found ourselves amidst a motley mix of noisy West Africans, snobby French ex-pats and hairy Boer farmers.  It gave me a brief taste of what awaits me when I leave the Francophone corner of the continent.  Our large plane roared down the wet runway and with that, Mali was in the past.

Gav (23 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Abidjan - This town, is becoming like a ghost town"

We couldn't believe the humidity when we stepped off the aeroplane in Côte d'Ivoire.  It was more uncomfortable than the searing heat of Dogon Country. One interminably long wait for our luggage later, we were taxi bound for downtown Abidjan.  After two and a half months pottering around the dark continent, the entrance across the Pont Charles de Gaulle over the lagoon into Le Plâteau, the central business district of Abidjan, was unforgettable.  I felt like I was arriving in Las Vegas.  Massive skyscrapers and neon lights dominated the horizon.  Even Tiff, who's only been in electricity starved Africa for a week (though he says it already feels like three), was pretty impressed by the 21st century skyline.  Having been trapsing around Muslim countries, it took me by some surprise to see that Abidjan had basically closed down for Easter.  So when we awoke in the run-down Hotel des Sports (13,000 CFA for a double) and headed outside on Easter Monday morning, we didn't find a bustling metropolis.  Instead we found ourselves in a sleepy deserted town, like something from a Stephen King movie, when all the inhabitants of a city have been wiped out or have mysteriously disappeared.  So no CD buying, no cyber cafés, no lazily leafing through the weekend papers.  Instead we busied ourselves washing our clothes, which were in a rancid state after Mali.  A woman's work is never done.or delegated, as Tiff added.  We then headed to the notorious Gare Routière north of Le Plâteau in Adjamé.

Adjamé is one of those areas that the Lonely Planet describes as "popular".  This does not mean that it is a big hit with travellers, like say, Bondi beach.  By "popular" they intend an over-populated heaving smelly mess, where there's a strong likelihood that you'll get mugged.  But armed with this knowledge, we hid our watches, wallets and my newly acquired Malian jewellery (it's okay for men to wear trinkets in Africa, honestly - I just have to remember to pack any Tuareg silver bracelets or necklaces away before I hit Australia!), and we put on our "mean M.F." faces.  We obtained our tickets to Yamoussoukro with surprising ease at the STIF bus station and went back to the relative safety of Le Plâteau.  Then there was nothing for it, but a few Castel beers and the customary G&Ts (between Preben's vodka & Red Bulls and Tiff's gin & tonics I'm in need of serious detox).  But at least Schwepps tonic contains Quinine, which helps to combat malaria.  And now with the rainy season looming large on the horizon, the mossies will be carrying those nasty parasites.  I just hope the Lariam will keep working its magic.

Gav (24 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Yamoussoukro - As silly ideas go, this one's a winner"

There's only one reason to go to Yamoussoukro, the nominal capital of the Côte d'Ivoire since 1983. That's to see the Basilique de Notre Dame de la Paix, the largest church in all Christendom, bar none.  It amazingly only took three years to build, compared to over a century for the construction of St. Peter's in Rome, to which it bears more than a passing and deliberate resemblance.  When you consider the cost of the basilica (US $300 million) and the fact that less than one fifth of Ivorians are Roman Catholics, you begin to get an idea of what a folly its construction was.  However, it is only upon actually viewing the juxtaposition of the extravagant cathedral and the squalid conditions in which many of the local population continue to live, that you can truly appreciate the egotistical madness of its creator, the late ex-President, Felix Houphouët-Boigny.  The first inkling Tiff and I had that we were entering a "never-never land", was when the one lane road on which we were travelling expanded into a massive six-lane boulevard.  The four-hour journey from Abidjan, through the Ivorian rainforest had left our bus broken and our legs covered in mosquito bites. But as we sped along in a second coach, which had exceptionally stopped to pick us, but nobody else, up (an example of positive racism) we realised that it was worth the wait.  The basilica totally dominates the large empty decaying streets of Yamoussoukro, not to mention the surrounding jungle.  You really have to do a double-check to believe your eyes.  We booked into the Motel Shell (14,000 CFA / 16 Euro a night for a double), which is my kind of hotel.  It has a youth hostel feel to it - lots of fresh bright colours, plus in the back garden there is a veritable menagerie of wildlife.  A deer, a gazelle, an antelope, a giant tortoise, peacocks, geese, badgers and a few small unidentifiable mammals who, we discovered, like to wile away their evenings nibbling on the feet of tourists.  We dined on expensive pizzas and I purchased a large decorative Tuareg knife for 18.000 CFA (27 Euro).  I know I'm not exactly in a position to splash out so much wonga on West African paraphernalia, but I'm getting to enjoy the haggling and it would be sad not to have any souvenirs.  Tiff, however, has sworn blindly that he's not carrying a tribal weapon back to Europe with him.  So let it be on his conscience if I end up having to spend a night in a Kenyan jail!

The following morning we made for the cathedral, which due to its huge size, seemed deceptively close.  By the time we reached its gates, we were sweating like.eh.two extremely sweaty people.  Still pretty sceptical about the whole basilica and its hefty financial cost, we made the one kilometre walk along the main entrance way; through its gigantic doors. What we beheld was a wonder.  The church is ringed by 36 enormous stained-glass windows, which use over 5,000 different shades of colour.  I have, hand on heart, never seen anything more beautiful in my life. It is an awe inspiring interior.  Tiff and I got the distinct impression that we had been magically transported back to Europe.  Air-conditioned polished wooden pews, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian marble, a hanging royal blue oriental-style altar and a million hues of refracted light.  A 1,000 CFA (1.50 Euro) fee took us in a hidden elevator (yes, an elevator) up to the top of the lacquered aluminium cupola, where a guide showed us the giant crib, and paintings and photos of the process of construction of the basilica, which dwarfs Notre Dame in Paris and looms larger than St. Peter's in the Vatican.  We were treated to a spectacular view of the three-hectare plaza that can contain over 300,000 pilgrims.  Land on the church grounds is now being razed to accommodate a Catholic university, hospital and radio station, which a reluctant Pope John Paul II insisted be created before he consecrated the church in 1990.  The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro is a wonder.  It's a wonder how the ex-President (forever immortalised along with the Lebanese architect, the foreman and the French lady who chose the furnishing at the feet of Christ in one of the stained-glass windows) got away with spending such a sum on its construction.  The maintenance costs alone are US $1.5 million per annum.  But it is undeniably an artistic masterpiece, that will simply take your breath away, especially given its location and the total and utter contrast with its African surroundings.  Just a pity then that Tiff, the big eejit, chose to bring a black and white film with him to Yamoussoukro!  So I hope my little camera will do its majesty justice.

Gav (25 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "San Pedro - Wiggle it, just a little bit"

Tiff and myself were brought back from our heavenly hiatus to earth and the reality of Africa with a bump.  Our 2 o'clock ATB coach (for some reason the have more bus companies in the Ivory Coast than new Zealand has sheep) hadn't left the station by 5 o'clock and a half hour later, even though we were finally underway, we had progressed no further than 10 kilometres, due to a ridiculous amount of passport and identity card checks.  Ever since the coup d'état here last Christmas, the Ivorian military are over-zealously controlling the movements, not only of foreigners, but also of their own citizens.  Tiff even had his vaccination card checked.  After the luxury of the 4x4 in Mali, this was Tiff's first real introduction to the difficulties of travel in sub-Saharan Africa.  He was taken aback by the Ivorians capacity to take everything on the chin, laugh at every delay and joke at every setback, even if sometimes it's hard to tell if Africans are jesting or are veritably fuming. Their mood can change like the wind.  Life in Europe is a lot easier, but somehow it has made us take things for granted.  And we are consequently less warm people.  At one moment, the driver, shagged off with the soldiers, who were holding one of the passengers (a student who was missing a stamp on his ID card), decided that enough was enough, hopped back in his seat and started to depart.  This resulted in an almighty rush (quite literally a "Scramble in Africa") with all the passengers, who had alighted from the bus to relieve themselves or buy things to eat and drink, trying to clamber aboard again.  But nonetheless, they all were in high spirits and the smiles never left their faces.  When we finally meaningfully got under way again, the driver did his best to emulate Michael Schumacher, as he tore the hell out of the gearbox and rode over the giant potholes as if they were not there.  Each sudden jolt brought back memories to myself and Tiff of the accident in Mali, and with my ribs still bruised and sore, we realised that we were not quite mentally or physically over the events of the previous week just yet.  Tiff was convinced we were not going to arrive at the coast in one piece. Somehow I managed to sleep through some of the rodeo experience, with the song "Premier Gao" by Magic Système (a banging African tune that has followed my eardrums through Senegal, Mali and Côte d'Ivoire) playing loudly in the background.  By the time we arrived in San Pedro around 23h00, we were exhausted. With at least 25 mosquito bites each on both legs, we were in need of some serious pampering.  So we treated ourselves to dousing of calamine lotion and a few nights in the Hotel Balmer at 49,000 CFA (75 Euro) a night for a twin room.  This proved a very prudent decision.  The stress and hassle of the travel days make one appreciate the nicer things in life that little bit more.  Hotel Balmer definitely qualified as one of those nicer things.

Literally situated on a rocky promontory, the hotel is a picturesque haven, where even the Ivorian humidity is just about kept at arms length.  Lazing by the pool, the height of our exertions stretched to the odd game of sweaty Ping-Pong.  An afternoon foray into the dilapidated town of San Pedro itself, confirmed our suspicions that we were wise to stay on the coast. Sufficiently refreshed we headed to a bar called "La Paillote", with Eve, a cute, but spoiled, Parisian studying in Washington DC, who we'd met earlier in the day.  Unfortunately, eve was chaperoned by an incredibly annoying, slobbering, alcoholic French oaf called Gailan.  I'll never forget her response when we asked her what she wanted from the bar.  "Un coup de champagne," was the reply.  Tiff and I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.  Glasses of champagne are well beyond the budget of overlanders, so we made sure not to repeat our generous offer.  Instead we started talking to the local staff in the bar, who of course were all female and silky smooth movers.  Their writhing dance floor gyrations proved to be Tiff's first introduction to the wonderful world of wriggling African bottoms.  He watched transfixed as the dancers shook their derrières with the speed of a hummingbird's wings, as if they were separate appendages attached to their torsos.  We tried to join in as the girls stood dancing in front of the full length mirrors, which surrounded the disco floor, but despite our best efforts, we just couldn't make the grade.  To be honest, I don't think any white person could.  I hope I'm proved wrong.  Because if I met a woman in Europe, who could move like these African sirens, I'd probably marry her.

Gav (26 April 2000)

Guinness on my Compass: April 2000 - "Grand Bassam - Surf's Up!"

Our stay in the old French colonial capital was a very pleasant one.  After our fascinating trip around Mali, the Ivory Coast had initially proved a disappointment.  However, the last few days have seen a significant turnaround in our travelling fortunes, and the week definitely ended on a high.  Grand Bassam, 45 minutes to the east of Abidjan and less than three hours from the border with Ghana, was the capital of the French colony of Côte d'Ivoire only until 1899, when a yellow fever epidemic broke out here.  But a leisurely stroll around the colonial houses of Ancien Bassam is to be recommended, though seeing the orange, white and green of the Ivorian flag (the same as the Irish flag backwards) fluttering over the old buildings keeps reminding me of home.  I half expect to see a group of Gardaí coming out of one of them.  We stayed in the Château Blanc (or "Château Blankety Blank" as we Christened it), a lovely little spot situated on the beach, which costs 20,000 CFA for a double and 12,000 CFA for a single.  Here the waters of the Gulf of Guinea are at their most powerful.  Huge breakers continually crash onto the sands of the shoreline of Ancien Bassam.  Swimming in the sea here is great fun, but after a while it can become akin to being spun around in a washing machine, so powerful are its waves.  A surfboard would not go amiss here.  We shared our hotel with a selection of wealthy Ivorians down for the weekend from Abidjan.  Unfortunately, a troop of French soldiers were also let out of their barracks  for two days and they too were lounging around the beachfront bar.

Before coming to Africa I had always liked the French.  I remember being the only foreigner invited to go with my Gallic colleagues to France to celebrate Bastille day and their victory over Brazil in the 1998 World Cup final.  But my experience of them in West Africa has left me cold.  For starters, why French troops are stationed on Senegalese and Ivorian soil is beyond me.  It's as if Paris doesn't want to acknowledge that the days of colonialism are over. Plus the fact that the currencies of eight Francophone countries are still tied to the Franc (and consequently the Euro), means that the value of the money in many West African's pockets is now determined by Europeans.  But what really got to me is the way their soldiers (the "National Legion" as Tiff baptised them), even the older ones who should know better, grope and manhandle the local women.  I don't understand what pleasure some men get by paying women to fawn all over them, when it is plainly obvious that they'd rather be anywhere else had they financial independence.  I'm not saying that I haven't met nice French people - of course I have, especially in Dakar, some of whom were even married to Senegalese.  But the pseudo-colonial policies of their governments and the underhand avaricious tactics of their large petroleum companies is bang out of order.  Responsible French citizens should ask themselves why, 40 years after Great Britain pulled out of Africa, and even two decades after the Portuguese were expelled from their old colonies, their country is still meddling in affairs, which should no longer be of their concern.

Anyway, Tiff and I pushed the boat out one last time and 24 hours later, I was seeing him off at Abidjan airport, where security is tighter than Fort Knox and the officials are blatantly corrupt.  I had to bribe the guard to get into the departures hall as I did not have a flight leaving that evening.  So it was the briefest of farewells with Tiff (who himself had to later slip 1,000 CFA to the police to ease his way through customs) amidst the surrounding chaos.  As he disappeared into the throng queuing haphazardly at passport control, I slipped out of the building and headed back to Grand Bassam alone.  Night fell and another month on the road drew to a solitary close.

Gav (30 April 2000)