A very slow ride. 60 miles in 8 hours.

Day 16
Tues Aug 2
Start: Nioro, Mali
Mid: Some village in northern Mali
End: Diema, Mali [14 29 N 09 08 W]

I didn't want to spend another minute in this town and I was at the garage park at six in the morning, hoping for the first vehicle out.

Despite being one of the first ones at the garage park and buying a ticket for a front-seat ride (I felt I deserved front-seat for last night, so I could sleep. I was willing to pay extra for it as well). While I waited for my guy to come back with the car other cars came and went to Bamako. Private cars left. Land-cruisers. Buses. Trucks. They all passed. Three hours later my guy showed up saying no car and gave me back my money. I missed all those rides! There was a few I bet I could have gotten for free as well. Fed up I was just going to wave down the next vehicle that crossed.

Ended up bring a truck with ten other passengers in the back. This truck was big though. The back was filled with crates of empty coke bottles, with bags of rice on top of them, with dried animal skins on top of the rice, with the people and the luggage on top of the skin. We had room to walk around, and when we stood up (and hung on) we could see over the driver’s cabin. Two women were also in the back with their babies.

I soon realized I shouldn’t have been too eager to get a ride. The road we were on was comparable to the Gambian roads of pot-holes, unpaved, sand-traps, and mud. It took us eight hours to go 60 miles. The guide books I had not only suggested not using this road but if you must, to used a 4WD or land-cruiser. I looked around. I was in a truck – this was going to be a slow day.

We got stuck (of course!).



For the next two hours the workers dug in the mud trying to get the truck free, with each unsuccessful attemp actually overturning it more. After a while they switched sides to get the other two tires on the ground before trying to get it unstuck. In the mean-time I talked to the owner of the vehicle, from Ghana, whose brother bought him the truck. He now rents it out to people who want to us it to ship items across the country. I didn’t ask why he came along, but it was his truck he could do what he wanted. As we’re talking a 4WD drove past slowly with Europeans in it.
Momodou, the owner, looked at afterwards: “You did not get a ride with them?”
“Why should I?”
“They are white.”

I looked down the road. Being white was inconsequential, the point I was thinking was they have private transportation and can go 5 times as fast as this truck. I watch them speed down the road and then looked at our half-flipped over truck. With that I told Momodou that this was my ride. He was impressed that I didn’t leave them the first time there was trouble and headed for the white-people vehicles.

Throughout the trip, whenever we stopped we would always joke with each other. (I was riding in the back, and being the owner, of course, he sat upfront with the driver, along with two other people).

He would joke that I was weak since I was not helping them dig out of the hole. (The rules actually are that the people who rent the truck are responsible for it, so they were the ones who were digging it out – the one or two others that were helping just were giving a friendly hand. No obligation. The rest all were just sitting)
“If I am weak, you are old!”
“Old? I am not old. I am 45”
“Too old! See, you don’t even help them. Pretty soon you will need a walking stick!”
“No no. I’m hard worker” and he showed me his hands, full of calluses. He then grabbed my hands, flipped them over. “See, you no hard worker.”
“Ah! But I am a teacher. I work hard up here” and I pointed to my head.
We then went on to writing in the sand, on the road, for him to explain Arabic. It was him that explained the numeric writing. Also, we talked about the differences between

Ghanaian (ga-nay-an), someone from Ghana
to
Guinean (gan-ay-an), someone from Guinea

or, even worse

Nigerien and Nigerian

Nigerien (knee-shair-ian), someone from Niger
Nigerian (Ni-gere-ian), someone from Nigeria

They get very fussy if you pronounce Niger as just a shortened version of Nigeria. They are pronounced very differently.

Late at night we reached Diema, a major transportation hub, although being out in the middle of nowhere. Trucks and buses were lining the street, men with their street shops of food, women selling goods. I called PC to see if there was a volunteer here. Nope. For the second night in a row I slept in the streets.