Naked from the Waist Down

This is the start of an old story. It’s one that’s lingered, like smoke from a dying cigarette, the memory smoldering down to the filter, the embers dying as time goes by.

It’s December 2009. At the time, I was a fresh-faced former Peace Corps Volunteer who’d just completed two years in rural Niger, not necessarily on my own terms, but completed nonetheless.

I was on a bus at five in the morning, headed west for Burkina Faso and what would become the next nine months of my life: an overland trip from Niamey through Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, through the mountains, the jungle, the delta, and the plains and up the West African coast to Morocco and Europe.

We hit the border at dawn, just as it opened. It was a cold morning, promising a hot day. While I waited for my bags to be checked by immigration, then customs, I spied a large man, hair unkempt and dirty, wearing thirty-odd coats and no pants, his block and tackle exposed to the elements, flopping around like a dying fish.

Somehow, this image represents everything I’ve done for the past four years.

Sure, he was crazy. He proved that by accosting people menacingly before staggering off laughing. In the cold morning air, while I drank my tea, he ambled over to me. Sat down on the step next to me and had a laugh imitating the white man who’d come to this remote border so far from everything, its only reason for existence being the intersection of highway and colonial partition. Others looked on, intrigued by what I might do to what could be considered a slight. I only laughed, and continued to drink my tea. Eventually, he moved on, his dirty backside roving between buses and trucks in search of his own breakfast.

If I start to look back on my travels, I think about how crazy they were at the time. In 2009, I knew nothing about the places I would go. In some ways, I felt so prepared, so ready to face the world. I had lived two years in one of the poorest countries on earth, certainly the poorest in West Africa. Everything from here on out would be a step up. I spoke a local language. I knew a lot about local culture. I had about thirty-seven reasons as to why I could make it, all these jackets keeping me warm and safe, but underneath, I really wasn’t wearing any pants.

I didn’t have a route planned. Initially, I thought I’d go across Mali, to Senegal, and then north. I only added the coast countries on a dare from a friend who’d traveled West Africa. Less a dare, actually, than just an admission: Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone just proved too difficult. The visas were too expensive, the logistics were terrible. If you could make it, I’d be impressed.

That was a good enough reason for me, and so I walked out that door swaddled in coats and naked from the waist down.

I didn’t know that Côte d’Ivoire was a year away from a renewed civil war, one that saw the government deploy artillery against its own people in Abidjan. I thought my alien status, a man with no affiliation, no skin in the game would protect me against the tension that held the country together like a taut rubber band. Maybe it did. I was nearly arrested in Bouaké for taking pictures that I shouldn’t have been taking, and rather than getting throw in prison, I was told to get out of town.

I didn’t know that Western Côte d’Ivoire was a region in anarchy, even today only nominally under government control. Roving bands move between Liberia, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire looking for the next fight. Renewed conflict means loot for the likes of them. Violence is a paycheck. I didn’t discover how deadly that region could be until I researched my master’s thesis. Looking back, I realize now that those men all along the only road from Danané to Sanniquellie didn’t have to let us on our way. Push came to shove, quite literally, and it could have escalated further if cooler heads hadn’t prevailed.

We walked Monrovia’s streets at night; we walked the beaches in the morning. We’d been warned about both. Maybe we were just lucky. Calculated risk, but how can one calculate risk when you’re a stranger in a strange land?

In Guinea, the military junta had massacred 157 people in a stadium in the capital, Conakry, only six months prior. The security situation seemed to change daily, but why should that stop me? I was on my own mission. Besides, I had all these coats. No one can hurt me when I’m wearing all these coats, but hey, why’s my ass so cold?

In Guinea-Bissau, the army staged a coup about half an hour after we entered the country. Security checks every twenty kilometers, looking for weapons. Not that we knew any Portuguese, who knew what they were saying? The streets of the capital were deserted. We’d heard it was a sleepy town, but this is ridiculous…

Kidnappings in Mauritania. No different than the threat in Niger. I’m surely safe here, camping in the middle of the desert, a few kilometers from the nearest town. Peaceful. Moonlight turning mountains of orange sand into silent snow. Here there’s no danger, only beauty, and violence can never unseat beauty.

There’s risk in everything I guess. No matter how well prepared you are, you can’t predict all the uncertainties. No matter how many times you’ve put on a pair of pants, every once in a while you’ll forget to zip the fly. Even now, in Zimbabwe, a country reviled for farm invasions, attacks on journalists, civil society activists, and opposition figures, I take my precautions as best I can, but surely there’s something I’m missing. I’ll only know with time.

For now, I’m happy, and that’s all I can say for sure.

So to the man on the Niger/Burkina border, if you’re still there: You wore thirty-seven coats and no pants. I like your style.

West Africa Redux

Whenever I meet new people on the road, I try not to mention the fact that I've been traveling by myself for over six months, if only to avoid the inevitable ten-minute repetition of my past two years. (I continually mention my two years in West Africa here both because anyone who reads this can look back and get the whole story in one long afternoon and because you can't ask any follow-up questions!) But for those who are really curious, those whose eyes widen a little bit whenever I mention Mali, Ghana, or Sierra Leone, the inevitable question is usually, "What was your favorite place?"

And my usual gut reaction is "Are you kidding me?" Ask a student of literature for her favorite book. Ask a film historian to name his favorite flick. Ask my friend Patrick for his favorite paranoid, evil personality from 1928 - 1957. Maybe you could help him out by asking him only to focus on Europe, but really, there are just too many from which to choose. Asking me to choose my favorite place in West Africa is about like asking me to choose my favorite digit. My first inclination, I think I'd have to go with right-hand thumb, but that doesn't mean I'd be fine losing any of the rest.

Instead of launching into this diatribe, however, I usually cock my head and ask, "Of which country?" The truth is, I've seen and done a lot in my two and a half years in West Africa. I can't really give a definitive answer, but I can give you my list of my top travel descriptions. Apologies for continuing to neglect Morocco, but hopefully this Cliff's notes version of my trip can help guide any future questions for whenever I return home. Thus, in chronological order, I give you Sterling's Personal Guide to West Africa.

Abomey, Benin - the old seat of the Dahomey Empire, Abomey is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but its red-earth palaces, symbols of a kingdom built on slavery, is slowly crumbling back unto whence they. This is one of the best places, though, to look onto the sadistic side of the African slave trade and examine how this bloody, black institution set tribe against tribe to tear one another apart.

Boukoumbé, Benin - a hike deep into the hills reveals the land of the Betammaribé tribe, who resisted slavery by living independently as family units protected by their small, fortress-like houses. Spend a night with a family in a tata house surrounded by rolling green hills and towering baobob trees and you'll feel like you're in the Shire. Just try not to hit any old hobbit women with your slingshot (or blame it on a kid if you do).

Klouto, Togo - deep in the hills and jungle of southern Togo, Klouto is filled with coffee plantations that you can hike through while on the search for beautiful butterflies. If you don't have an inner lepidopterist, you can always check out the abandoned European castle hidden in the trees...

Green Turtle Lodge, Ghana - an ecolodge working on community development along one of the most beautiful stretches of beach in West Africa. A sure place to meet Peace Corps types and to get crunched by some seriously awesome waves.

Kumasi, Ghana - home of the Ashanti, one of the most well-known West African ethnies, famous for their colorful and highly-prized kente and adinkra cloth.

N'guigmi, Niger - not much there but pure white sand. Too bad the nearest ocean is thousands of kilometers away. Go and you'll feel like you're at the end of the earth, or at least the end of your travels. With genocide to the east, a batshit crazy dictator to the north, religo-ethnic conflict to the south, and general famine all around, you'll definitely start to rethink your privileged status as a developed country national.

Banfora to Sindou Peaks, Burkina Faso - I rented a motorbike and took it the 100km there and back all in one day, and what a day it was. The dirt piste is lined with trees the entire way, and hiking around the peaks is a bit like stepping into the scenery from Fraggle Rock. Those who remember that reference get bonus points for having a great childhood.

Dogon Country, Mali - take the road up from Ouaghiya to the Falaise de Bandiagara and get into some real hiking. This is one of the most unique cultural areas in all of Africa, but due to its location in rural West Africa has remained relatively untouched by mass tourism. And the stars...if only you knew.

Sunset Beers on the Niger - whether it's in Niamey, Mopti, Gao, or Gaya, a cold Flag on a hot desert night is pretty unbeatable with those beautiful African sunsets. And with fresh fish brought in that hour by colorful characters in even more colorful pirogues, you're sure of a good meal to go with your beer.

Festival du Desert, Mali - one of the greatest concerts I've ever been to, bar none. A celebration of Tuareg culture, and a great revenue resourse for a severely impoverished people, the Festival du Desert brings together some of the greatest acts in West African music alongside musicians from all over the world. But the focus is definitely the desert, and you won't ever forget that when you're freezing your ass off on your third night in the Saharan winter.

Yamoussoukro, Côté d'Ivoire - check out the previous post on this one from sometime in January. The city was built to glorify former president Houphouet-Boigny's ancestors, but from the looks of it, the only thing the city glorifies is how much money one man can dump into a swamp.

Monrovia, Liberia - maybe less of a tourist hotspot than a fascinating look into a community still trying to rebuild itself after nearly two decades of civil war. Let's examine the amenities: no electricity, no running water, unsafe tap water, and streets that most embassies have put off limits after 9 pm. But if you dare to brave them (carrying no more than $20 at any time) you can have a great night drinking with awesome people on the streets of this awesome town.

Tiwai Island, Sierra Leone - home to eleven different species of primate, including the rare Diana monkey, all on one easy-to-trek island in the middle of the Moa River. Go looking for rare pygmy hippos (good luck), walk through dense jungle, take a river swim (just watch out for the oyster shells), and finish it all up with a fresh-grilled fish caught that morning by your boat guide.

Freetown Beaches, Sierra Leone - by far the best beaches in all of West Africa, and there's something for everyone. Choose any color of powdery sand from pure white to yellow ochre, even sand that turns your feet black. Your food choices may be limited to lobster, oysters, barracuda, and mango, but who needs anything else? And while all the beaches may be beautiful, only a few have phosphorescent water...

Kamakwie, Sierra Leone - So why does Sierra Leone rank so highly? Well, when you have savannah, mountains, beaches, and jungle, it's kind of hard to choose just one place. Kamakwie wins out because it's close to Outamba-Kilimi National Park, but it's really only a good place to sleep if you've got awesome friends who work for a local NGO. Try camping in the park instead.

Doucki, Guinea - it's more than just a great name. Doucki is a village perched on the edge of a cliff in the Fouta Djalon region of Guinea, the ancestral home of the Fula people. This would only be mildly interesting without the incomparable Hassan Ba, who leads some of the most fun trekking I've ever done in this part of the world. Gorges, waterfalls, and more animals hiding in the rocks than you could ever imagine. What more could you want?

Kedougou, Senegal - I have to admit, some of these are brilliant only because of the people I met there. I spent a week laid up in Kedougou after I hurt my foot. It's a laid-back, chill town: the perfect place to see Senegalese/Fula culture on the everyday level. But there's enough nature about (including the nearby national park) to keep you busy even if you don't have the Peace Corps connections.

Bijagos Archipelago, Guinea-Bissau - a unique culture hidden amongst the dangerous currents of the turquoise seas surrounding the islands. White powdery beaches and a Portugese influence makes this country unlike any other in West Africa.

Chinguetti, Mauritania - stuck right in the middle of the desert, and one of the holiest cities in all of Islam, Chinguetti is a great place to start your camel trek, be it two days, four, or fifty (if you're keen to take it all the way to Timbuktu). If nothing else, a trek into the desert will provide one of the most beautiful sleeping experiences you'll ever have, especially with a full moon.

Chôum to Nouadhibou Express - the ultimate travel experience. Sixteen hours on top of an iron ore hopper through the desert. It doesn't get much hardcore than that. If you're brave, you can hop off for bathroom breaks whenever the train stops, but make them quick, because this train don't wait!

So there you have it. It may be a bit cheap to do a "best of" list, but the well of ideas was pretty dry there for a while. I think the rains may have come, however, with my first full day in Tangier. I'll have a really good post again soon. I promise.

Travel and Tourism

Hard to believe it's been over a week since my last post. I haven't been plugged into the Internet despite its pretty universal access in Morocco. But more than just technological laziness, I've found it very difficult to write since I've been here. I'm not sure how to describe this issue. Perhaps, like Hemingway, if I may be permitted to use a pretty weak comparison, I find it difficult to write of a place I know while I'm in said place. Only upon reflection can I find my voice, and indeed, with increasingly fragile memory, I do find myself looking back to West Africa. And how could I not? For me, it was home. After two years, I felt as if I knew the people and knew myself within that culture.

But in Morocco, in North Africa, I am a stranger, and though I may hate to admit it, I am, in many ways, just another tourist. I never felt this unique difference in West Africa, despite being typically the only Westerner around. Cultural currents run deep in in the former French Afrique Occidental, so I felt that from Diffa to Dakar, Timbuktu to Tubmanburg as if I belonged, knowing as I did my own persona within an African context. Thus, I was traveler, even sometimes resident, not tourist. Tourist, to me, implies a certain naïvety, often seen as a walking bag of money who may know a bit about a place's people or culture, but often not much more than the superficial. More important than experiencing the place, tourists tend to shuttle from sight to sight, with limited time to check as many "must-sees" off their list as possible.

I wasn't a tourist in West Africa, partially because there are so few people who travel there who fit this description. The Sahelian zone is the poorest, least developed part of the world. Despite hosting at one time some of the richest empires in sub-Saharan Africa, the land left little behind as a testament to African wealth and power. So West Africa remains little visited, and you'd be hard-pressed to find many who know where Mali is, let alone someone who knows it hosted two of the European Middle Ages' wealthiest civilizations.

Tourism, at its best, can change this. Fifteen years ago, who would have known the architectural wonders of Fez, the seedy reputation of Tangiers, or the human pageantry of Marrakesh? Maybe those who read some of the beat poets who took advantage of the anything goes attitude of post-independence Morocco. But others had to wait for cheap flights from Europe. Now it's easy to take a weekend trip to see transvestite belly dancers in the Jma el-Fna or to enjoy hand-rolled cous cous with a view of the snow-capped High Atlas mountains. Hordes have taken advantage of this place's newly discovered accessibility.

Tourism, at it's best, opens up cultures in ways impossible to other experiences. It's one thing to read about slavery in history books or personal narratives; it's quite something else to see the slave castles in Cape Coast, Ghana. Seeing Islam represented as only a young man's hostile antagonism belies the gentle nature of a Moroccan father with his children. Hearing only about repressed, burka-clad women banned from public places in France ignores an upwardly mobile generation of working women who have money and know how to look good. One of the most interesting things I've noticed as someone who studied a bit of gender is the women's revolution modestly moving forward in Morocco. Women in the cities are finding many more opportunities in education and the workplace and are beginning to make their voices heard. Of course, the examples I've cited exist in the West, but as an unvoiced majority, one all too easy to overlook in a culture obsessed with political theatre and posturing instead of news, people interested only in entertainment, conflict, and "talking points." At it's best, tourism opens the tourist to a culture and ideals he/she may not understand at home. It's far easier to see the forest when you're surrounded by the trees.

Of course, tourism, at it's best, is usually simply called travel. At my university, we tried our best to instill the ideal of experiential learning in our travels. But in the end, we were still tourists. I look back now on those days as a learning experience for my present travels, so I guess in that regard, the whole experiential learning thing worked out. (You'd think, as an English major, I would have been able to connect those two thoughts...) I didn't realize how much I'd subconsciously picked up until I came to Morocco and saw the throngs of tourists who've just discovered this land thanks to Ryan Air. They provide a case study of what NOT to do if you want to truly experience a place. Read ahead and hope you're not here described.

What are you wearing?! This applies especially to Morocco, but I saw a lot of it in West Africa too. In Muslim cultures, modesty is paramount, especially for women. Like it or not, you stand out and can be borderline offensive when you bare shoulders, legs, and chest. Look around you. If the locals aren't wearing it, neither should you. How can you stand to stand out so? Don't you feel naked? Oh and one more thing: shorts were made for sport and the beach. There is really no other time when they are needed. You look stupid. Especially jean shorts. What is this? Did I miss the memo on reliving 1995? "But it's hot...," I hear you whining. Pants are no hotter than shorts. Get yourself a nice pair of linen slacks, and guess what, they're even cooler, as they block the radiant heat from the pavement, ground etc. I recently met a girl and we played "Guess the Nationality" based on dress and attitude. I hope you weren't one of the many Germans who should have left their lederhosen at home.

Put away the guide book. Lonely Planet. Yes, it's a great resource. I myself have one, and it was indispensible to my travels around West Africa. However, there is never any need to have it out while you're walking. The Lonely Planet: Morocco book has a distinct cover of the Fez palace gates which you can spot a mile away. It just screams "TOURIST!" And while that may not bother you, just think of for whom the next carpet seller is searching...you may just be that sucker.

Why are you taking a picture? It's a door. It's not even a very interesting door. I've seen plenty more interesting doors in my time. Hell, there's even a more interesting door five feet away. There are 5000 more interesting doors in Morocco alone. Are you going to photograph all of them too? Are you some kind of door enthusiast? If so, then I admire your commitment to a fantastically boring hobby. My favorite tourists are the ones who have the guide book in one hand and a digital camera in the other. One of the blessings of the digital age is a nearly limitless capacity to get the perfect shot. One of the tragedies is that most people now spend all their time getting any and every shot. I sometimes miss the days of film, where you couldn't afford to take thousands of pictures of walls, doors, and that speck of bird on the horizon. You had 32 shots, and every one had to count. Now I see tourists just walking and snapping as they go. I don't even think they look at what they're photographing. Forget form and composition, I'm wondering what the subject is even supposed to be. No, you can't take a good picture of the bright crescent moon. And no, that little Nikon will not be able to pick up the subtle lighting in an underground mausoleum. And for the love of God, stop taking pictures of artwork. Buy the f***in' post card! This goes to all of you who crowd around the Mona Lisa. Can we just take some time to f***in' appreciate the things in life that cannot be captured by technology?! What do you do with the literally thousands of photos you snap when you get home? Do you print them all out and bind them in an album? There's a good rule: snap only what you would pay to print.

There are more. This might become a recurring theme as I find more and more things that irritate the ever-loving sh** out of me. One thing that I do appreciate, after a long time on the road with French people, are Americans. I realize this is a non sequitor, but please, induldge me. This sounds kind of cheesy, but the child-like simplicity of most Americans is refreshing after so much travel. I'm used to Europeans who have the tendency to take their service for granted. But after meeting Norman and Jeanne in Essaouira, who introduced themselves and had a big, happy greeting for the receptionist at the hotel, I had to remember that that's not something I'm used to seeing. It's nice. It humanizes both the tourist and the local. Not only that, but locals always greet one another, so it's culturally appropriate as well as humanizing. And that's where true experience rests.

If I Go, Be Sure to Bury Me in the Clouds

I tend to fall asleep in public transport. Any kind. From iron ore train to crowded bush taxi, bus to boat. It's become quite a talent of mine, and I have to admit, it is kind of nice to wake up from a peaceful nap, look out the window, and see some beautiful new part of Afric... OH MY GOD, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!

Okay, so only sometimes does it happen like that. Today was one of those days. After hiking down out of the mountains, I took a grand taxi back up said mountains from Ouled Brahil to Marrakesh. First of all, there's so much to say about Marrakesh in the few hours I've been here that it will take a completely different entry. This is about something else. The road to Marrakesh weaves through the High Atlas mountains through the Tizi n'Test. This pass is the only way through the mountains without resorting to hours of detours through Ouarzazate to the east or Agadir to the west.

Okay, so now that I have some background out of the way, where was I? Oh yes, death and destruction. It's difficult not to panic a bit when you wake up to the screech of tires and nothing but sky in front of the car. Then it turns, and you realize you've only almost driven over the edge of a cliff at 40k an hour. And then you realize that you still have 140km to go with a Michael Schumacher wannabe in a crappy Mercedes Berliner on a twisty, one-lane mountain road filled with blind turns. It's like the best rollercoaster ever. You know, the one at the county fair that's been shut down across the state for maiming too many carnies? Ya, that one. Anyway, I found myself praying to whoever would listen that we'd make it out alive as we burned up the mountain road, oblivious to any sense of danger or stomach-churning G's. Go ahead, lady in the front seat, throw up; in this case, it's warranted. I'd join you, except I have about a liter of orange Fanta sitting in my stomach, so anything that comes out my nose is going to end up looking like a Nickelodeon advertisement. It's Slime Time!!! Gross. There have been many times in Africa that I've been glad of a broken speedometer. In cases like these, ignorance is bliss.

And Perhaps the Worst of All...

As any of you who have followed this blog for a while know, every once in a while I like to throw my professional demeanor away and engage in some humor. This usually comes in the form of a rant against a traumatic event I've recently experienced. These are always drawn from real occurences, just a bit exaggerated. This one may be the first to be completely true and unaltered. I'll start at the beginning...

Another 16 hours through the desert and along the wild Atlantic coast. This time it was on a bus from Dakhla to Guelmim, and when I think back to those long rides from Niamey to Zinder (here I start the comparisons between North and West Africa), I have to marvel at the decent amount of sleep I managed on this luxury overnighter. I also have to give credit where it's due to Nigerien women, as not once in all my horrific, hair-pulling, death-defying, vomit-inducing bush taxi rides did I ever have a woman get sick on me.

I wish I could say the same about my very first bus ride in Morocco.

Oh sure, it started innocently enough. My seat mate for the next 16 hours was a little, old Moroccan lady, a bit fat, with crinkles about her eyes, and a wart on her big, hooked nose. She actually looked not a bit unlike Yubaba, the witch from Miyazaki's Spirited Away. "Okay, good," I thought as she spread out her blanket for the journey ahead, "at least I'm not sitting next to a small child, wailing his head off for hours upon hours, like the one sitting right behind me, who won't stop kicking my chair... For the love of God, would you QUIT KICKING THE BACK OF MY CHAIR?!"

He stopped kicking the back of my chair...eventually, and slowly, I drifted off to sleep with the rocking of the bus and the barren, rocky desert flying by outside my window. In the morning, I awoke peacefully to the first rays of a soft, desert sunrise, the crash of Atlantic breakers, and the gentle retching of my venerable neighbor. A lovely way to start any day, and, even better, it continued for two hours, until we stopped for morning prayer and coffee. Though I don't pray and I wasn't much up for coffee, I jumped at the chance to extricate myself from my portly, puking companion.

What happened next can only be described as nightmarish. If you're at all squeamish, please turn away as we go into my mind, a pretty scary alternate reality in its own right.

Alright, back on the bus. Let's hope she's got everything out of her system. "Oh, Alhamdulilai, I don't want any bread, thank you." Wait. You're eating bread? You just spent the last two hours vomiting into a plastic jar. Most people choose not to eat if they're liable to get motionsick. You don't need to eat, you're just refueling! What's tha...is that yogurt? Tell me that isn't yogurt. Oh, come on! Haven't you ever thrown up dairy before? No, don't give her a spoon! Well...great. Smile away granny, I have a feeling we're both going to regret this...

(30 minutes later)

Yep, there you go again. Oh, that's disgusting. Yep, goes down yogurt, comes up cottage cheese doesn't it? You done now? Learned your lesson? Ohp, nope, there's an orange. Who gave you an orange? No worries, there's an apple as well. Can't have an orange without an apple chaser, can you? Mmm...vomiting a bit whilst eating eh? Didn't know that was possible. What is wrong with you?! STOP INGESTING FOOD!!!

(30 minutes later)

Is that ANOTHER yogurt container?! Okay, it's empty. I see. Need something else to yak into? Filled up your jar? Wait...the lid of that jar says it holds 425 grams. Oh Sweet Lord in Heaven. There's nearly half a kilo of old lady chunks precariously perched only two feet away. All it would take is one big pothole and it's all over. I think I'm going to chunder. But wait, into what would I toss cookies ? She's used every available container on the bus. Filled the yogurt cup... You need another?! Wait...that one's not open yet. NO! WHY ARE YOU EATING AGAIN?! Only 400km left...

At the end of this roller-coaster, I could conceive of only two possibilities for this woman's behavior: Either A) She really had taken quite a dislike to me and had set it her goal to make me hurl, or B) She just really loved the feeling of a good heave. Either way, I think I think I'd take the slow-moving iron ore train over the vomit express.

Those Train Travelin' Blues

So, now it's time for the great transport blog, or at least the first leg of it. Two trucks, a train, a car, a bus, and I've covered something like 2500km of desert in under five days. I think I've had more travel time than sleep this month, but now that I'm in Morocco, I hope to make up for it in one long, marathon nap.

But first, let's recount this trip. I awoke in the dunes of Chinguetti with the prayer call at 5:30 am on May 1st. Tromping a couple kilometers through the desert's sands, I was met by a pickup truck, the ever-present Toyota Hilux, on it's way to Atâr. Growing up in the Midwest, I'm pretty used to crazily careening down gravel roads in the back of a pickup, so this was actually a bit of a treat, taking me back to my youth and adding a bit of excitement: Indiana doesn't have roads winding around desert gorges, only inches from free-fall cliff edges. Made it to Atâr in about an hour and a half and had a couple hours to wait to catch the next pickup to Choûm. Four hours through the desert, with the sun beating down and the sand in my face, I still somehow managed to fall asleep. I don't know when narcolepsy became part and parcel of all my public transport ventures, but it does help to make the trip that much shorter.

All this discomfort was rather easy to take, as I was to meet my real goal in Choûm: the iron-ore train from the mining town of Zouérat to the port city of Nouadhibou. It's one of the longest trains in the world, sometimes stretching to over two kilometers and, fully loaded, weighing several thousand tons. Though it's not even offically meant for passengers, but dozens jump the train every day for the 24-hour trip between the two cities. It's really the only means of transport in this stretch of desert, but for me, and for the few other travelers who've done it, it's an adventure impossible to forgo.

I arrived in Choûm around two in the afternoon, hot, dusty, and in need of food. Unfortunately, Choûm turned out to be little more than a train platform in the middle of the desert. "Dix heures, onze heures," the train would arrive, according to some local kids. However, in Africa, I knew this wait would be a bit longer, and unfortunately, Choûm had little to offer other than shade and a woman selling tea. It was the perfect picture of a town at the end of the earth: dusty, wind-swept, barren, with nothing but a few crows croaking from atop the telegraph wires (I don't actually know what these poles were, but I'd just like to take the time to reimagine Choûm as a lawless, Western boom town.)

So, I settled down beside the tracks to wait for the train. And sleep a bit. Wait a bit more. Wander around the six or eight houses in town. Visit the boutique. Can't buy anything because the shopkeeper's passed out on the concrete floor. Sleep a bit more. Five more hours of this? I'd throw myself in front of the train if one ever went by. Around ten at night, I heard the rumblings in the distance, but my neighbors said only, "Nope, not until 2am." And indeed, this train, loaded full of ore and roaring by for what seemed hours passed us without even slowing. Four hours later though, with a screech and a hiss, a train stretching into the darkened horizon pulled in at our lonely little outpost and, not wanting to pay for a seat on the floor in the one passenger cabin, I climbed into an open iron-ore hopper with Moussa and Mohammed, two kids on their way to Nouadhibou to sell African toothbrushes (those of you who've spent time in Africa know these are sticks).

I expected the iron ore to be bound up in rocks, the hoppers full of uncomfortable stone that I would have to, in some way, tolerate for sixteen hours through the burning desert sun. So I was quite surprised, upon landing in the hopper to find myself sinking slightly in heavy, black sand, the iron ore filings which are processed in Zouérat and shipped in Nouadhibou. However, unlike sand, the iron ore stuck to everything. The first thing Moussa did was to put down a tarp, which we shared for the trip, and wrap himself up in a heavy blanket, something I mimicked immediately as the train took off, the wind catching the lighter particles of iron and sending them flying in clouds of black soot.

For all the romanticism of this trip, which so few in the world have ever heard of, let alone taken, the train was pretty unromantically dull. I spent the night getting the best sleep I've had on public transport. Despite the cold and the wind, the iron ore was quite soft and comfortable, and I, cocooned in my sleep sack, had little trouble with the heat come daytime. Sheer boredom was the primary drawback. The desert was beautiful by moonlight, but in the day, the sun baked the iron ore and just made for a generally dirty, uncomfortable afternoon. But, by the time Nouadhibou peeked over the horizon, I knew I'd done something special and, coated in black dust, tired, half-starved, I knew that this would be a memory I'd carry with me for a while: one of those true "African experiences," i.e. one you're glad you've had, but not necessarily ready to ever repeat.

Shortcut to Senegal

I bought a pith helmet.

Does that statement need explanation? Is it a little too colonial? A little too Heart of Darkness for our modern sensibilities? Well, like everything, there's a story behind it, and here it is.

After two weeks scrambling around the canyons, waterfalls, and plateaux of Doucki, I was exhausted. However, I still had one major challenge before me. In order to meet up with friends in Kedougou, Senegal, I had to take the mountain road down from Mali-ville in northern Guinea. All the guide books said that it was only 50km from Mali to the border post at Segou, and Kedougou was 12k farther along the road. It's possible to hike in 6 to 12 hours, say the guidebooks. All downhill, with shortcuts through the bush and amazing scenery, as if any of these writers had done such a thing. But, exhausted by two weeks of hiking, I got it into my head that this would be a good idea.

I was wrong.

I stopped off in Labé, Guinea to get some supplies and have a rest before I attempted an all-day hike in the middle of hot season. (See any problems with this idea yet?) It was here that I bought the pith helmet, but the shape of the hat, which I found in both Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, didn't really sink in until I was well on my way into Senegal.

The story is this. I hiked about 30k down from Mali through some amazing scenery. The weather wasn't bad, rather cool because of the elevation, and at the end of the dry season, the trees had lost their foliage, making the trip a bit eerie in the ashey haze from the harmattan winds. The beginning of the hike was like a nice, autumn day. But after 30k, things began to unravel. I came off the mountain onto a middle plateau, and the heat and the sun really started to pick up. I'd seen no one for a few hours of this trip, and around about 1:30 in the afternoon, a guy on a motorbike drove by and stopped. "Where ya goin?" Senegal! "Oh, you've missed your road. You can still get there on this road, but it's another 30k." Well...damn. "Jump on, I'll give you a lift...idiot (which is what he must have been thinking at the time)."

It was a good thing I got a ride, because another 30k of hard hiking lay ahead of me, and I did not have the resources to complete the hike. When we got to Loungha, the Guinean border post, he said that he had some stuff coming along in a camion (a huge truck) and that I could catch a ride all the way to Kedougou with them when they came through. Now to explain things a bit, the road from Mali to Kedougou is barely even a road. It comes off the highest part of the Fouta Djalon plateau and is a twisted mess of unpaved, rocky, on-in-four grade track. This guy had done it on a motorcycle, and the 50k had taken him about 5 hours. It was even worse in a truck.

So I waited around this border town until 4:30 in the afternoon. Just when I thought I'd had enough and it was better to spend a little money on a moto into Senegal, I heard the roar of a big truck. Here was my camion. After about two hours in customs (i.e. bribe negotiation) we were on our way. Since I didn't have any money to pay these guys, I was in the back of the camion, which is kind of like a dump-truck when you get right down to it. There was a car seat back there crunched in between two enormous truck axles. Looking at these, I could only help thinking, "If this truck flips...I really have no escape plan," but, I settled in, my head and shoulders just peeking out from the lip of the truck bed and off we went. As we drove away from the border post, waving to the customs officials, I realized what a sight I must have looked. Here I am, dirty, sweat-streaked, in torn clothes (all my clothes are torn now, the shirt and pants I was wearing have each been patched about six times), sitting in the back of a camion like I'm Teddy Roosevelt on my way to the inaugural ball. But, like any good fool, I was smiling, ragged, and looked a mockery of any kind of civility. At that moment, I felt as if the only thing I needed was for Jambe to bring my hammock and my pink gin sundowner. My pith helmet is made of grass. My clothes, patched with bright African pagne fabric are a laughable embarrassment that will be completely replaced when I reach Dakar. My hair has gotten long after four months traveling, and like my first year in Niger, it's become rather sun-bleached. Charlie Chaplin could not have conceived a more ridiculous scene. Arriving in Kedougou, tired, hungry, dehydrated, beat up, and sore, I couldn't help thinking how appropriate it was that I entered Senegal, the last leg of my trip in sub-Saharan Africa, totally wrecked by four months on the road, but grinning like a happy fool nonetheless.

Spending Holidays in Mali with Terrible Transport

It seems that I just can't post any pictures from any of the computers I've been at recently. Everyone got a small taste of some of the stuff I've been seeing, and now there's nothing. Apologies for that. I have been seeing amazing things, I swear, but I'd like to post some pictures to really drive the point home.

Well, what can I say instead? I was in Mopti for my birthday, in Djenné, a city of faded glory from the days of Islamic empire, for Christmas, and now I'm in Mali's capital, Bamako, for New Year's Eve. It seems I've been running into Mali Volunteers all over the place lately, as everyone is moving around for the holidays. It's been great for me, as Volunteers tend to know the cheap/interesting places to eat, sleep, and see.

But this post is about something different. I could write about the old city in Mopti, or the massive mud mosque in Djenné, about the first's surge as Mali's major river port at the expense of the second, about Djenné's once glorious past as a center of Islamic learning and one of the major trading cities on the trans-Saharan routes, rivaling even Timbuktu and Agadez. But I'm not going to do any of that. Instead, I'm going to throw out some of the challenges the traveler faces in West Africa, which just reaffirm that you haven't left this part of the world, that though places like Mopti, Djenné, and Segou all have Internet access (even wireless in some places), the difficulty of moving around is still the biggest pain of West Africa.

I was told by the Volunteer in Djenné, which is a city more or less on an island, requiring a ferry service to access, that if I wanted to get out of Djenné, I'd have to get to the loading point (gare) by 7:00 am, or else it'd be really difficult to get anywhere before nightfall. So I woke up early and was there before 7. This is how the next three hours played out.

Me: Hi, I'd like to go to Segou today, so I want to buy a ticket to the carrefour (the main stop on the road outside Djenné where everyone gets buses, cars, etc.)
Ticket Guy: Why go to the carrefour? We have a bus that's leaving this morning for Bamako. It can drop you off in Segou, and it goes direct. You'll have no problems.
And it's leaving this morning?
Yes, this morning.

So I take the ticket and I sit down to wait. I've probably been waiting about half an hour when a woman getting in a car to the carrefour looks at me and says, "You need to go to the carrefour. If you're waiting for that bus, wallahi, you'll be waiting here still by tonight. Just you see, you'll still be here tonight." Well...that was ominous.

Excuse me, sir? That lady who just left said that this bus isn't going anywhere today and that I should go to the carrefour.
No, no, no, it is going today, trust me. (We walk over to the bus) See? Everything is already packed on top. We'll leave in twenty minutes. 8:00 at the latest.

By 7:40, they're taking everything off the bus.

Why are they taking everything off the bus? (Search for the ticket agent again after 20 mins of waiting.) They're taking everything off the bus. It's obviously not leaving today.
No, it will leave. They're taking everything off the bus and sweeping it. It will leave after.
You said before they loaded everything on it last night so it could leave early.
Look, I'll ask the driver. (To some random guy) Is this bus leaving today? Yes, it's leaving today. See? Just sit here and wait.

More waiting. It becomes more and more obvious that this bus is not leaving. Find the ticket seller.

Okay, give me my money back, I'm walking. (It's 30k to the carrefour and 2k to the ferry)
No! It's leaving, I swear. You just be patient.
But not now! It's not leaving this morning, and I want to leave.
It is leaving now. Not at noon, not even at ten. In a few minutes.
Bullshit! (Is what I was thinking and trying to communicate, but I don't know how to say that in French) Give me my money.
Look, I'll ask the driver again. (Some other random guy, not even the same one as before.) Oh, he said tomorrow morning.
F*** you, give me my money!
Patience, patience, we'll get a car for all of you waiting for the bus and it'll leave toute suite.

Fifteen minutes more. I talk to a French couple traveling overland through West Africa. Back to the ticket guy.

Let's go. You said toute suite.
Patience, we need five more people to fill the car.
I might actually kill you! Give me my expletive-inducing money!
The car will leave soon.
I don't want soon! I've been waiting over two hours for transport that barely exists anyway! GIVE ME MY F***ING MONEY, I'M F***ING WALKING!
It's too far!
I DON'T GIVE A GOOD GOD D***! I'M WHITE! I'LL HITCHHIKE! TOURISTS WILL PICK ME UP! ANYTHING TO GET AWAY FROM YOU!

The guy basically lied to me the entire time because he wanted more money. He knows the bus schedule and knows that every week for, I'm sure, years that the bus stays overnight on a Sunday to take people home after Monday's market. In this case, patience was not a virtue. If I'd waited, I would still be in Djenné or God only knows where. As it was, I started walking, got picked up by a really, really crappy bush taxi that was carrying goods only, not people, as I'm sure this thing would be unsafe under any conditions. There were no interior panels, the doors had to be jammed shut, they didn't close fully without a good kick, there was no starter, the guy just had to literally hot wire it everytime he wanted to start it. It had a max speed of about 10 mph, and the popping I kept hearing, I found out after about 30 mins, was the metal of the door grinding against the metal of the frame everytime we hit a bump.

But overall, none of this mattered. The car managed to get me to the carrefour, where I immediately got a bus. Though cramped in the back seat, breathing in the heat and exhaust from the engine, it got me to Segou about two hours slower than a regular bus would. However, I did meet some Volunteers on the bus, and they showed me around Segou and have helped me out a lot in Bamako. Overall, there wasn't a lot to Segou, but after a full day of travel hell, the simplicity and laid-back atmosphere of the city seemed like a god send.

So for now, that's all I want to spend on a computer. I'm off to somewhere else in Mali for a couple weeks until I'm in Ivory Coast to meet up with Emilie Ross, who was the first Volunteer in Tanka Lokoto, my village in Niger. We'll have a lot of stories to trade I'm sure, but until then, I'll see what other adventures I can have.

Celebrating a Quarter Century while Hiking Le Pays Dogon

No pictures this time around because I forgot my camera cord in my backpack. It's a shame, because as beautiful and interesting as the area around Banfora was, I think Dogon Country just blows it away. In fact, it probably eliminates the competition in all the rest of West Africa, but I can't make that claim until I visit the rest of West Africa. Dege dege as the Dogon say. That's moso moso to all you Zarma speakers or slowly slowly for everyone else.

To get to the Bandiagara Escarpment (where I hiked with Eli and Lauren for four days and nights), we had to start at 4:45 am to catch a bus from Ouagadougou to Ouahigouya. From there, we waited around a few hours for a bush taxi to Koro, and a few hours later, we grabbed another bush taxi for Bankass, our starting point for Dogon Country. Overall, it was a full day of traveling or waiting, but it was all worth it when we caught a view of the Bandiagara Escarpment while on the road to Bankass. Traveling through the Malian countryside, you're surrounded by plains, grasses, and trees of the Sahelian variety. In short, it looks exactly like Niger. Then, suddenly, your gaze moves to the west, and a 500m cliff face just seems to appear out of the middle of these vast, unbroken plains and stretch to the horizon. It's a 150km-long cliff that looks like someone just gashed the ground and pulled up solid rock.

The hiking is amazing. Let me say this now: I had giardia for the entire trip, and I still thought it was amazing. The trip. Not the giardia. I've had worse giardia, but anytime you think you're going to pass out while climbing onto the roof where you're sleeping in the pitch black...ya, not a great feeling. This echoes a friend who went to Dogon Country and realized he had malaria. Despite the horrible symptoms, they could not overpower the magic of Dogon Country. By the way, I don't mention it like I should, but we slept on the roof of the Dogon houses. An amazing view of every star in an ink-black sky, and mornings at sunrise? I don't think you can feel anything other than peace as you watch color slowly bleed into a brightening sky.

The Dogon are an amazing people. There's been a lot of research done on the Dogons in anthropological and archaeological sources, so I'll leave the heavy work to anyone really interested. The Dogon people came to the Escarpment around the 15th Century, where they met the Tellem people, who were already living there. The Tellem allowed them to settle but said the Dogon were not allowed to cut the trees or eat the fruit. The Tellem were a very small people, only about three or four feet, but they possessed powerful black magic which allowed them to fly. This explains the vaults, small houses in the rock which are completely inaccessible today but which the Tellem used to store their most prized possessions. An explanation more likely than flight (or very advanced climbing gear) is that this area was at one time much rainier, which allowed vines and other plants to climb the cliff face, allowing climbing access for some pretty scrappy people. Whatever the explanation is, it still takes a pretty brave little guy to climb up the 300m to where some of these vaults have been secured into the cliff face.

I'll skip ahead a little now. The Dogon eventually broke their word and began cutting the trees, so the Tellem left the Escarpment, never to return. The Dogon, holding tight to their animist beliefs in the face of repeated aggression from Islamic empires such as the Malian and Songhai, built their houses at the very base of the cliff, making them nigh-impregnable. Thus they maintained their distinct culture down to the present day. In the past fifty years or so, most of the Dogon have moved down to the plain, and many have taken up Islam or Catholicism. The only thing assaulting the Dogon these days are hordes of tourists, which has actually helped the Dogon in that they haven't suffered the loss of their younger generations to better opportunities in the big cities or elsewhere in Africa, America, or Europe. They no longer live at the base of the cliff, but all the old houses and granaries are still there, and their culture, strangly, has been somewhat preserved by the tourism industry. There's actually a reason for the Dogon to continue speaking their language, performing their ritual dances, and remembering their past, and that reason is because they've found a market among Westerners.

I could go on and on about the people we met, some of the breathtaking scenery we saw, and the even more breathtaking cliffs of which we peered over the edge. However, all of it is just words, and pictures paint a thousand words or more, so I'll try to post some in the near-ish future. I'll also try to post more about this amazing place, but honestly, I'm having such a hard time keeping up with the places I'm going that it's going to be very difficult to go back and rehash the places I've been.

For example, right now, I'm in Mopti, the Venice of West Africa. It's spread out over three islands at the confluence of the Niger and Bani rivers and is probably the biggest river port on the Niger. Everyone and everything on the river seems to move through Mopti, and as a result it's very hectic and colorful. However, hectic is not what I wanted for my birthday yesterday, so Eli, Lauren, and I chose a nice bar down by the water at sunset to while away the time and watch other people be hectic. After, we met up with our Dogon guide, Moumouni, for another beer, and I began to hatch some plans about possibly trying to get to the Festival in the Desert in a couple weeks. We'll see how that goes. Overall, it wasn't much activity by way of birthdays, but zipping through the streets at the end of the night on the back of a motorcycle, I could only think of how happy I was. I'd hiked out of Dogon Country in the morning, made it to Mopti by the early afternoon, and was drinking beers by the river in the Venice of West Africa by sunset. All with two great friends alongside me. Of course there are more people I wish could have been there, and they know who they are, but I couldn't ask for a better end to a great day.

On the Road in Burkina Faso

Not a very imaginative title, I know, but guess what? I just found out that you can add pictures on this website. So now you can all stop going to my facebook page to check stuff out, and I can make my posts a lot more pertinent to my travels. I'll warn you right now: this is all going to seem very cool and exotic. I have to admit, it kind of is. I'm in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou right now, and eventhough it's kind of a calm, slightly boring capital, just the name alone I think wins it points for originality. I've officially been out of Niger for about a week now, and I've been hopping from city to city, visiting Volunteers, and helping with any Agriculture related projects that I might have any experience with.

Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso are the two biggest cities in Burkina Faso, and while I've met a lot of really cool Volunteers, there wasn't really much to distinguish them from Niamey. I'd spent over two months stuck in Niger's capital, so I needed a break from cities. I found it in Banfora.

Banfora is Burkina's tourist Mecca. To be honest, there isn't a lot to see in Burkina according to the guide books, but Peace Corps Volunteers are always a good bet to see the really cool stuff. In Banfora, I stayed with a Volunteer named Brad and got to visit two of the coolest geographical sites in the area. I'll get the names later when I update this post, but the Domes are about 15km from Banfora, which I managed to get to with a rented bike. Evidently, they are only one of two sites in the world where the erosive forces have worked to create these entirely unique rock formations. From the nearby waterfalls, you can hike along Banfora's main water supply to the Domes, and you have a great view of the local sugar cane fields.

Now that I'm no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer, I have no restrictions on any kind of stupid thing I want to go off and do in the African countryside. So what did I do? I rented a moped and took it 50km into the bush to see the Sindou Peaks.

Let's just put it out there: I've never driven a moped before. I've always wanted a motorcycle, but I've also harbored a secret fear of them. No more. It was so much fun. Granted, I did almost crash it into a fruit stand, but once I got away from town, away from the goats, children, and fruit stands, I really had the laterite road all to myself. It meant that I was coated with fine red dust by the end of my trip, but what a feeling.

The Sindou Peaks are a chain of rocky spires that extend from the city of Sindou. There's really no other way to describe them other than fantastic, as in, I thought I was on the set of some Hollywood fantasy film. I honestly expected a Muppet to jump out from behind the rocks. Maybe Hoggle would lead me to the castle of the Goblin King. If you understand that reference, then more power to you. But seriously, doesn't this look like a place where you'd find faeries?

Unfortunately, that's all I have time for right now. I'm heading up to Mali and Dogon Country bright and early tomorrow morning, so I'll be out of any contact for quite a while. Hope everyone's safe and enjoying the holiday season. I'll be spending it in Mali, where there's no snow, but at least I don't have to deal with the cold. I'm sure I'll have some amazing pictures in the next post, but until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. - Sterling

Leaving Niger

This one is hard to write, but it's been a long time coming. How do you sum up two years living in the bush in Africa? How do I even sum up the last month, when those of us Northern Tillaberi refugees became grouped with a whole new set of refugees from an expanded terror threat. In case you haven't been diligently following Nigerien news. Here's the official word on what's been going on lately:

https://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=110469

To see how this plays into the larger picture of AQIM and all the fun they've been having across the Sahel, focusing on events that have occurred during my service, go to these places:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7798571.stm
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLP155404
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8080447.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8373821.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8381200.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8385559.stm

Wow. I didn't realize how frightening a picture that paints until I put them all together. My village was about 100km give or take from the border with Mali where the French national and the European tourists were kidnapped. However, throughout my entire service, I never once felt as if I were in danger. Someone with an outside perspective could call me naive or worse, but I think it says more about my community and the place I live. I firmly believe my villagers would have done anything to shelter and protect me had the occasion ever arisen.

Looking back, the week I had at my post seems like a positive, real risk. Would I do it again? Definitely. I hold no regrets. At least I was allowed to say goodbye. After the attempted kidnapping of embassy staff in Tahoua, a capital city much farther from the border than my village, the entire region was evacuated of all Volunteers. Many of them had no idea they would never be allowed back to their villages when they got the call to consolidate in Konni. As dangerous as it was, I know that I needed to see my villagers again, and sometimes, when something is that important, you just have to take a few chances.

I'll leave that. There's too much involved in the decisions made by individuals in any given circumstance to really examine them closely. Especially in a situation as extraordinary as this. Overall, I think Peace Corps' response was well managed and assessed all risks responsibly. I won't say anymore in part because of those who've decided to leave due to the security reasons and for those who will be staying on in very trying circumstances. The worst part of my entire second year living under travel restrictions was the uncertainty of the situation on a day-to-day basis. I was sure after the British tourist was executed that I would be evacuated from my site. I was allowed to stay, but it did underline how quickly things could change. That uncertainty will inform their entire service, but I'm confident those who have stayed will weather through it.

And now I'm leaving Niger. I have my visas for Mali (the non-dangerous part) and Burkina Faso ready and I'm heading out the door. This blog has been a pretty good representation of my service, but it can't cover even one percent of the emotions I've felt, the trials I've been through, the friendships I've made, and the rewards I've been given. If none of these kidnappings had happened, I can confidently say I would be staying another year. However, I can't really complain about that. One of my best friends in country (who also spent a full year under travel restrictions in Northern Tillaberi) said to me once that living alone in the bush, over a hundred kilometers from any other American, working with limited resources within our communities was closer to the "romantic" idea everyone has of Peace Corps, which is pretty cool. And throughout all of this, I've learned that Allah provides. I'm not saying things aren't meant to happen for one reason or another, or that things always turn out okay. However, when those two paths diverge in the wood, they lead to endless other possibilities and endless other divergences. That's just the route life takes, and it's better to appreciate what's on your own path, rather than wonder at what you'd missed.

I'll be keeping this blog going throughout the remainder of my time in West Africa, so keep checking for my whereabouts and to see what adventures I've had. Much love to everyone at home. I know there are some worried about me, but I hope that worry is tempered with excitement for all that I hope to experience in the coming months.

Irkoy m'ir cabe cere!

Solo Traveling and the Desert City (Part 2)

The trip out to Diffa required a stop in Zinder. From Dosso, Zinder is typically a 12-hour bus ride. From Zinder, it's seven more hours on broken tarmac to Diffa. There aren't any bus companies that will ply the route from Niamey to Diffa direct. I didn't mind the stop though. It gave me some time to see friends I hadn't seen in months, and Zinder is just a great city to kill a few days. It has some beautiful architecture in the old quarter, and, if you ever need a diversion, you can visit the cookie factory. Thirty or so women making honey and shortbread cookies everyday. It's awesome, but that's beside the point. I stopped off in Zinder and caught a bus out to Diffa at the "what am I doing up this early?" crack of dawn.

As a result, I missed the first half of the trip out to Diffa. It was still early, and I wasn't really concious. The road changed that. It's an old highway, and, while I hear they're going to repair it soon, it's in a pretty dire state. I was fortunate to get such a rude awakening though, as the ride out to Diffa was beautiful. The desert encroaches a bit further south than the rest of the country, which means that instead of subsistence agriculture, you're dealing with subsistence pastureland. Plains stretch to the horizon and are dotted with acacia trees that have all been grazed up above the level of hungry camels. It reminded me a lot of how I feel Kenya or Ethiopia must look: dry savannah interspersed with short, scrubby acacias. If you've ever been to Montana or maybe the Dakotas, they might look pretty similar. And the horses. These were the first horses I'd seen in country that actually looked healthy and well-fed. And why not? You could conceivably ride a horse for days in that landscape, camp under the stars, and never have to worry about food or anything else really. I don't deny I was dreaming of such things, despite the fact that I've never ridden a horse, nor do I have the money to buy one.

We reached Diffa a little after noon, and while I didn't take a long time to explore, I did get to see some beautiful marshlands. Diffa used to be close to Lake Chad, but environmental degradation, repeated drought, and climate change have all had noticable differences on the size of the lake. Diffa, though, is an important wetlands for migratory birds, and the flood plains around the city teem with life during the rainy season. I, however, was anxious to get on to N'guigmi, so I hopped a Land Cruiser bush taxi that afternoon, and, after six excruciating hours in cramped quarters, I arrived at night in the desert.

The trip took six hours, and N'guigmi is only 120km from Diffa. I'll let you imagine what the "road" was like. It's been a long time without any repairs, and with big trucks hauling from Nigeria to Libya, it's taken quite a beating. My bush taxi didn't even use the road for the majority of the trip, and after we passed Kabelawa, we left the road all together, shooting through the desert on paths only the driver knew. This of course takes a dramatic environmental toll on the desert, as eventhough it is a vast sea of sand, it's held in place by short grasses. When the trucks and Land Cruisers tear through the desert (as they have to in deep sand), they rip up the grasses and churn the earth into vast washes of deep sand. Desertification at its finest. We got stuck in one of these churned up chunks of "road," around 8:00 at night. I was not looking forward to spending the night in the desert, but I must say, the moonlight reflected from the pure, white sands reminded me a lot of a quiet winter night at home and looked quite comfortable. We managed to dig ourselves out, which was probably a bit better, as I'd completely forgotten the danger from snakes and scorpions in the desert.

We finally made it to N'guigmi around 9:00 at night, and I somehow managed to wrangle a place to stay. I still have no idea how I managed this. One minute I was talking to a shop owner and the next I was installed in a project rest house with air conditioning and a shower. Not too shabby for the first fifteen minutes in town.

N'guigmi feels like a city at the end of the earth. There's only one main paved road through a provincial town that gleams white from the desert sands. I'd like to say I did more than just take a few bush walks in the desert. I'd like to say I hooked up with a camel caravan and got to see the Grande Tal, an enormous sand dune that stretches over 30km from end to end and 2km across. In reality, however, these things cost money, money I didn't have. The bush walks were beautiful though. The white sand is as fine as powdered sugar and is peaceful and calm at night and deadly during the day. The temperature was well over 120F (48C) during most of the day, and this is during the rainy season. I could not imagine living there during the hot season.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the city though is the diversity. N'guigmi is forty-odd kilometers from the Chadian border, and they deal with Nigerian currency so much that within minutes I was carrying the Nigerian naira, the West African cfa, and the Central African cfa. The people were also a mix: Zarma gendarmes, Arab traders, Toubou herders, Kanouri farmers, and Hausa merchants. And one white guy. The most common question I got from all groups?

"What are you doing here?"

I'm seeing the desert!

"...Why?"

Seems the thing that can best unify Africa is the realization that white folks are just plain crazy.

Anyway, this has turned into a long post, and I didn't mean it to be. I had an amazing time out in the Diffa region, and I definitely plan to go back, despite the pain of travel and the stresses of being in such a remote location. It's beautiful, and I can't stress that enough. This trip was my practice backpacking trip, and I loved it. I think I'm finally ready to get started on the serious stuff come December.