Today was the long ride to Bandiagara. The car was quite full; it was a 3 row seating SUV, but we had 7 people (the driver, Thera, his 3 daughters, Liz and me) and a lot of stuff. I felt a little bad; Thera’s 2 youngest daughters had to squeeze together in the one seat in the back. Surprisingly the roads weren’t bad (at least not till we got closer to Bandiagara), they actually seemed in better condition than many roads in Baltimore (though a bit narrower, which made passing trucks and donkey carts and everything interesting). I think I also learned some of the interesting road signals here: when a car is passing you in the opposite direction you use your left turn signal, when a car is passing you (as in you are slower) you put on your right turn signal, when you are passing a car going the same direction you put on your left signal. Horns are also used here to just let people know you are there, like if you are going fast and are going to pass a car or a donkey cart or a moped you honk first. The horn is also often used to convince animals to get out of the road (to my relief people seem to really try not to hit animals).
We stopped in Segou for lunch at the Hotel l’Indepedence. I had some rather good capitaine (the river fish) and a can of pineapple juice to wash it all down. After wards we continued down Rue de Poisson (which apparently is called that because it’s the route the trucks take to transport the fish from Mopti to Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo and other countries (I would guess the fish isn’t very fresh by then). As we got closer to Bandiagara the terrain changed from a red clay earth to increasingly sandy soil and the countryside took on an appearance similar to that of the southwest US (not that I’ve ever been there, but I’ve seen pictures). As we travelled through small towns (and by town I mean a collection of mud brick houses and maybe a mosque) I noticed that many of them had a signs for different public works projects, as if each small town were responsible for some project to improve the country. One that struck me as particularly interesting was a town that seemed to be dedicated to reforesting the area. Perhaps this is in an attempt to slow the encroaching desertification (though I wonder how the people survive without farming to subsist on).
We made one more quick stop in Sevare (a suburb of Mopti), which is only 45 minutes from Bandiagara. Thera and Sanoussi (the driver) got out and bought some grilled meat (animal unknown) that we ate later with dinner. After a little more driving we finally made it. Bandiagara has one paved road (Rue de Poisson) it goes in and it leaves, the rest is well a bit rough. The house where we are staying is pretty nice, Liz and I are sharing a room and there’s a common bathroom. So after we settled in for a bit we had dinner with the whole team from the medical center (apparently everyone eats here). The food was good, though not as complex and ample as at Chez Gwadz. I wanted to take a shower in the evening (it had been very hot in the car), but apparently the water for the day was all used up. So instead I just crashed and thus spent my first night under a bed net (not that exciting though).
No comments:
Post a Comment