Bamako

***UPDATE - We finally have SIM cards!  In case of an emergency, you can reach us at either +223.77.81.68.02 or +223.77.32.99.83.  We will be in Mali through the beginning of Wednesday, Jan 29.  We will let you know when we are able to purchase new SIM cards in Burkina.***

Road-tripping around West Africa in a minivan is hard. We knew this before setting off on our adventure. We knew there would be challenges, although we didn’t know exactly what form they would take. It was a vague notion: “There will be problems along the road – we’ll have to be there to solve them when the time comes.” Still, after two years of Peace Corps service in Guinea (and in Zach’s case – carefully observing the way Guinean taxi drivers went about their jobs) we felt as prepared as anyone. We had done our research on the car, gotten a mechanic and a Peace Corps driver to inspect it and got all the necessary documents that were available. We left the Peace Corps compound in Conakry at 6 a.m. on Thursday ready to breeze past the awful Guinean roads once and for all and onto Bamako, Mali in less than two days.

Taking off from Conakry!

By 10 a.m. the Goose had its first flat tire. We switched in the spare tire and soon stopped in Linsan, a village in the Fouta Djallon region known for its copious amounts of meat – and, as a result, vultures – and found a mechanic. The mechanic couldn’t have been older than 18, which would have been okay – if he had actually stayed around to fix our tire. Instead, an eight-year old banged on the wheel rim for a while. Success!

Zach replacing our flat, about 1k before Linsan.

Back on the road in the early afternoon, we were somewhat less optimistic about reaching our destination of Kankan – about eight hours away – before a reasonable hour. And that’s when the real problems started.

***Dislaimer: I really shouldn’t be writing this post. I got less than an hour of sleep on our last night in Conakry. What began as Clara and I cracking jokes in the backseat soon morphed into a sleepfest, so I’m only going off of what the rest of the GGG told me (More on Clara and my refusal to sleep later)***

Over the next hundred or so miles, the Goose saw its undercarriage fall off, its exhaust pipe break in half, its serpentine belt shred, and its battery die. At the final 30 km stretch of the road before Dabola – easily the worst stretch of the road from Conakry to Kankan – our heroic captain Zach had to make sure he didn’t stall along the crater-sized potholes or else the car would die. Somehow I slept through all of this. The Goose gave its last breath outside the entrance to our friend’s house, and we triumphantly (dejectedly?) pushed our battered vessel into the compound.

The next day we fixed the Goose, drove to Kankan, and said goodbye to some Peace Corps friends. Yay!

We got the Goose checked again – “Definitely nothing wrong with the car - no problem whatsoever!” – and drove to the Malian border. It took three hours to cross the border: not too bad, until I remembered that friends from my village made the 3+-hour trip to Bamako and back in a day.

On the road to Bamako, we marveled at the:

• crosswalks/roadlines
• weirdly shaped rock formations
• abundance of trees
• abundance of mangoes! (more on that later, too) 

Finally in Mali!

We arrived in Bamako at around 8 p.m. Our first impressions:

SOOO MANY MOPEDS. It’s what I imagine Beijing or Bangkok to be like. Roundabouts are usually pretty tricky, but what do you do when you have no idea where you’re going and there are close to 100 mopeds zooming around you? Mopeds like minnows!

Highlights from our time in Bamako so far:

• We went to the botanical gardens, drank wine in the shade next to a playground, tried to learn how to do cartwheels (By which I mean I embarrassed myself while Chris A., Clara and Zach showed they secretly did varsity gymnastics in college.) Brittany also got kicked off the see-saw by a guard for not being a child.
• We ate delicious Indian food. It was so delicious that we (the former Peace Corps Volunteers) licked the platters. And not just a sneaky little peck – a full-on stamp-licking contest. Molly, the only non-Peace Corps member of our group, was appalled. 
• Michelle and I had vanilla milkshakes with whisky, and sooo many eggrolls!!! (I realize this blog post is skewed heavily in the direction of things that I’ve done, but if I admit that up-front, it’s okay, right?)
• Clara and I had a mango-eating race. We had five mangoes and a large bottle of beer. On the count of go, we drank some beer, began peeling and eating the mangoes as fast as we could until we had eaten all five mangoes, then finished the rest of the beer. Clara won. Who knew that a knife is better at peeling mangoes than an actual peeler? It turns out eating mangoes two months before the start of mango season is not delicious, and not good for your bowels.
• In my best excited Michelle voice: “Our hostel has a dart board!!!!!”

Lastly, Chris A. had lots of helpful statistics in our first post, so I’m going to finish up with one completely pointless one. Clara and I are having a competition to see who can sleep the least (Not counting hours slept in the car, because, as we all know, that’s not real sleep. We’ll track it throughout the trip.

So far:

Chris: Day 1- 1 hour. Day 2-8 hours. Day 3- 4 hours. Day 4- 6.5 hours. Average-4.875 hours

Clara: Day 1-2 hours. Day 2-6 hours. Day 3-3 hours. Day 4: 6.5 hours. Average-4.375 hours.

Clara is in the lead by 2 hours. Or .5 hours/day.

That’s about all. It turns out there are, in fact, mosquitoes in Mali. So I’m going to sign off. See you in Ouagadougou.

Chris (M)

Trip stats:

• Total kilometers traveled: 1150
• Total time in car: 26 hours 30 minutes
• Cheapest diesel: Conakry/ Siguiri (9,500 GNF/liter)
• Most expensive diesel: Conakry/ Siguiri (9,500 GNF/liter)
• Number of breakdowns: 2
1. flat tire
2. serpentine belt, undercarriage, lost power steering
• Capitals visited: Conakry, Bamako
• Number of doppelgangers sighted: 1 (Lebanese Sean Cochrane seen at Room, Conakry, Guinea)
• Longest border crossing: 3 hours 30 minutes (Guinea - Mali)
• Shortest border crossing: 3 hours 30 minutes (Guinea - Mali)
• Guinea-Mali boarder crossing debrief (3 hours 30 minutes):
• Stop 1 (Guinean) - Gendarmerie stop - present passport, drivers license and carte grise
• Stop 2 (Guinean) - Douane stop - purchase laissez-passer for Mali for 60,000 GNF  
• Stop 3 (Guinean) - Gendarmerie stop (aka doucheville) - present laissez-passer, carte grise, vignette, insurance and passport
• Stop 4 (Malian) - Douane stop - present laissez-passer, waited 20 minutes, pay 10,000 CFA for miscellaneous documents
• Stop 5 (Malian) - Gendarmerie stop - present passports, buy 20,000 CFA visa, pay 500 CFA road toll
• Stop 6 (Malian) - Gendarmerie stop - present driver's license, laissez-passer, unpack all luggage for inspection

Conakry

Welcome to everything you need to know about the best COS trip of all time! 

While this blog serves a functional purpose, i.e. appeasing our anxious parents and letting them know that we’re still alive and how to contact us, it’s also a means of updating our friends and family on the places we go, the people we meet and the adventures we have.  Plus, if you ever plan on visiting West Africa or following in our COS footsteps we hope you can better plan your trip and learn from our mistakes. 

I swear we are responsible individuals.  We just couldn't resist.

The Car

Purchasing a car in Guinea is surprisingly similar to purchasing one in the US.  Ok, so I’ve never actually purchased a car from a dealer in the states, but I image it would be the same.  You prepare yourself to interface with an affable and energetic salesman.  One who wants you to think he is your best friend and the most honest source of information available.  This is where our experience after two years in Guinea comes in handy.  We knew where to locate the car dealers.  We knew reliable Guineans who can inform us on how much the car should actually cost.  We had enough resolve to get the price we wanted or to walk away from a bad deal. 

So after schmoozing and bargaining with the salesmen for the past week in French, Malinké and Pulaar, we finally have our car.  The one:  a gray, ’98 Peugeot 806 minivan.  With worn leather bucket seats and decent stereo system it was love at first sight.  Well, almost.  It wasn't the newest car in the lot.  Nor the fastest or flashiest.  But seeing as our sole means of transportation for the past two years have been cramming into weathered, five person sedans with up to eight other malodorous strangers, it seemed like a more than acceptable alternative.  The oil needed to be changed, the locks fixed and the air filter replaced, but in all honesty this was one fine looking car.  At the very least it is definitely nicer than the minivan I drove back in high school, so I’m going to count that as a win.

Other action items on our to-do list this past week have been purchasing our ECOWAS car insurance, license plates, Guinean car registration, laissez-passer, traveler’s insurance and return tickets*.

The Trip

From the very scientific measurements I took with some string and the legend of my Michelin map, our trip will total 3,865 kilometers or roughly 2,400 miles.  During this time we will travel through Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.  Breakdowns will happen.  Bribes are inevitable.  But hopefully we will come out of this trip fully intact and with some good stories to share. 

Here are the stats that we will continually update throughout our trip:

• Total kilometers traveled: 100
• Cheapest diesel: Conakry (10,000 GNF/liter)
• Most expensive diesel: Conakry (10,000 GNF/liter)
• Number of breakdowns: 0
• Longest border crossing: N/A
• Shortest border crossing: N/A
• Capitals visited: Conakry
• Number of doppelgangers sighted: 1 (Lebanese Sean Cochrane seen at Room, Conakry, Guinea)

Thursday morning we’ll drive to Kankan and then Friday we’ll head to Bamako. Parents, you can contact us at our normal Guinean phone numbers through Friday.  After that you will have to wait for us to purchase new SIM cards in Mali.  We will post them here as soon as we have them.

So that’s it for now.  Thanks for reading and we'll see you in Bamako!  

Chris (A)

* For those interested, here are more details on what we purchased:

• ’98 Peugeot 806 with about 110,000 miles – 4,062 USD – Because there are seven of us on this trip we had to buy a minivan, but smaller sedans will run you around 2,000 USD.  We purchased from Mamadou Oury Diallo – 664.40.68.70/ 628.11.96.08 located near Carrefour chien. 
• Carte grise and license plates – 450,000 GNF – your carte grise is the registration card that goes in the glove compartment and proves that the car belongs to you.  License plates need to be mounted to the car and requires a drill to install.
• Vignette – 250,000 GNF – you need to purchase and are expected to mount the most up-to-date vignette available on your car (the circular sticker you see slapped onto the back of the windshields here).   Unfortunately, the 2014 vignettes are still not available (the 2013’s came out this past June…).  Legally our carte grise will suffice in demonstrating the cars origin and registration, but hopefully we won’t get hassled too much outside of Guinea because of it. 
• Laissez-passer – 20,000 CFA - to be purchased in every country you drive through.
• ECOWAS car insurance – 380,000 GNF – the plan covers us in Guinea, Mali, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. NOT Burkina.  Yes, Burkina Faso is part of ECOWAS, but for some reason they're not part of our coverage.  We’ll need to find an alternative when we get there.
• Traveler’s insurance – 30-90 USD – your PC insurance lasts 30 days after you COS.  We will still be traveling after it expires so we needed something else to last us through the end of the trip.  Even if you have your own insurance or go back on your parents plan after PC, you still need to buy traveler’s insurance!!!  We’re going to try and stay as safe as possible, but you never know.  Medical evacuations could run you up to 200,000 USD and normal insurance plans don’t cover them.  Make sure your new one does.
• International driver’s license – 15 USD - order at AAA.  You don’t need to actually be present when you register so you can just have your parent buy it for you in the states and mail it to you.