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