Grey Goose Gaggle: February 2014

Hey everyone!! This is Zach, writing from Accra, doing my first blog post of the trip (finally), and technically my first blog post EVER that I will have actually posted myself!! I am really sorry for delaying this, and I hope I don't forget anything... but my post will be travelling back in time a bit!

SO! I believe that the last time we communicated a legit post, we were in Bamako. I can't recall exact dates, but we were only in Bamako for a few days at first. I went to find a new serpentine belt with Michelle and Chris A. and it turned out that we needed to change one of the pulleys as well, the pulley that is supposed to have a bit of bounce to it (it didn't move at all) and the spring that was attached to it (the spring was locked up). After grabbing a moto with the mechanic to the Grande Market, we found a multitude of possible replacement parts, and found good ones from a '95 Peugeot. We found a good belt, replaced the parts, got Mother Goose back to the house, and then went out for a night on the town with a friend of Chris M. He took us to a live music show at a little dive club nearby, where we got to listen to one of the many underground artists in Bamako's music scene. She had a great voice (Chris M and I bought some of her songs and put them on his phone's memory, maybe we'll post one..), two guitars backing her, a bassist, a guy on trap set, another on tom-toms, and I think a piano player. She also had three dancers that did their thing in front of the band on the small dance floor. We were a bit surprised by the exuberance of their dancing, and the suggestiveness of it as well! The band surprised us even more by inviting Chris M up to play the tom-toms, and he got them to pull me on stage to play the bass, and we jammed with them to one of their songs, desperately trying to follow along! I think we acquitted ourselves well. After that we got pull out onto the dance floor, and some of the dancers did their best to make us feel uncomfortable in front of the entire club... but it was a good laugh, drinks were cheap, and we had a ball.

On the way home, our taxi was stopped by some policemen. I was in the taxi with Clara and Brittany, and Chris. One of the policemen asked us for our papers, a totally normal request. However he then proceeded to ask Brittany and Clara for their World Health Organization Immunization cards! He said "you should have your cards on you, because, if you don't then well, you know that means you're..." We couldn't believe it, he was implying that our girls were prostitutes!!! We had to laugh and luckily had our old peace corps IDs which said we didn't need our cards, but it was an outrageous situation, that we continue to chuckle over now (though we always bring our WHO cards now, in case we meet some really mean police, like the some of the ones here in Ghana).

The next day we left, heading down to Sikasso, and not even 50km out of Bamako, disaster struck.

The serpentine belt disintegrated. Belt number 3. We waited for a few hours to get a mechanic on a moto from the next town to put on a new belt. He broke the one we gave him to put on, but claimed it was the wrong size anyway, and then put on another. We decided to get back to Bamako and find a better mechanic. Luckily one of our friends at the Sleeping Camel Hostel new a guy, and we called our old Public Health Program Manager, N'Tossoma (who is Malian) to get a guy to come to the hostel. The dynamic duo of mechanics re-aligned our serpentine belt, found an ACTUALLY high quality belt (the belt we used to get back to Bamako was already starting to fall apart as well...), and they also decided to change up our timing belt, a process that required we stay an extra two nights in Bamako. So we bit the bullet and paid for it all, and they did a stellar job. We got to go out to experience more of Bamako's night life at a club called Byblos, where we played lots of pool and paid for overpriced Long Island iced teas, and danced the night away. The next day, our mechanics worked their magic, we packed the car up, and headed to Sikasso. We found a nice little hotel, snuck in our 7th person into one of the rooms (having 7 people was a bit awkward at some hotels, but we made it work!), and had a good night's sleep. We ran into our friend from the Sleeping Camel the next day, because he was also heading to the Burkina Faso border.

The border crossing I recall being rather painless, we had to pay a random fee without a receipt that must have been a harmless bribe, and we headed on to Bobo-Dioulasso. We found the Peace Corps regional house no problem, met a few volunteers and chatted about what things we should do, ate a nice lunch with some ground nut drink, and then moved on to Banfora, a city to the south of Bobo.

The drive was beautiful, and coming down off a plateau we saw huge spreading fields of sugarcane, complete with large scale rolling irrigation sprinklers!! These fields were easily several hectares. The agriculture we saw around Banfora was incredible, a lot of great Agroforestry!!!

We stayed at a cool hotel called Calypso. Good price, nice rooms and bathrooms and showers, cheap drinks again, we really enjoyed staying there. We used what little daylight we had left the first day to play some soccer in the Banfora stadium (its under construction and open for pick up games). We just played 3 on 3 among ourselves.

The next day we went off to see the Domes of Banfora, and a cool waterfall down the way (**we should be putting up photos of all this stuff at some point, just bear with us**)

We spent a lovely day walking along the massive water pipes for the irrigation systems in the sugarcane fields, getting a nice tan and taking a dip in the waterfall. We also gave Molly her first palm wine experience! We drank it out of a calebasse cup (kind of like drinking out of a gourd I guess..)

So the next day I think we went back up to Bobo and stayed the nite in a hostel right beside the peace corps regional house for a wicked cheap price, then moved on to Ouagadougou. We were awed by the ambiance on the drive in to Ouaga, with its street lamps and good roads and spread out feel. We found our hotel, Le Pavillon Vert (maybe spelled that wrong) and posted up for the next few days. It was a in a great location. I got the breaks on the car looked at, the oil, and tried to fix the driver's side window (which had broken on the rough road from Banfora). The peace corps people we met in Ouaga were great, they found the mechanic for us, and invited us out to have beers at happy hour in a mining company bar nearby. We had a blast with them, and cant thank them enough for the help with the mechanic. The next day some of the group went off to see crocodiles, while I got the car sorted. We got money changed, found an awesome panini place, and ran into our friend from the Sleeping Camel again!! He decided to stay at the Pavillon too, as luck would have it.

So our final night, we went to a bar called De Niro, which featured pool tables, great burgers, an ancient and battered dartboard, and some awesome music. Old jazzy tunes, Sinatra, big band kind of stuff. They had sandwiches named after different DeNiro films too, funnily enough, including the Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. I ordered myself a James Bond martini (unwittingly in an English accent) and she served it to me, well shaken.

After Ouaga, we headed down to Benin, and despite warnings of bandits along the road, we had no problems! The border crossing there was also fairly easy, though I had to talk my way out of an extortionate bribe (name dropping that we were former Peace Corps again really helped).

The next part of our saga took place in the Park de Pendjari, but my post ends here. Thanks for following us, and again, I'm sorry it took so long!! Michelle has got the next post :)

Peas

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

POST 2?

Monday, February 17, 2014

ALIVE