Leaving Africa

I spent about a week getting from Timbuktou to Dakar and, excepting one particularly long bus-ride, this last leg of the trip was good fun. For the first time I met up with other travelers, downed some good beers, ate in restaurants, and got to know some interesting characters.

I met Jeff, an English Iraq-vet and security contractor who was taking a 2-year spin around the globe on a motorcycle (he looked and acted exactly like that soldier from the cable show Rome, Vorinus I think?); I met his companion Mark, an SF vet like myself, and we agreed to meet up for a beer in March; I met Mike, a long-bearded Scottish postman who endured the ride across Senegal with me; I met Paul, who makes his living buying and trading Chicago White-Sox tickets like it's some kind of stock; I met Ragnar, a young Norwegian girl who amazingly is on her way overland from Norway to the the Congo (yes, she knows there's a war there) and who had earlier traveled for three years across Asia, including Afganistan in 2004.

In Bamako, the capital of Mali, I started the last punishment of this trip: a 24-hour busride to Dakar that took 55 hours. It was awful, I don't care to write too much about it except to say we were endlessly delayed by police, 'gendarmerie', toll officialls, soldiers, and that we spent one night outdoors on a concrete pad at a busstation and I woke up with over fifty mosquito bites, a second night rudely awakened by over-eager toll officials, and that it was hot, overcrowded, they stored gasoline in the aisles, and my only luck was meeting up with Mike for part of the journey, the aforementioned Scottish postman. To give you some idea of corruption and inefficiency in Africa, the bus paid over 200 dollars in bribes to dozens of uniformed officials in both Mali and Senegal, and still our bags were searched and id's checked. The road in some places -- that's the main road between the capital cities of two nations-- was so riddled with potholes that we spent hours at a time cruising at five to ten mph.

Now I'm in Dakar, where the trip ends. I met my Dad here a week ago, he was on his way back from a business trip in South Africa and me on the way back from a marginally-business trip, and the timing worked out well, and it's been great to see a familar face and have good conversations and catch up after so long.

Although we're heading to the airport tonight I in essence checked out of Africa three days ago, when we checked into a swank lux hotel on the outskirts of town, complete with 50-meter swimming pool, chaise lounges, coctails with the lime placed just so, you get the idea. We also had excursions to St. Louis, the earliest French colonial town in West Africa, and a trip to the Parque National de Ouiseaux de Djoudj. The park is a sanctuary for migrating birds in a huge wetlands by the Senegal River, and from a boat we saw beautiful cormorants catching fish, a huge colonly of pelicans, a lone pelican (they fly solo when wounded or sick), lone herons, black and white egrets, ducks, eagles, and the 'Sacred Ibis' which looked just like an ancient Egyptian sculpture in the Palace of the Legion of Honor back in SF (both the bird and the sculpture are extraordinary). We also saw a big bad crocodile.

I'm leaving Africa now, leaving tired and happy, looking forward to coming home, grateful for the things I've seen, and thinking that one day, a long time from now, I might just be back.

(But before I return, a quick stop in Europe.)