Happy New Year - Refuge at last
Trip Start
Nov 06, 2004
1
25
Trip End
Apr 30, 2005
Sevare,
Mali
Saturday, January 1, 2005
I'd been on a diet of plain rice and water for the last 3 days, and was beginning to get quite thin, but the only time I'd relented and had something a bit more exciting to eat my stomach started up with a vengeance again. No details necessary, but it wasn't pretty.
Mohamadou stayed around for the first day, and then left for Bankass the next day after I'd paid him the last of what I owed him, so I was pretty much on my own. This was a bit frustrating, as the town itself is flat, dusty and pretty boring, and most of the travelers there were all at the start of their trips, and trying to get groups together to go into the Dogon.
On top of this, the Harmattan (a seasonal wind that blows through the Sahara from the North East) had started in earnest a couple of days ago, and the wind was blowing with a vengeance. (In fact, my last view from the top of the escarpment before we left for Bandiagara was basically pretty much obscured by big dust clouds). A good tip if you're going to the Dogon would be to try and miss the Harmattan, as it mostly obscures the views, and it can be pretty chilly and windy at night - especially if you're sleeping on the roof. Additionally, if you're doing any biking in Burkina Faso or Mali in late December or January, I would really really really recommend that you plan your trip so that you don't head North East - the wind has to be seen to be believed, and it blows for days.
Anyway, after two days in Bandiagara I was pretty keen to move on, and get to Sevare, as I heard there was a really nice place to stay called Mac's Refuge. I was pretty eager to be there for New Year's eve, rather than in Bandiagara, so I dosed the water I had with a mixture of salt and sugar to make up some basic rehydration fluid, and set off the next morning, even though things on the stomach front were still no better.
I was feeling pretty weak, but luckily the Harmattan was essentially blowing from behind or to the side of me (which was pretty good, as I doubt I would have made it going in the other direction). The ride of about three and a half hours was uneventful, and I made it into Sevare still feeling relatively chirpy.
Sevare lies on the main road from Bamako to Gao, and serves as a feeder town for Mopti, which lies on the Niger river. A lot of aid agencies and NGOs use it as a base for their Sub-Saharan work and it's pretty civilized, with some tarred roads (complete with road markings), a big power generating station, an airport, and even some internet cafes! That said, it's very dusty, dry, and spread out, with lots of mud walled buildings, and it's pretty hard to convey the bleakness of the place, especially with the Harmattan blowing.
I'd been in Africa a while now, but once again I got caught out by the difference between the sketch map of the place in my guide book, and the reality of the 'roads' on the ground. What looks on the map to be a nice unambiguous road often turns out to be a dusty bumpy track and leaves you asking yourself "That can't be it, can it?". However, I managed to get myself oriented, and at last got to Mac's Refuge.
And what a refuge it turned out to be! Basically it's inside a small walled compound right on the edge of town, and despite looking pretty desolate from the outside, once you get inside the gates it's all pretty civilized. Unfortunately the rooms were outside of my budget, so I opted for the roof at 5000 CFA a night, figuring that the famous breakfast included in the price would make it worth it. Anyway, after my Dogon trip I was well used to sleeping on the roof, although now that the Harmattan had started I put up my tent to keep off the wind, as my lightweight sleeping bag just wasn't proving effective enough.
Mac was born in the Dogon region of Mali in the 1940's, the son of a couple of American missionaries who had come to West Africa during the 1920's. He could speak the local Dogon language as well as French fluently and had gone to school here. After spending some time back in America he had returned to Mali and finally settled down and opened this guesthouse.
Mac's was run by Mac (surprise), who was the son of American missionaries, and had been born in the Dogon region in the 1940's and gone to school there, so he could speak French and Dogon fluently. He'd spent some time in America, but had returned and opened the guesthouse with some money he'd earnt working as an adviser to the US military on a peace mission in the region. The rooms looked pretty nicely set up and cosy, and there was a communal dining area where meals were served, and even a small selection of books and magazines, some of which were actually pretty good. Ironically though, although there was indeed a pool with nice clean blue water, I never ended up using it, as it had somehow lost its appeal with the temperature drop caused by the Harmattan.
Breakfast consisted of fruit salad, muesli, porridge, real coffee, and even pancakes with a selection of syrups, including maple! Unfortunately I had to restrain myself until things had settled down stomach-wise, so I only ate a smallish selection of the above, but even this only served to kick off my stomach problems again. So - back onto starvation rations. I was feeling a lot better though, just having reading material on hand, so I settled down to read as many of the magazines and books that I could.
I'd been carrying a dose of a pretty strong anti-biotic with me called Metronizadole, but had been holding off, as is normally recommended, and trying to let my stomach build up some natural resistance, and get better by itself. However, things were pretty much reaching the point where I would have to give in and start taking the antibiotics, as even when I'd had a couple of cases of Giardia in East Africa I'd never been as sick as this. My moneybelt underneath my trousers had been the only thing holding them up for a while now (I wasn't carrying a belt to save weight), but it had now reached the point where my trousers were now slipping down over the moneybelt, and things were getting a bit silly. Still, I was desperate to have a drink and a decent feed on New Year's eve, especially after the relative hardship of my Dogon trek, and since you couldn't have any alcohol while taking the antibiotics I decided to have one big nosh-up that night, and then start on the drugs in the morning.
Mac's was full on New Year's Eve, mostly with English speaking travelers (including a lot of Europeans, but most people were speaking English) and I quite enjoyed myself. It was the first time basically since I'd left Ghana that I'd had much in the way of proper English conversation, and it turned out to be a good night. The meal that night was Chinese, even including prawn crackers, and so we stuffed ourselves to the gills with food and drink, wished each other a happy New Year, sang Auld Lang Syne, and went to bed quite content.
The next day I paid for it, of course, but it was straight onto the Metranizadole, and things started looking up pretty quickly from then on.
The really good news on getting to Sevare was that I could check the internet, and see if my attempt to book a place to the Festival au Desert at Essakane had been successful. I'd been a bit skeptical that things would work out, since I'd cut it so close in trying to book a place, but surprisingly, there was an email waiting for me from a guy called Almou Agmohammed, which included his phone number , and said that he was my travel contact for the festival, and that they "would have a meeting point in the airport at Mopti"
Although I assumed that this would be on the 3'rd of January, the email was a bit light on details, such as the time to be there, so I rung the number Almou had given me, only to get someone who could speak virtually no English. I tried as best I could in my terrible French to find out when the meeting time was, but often the French say the time in 24 hour format, and I couldn't really tell if I was meant to be at the airport at 5 pm, 7 pm, or 9. Luckily another guy at Mac's had a mobile phone, and could speak French, so when I got back he did me a huge favour and rung them up and confirmed that it was in fact 7pm, and that they would meet me at the airport.
Satisfied at last I settled down to spend the next couple of days at Mac's reading, resting, and recovering a bit of my strength. Little did I realize that the next few days would turn out to pretty much be the highlight of my trip, a complicated saga of madly driven convoys through the desert, blown tyres, nights out in the bush, lots of waiting around, a con which ended up with one of the locals in jail in Timbuktu, and camels, camels and more camels.
