Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
-Maya Angelou-
It was time to leave paradise again for
the second and final time. I think we do
get a chance to see some more beach action in the latter half of the trip in
Senegal when we spend 2 nights along the coast, but for now, it was time to get
back into Madge and get some distance as we leave Sierra Leone today and head
back into Guinea again. We were on a 9am
departure this morning, so Helen and I were up at 7am, with the idea of having
a quick shower before pulling down the tent, but there was still no water, so I
just got changed on the truck and started the process of pulling down a very
sandy tent. Seriously that stuff is
everywhere and we figured it would be a waste of time sweeping out the tent now
and we would do it tonight as we had a bush camp in Guinea on the cards, talk
about heading from paradise to the sticks in one foul swoop!!! I’m just trying to keep all the gadgets sand
free, with my phone which is my alarm, my big camera which has a few specs of
sand on the lens and my IPod which I have now in a waterproof case to try and
keep that from attracting the little grains.
We have had such a good run since this crew started, 2 nights in a fancy
hotel in Freetown, real ham and cheese for lunch, 2 nights on a wonderful beach
at Bureh Beach and the food and service at both places has been
outstanding. We are going to start
looking like whingers as we have been saying how tough we have been doing it
the last 3 weeks. And then previous to
that I was saying to the couples how tough we had been doing it before they
joined in Benin and Togo. I am starting
to get a picture the more north we move the more money seems to be invested and
the better the facilities and accommodations.
It was still a little overcast this
morning, and after the massive storm last night it was a little cooler. Breakfast was an interesting combination of
some baked beans, a spicy tuna and mayo mix, happy cow cheese and a fresh bread
roll. I was not game to mix it all
together on a roll, but was happy to have a half-baked bean roll and a half
tuna roll and it was delicious! We were
all packed and in the truck bang on 9am when I looked out the window and
Ibrahim was there in his school uniform with somebody and he asked Sam if he
could have a quick word with me. Unfortunately
Sam didn’t see but I did, so as Zoe did a 3 point turn to get us around to the
drive way, Ibrahim had bought his brother to meet me and he had my card in his
hands. He introduced himself, we shook
hands and he asked if he could give his number, so I gave him a pad and pen and
he wrote his name and number down and that we would be in touch. We shook hands again and with a wave to both
of them we were on our way. I do feel a
connection here, with the place and the ‘beach boys’ and I have a feeling that
I just may be coming back again. I don’t
know when, but I can just feel something stirring……
It took us 40 minutes to get to
Waterloo, the next biggest town from Bureh Beach and I did see the same
orphanage sign, but I didn’t take down the name of it. Dang……
Helen got Dan’s email address, so maybe I can ask him to find out the
name of it for me. Just to have it and
for future reference. Now that the group
has grown, we have re-established cook groups and a cooking roster for our camp
nights and truck lunches. I am cook
group number 3 which has myself, Cathy and Ian and Sian came up with a great
name around the camp fire last night of Ready, Steady, Cock-which is a takeoff
of an Australian TV cooking show of Ready, Steady, Cook. Needless to say that Cathy and I love the
name and Ian is a little stone fished about it, so we had a vote and it was
2-1, with majority rules the name stays.
So either Cathy or I will randomly yell out Ready, the other replies
Steady and then you hear a tiny cock from Ian.
Poor guy, he didn’t stand a chance!!!
So with the cooking roster in place, group 1 was up for lunch and dinner
tonight and group 2 was up for lunch tomorrow.
So I was able to stay in the truck as the cook groups took to the
markets of Waterloo, which for a smaller sized town, had an extremely busy
market place. Apparently the newbies
looked a little flustered when they got to the food section, but Ellie was
snapping things up that were needed and within 30 minutes we had baguettes,
tomatoes, onions and cucumbers to get us through. With the way the cook roster is, my group
don’t have to cook until day 8, and I’m pretty that is the only time we do the
whole trip.
This section of the trip re the
accommodation looks really good. We have
in total 4 camps (hoping with facilities), 4 bush camps and 13 nights in hotels
and they are all spread through the itinerary.
It looks much more civil than what we have done all trip, and again we
are looking a little like Debbie Downers with our talk of how rough we have had
it. The last week is all in hotels and
one last camp before heading into the big smoke of Dakar and the finality of
what will have been a remarkable 10 weeks on the road. It sounds like such a long time to be in an
overland truck, but I just cannot express how quick the trip has gone, and not
once have I counted the days left, not once did I wish I was somewhere else
(well maybe a few times back in Nairobi when I missed events) but other than
that it really has been an outstanding trip to date.
So today it was a big travel day and we
also had a border crossing. It was time
to finally leave Sierra Leone after 2 weeks in this amazing and surprising
country it was time to move onto Guinea for the second time and then onto the
remaining 3 countries of Guinea Bissau, The Gambia and finally Senegal. We had
to backtrack the way that we had come from Makeni nearly a week ago to then
head west to the Guinea border and the crossing. With everyone loaded on, I gave my seat to
Rich and Ellie so that they could sit together and I sat next to Helen in the
very front, right in front of the steps.
It is funny, the whole 7 weeks I have not sat in this chair once and I
have also not sat next to anyone in all that time either, so it was a new
double whammy!! I was also not on a
window, which makes it a triple whammy and I think what led me to know that I
was in a crappy spot for a long travel day.
I knew that it would happen and the good times and lots of space would
come to an end and I also knew that there would be days like this and I would
have to suck it up. Out of all that, I
think I just missed the window the most, as my waving was inhibited with Helen
next to the window, as I didn’t want to keep flapping my hand in front of her
face every 3 minutes. Ian was also in an
aisle and I think we could see it on both our faces, the great opportunities of
waves that were missed with us both not on a window. But again there we bound to be days like this
and I would just have to get used to it.
Dang it.
We made great time, on great roads and
reached the Sierra Leone border at 12.15pm.
Madge had to get stamped just before the main border buildings and then
we drove the 3 minutes there and due to the time decided to set up the lunch
stop while Zoe ran around getting us stamped out of the country and Sam was
busy inside the truck with a mountain of Sierra Leone francs and a few other
currencies that we were getting exchanged as a group, for safety, time and ease
into Guinean francs. As it worked out
Zoe came back out with departure forms we had to fill in, and then she was gone
again and we managed to unpack, have lunch and repack everything before Sam and
Zoe had both finished. The good thing
(there are some) of a bigger group is that now we have all been allocated
duties for the truck now as well, so things that we have all been pitching into
do the last 4 weeks are now allocated and we were left standing around with
nothing to do, which is nice as the pressure is take off a smaller group and
you can have a little rest while the work around you gets done, which is harder
to do in a smaller group. So the bigger
group does have some advantages after all.
We were smart enough to also make them a roll and wrapped it in cling
wrap for them to eat later on the road.
While we waited there was a great photo opportunity of getting the
‘welcome to Guinea’ sign and facing the other way the ‘welcome to Sierra Leone’
sign. Besides the Togo border that had a
sign, we have been passing through posts that small that the only thing they
have to show you are crossing a border is a sad looking country flag waving in
the breeze. So I said to Sam, it would
be great if we could ask for permission to get our photos in front of the signs
and since we hadn’t got a group photo from the old trip, we could stand in
front of the Sierra Leone sign and the we could get a new group photo in front
of the Guinea sign. So when everyone was
back, Sam went and asked and after a small wait while they exercised their
authority, they said fine and we were given the all clear to take a photo on
the border, which normally is unheard of, but the signs were located on the
main road and there really wasn’t any soldiers or buildings that could be
compromised in the shot. I LOVE these
type of photos and after getting the ‘old’ group photo, we then asked one of
the money changers to take the ‘new’ group photo, which he did grandly if not a
little crooked and took 10 of them, but nothing that can’t be fixed or deleted
and then we were back in the truck to pass through the Guinea formalities. As we have a bigger group, this procedure now
takes a little longer, we had to stop at a checkpoint to make sure we all had
the correct visa and then 200m down the road was where we got stamped in. We were left to sweat it out on the truck
while Zoe and Sam went into immigration and it does seem hotter here already
than in Sierra Leone, and after a very hot 40 minutes, we were all cleared, an
officer came on board to have a quick sticky beak, Madge stamped and we were
now back in Guinea. There apparently was
no issue not having the first exit stamp out of Guinea missing in our passport,
but then Sam kept the guy busy so as to distract him from that point as it
worked and it didn’t even come up as an issue.
Pretty much after traveling for only 25
minutes the roads changed from really good (Sierra Leone) to not too bad (in
Guinea) with some pot holes here and there, but certainly compared to the
Guinea roads we had seen I would call them 150% better, and again after us
saying how bad the roads had been in Guinea, we were again proved wrong. I have now learned to keep my mouth shut, as
like the first section to the second group and the second section to the third
group, it has all been totally different and I know that things would not be
exactly the same, even in the same countries, but we DID do it tough and
sometimes you just want to tell the newbies that this is nothing to what we had
done, it is like some form of society we had getting through what we did and it
was hard to not boast a little about that, as it was an achievement what we did
and anything better than that is an improvement for us. I need to remember that I have been on the
road for 7 weeks, nearly 8, so what they are experiencing for the first time I
have seen, probably more than once and I need to let them find out for
themselves things, which is what I would want and just be more than happy to
answer any questions they may have and know what I have done and the hard yards
we did to get where we were today.
I have to make the call, and after
spending only an hour back in Guinea, I think, so far, they take the award for
the friendliest people out of the 6 West African countries I have been to so
far. Guinea was also where we had the
kids run after the truck, on more than one occasions and I think that photo
also sticks out as my favorite of the trip, catching that on film as it is
currently my cover photo for Facebook.
For the afternoons drive the sun was coming in on our side of the truck
and Helen asked if I would swap seats with her, as she was getting burnt and it
took me a micro second to reply and all of a sudden all was well again in my
world with a window and back to waving again.
Rich asked if I had been keeping a wave tally of the trip, which of
course I hadn’t but wouldn’t it have been interesting to know how many waves
have been shared with the West African people.
Let’s have a think about this.
Let’s assume that I would wave around 200 times a day, I think it may be
a little more, but taking into account 2 days stays where we don’t go anywhere
in the truck, let’s say 200. I have been
on the road now for 50 days, so that makes a total of 10,000 waves and let’s
say half of them are returned, some are in groups, some don’t see, some don’t
wave back at all, some are scared, that means that I have received over 5,000
waves back and then if you add in Ian for his 28 days, as he is up there in the
wave club-we have sent out nearly 30,000 waves and isn’t that just amazing! Something that costs nothing can make such an
impact to the sender and the receiver, if you have not waved to people you
don’t know ever in your life, especially when travelling, you do not know what
you are missing. I have never seen
anyone wave as much as me until I met Ian and it is good to know that some else
also enjoys dishing out some waves and smiles on trips.
We arrived into a junction at 5.15pm
where we had to drop Zoe off as she was given a top secret mission to head into
Guinea’s capital Conakry to apply for all of our Guinea Bissau visas as they
seemed quite hard to obtain from anywhere else and Dragoman notes said that it
could easily be done en-route. So Zoe
was bestowed this grand adventure and armed with 14 passports, all our details
that you normally require for an application and passport photos, she was to
catch a motor taxi the 30km to the city and we were to keep heading north for
our bush camp. All going well we would
see her in a few days in Labe with our passports and our visas as well in hand. So with a farewell to the group, lots of luck
wished her way (for her safety and the visa) we were back on the road again to
push as far as we could before having to set up camp. We found a track just on dusk, so Sam took us
down there and after around 800m, we did find an ideal set up and just before
it got dark, sweating our pants off in the humidity (it was stifling), everyone
got their tents up, kitchen set up, chairs out and again it was good to know
that I could sit on the truck guilt free as the cook group got to work on
dinner for the next hour. It is the
first dinner of a larger group and Rich, Sian and Helen all got stuck in and
the end product was perfect in portion sizes, leftover food was just about nil
and to boot it was delicious tomato tuna pasta.
It is the first of 4 bush camps and
everyone seemed in high spirits and with people turning in around 9.30pm, I am
slowly falling back behind on my blog, with it now 4 days past, but I know I
will be able to catch up in the next few days as there is a hike option coming
up in Labe which I will not be going on and I will have plenty of time for a
catch up then, so I am not too concerned I didn’t get much done tonight. Even though I did relive my pickpocket
incident and I have to say I am missing my little camera. I sometimes wondered if I needed to travel
with a smaller camera, but now not having it I know that I do and it reinforces
that I do need that little guy and I will be able to get another one back in
Australia when I return, along with a new big camera, now thanks to the 6 specs
of sand on my lens, on the inside.
I have high hopes of a good sleep
tonight, as I found a new branch to hold up the inside of my tent and for
something new, I have turned my sleeping arrangements around and I am going to
sleep with my head to the door rather than at the back of the tent, which gives
me more fresh air and more room due to the way the tent is pegged and I think
this will solve my restless nights in the tent.
So good night from our Guinea bush camp.
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