Yay for Vacation!

Well, I made it back from my vacation in one piece, despite the best intentions of various peoples. Here are the highlights of our three-week adventure through West Africa:

Basse to Labe—Becca and I left at 11am on Christmas day because that’s when the car was leaving. Thirteen people piled into a Pugeot taxi meant to seat seven people in comfort. The road was okay in The Gambia, better in Senegal, then turned into a 4WD nightmare in Guinea! The child sitting on his mother’s lap next to me vomited on me after a few hours, so I had that to enjoy for the rest of the 20 hour trip. It would have taken less time if we hadn’t had to stop at 10 at night to weld the underbody of the car back together, and if we hadn’t run out of gas at 4 in the morning and had to push the car to the next village to look for gas. We finally reached Labe around 7 am on the 26th, but we were dropped a ways outside of Labe for reasons unknown and had to trek in and find our dive of a hotel. We passed out until the afternoon, shivering against each other because the nights in Guinea are cold.

Doucki—After resting in Labe for the day we headed out to Doucki for some hiking. Hassan Bah has a tourist complex and leads tours all over the mountain on which he lives. We stayed for three days, four nights and hiked 44 kilometers. We enjoyed the gorgeous scenery, went swim in waterfalls, and hiked some insane trails that involved rock climbing (we’re talking literally climbing the face of a mountain where if you slip, you’re going to fall a good ways and get hurt). Empowering, but also exhausting, so we had to rest a few days in this nice town called Dalaba. The craziest thing about the trails we hiked is that these are trails the locals use everyday to get up and down the mountain for market, herding, etc. And they do it all with baskets on their heads and in flip-flops! We met some really cool ex-pats, Annoushka from Czech Republic, and Romain from France, who do development work in Guinea Bissau. They loaned us money so we wouldn’t have to try and find a Standard Chartered when we went to Conakry. We owe them a lot since we weren’t ever able to find a Standard Chartered where we could cash checks and we would have been completely stuck halfway through the trip.

Dalaba to Conakry—What a trip! First of all, the car was dirty and so it had cockroaches, which enjoyed crawling up and down my legs. Ewww! Our driver was a crazy man driving way too fast on a winding road coming down off the mountain. This made the girl in front of me so nauseous that she threw up numerous times, and one time she missed the barf-bag and ended up vomiting into the car. The only good part about this is that it detracted the roaches away from my legs and they didn’t bother me the rest of the trip. However, the sounds of her vomiting were making me queasy, so I shut my eyes and tried to think happy thoughts. The next thing I know, there’s a BOOM sound and I’m thrown against the seat in front of me. I open my eyes to see that we’ve run into a truck which was going at a significantly slower pace than the one our car had kept up. Only one woman was hurt—she had hit the door frame and was a bit bloody with a hen’s egg sized contusion on her forehead. The twelve of us climb out of the car, look after the injured woman, wait for the drivers to finish yelling at each other, then pile back in the car and coast to a sort of mechanic’s shop on the side of the road. Back out of the car. We wait for and hour and a half for them to ‘fix’ the car—‘fix’ meaning removing the hood, front bumper, and remaining glass from the shattered headlight, then banging the engine with a hammer, checking the fuel line, and starting the car. So back in the car, with the hood and front bumper attached to the top on top of our bags. It’s actually a good thing the car parts were there because at the next stop a woman decided to buy a cow leg that dripped blood and fat onto the car for the rest of the journey.

Conakry—It is a very bad idea to visit a Francophone country when you don’t know French. We were able to get by up-country with the Pulaar I had learned for the trip, but it was no dice in Conakry. So of course we get lost looking for the US Embassy, but not entirely our fault. I blame the embassy for moving to a completely different side of town within the two years since our guide book had been published. Tens of mil Guinea Franc later, we find our way to the embassy, and they contact PC Guinea and help us get a taxi to the compound, which was a life-saver because it was 8pm by this point. Once we reach the compound, check in, and make our way to the hostel, we are greeted by a group of very cool volunteers. Truly, the Guinea volunteers that we met were just good people, and they helped us so much, especially with stuff like where to find food and the appropriate costs for things. So, we stayed for a few days and tried to leave Friday morning. However, the president of Guinea fired his Minister for Information on Thursday, so when we were driving to the carpark in PC transport, things were crazy at the traffic circle. It took us twenty minutes to get through the traffic. We dropped off the Guinea volunteers at Bambeto carpark, then headed to the US embassy to pick up a security official. We received a call saying we should probably go back to the Bambeto carpark in order to find a car going to Sierra Leone, and this time when we went through the traffic circle it was completely empty. There was maybe one other vehicle and three police officers on the road. Becca and I were wondering what the heck was going on, and when we reached the Bambeto carpark the gates were locked. The security official jumped out of the car, ran inside, found the Guinea volunteers, and we all loaded up in the car, which sped back to the PC compound. Half an hour later the riots started, with rock-throwing and tire-burning. One person died. All the volunteers were stuck in the PC house trying to figure out what to do and where we could find any food since everything was closed because of the riots. Thankfully, things quieted down and we were able to leave for Sierra Leone the next day.

Freetown—We made it to Freetown despite the scary people at the border asking for bribes and being way too suggestive. Because we brought silafando, we were able to stay with some relatives of our Doucki guide for a few days, then we moved to a hotel a few kilometers from the beach. We went to the beach for a few days, but one time when we were walking to the beach we noticed this creepy guy following us. We ended up escaping, no helps to our driver who ended up being in league with the stalker, and making it to the beach we wanted to go to, only to see the stalker when we were leaving. I looked him dead in the eye, we recognized each other, and he looked pissed. Becca and I freaked out a little while we tried to get back to our hotel, then tried to check out. We couldn’t leave because we couldn’t get our deposit back until the next day (and we couldn’t afford to go to another hotel without that deposit), so they put a guard n watch for the night and moved us to a room on the second floor. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep well, and were out the door on the way to the US Embassy as soon as we had cash in hand. Trying to find the US Embassy was quite the experience, seeing as how it had moved just like the one in Guinea, only this time to the top of a hill very far away from anything except other embassies. We ended up having to walk up several hills so that by the time we arrived, we were cursing the ostentatious nature of the American government and whining about what is the point of having an embassy really far away from where American citizens actually live. How could citizens get to the embassy if something bad were to happen? Anyway, when we reached the embassy we were told we’d have to wait until 2 o’clock, so they let us wait in the library. When we checked in after 2 and told our story, we were basically told to be careful and not to go back to that area (ya think?) and sent on our way. It might have been different if we could have talked with an American, but they were nowhere to be found. Anyway, we moved to a new hotel in Central Freetown which ended up being a nicer place for the exact same price, and we had people to look out for us. We spent the rest of our time walking around and going to markets. We were supposed to return on Friday but the airline we booked with doesn’t actually have any flights on Fridays (no idea how the travel agency’s computer let them book our flights for a day when no planes are flying), so we just had to show up really freakin’ early on Saturday morning so we could make sure to get a seat on the plane. Everything worked out, and now I’m back in The Gambia. *sigh of relief* And tomorrow I go back to site to write all my lesson plans for the week, then start teaching again on Tuesday. Wait! I’m not ready! I need to relax from my vacation first!