Many of these smaller towns are particularly pleasant in the early morning and in the evening, when the heat's not so brutal—although it's not nearly as humid here as it was in Abidjan and the temperature is bearable by 4pm. This morning, I walked about a mile to get breakfast and everyone was chugging along, setting up business for the day. Afterwards, I went to Post Office to ask where I could get some postcards, fully expecting to be told it wasn't their business. Instead, one of the clerks walked down the street with me, brought me to a store and waited for me while I stopped.The kids are friendly, too. Even the tiniest ones seldom miss a chance to say "Ça va?" to me. yesterday I was bending over to stretch my lower back and when I looked up, there was a four-year old mimicking me, while lifting his feet up and down— he seemed to think it was a dance and I couldn't help cracking up.
At 2pm, went to the auto-park. A mini-bus was waiting, so I bought a ticket to Sikasso, Mali, loaded my pack and sat down to read for a couple of hours. At 4pm, we were full, which is to say six rows of five people each in a six-foot wide truck. I had a window seat, so I was relatively comfortable.
My outlook on African transport has definitely changed, though maybe that's because the trip's nearing its end. I take it at the temp the locals do, expecting a million stops, not minding them, treating the trip as a prolonged adventure, instead of just a painful period between two desirable places. Five miles from town, we passed our first community— a little village of thatched, mud-brick huts, one of which had the inevitable "Coke" and "Fanta" signs. Saw lots of tropical savannah countryside, including several baobabs.I'd been thinking about staying for a day at Sikasso, but we arrived at midnight and I didn't want to look for a sleeping place at that hour, so I took the connecting truck to Bamako, the capital of Mali. Though we'd had a half-dozen police stops in seven hours, I miraculously got no stamps in the passport, not even for leaving Ivory Coast or entering Mali.
The second leg of the journey was in a real taxi-brousse: the same deal that I refused to take part in a month ago, packing no fewer than 14 people, with luggage, on benches in the back of a small, covered pickup. During the next 12 hours, we became very close.
PHOTO CREDIT 1
PHOTO CREDIT 2
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