November 8, 1980

NIAMEY – OUAGADOUGOU
As we pulled out, we left the rough road behind us and moved onto the most unbelievably terrible road in the world. We spent the whole day snaking our way around and over "pot holes" that were deep enough to hide hippos. We never reached more than a jogging pace. We were thrown around in the cab like dice being shaken. Sometimes my head hit the ceiling a foot above me.

A curious thing happened. My strongest regret of the taxi-brousses is the number of unexpected stops along the way, but now, with just the four of us, I was finally relaxing enough to actually enjoy the stops, the chats, the sights, having a Fanta with the driver, meeting African tourists, talking to kids. It occurred to me that it didn't matter to me how long it took to get to Ouagadougou. I checked my watch less often. I was enjoying the voyage, instead of just looking toward my next point. An existentialist flash!

Just after leaving a village this evening, the truck developed problems—something in the oil distribution, I think. The middle-aged passenger, who'd planned on reaching Ouaga much earlier, immediately flagged down another truck and continued with him. I was "at peace" and comfortable to stay with this truck— also, some kind of loyalty was involved: the driver was good to me, buying me refreshments all the way.

After an hour, it was fixed. Unfortunately, we'd picked up another passenger in back, who now moved up with us and we got no reprieve from crowdedness.

We rolled quite a while in the night, finally pulling into a truck park, 40 k from Ouaga. Ate, relaxed, maintained the truck and, to my surprise, drove again, just to the outskirts of Ouagadougou. We had dumped our extra party, ridden comfortably for a while, then picked up a big Mama! Fortunately, the road from this truck park was (shout Alleluia!) paved! We reached speeds of 40 mph, only occasionally careening into a pothole that would almost break our bones. At this point outside town, we threw the straw mats under the truck and slept until morning.

PHOTO CREDIT 1
PHOTO CREDIT 2