VIDEO: uploading chickens – Burkina Faso

Uploading chickens onto the bus roof in Burkina Faso

In search of diamonds – Kono, SIERRA LEONE

Kono mosque at dusk (looking from the balcony of my guesthouse)

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VIDEO: market street, Freetown – Sierra Leone

 along a market street, Freetown – Sierra Leone, 2007

I was on an early morning bus – that departed 2 hours late so we got caught up in the market rush of this main street, as the music of Lucy Dube played on the bus stereo.

On the rough road – GUINEA-BISSAU to GUINEA

 Often you know when a journey will be difficult, when it with wear you out, when it will numb your bum and tire your mind but hell it will be memorable and etched in your head and so this was one – one, of 100s – that I’ll remember (assuming that a mind-rotting disease doesn’t kick in) but hell for now it’s here. But how did it begin …? I forget.

On the road towards Guinea

NOTE: Presently I am in Labé in the Fouta Djalon region, the lush, canyon-ed high plateau of north-eastern Guinea, writing this on battery by candlelight …  and I’ve drunken several beers at a friendly, hole-in-the-wall bar shortly after the Ramadan fasting came to an end today.

So where was I? Remembering … Okay, let me listen to my audio diary and get back to you …

Koundara: just been talking to Captain Thomas and friends – very drunk soldiers, missing teeth, red berets slopped everywhere. They came into this shack-bar/disco/hotel where I was staying – few other choices … the boss-chick has just gone out to appease them; I fucked her when I arrived – in the morning & in the evening … don’t know where to start … this was on the eve of Ramadan, drinking amid drunk, ragged, aggressive soldiers in a scene from a twisted movie.

Lone hut in the early morning light

This is a country that is deemed the next failed state – here a history of dictatorships and coups and economic mismanagement despite it being a major Bauxite exporter and having other vast mineral riches – Guinea is driven by a general who for the last 20 years has succeeded in keeping himself in power by cheating at the ballot and by changing the rules to suit himself, and who was last shot at in 2005. Even his soldiers, after a pay revision, revolted, but he survived despite an artillery siege at the presidential palace and then after an agreement there followed the sudden execution of mutineers. Today Conte still rules; this is another banana republic that we don’t know or care about. (And I read on the internet this morning that the soldiers just this week are threatening violence again unless pay owed from the late-1990s is paid. But I also hear that nothing will happen until after Ramadan). 

There is no running water; electricity is either occasional in major towns or more likely not at all unless supplied via private generator. And, most roads are appalling.

Which brings me back to the roads – the journey … a test of the will, or at least this western will. Not the most difficult but (that was yesterday on route to Labé – shattered roads that are red clay hard ruts, deep festering holes, thick mud eating trucks; to avoid holes one side of the car driving along road’s outermost edge and other down lower along the mud track, car riding at a sloping 45 degree angle – branches hitting windows. Fucked up but … the mountain slopes often the best traction – less erosion uphill apart from some deep rain ruts that channel down; early in the day passing thatched huts and long green red-tipped grass then and later jungle and  grouped chimpanzees on huge rocks seated calmly in dusk light as we struggle uphill. Followed by cattle and goats across the track – kids waving – when I wave at then – astonished at my white presence – Foto, they call – meaning white in the local tongue. Women with bowls on heads going nowhere obvious but greenery all around and our journey slow, bumpy, broken; painful.

Awaiting more passengers in Koundara “taxi” station

I woke at 6:30 AM in dark, waited till 7:30 for the car to fill and we arrive in dark at 9:30 PM; we have only covered 265 km … we have 4 people in the front including the driver, 3 in the back – only cos I paid double for an extra seat/space, and then 3 more cramped in the boot-bench-seat of the Peugeot 505 over the rear wheel, and one more in the tiny actual boot and two more on top of the heaped baggage on the roof-rack. And so a humble 5-seater hatchback is a 14 seat slave … But this particular journey of Guinea is another story. 

So I forget, I forgot, my mind is rotting … back to this day, this journey: Her name was Monica, 3 babies at age 25, tribal slit cut down along the rims of each ear-lope; when I arrived she offered me sex … fingers placed together then the in-out motion is understandable in any language – especially mine, her washing the rooms – dusty, concrete, lino-clad floors, spider web corners, sunken thin mattress, showers equal water in a bucket, a fan when the generator kicks in at 7 pm … She got on top of me. Twice … actually, five times by the time it was over that evening.

Anyway before that there was the border crossing between Guinea-Bissau and Guinea in a crammed car, no room for legs or arms or beer bellies … that lasted checkpoints and past villages to the now searing mid-day heat of the frontier, where the Immigration officer in a small tatty concrete office was pleasant, decent, friendly but the Customs across the dirt road made me empty my backpack. But I threw off his ambitions of a full search straight away by showing him my dullest aspect of my bag first – here’s my towel, my books, my toothpaste, my … after wanting something from me – he got nothing, he actually thanked me, keen to have met a New Zealander, a nomad who had nothing but his bags – for he understood slight English and I explained my life to him. But then the soldiers in the thatch hut wanted me to enter … Alert: nasty dumb fucks ahead.

River crossing on route to Labé; the barge was broken, so cables welded for 2 hours and then we crossed … by two men turning a wheel we were pulled along the cable to the other side

They tried to intimidate me: 5 of them; unfriendly. They didn’t acknowledge my greetings in English, Islamic salutations, or French. They wanted me to empty my backpack and electronics bag on the dry dirt floor and I realized there was some real danger here of a huge bribe or other hassle. I got shitty, growled – fuck this shit, having already deflected the same nonsense minutes earlier at customs and so said loudly and slowly each item. I got out my towel and mentioned its name – like a teacher – and demonstrated drying myself. Then I got our my tooth brush and brushed, my book and I read … trying to delay the search of my valuables – a Nikon SLR D80 with expensive lenses, Sony video camera, lightweight powerful laptop with extra hard drives, MP3 player, etc, etc … I got out my toilet paper – “here’s my toilet paper, this is for wiping my butt” – and held it high and started to wipe my arse – and they cracked up! That was it, I could pack my pack, and out … they asked my nationality and were pleased to meet me – although I’m sure they knew nothing of where I was from. Even the mention of Australia washed over them – but no more search. No money paid; nothing lost.

The next stage was much easier: but no vehicles were going from this deserted border post to the next deserted border post. There was only one other traveler. A guy from a Guinea, as the others in our shared taxi had raced off into a waiting friend’s 4WD, and that left us with 10 seats to fill; just 2 people and not a person or vehicle coming within hours to complete the journey and so I offered to pay the bulk of the distance: 45 km = over 1 hour of rutted track to get us to the next village and there next shared taxi probably awaiting passengers – as maybe you don’t know: but taxis, cars, buses in Africa don’t leave until full: there is never a timetable for departure – just when a vehicle is full, which by my previous experiences of Africa can mean mercifully just 30 minutes or even less but usually up to several hours waiting … so I paid nearly-the-complete taxi fare which, in this case was nothing – $10, but often it can be too much, as in 10 x $10 +/-. 

When we arrived at the Guinean border – about 1 km away – I hopped over the wire that stops traffic – like there’s any – and the soldier go shitty, didn’t understand what he was saying but realized I had to go around the now limp wire down on the dirt – Not over it, like I was walking on the flag or something! Got to the Immigration shack where lines of tired Africans were waiting and was stamped immediately, without fuss. Wow.  Thank you. Then as our taxi was rearing on – the Customs guy on the other side was calling to the driver to stop – but he could not hear – as we were walking on to the next post – I also ignored him while urging the local with me to stop shouting to the driver to stop … and so we cleared Customs by ignoring them.

Truck on the road in the mountains of Fouta Djalon, Guinea

The next soldier post was gentle. And that was it, across more broken mud tracks – too easy, with seats to ourselves – for an hour towards the town of Saréboido.  And then it was back to cramming – should have paid a few bucks extra to avoid this but … got in the back – as in 3 people crammed in over the rear wheel for another hour of banging heads, crammed legs room, scarping shins.

And so I arrived in Guinea, in the sleepy town of my chosen stay in Koundara, found a “hotel” and gotten laid within minutes of arrival, had endured hours of cramped spaces over rough roads, had defused greedy soldiers and gotten drinking with deluded others to realize that indeed it was a lucky day; a relatively easy journey.

(PS: in Part 2: Leaving Guinea to Sierra Leone was just as crazy – soldiers, bribes and bad roads abound.)

Will you join me? – Kaolack, SENEGAL

NOTE: this rant is only one brief moment of the journey and doesn’t reflect my feelings towards Senegal, Africa, etc, but rather to show that not everyday on the road is great – sometimes things go wrong and also to show my own personal madness and being the honest egg that I am I have included it here …

Here I am enjoying yet again the ambience of another grotty, overpriced hotel room bombarded by traffic from the front and bleeping goats from the back. Non-stop is the noise. Scooters, trucks, taxi, all battered and some really banged up and most bleeching smoke and horns. The clip clop of donkey carts the only soothing sound amid this miracle of noise and smoke.

On a main road; and if I was not here then it’s just mud and puddle, trash and stench and broken sewers, swarms of demented flies and street junk amid people that claims to be the route typical of this town. The place is a fuckin’ mess – like so much of the modern urban world. My guidebook says it’s worth a couple to days to soak up the urban charm – like fuck, more like inhale the hell of filth and hopelessness; having seen a huge chunk of the world I can said that is just another shit-hole equal in elegance to any fucked mess in India or Africa or elsewhere.

Unlike other towns in Senegal - like the mega-friendly holy city of Touba - here the people barely notice you: the lone white face; they seem happy to sleep or sit by the side of the road bored as fuck, watching another day pass.

I mean, as I entered the town I saw a completely naked black man standing in the street with a large limp penis and nobody even looked at him !!! – so what chance do I stand? I swear: I felt black, anonymous. I wonder would nakedness have worked for me? Maybe if I was juggling an elephant – maybe 7 elephants, then all eyes would’ve said - Hi white man. 

I chose this cheap hotel cos there was little choice … and at $17 you could do worse – like last night – but here the prices are largely for doubles and thus as I travel solo I could travel cheaper as two: anyone care to join me in a tour of West Africa’s worse hotels? I didn’t think so; so long, MRP, ya sucker.

The bottom line is this: French West Africa is overpriced, uses a currency called the CFA, supported by France, that makes the country for a backpacker often close to European prices at mucher lower standards …

This $20 room here will cost you $5 – 7 in SE Asia; and it will have a fan – it’s hot and humid, a very simple bathroom attached, maybe … or usually a shared squat bog where the other guests are so lazy as not to flush it but leave turds for the next to disperse. Off course, constant noise is included in the price. And for sure – mosquitoes and flies past as the local wildlife (but one look out the window at the traffic will verify much more wild-life as scooters zip and weave endlessly and if your wondering why I’m not describing the scenes outside it’s cos I’ve chained and padlocked the balcony doors close as they don’t lock and the “closed” door now offers a little noise reduction; otherwise you could swear I’m sleeping on the street). Often the water stops when you most want a shower – luckily a bucket of water can be found by the management. So far in Senegal there have been no power outages …

Coming from orderly and clean (sometimes dirty-air) Seoul – Korea recently, it had taken a while to get used to urban Africa again, and I’d forgotten how smelly, wretched and filthy African urban centers can be – mostly the sprawling chaotic suburbs but Mauritania takes all the awards including highest rubbish mounds in streets and more wrecked cars than street lamps awards … But don’t get me wrong: I love Africa.

This is my third time here, and remember I come from New Zealand and so the crap that I spew here now about the state around me is the truth of this small moment: the price I pay to travel, to get local, to see and experience urban Africa as it really is; besides I can’t afford $50 – 100 rooms to lock myself away. This is it; take it, inhale deeply, glad to be here! Will you join me?

Hours later, after a siesta & a meal in a fly-blown bar – fuckers on my face, in my beer – with kitsch painted pics of hip boys and hot chicks, of tribal bare-breasts in jungle and a true African hunting his dinner, I ate chicken shwarma that has now forced itself out prematurely … another rush to the loo and hell, this one tasted so good, well, obviously not that great, that I ate another for dinner at the same place, and had a few of beers.

I get home to this room along the dusty, dirty, hectic streets and a few people finally notice that I’m juggling elephants and say, Hi white man. Bonjour, Cava?

Inside my festering suite I undress before the sweats hit in and enter the bathroom to slip savagely on the floor coming cracking down on elbow and ribs and think fuck, I’m okay, what a fall, ouch; lucky I’ve had a few beers to ease the fall. The fall in a puddle without drain; the room a humid, relentless squeal and shit I think maybe it would been best to stay longer at the bar … the hooker in the wheelchair was cute - and she waved to me: will you join me?

                                                                          *

PS: One week later: Have to say that Senegal has been really great but that my ribs still hurt from the fall to the floor and yes, the electricity went down that night I wrote, with a massive thunderstorm – but anyway I’m now staying in a nice hotel – very nice for $30, to use their in-room internet to upload this story, to have A/C, a real bathroom with hot water and towels!, a good bed and much needed sleep. But mostly I’ve waited out the weekend here in Ziguinchor cos the fuckin’ ATM ate my Visa card yesterday morning and I have to wait til Monday to see if I can retrieve it …

The ups and downs of travel are endless fun … the perfect honeymoon: will you join me?

Hangin’ with the coolest Rasta – Goree, SENEGAL

When I first waved back to him I was cautious. Too many strangers in Dakar had ulterior motives, and this guy from the distance seemed to be another. But this wasn’t Dakar. It was the Island of Goree, 3 km offshore of the monster city.

Approaching historic island of Goree, near Dakar

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MOROCCO – Confessions of a traveling vegetable #2

Taking a shit my arse smelt like Moroccan cooking – it’s true … My shit was alluring, scented with lemon and herbs and not at all offensive as it wafted into my nostrils like I was ready to eat yesterdays meal again. Tagine. That conical-clay-vase of simmering casserole: pickled lemon, tomatoes, olives, peppers, carrot and in this case fish; other times chicken with potato. Yum.

Classic Moroccan cuisine – Tagine (fish)

Talking of nice arse – Fatima, the Moroccan woman I shacked up with for 4 days in Adagir had some booty to adore … best arse this side of a Chicago blues bar.

And so how did I meet her you ask?

I was in a café on the street of Adagir’s New Talborjt district, eating dinner. A Moroccan man with a limp soon sat at the table next to me and preceded to play tunes on his cell-phone – from some pop-rock to Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here – to trance and techno and I could see him glancing my way, hoping for my attention but I knew he was looking to sell – SOMETHING and so I ignored him and ate. But after maybe 15 minutes of this charade I heard Salaam Aleikum – thrown my way – Peace be Upon You – and so I replied with Aleikum as Salaam – And Peace be upon You – and so that was how he began to sell me hashish.

And so now a spliff … am too wasted too write … Later.

Well yuk, as the day/evening wears on and the shits become more frequent and texture-less I realize that my first bad belly maybe approaching – but I reckon it’s the alcohol, as I been really overdoing it these past days (months actually, if I include Korea) ; with Fatima shacked up in our total sex mission it was beers - at least 10 per evening – plus a bottle of whisky with Redbull, or a bottle of Tequila done in shots -across galaxies of frantic animal orgasms, of which little I remember – ouch, sex for money with little recollection only a week after – must consult my audio diary but do remember it be mad hard-porn, her licking my arse out like a lesbian starved for oral sex and our 69s were just too hungry. She drunk alongside me, glass for glass, and fucked much – cappuccino smooth skin and wired afro Rasta hair and that killer smile and arse rounded well and that Mohawk-public hair pussy that she joking pointed out matched my hairstyle; yeah, really intense. We connected like young lovers crazy on hot, inter-racial heat.

And now the summer fog from the Atlantic has come in over the desert cliffs and hill-top villages to smother the sunset in Sidi Ifni, 7:26 pm. I lock out a mosquito trying to zip in thru the patio door. It’s not hot like the other evenings; overcast mostly; here middle of summer at the western-most reaches of the Sahara nearby and … don’t know what the fuck I’m on about now … Thinking pussy, but Morocco is not Thailand.

And Morocco is how I remember it – but it’s gotten more modern in the big cities, the youth more sexy and hip but some scapes are still wretched and broken down, and then there’s the gorgeous traditional villages, and the yeah, touts and hustlers are still here annoying tourists and also many French expats have set up glossy cafés, hotels, tourist ventures – yet despite time and the march of modernity most of Morocco remains crazy and exotic like an India chaos with more edge.

Crazy things happened here with me and my last true love Robyn, back in 1991 traveling Morocco (but that’s another story) and now everything is familiar but fresh as I venture to different corners than before – that was before I got fucked-up on this smoke and thought about serious stuff like past love but I suppose it’s hard to avoid when you revisit a country for the first time in 17 years and the last time here was with her.

Time to revisit the toilet …

> photos of Morocco 

VIDEO: crazy old woman – Morocco

Crazy old woman - Morocco, 2007

I was relaxing on my bed in a family guesthouse - smoking hash & drinking red wine - in the historic old town of Essaoiura on the Atlantic coast of Morocco when the shouting from below my window caused me to witness this …

MOROCCO – Confessions of a traveling vegetable #1

 

old fortress town of Essaouira  

Am sitting here with aspirations to be a (more) complete bum, waking up late towards midday, having an omelette, orange juice and coffee and then a beer and then lying on upon my bed, staring at the ceiling, daydreaming, drinking red wine and sucking hashish cigarettes across the afternoon and evening and wondering about everything and nothing … Been 5 days of this now – on the desert Atlantic coast in Sidi Ifni, and  really the past 3+ weeks have been this haze since arriving in Morocco; only the location has changed, as the blur has been constant.

Has taken a bit of software-reprogramming jumping straight into Morocco since leaving my comfortable, easy, dull existence as an English teacher in Korea, and the only continuum is large consumption of alcohol … mostly to enhance the enjoyment of my new life situation and recently partly cos I’m having writer’s block, or simply I can’t be fucked writing. I start a paragraph, a story with good intentions to blog and within 10 minutes it’s like: Why bother? You really wanna read this shit … ?

Anyway, if you’re still reading coming to the mess, bustle, heat, madness that is Morocco couldn’t be different from the calm, orderly, cyber-tech city of Seoul but I knew what I was in for as I was here in 1991 and experienced much beauty and chaos. Now the experience is quieter, away from the north, the tourist centers, the touts, the carpet sellers, the-Hey-mister, friend-need-something?

What I really needed when I arrived was to fuck … but before that happened I spend a week alone, smoking hash in a traditional room of a family town house in Essaouira, my window overlooking the main market thoroughfare across the old walled, coastal fortress town. All I did was eat grilled meat with salad taken back to my room, and stared out the window, drinking beer & red, and smoking up the whole week wondering where I was? Where I’d been? Where am I going next? I was the prefect zombie – mute, relaxed and not attacking anyone – but I’m sure the locals thought me insane: sitting at his window for 7 days, staring at the world.

Okay, I did get out for a few hours – walked around to take some photos, used the internet, talked alittle, bought food, water, alcohol, hash. 

Yet the single craziest – they were a few – thing that happened that week from the view from my window, a few meters above the street was this that I wrote at the time:

An old veiled woman is shrieking outside on the street below, screaming at a smiling young man working within a small-scale building site. He can’t stop smirking; meantime she’s throwing stones from the pile of gravel at him, now in the direction of all the young men. It’s crazy, then over. But within minutes she has returned and now grabs a large rock and heaves it as the boys are laughing but yelling a cautious tone – maybe:  careful, careful, no, easy lady – as she spits venom and continues the stone throwing assault as others watch as and walk by. I begin to video this scene. I saw the initial clash and it seems that something stones, sand shoveled, a loose beam narrowly missed the old woman and she I assume, said watch out, or be careful, ya trying to kill me? Off which the youth cheekily replied, what’s it matter – you’re nearly dead! Or as I imagined something to this effect as she went crazy.

And crazy she went further – she returned minutes later below my room where it stands above the covered, narrow alley, with a wine bottle and smashed it against the curb. She began throwing shards of glass at the young men; one perpetually smirking – he couldn’t keep back his grin if his life demanded it. She was eventually coaxed away by a middle-aged male … But later returned again, to throw more stones and shout.

>>> VIDEO: watch this crazy incident here

And now back in Sidi Ifni, I feel that’s enough writing … More wine and hash please, waiter.

> photos of Morocco

MRP art exhibition – 2006

>>> ENTER art exhibition here  (or click image)