Stephen

Last night in Bamako, back to New York

We started the Timbuktu Challenge more than two years ago. After 8 months of slow preparation, we launched on December 15th, 2011 and returned February 8th, 2012, 6 weeks behind schedule. Since my return, I’ve obsessed about the perfect, most creative way to document our journey in written and visual form. With the upcoming adventure we’re planning, this post is an attempt to mark the end of a journey that ended a year ago.

After the ambulance ceremony, I sat in the rear of the ambulance for a final, quiet ride back home. Mike sat up front with the new driver and conversed as best he could without a common language. This was it, the final moments before we bade farewell to our beloved ambulance. I was a sad that Dennis and Kunal weren’t here but they knew what was going on and were certainly marking the moment in their own way.

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Mike and I packed up our belongings and headed over to the ICS office where the ICS girls had generously offered to cook us dinner under the condition that we brought ice cream. At around 4:00 we showed up on their doorstep with a delightful box of raspberry sorbet that mostly survived under the hot Bamako sun.

That night, the ICS team served up some delicious pasta made from fresh food we brought from Tesco in London. In place of champagne, we passed around a bottle of vodka. With all the positive energy around the table, this was the most festive dinners I’ve had in a long time. Although we were on TV and interviewed by journalists in the morning, the most memorable moment that day was this dinner, the “the three cheers for Stephen”, and the “tunnel of awesomeness” they put me through like a 12 yr old boy.

The amazing ICS send off was so impressive that I found myself actually wanting to stay longer. After all that’s happened on the trip, I didn’t think that was even possible. I had been yearning for home and for the return to an easy life of abundant tacos, pad thai and burgers, but in the face of new friends and a new places, home easily fades into the back of my mind. I thanked all the ICS volunteers with a deep hug. Although we only spent a couple days together, they’ll be people I’ll never forget and have become a part of the journey. Mike stood at the end of the queue of good bye’s. In movies, it’d probably be the last scene where one of us would say something memorable and show some significant emotion to mark the moment. I came up with “thanks, see ya later”.

The path between the ICS center and main road was unpaved and horribly bumpy. I silently loaded into the taxi and quietly bounced down the road home.

Final Road Trip to Segou

With the ceremony scheduled for Tuesday, we had one last weekend together with the ambulance before the journey home – except Dennis. Earlier in the week, officials assured us that the customs issue would be resolved quickly and the hand over would happen by the end of the week. Dennis gambled that everything would go according to “plan”, so he had booked a flight home for Saturday evening. Sure enough, customs took all week to clear and the official delivery would take place the following week. Dennis was going to miss the ambulance ceremony.

Personally, I was looking forward to spending the weekend unwinding from rally, and getting over a head cold i caught in the Nioro. I was all set to spend the next 48 hours relaxing on a lounge chair by the Bamako Hotel Plage pool, when Mike floated the idea of taking one last road trip to the Segou Music Festival. Apparently the Segou Music Festival was a big deal here. Just about anybody who’s anybody was going to be there, people from around the world reorganize their lives to find ways to checkout this annual event and fate just dropped it on our lap. Mike pointed out that Segou was only 300 km away, and we had an ‘in’ with the headline performer, Salif Keita. All that was nice, but putting the ambulance back on the road and exposing it to more unknown African obstacles made me really nervous.

On February 18, 2012 Dennis Liaw became the second Last Responder to head home from Africa. Although he was going to miss the ceremony and the meeting with the Mali Health Organizing Project, he wasn’t too broken up about it. I can’t blame him. After all that’s happened, it’s tough to not put “returning home” at the top of the priority list. His flight would be stopping in Casablanca and arriving in JFK. We wished each other good luck and parted ways. Dennis was off to the airport. Mike and I hopped in the ambulance and drove toward Segou.

In the end, i convinced myself that even if I wasn’t feeling 100%, this may be my one and only chance to see the festival. Sure there was some risk to the ambulance, but so long as Mike was in the driver’s seat, i could always blame him if something happened. The drive took about 5 hours, 2 hours longer than expected. By the time we had arrived in Segou, the party had already started. In fact, we were catching the tail end of a week long party – “Last Responders” once again. Segou was packed with locals, tourists, and plenty of security. Despite the large volume of people coming and going, they checked each and every person for festival passes before letting them in. I saw one young kid who couldn’t have been more than 15 yrs old get caught trying to sneak in. A soldier grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, pulled him aside, and smacked him in the back of the head.

The festival was divided into two areas. The stage was on a barge anchored along the Niger River. Bleachers and chairs were setup along the bank facing the barge. Behind the wall of seats, the second area featured a giant 100 foot wide screen projecting a live video feed of the stage. The screen faced a row of cafe/restaurants, where patrons could enjoy food and drink during the show. When Mike and I arrived, we tried to make our way toward the stage where Salif and his crew were hanging. We didn’t get very far with that. After about 30 minutes of standing shoulder to shoulder with shouting Malians, we decided to split up. I went off and found myself an open seat way in the rear cafe area. Mike hung around the stadium, searching for a way forward.

Salif Keita took the stage about an hour later. He started his performance with a forceful Bambara speech that fired up the crowd – minus me because i had no idea what was said. Once the band started playing and Salif began singing, the crowd erupted. Every single Malian in the stadium was singing and dancing along. I slumped on my plastic chair and rested my face against my right palm looking like a total party pooper. I sat silently in peaceful contemplation until I was disrupted by the familiar sound of British-English coming from three girls sitting on a bench nearby. The three girls were trying hard to converse with a Malian urologist about the ubiquity of black sauce in Malian cuisine. I knew he was a urologist because earlier he was trying to diagnose the cause of my fatigue. I think he came up with some diagnosis but I didn’t understand much of what he said. If you asked me, I had just caught “Too Much Africa Syndrome”.

Felicity, Jemma and Rachel were working for the UK NGO International Citizen Service. Their project involved helping disable children manage their lives, integrate into local societies and they had a 3 month contract. I was aghast. I made it abundantly clear to them my feelings that 3 months in Africa sounded like the most miserable thing in the world. Here were three young, chipper, upbeat girls on their great African jaunt, and i was raining down on their parade by telling them that I couldn’t stand Africa. I was enthusiastically looking forward to my flight home and i missed my life of running water, fast internet, and ice cream. They all seemed a bit turned off by my negativity. Mike eventually found his way back to my area. He introduced himself as the teammate from Philadelphia and the positive force in the team. All three express their condolences to him in having to deal with a crabby teammate like me for the past nine weeks. At the end of the evening we exchanged numbers and mike promise them we could give them a ride back to Bamako.

The following morning we got a call from Felicity about a ride back to Bamako. It was only proper for us to help fellow English speakers in a foreign land – and of course we wanted to show off our ambulance one last time. Rachel introduced us to Fran, Bridie, and Megan, the other half of the ICS Bamako team. With me on driver duty, Mike had the “difficult” task of entertaining six attractive young girls in the back of the ambulance under our disco ball blasting Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild”. By the time we got back to Bamako, we secured 6 more Facebook ‘likes’ for Last Responders page.

Crossing the Finish Line

Last Drive down to Bamako

We left Nioro Customs station the morning of February 17. Aside from the poor bird that Dennis ran over, the drive down to Bamako was utterly uneventful. For once, we had a smooth drive, free of mechanical and bureaucratic obstacles. We arrived in Bamako at 2:00 pm. By 3:00 PM the ambulance parked at its new home, the Center for Development of Vaccines.

The Finish Line

Celebratory water!

Several doctors were at the entrance waiting for us when we pulled up to the main building. We gave them a brief tour of the ambulance and they were all utterly impressed with the made-in-USA, Wheeled Coach workmanship. The doctors invited us into the office for celebratory bottles of cold water and instant espresso. Dr Keita explained to us some of the work they did, including the treatment of leprosy, albinism, and skin cancer. The region that the center covered included Ghana, Burina Faso, and of course Mali. With such a large area, reaching out to remote villages is really tough. We are all hoping that this ambulance will be able to help the doctors deliver care to remote areas more effectively.

Next Monday, the team will be visiting the Mali Health Organizing Project. Tuesday, the ambulance will be handed over in a ceremony attended by officials and of course Salif Keita himself. Each Last Responder will be going their separate ways by Wednesday. This weekend, Team Last Responders would be taking one last road trip out to the Segou Music Festival before saying goodbye to the Timbuktu Challenge.

In front of the CDV

Last Night in Nioro

Last Night at Customs

For once, the prospect of spending a night at the Nioro customs parking lot did not make me want to stick a needle in my eye. We did have the option to drive through the night to Bamako. That option wasn’t even discussed. The last thing we needed was a midnight collision resulting in a donkey head lodged in our windshield.

Nioro du Sahel

Nioro Town Center When we first drove through Nioro du Sahel, I remember being amazed that even here in the middle of nowhere, the most visible structures at town center were banks – just like New York City. I guess Nioro being a border town, banks recognized it as a prime location for semi-functional ATM’s. The first ATM I visited didn’t work at all. From the second ATM, I requested 100,000 CFA (200 dollars). I received 40,000 CFA (80 dollars). On top of that, it dispensed four barely recognizable bank notes that looked worse than used toilet paper.

Aside from banks, convenience shops can be found in the town center. Some shops offered drinks proudly displayed in well lit, clear glass refrigerators. I was always a sucker for that. Every time I opened up one of those things, I’d reach in expecting an ice cold drink, simultaneously hoping to be blasted by a cloud of cold air. The refrigerators were always broken, the drinks were always luke cool.

We returned to the Nioro town center for one final meal. As usual, children carrying shiny tin cans flocked toward us the moment we exited the car. The youngest ones (8-9 yrs old) jumped in front of us and overtly asked for “gateau” or “cadeau”. The older ones (10-12 yrs old) silently hovered. They always met eye contact with sorry looking eyes followed by inaudible whisper for help. The children followed us to mike’s favorite food stall and hung back about 3 meters away. I felt their eyes on us as we ate.

Mike's Favorite Food Stall

At the front of the food stall, there is a hook nailed to the wooden post supporting the awning. On that hook, hung a thin crooked metal rod a quarter inch wide. The metal rod was the reason the children hung back from us. I hadn’t noticed it until the children inching closer to us scattered like flies when the assistant cook reached for the rod. One patron, annoyed at the gathering children, also reached out for the stick yielding same effect. Apparently the rod isn’t “staff only”. McDonald’s provides complimentary ketchup, mayo packets, and napkins. Chinese take out joints offer soy sauce and chopsticks. Nioro food stalls provide metal rods to shoo away begging children.

Children of Nioro

One child managed to grab a plate of left over beans and dump its contents into his can. The child promptly returned the plate on the stack of dirty bowls before getting forcefully shooed away by the assistant cook with the stick. I can’t imagine what would have happened if the child tried to run off with the plate. The other children gathered around him to share the spoils: a mouthful of beans. These kids led hard lives.

6 nights in Bamako, return to Nioro

Compared to Nioro Hotel Customs, the Bamako Hotel Plage was a completely different planet. Not even the daily trash burning next door changed my opinion that this was absolute paradise. Our rooms had electricity, air conditioning, and hot running water – something I hadn’t seen since Rabat. The hotel offered wifi, a spectacular view of the Niger River and, best of all, Italian food prepared by real Italians. The Salif Keita Foundation had generously prepared these accommodations for us and I must say that I’m really thankful. I’m also glad to report that I took my first modern shower in Africa. That’s right, I hadn’t taken a shower since December 20th, 2011, Tarifa. The black water streaming down the shower drain was pretty impressive.

I had hoped that all the paperwork would get sorted out on Monday as cited on Friday, but deep down I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I have yet to see bureaucracy in Africa get anything done in a timely fashion. We sat around the hotel Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday waiting for news that we were good to go back to Nioro. It’s amazing how every step forward seemed to reveal a new arbitrary complication. This was all mind boggling frustrating, but at least we weren’t waiting at Niroro.

Thursday morning we received the shocking news that we were good to go and a car had been prepared for us. After all we’ve been through, good news was hard to swallow. The drive back to Nioro was a completely different experience from the drive down on Feb 10. First of all, the car was a 4×4 Toyota HiLux. Secondly, the car wasn’t held together with rope and rubber cement. Thirdly, the car was equipped with air-conditioning. And finally, everything was prepaid. We didn’t have to wonder whether we were getting ripped off by some insidious coalition of Malian taxi drivers bent on squeezing every last dime out of foreign travellers. Amazingly, the drive was actually uneventful – no car switching, no break down, no stopping to check up on the car’s engine. Not only that, it took half the amount of time it took to come down. We departed Bamako at 1:30 and arrived at 6:30, a mere 5 hours as compared to 10 hours – amazing.

At 6:30 PM, February 16, 2012, Team Last Responders reunited with the ambulance at Nioro, stamped customs paper in hand.

Characters at the Customs Office

Strange people hang out at the customs office in Nioro. The customs office is sorta like the DMV. Anyone who voluntarily hangs out at the DMV has got to be a weirdo.

The King

The chief is a tall built man with an air of arrogance thicker than Beijing smog. The man struts around the customs office like he’s the man of the hour, and the lord of the manor. He makes everyone at the station wait for his regal arrival at 12:30 pm and demands a tithe from vehicles passing through his fiefdom. In his office you can see all sorts of contraband skimmed from travelers including electronics, cigarettes, and alcohol. The king is sometimes benevolent. Last Friday, as we waited for the taxi, he dropped 10,000 francs into our hat as if we were starving paupers. Even though we probably looked and smelled like the vagrants scrounging around the station, we still called him an ass. We spent the money on pasta and pizza.

The Queen

The queen sits at a desk in the office and pushes paper. When there is electricity, she is either playing solitaire or web browsing. Twice a day she’d get up off her chair and take slow walk to inspect the day’s turnout with an upturned nose. One day, she found me sitting atop of a small broken refrigerator. She pointed to the refrigerator, and she asked in French “Is that a chair?”. I gave her a blank look and shrugged my shoulders. She repeated herself. I have her a blank look. She repeated herself again. Even though I had shamefully forgotten 4 years of high school French, I knew full well wtf she was saying. It was too bad I didn’t speak enough French because I really really wanted to rip a sarcastic remark. I couldn’t believe I was being told to “sit on a proper chair” here of all places. The lady had dubbed herself the enforcer of all things correct and proper here. With the goat shit strewn about the lot and bands of goats rummaging through the trash piled high, she’s doing a great job.

The Jester

Every morning, Ali would mysteriously appear and look for “photo man mike” to say hello and chat. He didn’t seem to be selling anything so I had no idea what it was that he did and why he kept returning to the parking lot. At a glance, he seemed to speak coherent English, but as I conversed with him, I discovered that 90% of his words are mumbled jumbled garble. I found myself asking him to repeat himself, but that never cleared things up. Every time I speak to him I fight hard not to laugh at the strange nonsensical conversation. So far I’ve been able to gather that he wanted me to watch him drive a Jeep in San Francisco. He spoke Japanese, Spanish, Italian and German. He is father of the Jackson 5. Dennis thought that the man suffered from Dementia. I just figured his name was Ali Jackson.

The Villain

This guy speaks very little English. We had already given him a photo cadeau as a gesture of good will earlier in the day. Rather than be appreciative, he insisted that we delete his photo off our camera and print his personal photographs off his usb drive. I was pretty reluctant, but after 20 minutes of his begging and pleading like a baby, I gave in under the condition that he bought our team 3 cans of coke in return. I printed the photographs. When I asked for the cans of coke, he laughed and said it’s coming. For the next couple days, every time I asked, he said the same thing. Later on, he took Mike aside and declared himself to be an evil villain. Neither Mike nor I could decipher what was trying to say. We conjectured that it’s his way of communicating to us he’s a badass gangster thug of some kind and ripping me off for 3 cans of coke made him a tough guy.

Taxi to Bamako

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Thursday ended with the promise that the authorization phone call from Bamako to the Nioro customs post was imminent and would happen first thing Friday morning. I woke at the crack of dawn to wait for the customs office to receive the call. Watching the office, I discovered that the doors opened at 7:00. Travellers and office workers began the trickle in at 9:00. I didn’t realize this before, but nothing started without the chief. He arrived at 12:30 pm. “Friday morning’s” didn’t actually exist at the Nioro customs office.

At 1:30PM, our charity contact in America called to warn us about the looming possibility that the phone call from the Bamako official may not come by end of day. Cumba didn’t have that much visibility into the situation from Washington DC, but she pointed out that Saturday and Sunday were off days. If the call didn’t happen by 5PM, there wouldn’t be any movement until Monday. 424040_332019986837382_238046616234720_932696_1919143300_n Cumba suggested finding transportation to Bamako and spending the weekend with the foundation. Facing the prospect of another 3 mind numbing nights at the parking lot, we called a car service to take us to Bamako.

The price quote for the taxi was 100,000 Francs (200 dollars). The rate seemed high but they dangled an assurance that we would be the only 3 passengers in the car. Having seen how Mauritanians packed into a cars, we unanimously agreed that spending five hours in a car like tinned sardines should be avoided at any cost.

At 4:30, a 30 year old, rickety Renault came sputtered into the parking lot. It reeked of car exhaust, and looked like it’s been through hell. On our way out, the man who brokered the taxi service told us that the driver had been told not to allow extra passengers into the car. With a giant grin on his face, he shook our hands and waved us goodbye. He was either wishing us good journey, or thinking to himself “There goes a bunch of suckers.

I had hoped for an uneventful, 5 hour journey to Bamako. I figured taxi services all around the world operated on the same principle. I hire a car and they take me to my destination – simple. Not only did the journey unfold into a huge headache, it was 10 hours long, and our assurance evaporated in a poof. 60 km in, the transmission started to slip out (we’re very familiar with that sensation now). The driver pulled over to inspected the car’s underside. He came back up and explained to us using a lot of hand gesturing that something was broken and we’d have to stop at the next city. So much for an uneventful drive to Bamako. He coasted the car to Diema, and stopped among a crowd of cars parked along the side of the road. There, he unloaded our bags, found us another car, and sped off.

The second car was in pretty sorry shape too. Once again, the car reeked of nauseating car exhaust. The windshield was cracked, and the door was broken. The driver stopped the car every hour to pop up the hood and check the engine. Every now and then he’d open his bottle of motor oil and fill up. The first car driver neglected to mention our agreement to be the only 3 passengers in the car. Mike and Dennis spent the next 8 hours crammed in the back with an extra passenger in complete misery.

The drive down to Bamako demonstrated to me why night driving in Africa was highly discouraged. The hazards we encountered included speed bumps, pot holes, and road kill. I watched our driver evade donkey carts, animals, and broken down trucks in pitch black darkness, on a one lane highway, without the aid of lamps or signs. With the constant high beam from incoming cars one lane over, the driver was basically blind half the time. Night driving on an African highway for the inexperienced is suicide. IMG_5896 (1024x683)

We reached the city limits of Bamako at 1:30. The second driver didn’t want to drive into city center so he off loaded us into a third taxi parked at the top of a slope. Once we loaded in, he released the parking brake to give the car a rolling start before starting the engine. I didn’t get a good look at the car in the dark, but I’m sure it was also a prize .

At 2:00 AM, 50 meters from the hotel, our cab was suddenly forced to stop by a motor scooter and a Toyota HiLux loaded with armed men dressed in black. The whole thing happened so fast that Mike and Dennis thought it was a robbery. Half sleep, I was completely oblivious. All I saw was a skinny, dopey looking kid about 15 yrs old, knocking on a passenger side window asking for my passport in basic English – it was the army. The whole incident was pretty ridiculous.

Welcome to Bamako.

Nioro Customs Station: Four Days Three Nights of waiting

With the accelerator cable broken, our gas pedal dangled lifelessly under the steering column. The ambulance wasn’t moving anywhere on its own and getting it to a mechanic wasn’t going to be easy. For once, we had a stroke of luck. This “luck” came in the form of the generator powering the customs station breaking down. I woke Tuesday morning to the sound of Malian mechanics hammering and tinkering away at the broken generator. I strolled over and asked them to check out our car after they were done with his current task. The fix took about 30 minutes and cost 10000 Malian Francs (20 dollars).

The Nioro customs station is a small, 5 room, concrete brick. Buses, lorries, and cars of all types are parked out in front. Stray goats hang around the premises gnawing on grass and leaving piles of shit for people to admire. There is no running water. Behind the generator are three toilet stalls. I recall seeing the worst looking toilet out in Kazakhstan on the Mongol Rally 2010. I think I found the foulest smelling toilet here at the Nioro customs station.

Basic toilets are holes dug into the ground. They get pretty disgusting but they can accumulate only so much shit before it’s full. Here, there is one large, open air, concrete chamber collecting sewage from all three stalls. It brews the most disgusting smell I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. The stuff that wafts up packs a serious punch.

This will be day four at the Nioro customs station. What are we waiting for? We are waiting for the recipients of the ambulance to clear customs paperwork for us in Bamako. Once that happens we can move on from here. Frustrating? absolutely. The wait has been pretty miserable. To anyone who has complained about spending a night at an airport, try this place.

Stopped at Nioro

We came across an English van at the Mauritania-Mali border. The driver was a young man sporting a colorful shirt and heavy dreadlocks heading home. We asked him about the unrest in Bamako. His response was “What riots?” Even though he was in Bamako during the protests, he didn’t notice any of the disturbance. His account combined with assurances from our charities operating out of Bamako convinced us that the road to Bamako was clear and safe. With no more border crossings, no more difficult roads, and no more looming threats of revolution, we were feeling confident that we’re going to cross the finish line soon. A mile into the country we stopped to take a team photograph. A Malian truck driver stopped, hopped out of his truck and jumped in our photograph. From here on out, it’s nothing but smooth Malian tarmac, tail winds, and smiling Malians rooting for us to the finish line, Bamako.

The stretch of road between Nioro and the border gave us a first glimpse into Mali. The climate was neither hot nor dry, but it was very dusty. We saw farm fields and green crops. It was pretty cold. Villages seemed be as “basic” as Mauritanian villages but didn’t look as desperate and poverty stricken. In fact, the mud huts looked pretty cool.

We came up upon a fork in the road between Bamako and Nioro at 5PM. The checkpoint blocking the way to Bamako asked us for papers. We produced the papers that we had collected at the border including insurance, registration, and other bits. The guard directed us to a station across the road telling us that we were missing a customs form.

We weren’t sure what we were missing but the customs agent said that we couldn’t pass. We told them at the ambulance was a donation to Mali but he didn’t seem to care. He also didn’t speak any English at all. He told us to get in touch with our people to get in touch with his people. We told him we didn’t have a phone. He shrugged his shoulders.

The Timbuktu Challenge Guide book says nothing about any special procedure at the customs desk for vehicles so we were pretty confused. We asked a guy to borrow his phone and call some numbers but weren’t able to get though to anyone from the receiving foundation.

As if things weren’t complicated enough, on our way out of Nioro, our accelerator cable snapped. We limped the ambulance back to the customs station and spent the night in their parking lot. So much for smooth sailing and tailwinds to Bamako.

Ambulance at Nioro Customs Station

The Final Border: Crossing into Mali

Ayoun Hotel

We spent Sunday night in the ambulance, parked at a small hotel in Ayoun el Atrous (2000 Ouguiya) . We were dying for cold drinks but the hotel had pretty much nothing. Though they did have a bathroom with a missing doorknob and shower stall without a shower head. With the lack anything, I’m not even sure what makes this place a ‘hotel’.

We met a gentleman claiming to be a general. He proudly showed off his large collection of ribbons and medals pinned to his green uniform. After introductory handshakes, the first word out of his mouth was “gateau”, gift. We handed over a nice shiny pen. He asked for 2 more. We handed over two more shiny pens. Little did he know, the ink in the pen had dried up years ago. In fact, we’ve been giving these pens out to guards all the while. Yeah I know – we’re mean. The following day we saw the general directing traffic in the middle of town. If this man directed his troops the way he directed traffic, it’s no wonder the Mauritanians lost the war against the Western Saharan Polisario.

Leaving Mauritania

The border post marking the Mauritanian border looked no different from a typical police checkpoint. A couple men stood at the roadside and waved down cars. I feel like an 8^th grader coming back from a trip to Home Depot could put together a better guard post. We didn’t even know we were at the border until we were asked to step out of the ambulance. In all my travels so far, this border is the smallest and loosely controlled border i’ve ever seen. In fact, the Mauritanian official didn’t even stamp our passports. There are no gun toting soldiers, no walls, and no barbed wire. Perhaps that Moroccan fleeing from Bamako neglected to point out that the deserted border post means that everything is actually normal.

At 2:50 PM February 6th, 2012 after 7 and a half weeks of travel, Team Last Responders finally crossed into Mali.

Welcome to Mali