mali 1: ouagadougou to sevare
taxi stand at ouahigouya: it's about the middle of the day, and
we've been traveling since 6 in the morning on a bus. now, because we
heard rumors that roads were washed out due to rain, the bus has
declined to continue further and we have to catch the bush taxi!
that's our taxi in the background, a mini van which will eventually
hold 16 people + gear.
sarah beset by vendors at the burkina/mali border. the
border was interesting, because the burkina and mali checkpoints are
about 20km away from each other, making the land between them
something of a no-man's land (it was all desert anyway). the frontier
itself is a mud shack in the middle of nowhere, where girls presumably
from nearby villages hang out all day to sell peanuts, bananas,
sorghum doughnuts, etc. to passersby.
the mosque in koro, our second waypoint on the way to mali and our
first stop in mali itself. this is the first of many mud mosques we
would see. in koro, we negotiated with a guide for a later stage of
the trip, not quite sure if he actually was who he said he was.
already, things were somewhat different that we were used to.
a firewood vendor along the side of the road. one of the things
that makes traveling slow is when the driver of the bush taxi decides
he needs some charcoal or firewood and pulls over capriciously in this
or that small town. we ended up making it into sevare at about 10pm,
16 hours after we left ouaga.
posted by Jon @ 14:00
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