‘Tis the season

January 6, 2011 at 8:40 am (Uncategorized)

Christmas is the season for friends, family (real and chosen), reflection, good food, and…never-ending hikes from hell?

I’ll back up.  I was finally able to move to Kita (my new regional capital) after our sector specific training at the beginning of December.  This was also the time when I met my new homologue, Moro, who seems to be one of those tall, wiry, exceedingly wise characters.  Oh, and he keeps bees.

After being joined in Kita by friends from Bamako and San, we embarked on an entrancing plan — hike to Manatali for Christmas.  One of perhaps two actually pretty places in Mali, Manatali is on the Bafing River, part of which has been dammed into a huge lake, and is home to such legendary African things as monkeys and hippos.  For a few days of relaxation on the river with fellow volunteers, hiking in seemed a suitably epic entrance.

So, we packed up and headed to a friend’s site, the point of embarkation.  This stretch of the journey involved one of the ubiquitous green bashees.  You must understand that these are essentially twelve-passenger vans, gutted, and held together with spit and string.  The one we were in happened to be holding 34 people.  Granted, at least four of them were on the roof.

After reaching the village, checking out the women’s garden (nearly half of us were environment volunteers and you don’t just leave that behind — it was absolutely gorgeous, by the way), and eating a quick dinner, there naturally was an impromptu dance party with the entire village in the concession before bed.  With an old man playing the drums, the women started throwing headscarves at us to get us to dance.  Well, who could refuse that?

The next morning we were up early, freezing in the 50 degree pre-dawn light.  Eventually packed up and ready to go, we made our way through the village to do our leave-taking, which apparently included eating about three extra breakfasts.  Finally, finally, we set out on the beginning of the 45k to Manatali, rivers, and Christmas.

The first day we covered somewhere around 25k, stopping in the rare villages along the road to refresh water (with liberal amounts of iodine) and rest our weary bones.  And who the heck wants to be walking through the hot part of the day.  We found one delightful mango tree under which to take our mid-afternoon break, complete with ever-growing groups of Malians who find watching Toubabs sit fascinating.

While we spent most of the day walking through the red dust so familiar to us, looking out onto recently burned fields and brush, by the end of the day there were, by jove, more trees to be seen.  We set up camp just past a temporary farming community, building a fire and then coming back to beg water for quick baths and cooking.  The families were pleased to see us again, and even brought mats to our campsite, even after we dropped one of their buckets down the well.  Dinnered and s’mored out, we dropped gratefully into our tents, shifting them by inches closer to the fire.

Semi-refreshed the next morning (only 20k to go!), we made our way to the town we where we were told we could hire a boat to take us across the lake to Manatali.

Sure enough, around noon we rolled into Firria, nursing excruciating blisters, backs, and other various maladies.  To be told, quite pleasantly, that the water levels were low now, so we could find a boat if we asked for Mama in a town 3k down that sandy path over there.

8k later, we did indeed hit the water.  With no town.  Nor any discernible path around said water.  But we are not enterprising Peace Corps volunteers for nothing.  Off crashing through the brush we went!  Taking imaginative shortcuts around cliffs!  Hopping over fallen trees!  Racing down final stretches of paths lined by cotton fields!  Until finally we met the famed Mama in a tiny fishing village on the water, a glorious sight.

After haggling over prices and waiting for the fishing equipment to be moved out of a boat and an engine put in, spending the time chatting with the village elders and watching the fish dry on a rack (marginally more exciting than watching paint dry, if you consider smelly to be exciting), we finally loaded onto the boat.  And if you thought watching Toubabs sit was fun, think about how great seeing them attempt to clamber with full backpacks into a pirogue is.

So, after 20k to the “lakeside town,” “3k” to a dead end, who knows how many more k to this boat, we’re off!  Except not really.  We’re apparently just ferried about a quarter of a mile down the shore to…change boats.  And pick up a motorcycle.  Now we’re off!

After about an hour of this gorgeous boat ride, past majestic cliffs and pristine shores, we landed at the dam that marked the beginning of Manatali.  Finally arrived!  But of course we should have known better.  A quick call to our saner compatriots who had arrived by bus the day before revealed that we were, yes really, 3k away from the stage house.

Shouldering our backpacks once more, we made our way down the last long road, taking our minds off our feet with talk of family, Christmas traditions, favorite gifts, and home.  And as dusk settled in, we finally celebrated Christmas Eve by trudging through the doors to the rest of our adoptive family (who had been taking bets on our making it at all).  45k and a bit later, home for the holidays.

Happy New Year to all I love and miss so much.  May it bring you peace and love, fortune, good will and fun.