After Festival sur le Niger, I had a week to recuperate before my first chance to travel around since being here. This opportunity was WAIST, the West African Invitational Softball Tournament, in Dakar, Senegal. WAIST takes place every year over President’s Day Weekend and is a chance for all Peace Corps Volunteers and other US ex-pats to get together. This year there were teams from Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, and The Gambia.
However, first we had to get there. Segou is not what I would consider ‘close’ to Dakar. My trip started off leaving Segou in the afternoon after work and spending the night in Bamako. Early the next morning, I went with the other five volunteers I’d met in Bamako to catch our bus only to find out it had left hours earlier; we’d been told the incorrect time.
Luckily, the nice people at the bus station were kind enough to refer us to another no-name transport company down the road leaving later that morning at 11am. We were a little dismayed by this setback but taking it in stride and were happy at least to be able to leave the same day and not need to wait untill the next morning for a bus. In retrospect, I wish we had done just that – it would have saved us a lot of pain. Our vehicle was something of a supped up mobilie. It was somewhere in-between the mobilie and regular bus category of transport – in any event, it looked pretty sturdy and could do the job… looks are deceiving.
After a delayed departure and a little aimless driving around the streets of Bamako, we finally left the outskirts of the capital a little after 1pm. This put us about five hours behind schedule and on top of it we were driving painfully slow. The travel time to our destination of Kayes should ideally be 9-10 hours, however, not long after leaving Bamako we realized it was going to be a lot longer than that. The first portion of the trip on paved roads seemed ok albeit slow. As time went on, however, not only did the vehicles velocity gradually decline but we started to stop frequently. What started out as a stop every few hours to open the hood and fill up the radiator with water quickly became every 30 minutes and soon every 10 minutes or maybe every 50 feet I couldn’t really tell at that point. In any case, we weren’t sure if we were going to get to Kayes before the end of the month, if ever. Finally, at sundown, we stopped somewhere along the dirt road in a town that must have been a regular stop-over as there were lots of women set up with tables of beans, rice & sauce, salad, etc. We lingered around for a few minutes before settling down at a table where the food seemed to be the hottest. Kathy and I shared a bowl of beans and a bowl of rice – a few bites in, one of us noticed our mobilie was up on jacks and missing a tire. We took our time eating.
Two hours later we were on the road again at glacial speed. The stopping, at what appeared to be every few feet, continued. At one point we had apparently run out of water and upon seeing a thick brown puddle along the way stopped to fill up our reserves – this can’t be good. One of the times we stopped to fill-up; I went to stretch my legs and see what was going on. To my astonishment, I found out that not only had they been topping up the radiator with water each time we stopped, but had also been breaking up a pack of cigarettes and dropping the tobacco into the radiator. Somehow, this helped? Eventually, about a half hour past mid-night we pulled into the gendarme stop a few hours outside of Kayes city. Everyone on the bus got out and we thought we would take the opportunity to stretch our legs before trying to get some sleep before we went the rest of the way to Kayes. Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes of hanging around we were anything other than thrilled to find out there would be no continuing until after sunrise. We were told that no one is allowed to drive the stretch from here to Kayes after sundown because bandits frequently attack anyone unlucky enough to be driving that section of road. We then noticed that quite a few trucks were parked along the roadway all waiting, it seemed, for sunrise. We accepted our fate, got our tents out of our bags on the roof and setup on the side of the road right next to the mobilie – we didn’t want to venture too far for fear of being left at 6am when we were supposed to leave. Those four hours of being horizontal on the slanted, rocky, uneven ground could hardly be considered rest but at least I was lying down and not vibrating. At last, we rolled into Kayes the next morning right at 11am making it a solid 24-hour trip.
After a shower and a little tour around Kayes (I made it all the way out there, I had to at least walk around a bit and check the place out) it was off to bed for our 4am departure the next morning to Dakar. This was supposed to be another 10 or so hour journey, which was anything but. I can only justify our frequent stopping by the gendarme to the fact that Senegal was having presidential elections the next week, but, even so, it was incredible. Every time we stopped it seemed like hours. This time we were at least on a named and supposedly well regarded transport company – we even did drive about as fast as possible for the roads we were on (this ranges from full speed on well paved roads to barely 5 km a hour on a once paved road that is now unbelievably pot-hole ridden). Eventually, we arrived in Dakar not in the afternoon as we had expected but at 4:30. Only problem was that it was still dark out and the next morning! So after two consecutive 24 hour plus trips, 52 hours total from Segou, we were alas in Dakar.
Dakar is about as close to a westernized metropolis as you can get while still on the African continent (and I suppose Cape Town probably qualifies too). Whatever the case, it is a far cry from anything available in Mali. They have fried chicken fast food restaurants! Normally, I am not one to eat such greasy food but just having the opportunity was amazing. One day, I ate there for lunch and then again a few hours later as an afternoon snack just because.
One of the things that makes WAIST so great is the ex-pat community in Dakar itself. Primarily embassy employees, they open up their houses to the couple hundred volunteers who come for the tournament. I was lucky and got placed in a lovely family just a five-minute walk from where everything took place. In a northern suburb of Dakar near all the African embassies, is a country club on the coast with four fields all within a five-minute walk.
The Club Atlantique had a nice little pool area with music and a restaurant serving up good old American fare like hamburgers and hot dogs. It was heaven. Because there were about 30 of us from Mali, we split into two teams with each team guaranteed at least five games. There was a lot of softball to be had - with our two teams’ games only overlapping once – we would always go cheer each other on, making for ten games in two days. All the teams made their own uniforms consisting primarily of a printed t-shirt with their team name on it. 
However, our uniforms were the talk of the tournament complete with matching hats – everyone wanted one. They were shirts traditionally worn by the Bobo people of Mali. When we weren’t at the fields, we were at the pool; it was marvelous. On Sunday after all the games of first round were over, we even had a nice stint of throwing each other unwillingly into the pool. Never mind that that afternoon it was overcast and the temperature had dropped significantly – it was quite cold when wet.
All in all, it was a great time and a welcome relief to be in another country with so many (comparatively) amenities. I am not the avid softball fan and while it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, it was nice to socialize and talk with other volunteers from other countries – hearing about the differences in our situations, languages, climates, geography, etc. I am proud to be doing my service in Mali.
After the tournament we had some time to kill and found a tranquil little beach town called Popenguine a little south of Dakar. A bunch of us all hopped on a bus and rented a house literally on the beach. This was what I’d thought of when I thought of Senegal – beautiful deserted beaches. Popenguine exceeded my expectations. 
Lonely Planet describes it as, “… a really cool and unpretentious place to chill for a couple of days.” My thoughts exactly. As you can see from the photos, the place was beautiful. We got there in the early afternoon and were immediately down on the beach playing Frisbee and frolicking in the waves. I even got to body surf a couple. That night we made mac n cheese (with laughing cow cheese) and had a local woman come over with some Chicken Yassa, my favorite Senegalese dish (sweet and tangy onion and lime sauce over rice). The next day, most everyone headed back to Dakar and onwards to Mali.
Kathy, Jacqueline and I stayed on and were able to renegotiate staying in the same house for relatively the same price per person. It was so relaxing spending the afternoons strolling along the beach and eating great food. Even if short, it truly was a vacation.
When we left, we headed back to Dakar for transport to Kayes that same afternoon. We bought our tickets before going down to Popenguine and were told it would leave after prayer in the early afternoon. They assured us that it was the prayer around 1pm and that we should be on the road by two. We arrived at 1:30 to be safe and waited, and waited some more, and then waited some more. Finally we got on the road about 6pm after the evening prayer and had pretty much a repeat of the trip from Kayes to Dakar. Only this time, there were less gendarme stops but that was compensated for by a slower bus. We arrived in Kayes just as the sun was setting the next day. Another 24-hours! We had thought that we might stay on the same bus since it was continuing on to Bamako but since the same rule applied with bandits when leaving Kayes, it had to stay the night anyhow. We took this opportunity to get on another bus company (the one we had intended to take to Kayes originally) and were rewarded with a swift 9-hour trip to Bamako.
From there I continued on to FESPACO in Ouagadougou, but I’ll leave that story for my next post. I also intend to upload some photos to this one but as I leave this computer to go to the internet café, I know I won’t have enough time to get them up so check back later for photos sometime within the next week.
However, first we had to get there. Segou is not what I would consider ‘close’ to Dakar. My trip started off leaving Segou in the afternoon after work and spending the night in Bamako. Early the next morning, I went with the other five volunteers I’d met in Bamako to catch our bus only to find out it had left hours earlier; we’d been told the incorrect time.
Luckily, the nice people at the bus station were kind enough to refer us to another no-name transport company down the road leaving later that morning at 11am. We were a little dismayed by this setback but taking it in stride and were happy at least to be able to leave the same day and not need to wait untill the next morning for a bus. In retrospect, I wish we had done just that – it would have saved us a lot of pain. Our vehicle was something of a supped up mobilie. It was somewhere in-between the mobilie and regular bus category of transport – in any event, it looked pretty sturdy and could do the job… looks are deceiving.After a delayed departure and a little aimless driving around the streets of Bamako, we finally left the outskirts of the capital a little after 1pm. This put us about five hours behind schedule and on top of it we were driving painfully slow. The travel time to our destination of Kayes should ideally be 9-10 hours, however, not long after leaving Bamako we realized it was going to be a lot longer than that. The first portion of the trip on paved roads seemed ok albeit slow. As time went on, however, not only did the vehicles velocity gradually decline but we started to stop frequently. What started out as a stop every few hours to open the hood and fill up the radiator with water quickly became every 30 minutes and soon every 10 minutes or maybe every 50 feet I couldn’t really tell at that point. In any case, we weren’t sure if we were going to get to Kayes before the end of the month, if ever. Finally, at sundown, we stopped somewhere along the dirt road in a town that must have been a regular stop-over as there were lots of women set up with tables of beans, rice & sauce, salad, etc. We lingered around for a few minutes before settling down at a table where the food seemed to be the hottest. Kathy and I shared a bowl of beans and a bowl of rice – a few bites in, one of us noticed our mobilie was up on jacks and missing a tire. We took our time eating.
Two hours later we were on the road again at glacial speed. The stopping, at what appeared to be every few feet, continued. At one point we had apparently run out of water and upon seeing a thick brown puddle along the way stopped to fill up our reserves – this can’t be good. One of the times we stopped to fill-up; I went to stretch my legs and see what was going on. To my astonishment, I found out that not only had they been topping up the radiator with water each time we stopped, but had also been breaking up a pack of cigarettes and dropping the tobacco into the radiator. Somehow, this helped? Eventually, about a half hour past mid-night we pulled into the gendarme stop a few hours outside of Kayes city. Everyone on the bus got out and we thought we would take the opportunity to stretch our legs before trying to get some sleep before we went the rest of the way to Kayes. Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes of hanging around we were anything other than thrilled to find out there would be no continuing until after sunrise. We were told that no one is allowed to drive the stretch from here to Kayes after sundown because bandits frequently attack anyone unlucky enough to be driving that section of road. We then noticed that quite a few trucks were parked along the roadway all waiting, it seemed, for sunrise. We accepted our fate, got our tents out of our bags on the roof and setup on the side of the road right next to the mobilie – we didn’t want to venture too far for fear of being left at 6am when we were supposed to leave. Those four hours of being horizontal on the slanted, rocky, uneven ground could hardly be considered rest but at least I was lying down and not vibrating. At last, we rolled into Kayes the next morning right at 11am making it a solid 24-hour trip.
After a shower and a little tour around Kayes (I made it all the way out there, I had to at least walk around a bit and check the place out) it was off to bed for our 4am departure the next morning to Dakar. This was supposed to be another 10 or so hour journey, which was anything but. I can only justify our frequent stopping by the gendarme to the fact that Senegal was having presidential elections the next week, but, even so, it was incredible. Every time we stopped it seemed like hours. This time we were at least on a named and supposedly well regarded transport company – we even did drive about as fast as possible for the roads we were on (this ranges from full speed on well paved roads to barely 5 km a hour on a once paved road that is now unbelievably pot-hole ridden). Eventually, we arrived in Dakar not in the afternoon as we had expected but at 4:30. Only problem was that it was still dark out and the next morning! So after two consecutive 24 hour plus trips, 52 hours total from Segou, we were alas in Dakar.
Dakar is about as close to a westernized metropolis as you can get while still on the African continent (and I suppose Cape Town probably qualifies too). Whatever the case, it is a far cry from anything available in Mali. They have fried chicken fast food restaurants! Normally, I am not one to eat such greasy food but just having the opportunity was amazing. One day, I ate there for lunch and then again a few hours later as an afternoon snack just because.
One of the things that makes WAIST so great is the ex-pat community in Dakar itself. Primarily embassy employees, they open up their houses to the couple hundred volunteers who come for the tournament. I was lucky and got placed in a lovely family just a five-minute walk from where everything took place. In a northern suburb of Dakar near all the African embassies, is a country club on the coast with four fields all within a five-minute walk.
The Club Atlantique had a nice little pool area with music and a restaurant serving up good old American fare like hamburgers and hot dogs. It was heaven. Because there were about 30 of us from Mali, we split into two teams with each team guaranteed at least five games. There was a lot of softball to be had - with our two teams’ games only overlapping once – we would always go cheer each other on, making for ten games in two days. All the teams made their own uniforms consisting primarily of a printed t-shirt with their team name on it. 
However, our uniforms were the talk of the tournament complete with matching hats – everyone wanted one. They were shirts traditionally worn by the Bobo people of Mali. When we weren’t at the fields, we were at the pool; it was marvelous. On Sunday after all the games of first round were over, we even had a nice stint of throwing each other unwillingly into the pool. Never mind that that afternoon it was overcast and the temperature had dropped significantly – it was quite cold when wet.
All in all, it was a great time and a welcome relief to be in another country with so many (comparatively) amenities. I am not the avid softball fan and while it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, it was nice to socialize and talk with other volunteers from other countries – hearing about the differences in our situations, languages, climates, geography, etc. I am proud to be doing my service in Mali.
After the tournament we had some time to kill and found a tranquil little beach town called Popenguine a little south of Dakar. A bunch of us all hopped on a bus and rented a house literally on the beach. This was what I’d thought of when I thought of Senegal – beautiful deserted beaches. Popenguine exceeded my expectations. 
Lonely Planet describes it as, “… a really cool and unpretentious place to chill for a couple of days.” My thoughts exactly. As you can see from the photos, the place was beautiful. We got there in the early afternoon and were immediately down on the beach playing Frisbee and frolicking in the waves. I even got to body surf a couple. That night we made mac n cheese (with laughing cow cheese) and had a local woman come over with some Chicken Yassa, my favorite Senegalese dish (sweet and tangy onion and lime sauce over rice). The next day, most everyone headed back to Dakar and onwards to Mali.
Kathy, Jacqueline and I stayed on and were able to renegotiate staying in the same house for relatively the same price per person. It was so relaxing spending the afternoons strolling along the beach and eating great food. Even if short, it truly was a vacation.When we left, we headed back to Dakar for transport to Kayes that same afternoon. We bought our tickets before going down to Popenguine and were told it would leave after prayer in the early afternoon. They assured us that it was the prayer around 1pm and that we should be on the road by two. We arrived at 1:30 to be safe and waited, and waited some more, and then waited some more. Finally we got on the road about 6pm after the evening prayer and had pretty much a repeat of the trip from Kayes to Dakar. Only this time, there were less gendarme stops but that was compensated for by a slower bus. We arrived in Kayes just as the sun was setting the next day. Another 24-hours! We had thought that we might stay on the same bus since it was continuing on to Bamako but since the same rule applied with bandits when leaving Kayes, it had to stay the night anyhow. We took this opportunity to get on another bus company (the one we had intended to take to Kayes originally) and were rewarded with a swift 9-hour trip to Bamako.
From there I continued on to FESPACO in Ouagadougou, but I’ll leave that story for my next post. I also intend to upload some photos to this one but as I leave this computer to go to the internet café, I know I won’t have enough time to get them up so check back later for photos sometime within the next week.
1 comment:
When it's bad, it's bad.
But when it's good it's really great, eh?
-Tripp
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