Old Women Should Not Ride Camels

Day 13, Timbuktu, Mali

An integral part of our plan for our time in Timbuktu was a trip further into the Sahara Desert.  Ever since reading “The Little Prince” in high school, I had visions of going to this faraway place.  I wanted to be in the place where the crash-landed aviator met the strange blonde headed traveler from asteriod B-612.  And I wanted to ride a camel to get out there.

Unfortunately for me, a perfect storm of situations came together at just the wrong time to make my camel ride something that was a painful and just slightly excruciating experience.  An experience I was VERY glad to have had, nonetheless.

I wasn’t afraid of the camel, or of riding the camel, or of anything at all about the camel part of the experience.  But my body was rather irritated from all the time on the buses, and in the 4×4 and from the sleeping on the ground on the way out….from all that great adventure of getting to Timbuktu!  However, the position in which you have to sit on the camel externally rotoated my right hip into just the exact wrong position for comfort.  Plus, the saddle was tilted slightly to the side, so I was trying to stabilize myself from slipping to the side, which aggravated my hip even more.  I had the sensation of an taser constantly going off in my groin and shooting down my leg.

For this picture, I made the worst face I could.  This was at the beginning of the camel ride.  The ride was only about an hour and a half.  And I was making my camel nervous because of my constant shifting, and with my moving my feet away from where they were supposed to be.  But me and Abzaabaa stuck with it, and I made it the Tuareg camp.  I had to!  I had to say I rode a camel into the Sahara Desert.  My camel’s handler Ibrahim was also very patient with me.  ”You’re  much like a Tuareg woman.”, he told me.  Tuareg woman, he explained, don’t care for camel riding.  They prefer to be closer to the ground and so they ride donkeys instead.  I think he thought I was afraid.  I don’t think he quite appreciated the pain I was in.  He would come back and try to reposition me by moving my right leg and my foot into the right position for riding, and each time he would do that my pain would increase four-fold, and I would try to explain why I was having troubles, but in the end, I think he thought I was just afraid.  ”We’ll fix it in the morning for the ride back”, he promised.  Even in this picture you can see me holding my right leg in my hand, trying to keep it from externally rotating out.  For days after this, when I was externally rotate my hip, I got taser’ed!

So, I gritted my teeth, and I rode that camel out of Timbuktu and into the Sahara…

And Ibrahim straightened the saddle, but I walked back!!!

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Dying To Get A Visa

Days 5 & 6, Bamako, Mali

Figuring out which countries you will need a visa for and how is the best way, or only way, to get them, is one of the challenges of international travel.  Abner figured it all out for us for our trip.  Ghana, the last country we’d be visiting, was going to be the trickiest visa.  Ghana requires that visitors obtain their visa in their country of residence.  So we’d need to get in the States before leaving for our trip.  The embassy is in Washington, D.C.  So, we mail off our passports and all the requested information and the application in duplicate along with passport photos and pray for the best.  Which normally wouldn’t be cause for much concern…however I needed my passport for my trip to Haiti, and would have to send it in when I got back…which would give me less than two weeks for the turnaround.  Abner did most of the legwork, including coming to my office to pick up my paperwork and taking it to the Fed-Ex office and doing the calling to check on the status.  I got my passport back with my faboo Ghana visa in it just a few days before leaving for West Africa.  What a relief it was to have that in hand.  Only two more visas would be needed for our travels.

Senegal did not require a visa for Americans.  We’d obtain our Malian visa in Senegal.  We’d obtain our Burkina Faso visa in Mali.

Hyperbole aside, I nearly died getting our Burkina visa in Mali.  I was as close to being in a medical emergency as I’d ever been.  It was well over a hundred degrees in Bamako.  That was just the air temperature.  There was scorching heat coming up from the ground beneath us.  The air was toxic.  People riding motorcycles often wore medical masks to help filter the pollution from it.  On our first day in Bamako we left our hostel, La Mission Catholique, in the late morning to head to the Burkina Faso embassy.  Lonely Planet did not provide an exact address, but gave seemingly good directions on how to get to the location.  It was just a few miles from our hostel.

We’d arrived that morning after a 36 hour bus trip (that story is another post!) and we were tired.  The cabbie we’d hired to bring us to our hostel didn’t know quite know where the hostel was, and didn’t know any of the street names provided on the map we had.  He got us to the general neighborhood and then after asking around, finally pulled up to our location.  We thought his not knowing his way around well was a fluke…wrongo.

We flagged down a taxi to take us to the embassy because it was already oppressively hot and we didn’t feel like walking even a mile in the heat.  This taxi driver had literally no idea where the embassy was.  We had a map, but he did not read and could not understand maps.  We found this over and over again with the subsequent cabbies we’d hailed.  We finally decided we’d just walk there…seemed easy enough…well, easier than trying find a cab was turning out to be.

Wrongo.

Getting our bearings wasn’t too difficult.  We each had a Nalgene bottle of water with us.  We figured we’d find the embassy before our water ran out.

Wrongo.

Man, it was hot.  I live at altitude, and so I am naturally blood doped.  Despite that, I needed to stop frequently to drink water and try to stand in whatever shade I could find to try to cool down.  It didn’t take us too long to get to where we knew the embassy had to be close…only we couldn’t find it.  We asked and asked, but no one knew where it was.  Down one street that seemed to be the one the embassy was right off of, we saw a guy in a uniform.  Turns out he was a private security guard for some nice secured housing.  He knew where it was and sent us off in the right direction…”down the road, cross the big street, and then go down the street on the right”.  He said it in French though.  It wasn’t far.

Sooo,  off we went.  My water was gone, but we’d come back to the little store we passed along the way once we’d dropped off our passports.  Only that’s not quite how it went.  We went down the road, and we crossed the big street, and we found a road on the right, and we walked down that road, only there was no embassy.  We walked around a bit seeing what we could see, only we couldn’t see anything ebassyish looking.  We found an official looking building with official looking uniformed men and so I asked them, in rather clear and concise French thank you very much, if they knew where the BF embassy was.  By the way they looked at me, you would have thought I was speaking Bikya.  I asked and reasked, slowwwwwly and clearly…nope, nada, or should I say, rien!  But then a groundskeeper who overheard my attempted conversation approached us and said he knew where it was and that he would take us there, and that it was close.  HE understood my French.  I understood HIS French.  What was with those military guys anyway????  He took us back down the road we’d abandoned, then turned down another dusty little road, and there, just a few hundred meters down THAT road was the embassy!  Woo Hoo!!!  We’d found it!!!  Thanks groundskeeper guy!  Here’s a nice tip for you for your help!

By now I’m hot.  And beet red.  Abner is sharing his precious water supply with me, and soon, his is gone too.  We approach the guardhouse and make our request.  We are told to return in about two hours, that this is when the passport office is open again.  We head off in search of fluids.

IT IS REALLY HOT.  We realize that there is a bit of a short cut if we take a different route, so we head back to the little store we passed on the way to the embassy.  My heart is pounding and pounding fast.  I’m getting redder, and hotter, and drier by the minute.  My pulse is 140.  My usual resting heart rate is half that.  I’m feeling woozy.  It’s at this time that I tell Abner that I’m not feeling well at all and that we need to get to some liquids pronto.  The shortcut takes us past rotting chicken remains alongside the road.  The smell of death makes me even sicker.

I’m about a minute away from delirium and heat stroke when we make it to the store.  A couple of men outside the store take one look at me, and they give up their lawn chairs for us.  A few liters of fluid and soda and an hour later, my heart rate is down to a hundred, I’m sweating again, and my color and skin temperature has returned to normal.  Crisis averted.  And lesson learned.  No matter how tired I am and now matter how heavy it is, both Nalgene bottles need to go with me all the time.

We trudge back down the road, across the big street, through the shortcut, past the rotting flesh piles, and back to the embassy we go.  A short wait and we are allowed access to the embassy’s passport office…

Where we learn that passports are picked UP in the afternoon, but they are dropped OFF in the morning.  We’d have to come back tomorrow.

TIA, my friends…This Is Africa.

Since we are pretty certain that no cab driver will know how to get us back to our hostel, we decide to walk back.  I was feeling fine to make the walk.  Only our walk back didn’t quite go as planned either.  At first it was all good.  We walked with confidence!  We found our way back to the neighborhood we were staying in.

And then we were lost.  We got disoriented and turned around.  Nothing looked familiar and everything looked familiar.  We knew we were close, but we couldn’t find where we were supposed to be.  We asked a dozen people for help.  No one knew street names.  No one knew where the mission was.  Abner was getting frustrated.  I was starting to panic.  I was overheating again.  And as all the life-saving water I had imbibed earlier had worked its way through my system, I was now nearly in a bathroom state of emergency.  I’d been praying often on this trip already…but now I’m praying out loud.  ”Please, Jesus, send us someone who knows where we are and how to get us to where we want to be”.  I was begging.

Then, like a beautiful black angel, a young man,  working a jigsaw puzzle of all things, motions us over to him.  Without even asking him for help, he tells us that the place we are looking for is down this street, turn left at the corner, and then left at the next corner, and it will be on the right.

And it was.  And we were safely back to where there was water and a bathroom.

The next day we returned to the embassy early in the morning and dropped off our passports.  And we made it back in the afternoon to pick them up.  And we stopped for shawarmas on the way “home” where we took victory photos of us and our freshly minted Burkina visas.

It was looking like we’d both be filling all the pages of our passports on this trip!  I’ve never filled up a passport before!!  At the shawarma restaurant:  my Ghana visa on the right, our hard won Burkina Faso visas on our lefts!

None the worse for wear in the end, but getting this visa was a bit scary there for a minute.  This was a good place to learn the water lesson.  Further down the road, having plenty of water was going to be even more important as finding it would be more difficult.

After shawarmas, and without making a single wrong turn, we made it “home” once again.  Feeling a little contented, and a lot jubilant.

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Don’t Apologize…

There are some activities in which I engage that are purely for my own enjoyment.  ”Wandering” (hiking, for example) is one of those activities.  Sometimes it feels like I’m wasting time, that I could be more productive doing something else…like volunteering at a food bank or something…something more, well, philanthropic, if you will.  Recently a friend of mine told me to look up Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem, “The Apology”.  I’m taking this poem as my response to myself if ever I should find myself thinking that spending time out in creation is something to feel badly about…

The Apology

Think me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery,
But ’tis figured in the flowers,
Was never secret history,
But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.

  ~  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanks for that, Ralph.

And thanks, Dennis, too, for letting me in on Ralph’s poem.

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Top of the World

Day 15

Ya Pas De Probleme Hotel, Mopti, Mali, Second Stay

When asked what kind of music they listen to, you know how people often will answer “I listen to ALL kinds of music.”?  But then they really don’t?  Well, Abner actually does.  Abner is a Filipino-American who moved to the states as a teenager.  He’s in his late 20′s.  I had more surprises scrolling through the music playlists on his iPod!  I needn’t list the genres as they’re all pretty much represented there.  On the day we got to enjoy a leisurely day lounging and reading by, and swimming in, the lovely Ya Pas pool, I came across the Carpenters!  I pressed play for “Top of the World”, and Abner told me he was juuust thinking about listening to this very song.  I didn’t exactly believe him, but he knew more of the lyrics to the songs than I did…just like he knew all the lyrics to allll of his music.

We stayed at the Ya Pas when we were in Mopti before going to Timbuktu.  I didn’t find the pool that time around, but did so when we stayed there on the way back through after leaving Timbuktu.  I didn’t have high expectations in what the pool would actually be like.  Much to my absolute delight, the pool was located in a bit of an oasis in a very dusty land!  When I passed through the double sets of curtains into the pool area, I found myself in a walled in area filled with plants, and flowers….

…and a lovely blue tiled pool.  A pool that smelled of chlorine…which means it would be safe to swim in!

In a place where the color palette is largely made up of lovely dusty tans, browns, sands, yellows, and grays, the pool was a sparkling topaz hidden away behind mud walls and in the shadow of bougainvillea…

Ahhhhh….la piscine…..

Abner’s leap…..

…..and of course, our feet!

We’d just returned from our time in Timbuktu and were still in that “did we really just do that?” place when we spent our day poolside.  I think that this day, on the tail of those days, simply added more to the unrealistic nature of our journey!

Listening to Abner’s great music, in this oasis of a place, after having had one of the coolest experiences of my life…Well…I was on the top of the world!

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Slogan Fail

When in Accra, Ghana, we went to a local cultural arts center before leaving Africa for home, to see if there was any sort of souvenir we just couldn’t live without.  Despite there being a labyrinth of stalls, the stalls didn’t have much variety from one to the next.  Much of what was offered for sale was less than spectacular.  And the salespeople were overly aggressive.

The stuff was made in part by local craftsman, though some was clearly imported.  These articles are designed for the tourist population.  In addition to paintings, carvings, jewelry, fabrics, etc., there were lots of religiousy tchotchkes and collectiblely stuff for sale…buttons, magnets, key chains, that sort of thing.  Most were made of carved wood in the shape of Africa, or Ghana and painted in green, yellow, black, and red.

Some had religious symbols or sayings on them.

My personal favorite?  The ones that somehow got through quality assurance that said:

” Except Jesus”

In hindsight, I wish I would have bought one of them.  :-)

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Reason #427 Why Men Are Awesome

And on a completely different non-African adventure subject….

When I had the broken stereo in my car replace a few months ago, the broken old one had a CD stuck in it that I just couldn’t get out.  But it was an INXS CD, and I wanted it.  So I held on to the radio in hopes I could find help to get it out.

About two weeks ago the screw-on lid to my flour canister got stuck on the jar as it jumped its threads.  I could not get it off.  I had a few visitors to my house try, and they (all females) failed as well.

When I returned from my trip to Africa, my front passenger car door’s leading edge rubbed on the front fender in one little spot every time the door opened and shut…like the fender got pushed in.  The paint had been rubbed off and it needed to be fixed before the damage got worse.  I was loathe to take it to a mechanic as I know they would have charged me too much to do something totally easy.

These three things were things that I knew were an easy fix, and despite my relatively good skills at managing my own “problems”, I was stumped on each of them.  And I needed my flour!!!  :-)

This past weekend I went to the house of some friends for their garage sale.  I had a small pile of things to sell, but not enough stuff to have my own garage sale.  And, since I wanted to hang out with them, I went over and joined their sale.

One of those friends is James.  He fixes stuff.  Although it would mean admitting I was weak and inadequate, , I grabbed my radio and my flour jar and stuck them in my car.

I handed the jar to James and he had the lid off in about one and a half seconds.

He had the CD out of the stereo in about 15 seconds.

He had the fender fixed in about two minutes.

Men are awesome.  James especially so!

Thanks, Stephanie, for letting me borrow your husband to do my pitiful little chores!

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Numanbolofe

For most people who live in the United States there is no specific circumscribed societally appropriate method of greeting others.  Whether it be friends, or family, or strangers, or new acquaintances, greetings can take any number of forms.

And for the most part, you’re probably not going be completely offensive to the other person.

One hand shake, taking both hands, hugging, cheek kissing…it’s all mostly okay given various circumstances.

Not so in many other parts of the world.  When traveling, it’s a good idea to find out how greetings are to take place.  How do you greet people younger than you?  How do you greet those who are your elders?  How do you greet those who are “equals” to you?

Make a mistake and you can really offend.

In the Western African countries that we visited, you never shook hands left handed or for that matter, ate left handed, or took something from someone with your left hand.

One of the local languages, Bambara, incorporated this custom into their words for left and right.  The word for “right” is kinibolofe…translated as “rice eating hand”.  The word for “left” is numanbolofe…”nose picking hand”.

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15 Spices

Day 11

Shortly after our arrival in Timbuktu and getting settled in at the Sahara Passion, we were invited out into the courtyard for dinner.

As I scooped up small amounts of seasoned rice and bits of meat out of the communal bowl with my right hand, compressed and rolled it into balls and popped them into my mouth, I was only slightly taken aback by the somewhat gritty feel and crunchiness of the food as I chewed it.  No one else seemed to either notice or mind the sensation, so I continued to eat the food as they did.  It was, afterall, very delicious and flavorful!

It was after we were finished eating that the mystery of the gritty was solved.

I learned that there’s a saying in Timbuktu……….

Timbuktu is the land of 15 spices………and the 15th is sand.

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American Breakfast

If you see the words “American Breakfast” on the menu, what comes to mind?

Things that I sort of consider to be “American” breakfast foods (depending on what part of America we’re talking about):

• Pancakes
• Scrambled eggs or over easy friend eggs
• Cold cereal
• Smoothies
• Grits
• Thin crispy slices of bacon
• Hash browns
• Eggs Benedict
• Biscuits and gravy

Then there are foods we’ve co-opted from other countries that frequent the American breakfast plate:

• Bagels
• Waffles
• Croissants
• Breakfast burritos
• Crepes
• Huevos Rancheros
• Scones
• Beignets

So when Abner and I were at The Green Turtle Lodge at the beach in Ghana, we looked a bit puzzled at each other when we saw baked beans on the menu under “American Breakfast”.  Whether or not you are an American…are baked beans what YOU imagine when you think of breakfast in America??

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Dakar, Senegal

Day One, Hours 0-3

Dakar, Senegal (much like Addis Ababa in Ethiopia) sees a LOT of transit passenger traffic.  These airports are like airplane travel hubs for the entire continent of Africa.  I’ve flown to Senegal on a number of trips before, but this trip was the first time I would actually get off of the plane!  I was excited!  We would fly from JFK to Dakar where we would embark on our adventure.

We arrived just as the sun was rising.  We went through customs easily, retrieved our backpacks (intact and unmolested), and changed our Euros (we changed our USDs into Euros before leaving CO) into CFAs without having to pay a fee (which was nice!).

CFA is the currency for Senegal.  It is also the currency for much of French speaking West Africa:  Senegal, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Niger and Togo.  This group of nations is called UEMOA (Union Économique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine,  or “West African Economic and Monetary Union”).  CFA stands for Communauté financière d’Afrique (“Financial Community of Africa”).  One thousand CFA is roughly equivalent to two American bucks.  The 1000 note was the one we used the most.  A CFA is called a franc, and the CFA is pegged to the Euro.

After making a rookie traveler’s mistake getting our taxi (I’ll probably post on the different rookie mistakes we made later), we were off in search of the Ambassade du Mali to apply for the visas we would need to enter Mali.  It is very important to set a price for your taxi ride before setting off IN the taxi.  This helps to avoid uncomfortable and potentially dangerous arguments about the fare when you reach your destination.  This can be a challenge in that we really had no idea what the going rate was for taxis from place to place.  However, we settled on an amount and headed to the Malian embassy.  When we arrived, we learned that we’d need to wait about 45 minutes for the embassy to open.  We told our taxi driver that we’d be needing to wait and that he could go on and that we’d get another taxi to take us to our hotel.  No, he said he’d wait.  We were very firm in explaining that we would NOT be paying him to wait that we’d only be paying the fare from the airport to the embassy and from the embassy to the hotel.  He agreed.  So we sat around and waited, the three of us, attempting to communicate in limited french (mine) and limited english (the taxi driver).  Our taxi driver was named Aliel, but he went by Ali.  Once the embassy opened, we filled out applications and dropped off our passports, passport pictures, and the fee for the visa.  We could return at 3:00 the next day to retrieve our passports.  I hated walking away from my passport like that, but that’s what you do!

Next stop was the Hotel Saint-Louis Sun.  We’d decided on that from its review and good vital statistics provided by the Lonely Planet.  Our competent driver knew exactly where it was and took us directly there.  But then he wanted nearly twice the money we’d agreed on for the fare.  Thank God (seriously) for Abner, who didn’t back down in dealing with taxi drivers everywhere, who handed him the money AFTER getting our bags out of the trunk and informed him that he wasn’t get any more money than we’d agreed upon.  Ali knew he was wrong.  We attracted some attention with the heated debate, but none of the locals sided with him.  He let us walk away with our bags without too much of a fight after a minute or so.

Our primary source of information while on this trip would be the West Africa version of the Lonely Planet.  These books are packed with information on destinations and are very user friendly.  Potential places to stay, things to do, local adventures to engage in had been highlighted so that we easily locate entries that had caught our attention.  The latest edition was two years old, but we figured it would still be pretty accurate.  And it basically was, but the prices on things listed turned out to be less than the actual costs we encountered.

Like at our first hotel.  Despite still being the cheapest habitable location in town, it was about twice what the book had indicated we could anticipate spending.  However, it was clean, and it seemed mostly safe, it had a restaurant, and the rooms even had air conditioning.  PLUS for a small extra fee we could use the Wi-Fi (only in french, this is pronounced Wee-Fee, which sometimes made us laugh, but always made us smile to say!).

Since we were already there, and because, although it was more expensive than we thought, it wasn’t exactly expensive in the grand scheme of things, we decided to enjoy the place!  And to leave one day earlier than planned.

I was crazy with delight at being in West Africa…and it had only been a few hours!

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“I Don’t Like Mangoes”

Finding fresh fruits in Senegal and Mali was rather difficult.  Bananas we could find, but that was about it.  Most of the fruit available was overripe, underripe, or just plain gross looking.  By the time we got to Burkina Faso I was dying (okay, maybe not DYING…maybe aching, yeah, that’s it, ACHING) for something fresh to eat from the plant family.  On one of our walk-abouts in Ouagadougou (I love that I’ve been to Ouagadougou!) we happened upon a street full of excellent produce stands.  Abner saw some mangoes that he had to have.

“I don’t like mangoes.”  (That was me sayin’ that)  There’s something about the flavor, something that lingers in my mouth that I really don’t care for.  But, since it had been a long time since I’d had a mango, I figured I’d try one again.

I’m very glad I did.  I didn’t have any idea what it was that I’d tasted in the past that put me off of them so badly.  But wow, were those mangoes unbelievably delicious.  Maybe I was just that hungry for fruit…but maybe not!

Abner, who took prodigious care of me on our journey, did THIS to the mangoes to make them easier to eat!  Apparently it’s not some new invention or anything, but I’ve never seen it done!  And I was terribly impressed. 

Yummy mango! Who knew????

On another fruit shopping trip, Abner picked up some more mangoes.  He wanted some that weren’t quite ripe yet as he loved them that way, too.

When I tried one of those, I got that taste in my mouth, the one that made me not like mangoes…

Note to self:  you do not like GREEN mangoes… you LOVE ripe ones!

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Just a Few Days? Or Just a Few Shirts?

As I continue to post pictures here from my trip to West Africa, you might notice that I am frequently in the same clothes.

That’s cuz I didn’t take very many.

Everything I took had to fit into a not very big backpack and a small satchel.  I was amazed at how well we did with our packing.  We did a final pack out the night before we left to make sure we were being as smart as possible with what we were taking as we’d be dragging it all around Africa.  I did well, but I could have been even smarter…I left stuff at various locations along the way…socks I wasn’t going to need, a shirt that got stained and stretched out, underwear I simply didn’t feel like washing…  :-)  Doing so freed up a wee bit of space for a small souvenir or two.

The purple shirt washed easily, dried fairly quickly, didn’t show dirt and didn’t show stains.  It was an obvious favorite.  I also had a big floral shirt which covered me more, rinsed out and dried super fast, and totally hid anything I might have gotten on it. It was especially good for those long day and night bus trips.  So, if it looks like I was only there for a few days, it was just that I only had a few shirts!  :-)

In the purple shirt at the Cape Coast Castle

In the floral shirt for travel...made it to Mopti, finally, after 17 1/2 hours...not our longest bus trip, but a very interesting one! That, however, is another post. :-)

It was the least amount of clothes I’ve ever taken on a long trip.  Even so, Abner put me to shame with what he brought, or rather, what he didn’t bring.  I’m hoping I get the chance to take even less on another trip one day!

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Timbuktattoo…

Working on just what it’s gonna look like…and deciding on just where it’s going to go…

(P.S.  I googled the word “timbuktattoo”.  No results.  Hard to believe I’m the first person to coin that word….perhaps that’s just indicative of how few people 1:  go to Timbuktu and 2:  go to Timbuktu and then want to get a tattoo to celebrate going!)

Update:  Three seconds later…I googled “timbuktattoo” and this post showed up as the single result.  I literally pressed “Publish” and went and googled and there it was…that’s insane.

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I Wish I Was In Ouagadougou…

Days 18, 19, and part of 20

I’d never heard of Ouagadougou before Abner and I started to plan our trip.

Best name for a city EVER!!!!

Capital city of Burkina Faso.

Even though there’s not exactly a whole lot to do there…we put it on our list of places to spend time mostly because we liked the way it sounded when we said “Ouagadougou”…

We wanted to take pictures of ourselves in front of some sort of  ”Welcome to Ouagadougou” sign.  But we couldn’t find one.  Best Ouagadougou sign we could find was the one on a big trashcan downtown.  See????

It was rather awkward taking this picture…there was a cop across the street that made us nervous…like he might wonder why we were taking pictures of a trashcan…and it would be difficult to explain.  So we tried to look nonchalant while each of us surreptitiously tried to take a picture of the other.  I am casually sucking on a water sachet…I don’t look out of place at alll!!!!  :-)

Since getting to Timbuktu and back was a bit draining, we planned on relaxing in Ouagadougou.  We had a great room at a great hostel.  Hotel le Pavillon Vert.  I’m sure I’ll post on that at some point.  If you ever go to Ouaga, and you’re on a budget, you probably can’t beat the place.

Abner decided to not shave on this trip.  He started out being confused by people with being Korean…a little bit of beard and he became Japanese…a little more…Pakistani…full beard by the end of the trip and he was completely Saudi!  Oddly, not a single person thought he was Filipino!  When people would ask him, and he would tell them where he was from, very few people even knew of the country or where it was.

By the time we hit Ouaga, and were as tired as we were, I thought he was looking like a Laotian refugee…

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SEAL

Those Navy SEALS are something else.  Wherever you stand on the military, this or that war or conflict, the take down of OBL, etc., you gotta admit that the SEALS are pretty amazing.  Kindalike superheroes actually.  As proof of this I refer you to two  missions…the 2009 rescue of captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, and the recent OBL takedown (p.s.  Both missions were run by the same elite group of SEALs, Team 6).

I just learned a few days ago that I have a relative who was not only a Navy SEAL, but is also a Medal of Honor recipient.

Thomas R. Norris

Apparently Thomas R. Norris is the son of my dad’s father’s cousin.  I haven’t figured out what that makes him to me.  Other than a hero, that is.

Read his bio HERE.

Apparently the story of what lead to his being awarded this medal is told in the 1988 movie BAT*21.  I don’t know if he’s mentioned by name, but I’ve added the movie to my Netflix queue.  In a nutshell, while serving in Viet Nam, Norris volunteered to go deep behind enemy lines to rescue downed pilots.  This involved disguises, sampans, fierce fire fights, and unbelievable bravery.  I’m interested to learn more about this average-looking-far-from-average relative of mine.  An interesting part of his story is that after the actions that would ultimately earn him a MOH, he was severely injured and subsequently rescued by a fellow SEAL who was then awarded the MOH for HIS actions.  The only time a MOH winner was rescued by another MOH winner!  They received their medals in the same ceremony.  This link takes you to a page where his story is told in brief and a long interview with my “cousin”.

Pritzker Military Library | Medal of Honor with Ed Tracy.

Norris wasn’t alone on his mission to save downed pilots in Viet Nam.  He was accompanied by a brave South Vietnamese volunteer (read about him HERE).

After his service in the Navy, Norris went on to serve for 20 years with FBI.  He was an original member of the HRT, Hostage Rescue Team and an assault team leader.  This is one fascinating guy!  Maybe I’ll get to meet him some day!  He lives in Idaho.  I’ve never been to Idaho…

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Veggie Tales…West African Style

We stopped on our bus rides across West Africa.  We stopped (and broke down) a LOT.  Most of the stops have blurred together in my mind.  But, it WAS somewhere in Mali.  I’m sure of that.  I see a guy walking down the street towards Abner and me and he was wearing a white shirt with what appeared to be a familiarish cartoonish green cucumber on it.

Me to Abner:  ”Look!  How funny!!  That guy is wearing a Veggie Tales shirt in the middle of nowhere Mali!”

Abner to me as the shirted man gets closer:  ”Uh, that’s not a veggie, that’s a condom!”

So it was.  (It was an HIV education shirt).  And much laughter ensued…

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II Chronicles 7:14

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”  ~  God 

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Bon Anniversaire, Abner!!

Happy Birthday, Abner!  Thanks for bringing so much awesomeness into my life!  :-)  Here’s to the next visa and the next stamp in our passports…

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Three Glasses of Tea

“The first is strong…like death.

The second is sweet…like life.

The third is sugar…like love.”

~  Aziz

Tea is a fundamental component of the Tuareg way of life.  The tea they drink is  Chinese Green Tea.  Apparently through extensive trial and error, this has been determined to be the best tea.  And among the Tuareg, it’s a universally held opinion.  We had seen these small glasses of tea for sale all over Mali.  Vendors would sell it by the glass either from small stalls or on foot.  We had one bus driver who frequently purchased a glass during our innumerable stops.  We wondered what it was, but because the glass was a shared glass and the liquid within looked turbid, we declined…that is, until we were in Timbuktu.

Our hostess at the Sahara Passion where we staying made us aware that tea would come to us regularly and in a series of three glasses.  I guessed then that tea was something important in this place.

The tea is served hot, even though the weather is stiflingly hot already.  Despite this, it’s somehow refreshing.  The glass it is served in is reminiscent of a slightly oversized shot glass.  Each of the three glasses of tea is different, but all have many ingredients in varying amounts.  The first cup of tea is somewhat bitter, and yes, strong.  The second is my favorite.  It’s plenty sweet and a little bit minty.  The third is crazy sweet and crazy minty.  It is made in very small pots on very small charcoal braziers.

For the Tuareg, there is a tea ceremony of sorts in the brewing, mixing, and serving of it.  Aziz, a young Tuareg man who was our guide and became our friend, shared a story about the first time he was allowed to go on a salt caravan.

“You have to be eighteen to go.  And everyone has to have a job.  My job was to make the tea.”

Tea is that important…important enough to be a whole job.

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