Dear Internet,
We made it. It wasn’t
according to our original plans, but it was nonetheless through the whirlwind
and on time.
On 19 April 2013 Al and I departed Paris for Tanzania in a truck named
Archer. We had lived in the City of
Light for a year, and were both excited and nervous about the next step. As we navigated through the city’s network of
wide boulevards, backstreets and peripheral expressways, we couldn’t help but
ask each other, “Is this really happening?
Are we really doing this?” Those
questions have become a sort of mantra, uttered whenever we moved past a
landmark, or even more interesting, whenever stuck at one.
I started writing letters that the Internet can see while
still in Paris (Paris, I and Paris, II, both to o), and continued while in
Spain, where I wrote about hectic days from Pamplona, all I
haven’t done in Madrid, rude people in Matalascañas, trepidation beneath a lighthouse near Conil de la Frontera, and a lesson in
mechanics in Dos Hermanas. Once finished with work on an ecological wetlands site and visiting family, we crossed
the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco.
We spent a lot of unexpected time in Morocco, which was both
a frustration (see letter to DHL Morocco) and a pleasure (see letters from
Chefchaouen, Taghazout, and the Draa Valley).
Finally, when our carnet de passages arrived (or, more accurately, when we drove across the country to
collect it), we crossed over the great desert via the Western Sahara and Mauritania, and drove into Senegal.
Then it was the start-and-stop journey across West Africa,
and here’s the rundown: we witnessed corruption and hope in Dakar, got
stuck in the mud on the verge of the rainy season just past Guinea-Bissau in Weling, visited the beautiful, refreshing Waterfall of Ditinn in Guinea,
and met the friendliest of peoples in the notoriously
war-torn countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast, summed up in Abidjan. If you want details on the crossings themselves, they were: in and out of the Gambia, then Senegal to Guinea-Bissau, to Guinea, to Sierra Leone, to Liberia, and then to the Ivory Coast.
In Grand Bassam, where we were stopped near
Abidjan for another round of visa applications, we read the recent news: we
would not be able to enter the DR Congo, even with a visa issued from a
neighbouring country. Our plans would have to change.
Our new idea was to ship half our stuff backward to the UK,
along with Archer (our truck), the other half onward to Tanzania, our
destination, and then ourselves go with backpacks strapped by bus, train, taxi
and thumb to Gabon, from where we would fly.
On the day we got underway to drop off Archer for the RO/RO ship in
Abidjan, we got in an accident which rendered the 30-minute drive to the boat
impossible – or at least, much-delayed.
Luckily, a local mechanic offered to buy Archer within an hour of the
accident, and for the same price that we paid in the UK. With the import fee now waived because of the
truck being a write-off, we could, paradoxically, consider ourselves lucky for
getting T-boned by a speeding taxi. All
said and done, I had to thank Archer for saving my life.
So, the newer idea: ship the stuff from Abidjan to Dar es
Salaam as well as to the UK, and then go to Gabon. But we soon learned how much that would
cost. So, we cut down on our stuff (we
had a lot), stored it in a Grand Bassam hotel, and booked a flight from Abidjan
to Dar es Salaam.
Thus, the newest idea: go on a circuit, by train to Burkina Faso, from there by bush-taxi to Benin, more bush-taxis to Togo, and then a 24-hour bus through Ghana, to the Ivory Coast in time for
the flight, which for a hefty but still more reasonable fee, would also take
our extra stuff. This route we actually
did: museums and grand markets in Ouagadougou, lions, elephants and
baboons at Benin’s Pendjari National Park [LINK], a city on stilts at Ganvié, royal palaces and definitions
of art at Abomey, and Voodoo, Nigerians and a punchy cab driver in
Ouidah. At last, after the flight
we never wanted to take (and therefore bought a truck and countless supplies to
go another way), we arrived in Dar es Salaam.
There were a few other letters along the way: a letter to Virgo with country rankings, a couple letters to Viven explaining the carnet de passages and the fiche de passage (both crucial for driving across Africa), a letter to Jali on the importance of knowing a little French in West Africa, outlines of couple scams we came across while en route: the uncommon Powdered Milk for Baby Scam, and the classic Man of Authority Scam, and how we would have crossed from Benin to Nigeria.
The rest is all in there.
Enjoy,
