Saving the best until last; Mali, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Senegal and The Gambia

So where to begin.

Sitting with this little lap top plugged into an inverter amongst Ebu's maize of wires and batteries. There's a generator humming away out side to charge a battery for the party in Kartong later. Baana's brothers are having their circumcision ceremony and there will be a party to celebrate in their family compound afterwards. Living here amongst the palm trees of the forest near the coast in The Gambia I am relaxing at the journey's end. My counter on the bike says over 10000 km and I feel like the job's done, what ever it was in the first place. Perhaps the real meaning is yet to be revealed.

 Cycling from Bamako in Mali back to the Gambia through Guinea, Guinea Bissau and  the Casamance region of Senegal really felt like saving the best till last. Guinea, I remember, felt like my new favourite country until I reached Guinea Bissau that rapidly took its place. The Journey left the noise and stink of the Capital city quickly behind and I was able to abandon my face musk, needed for the dust and pollution, and breath fresh air in the hot dry bush once again. We had had a nice little party on my last night in Bamako and Solo cooked a fantastic stew with the cockerel that had not long before been running around the compound. Some of the crew turned up and we jammed into the evening with the moon full and glowing a peculiar orange through the city air. I have thought of these guys often on my journey of the last 2 weeks as I heard news of the Tuareg continuing their war and taking control of northern towns and then just 10 days or so after I left the Malian military had had enough and lead a coup d'etat capturing the President and taking control of the country. The borders were closed and I think there is still a curfew in Bamako restricting movement. As they say often here “it's not easy in Africa” and it seems Mali is really going through a hard time of it at the moment and the situation feels very unstable. Perhaps this is the opportunity for the Tuareg to finally get what they have been fighting for for so long out in the desert.

Well, I was far from Bamako by the time all this kicked off and felt lucky to be freely drifting the open road exploring the unfolding universe of West Africa. If you can call cycling nearly a 100km every day for 15 days really drifting; it was more of a mission than a drift. There were very few hotels along the way and generally I had no idea where I would sleep each night when I set off in the morning. Most evenings I slept in villages along the way with wonderfully hospitable families. Sometimes I would ask for the chief of the village or more often people I met would invite me to stay with them. They would bring me water to bath, which was always a blessed relief after a hot sweaty and often dusty day of cycling, and we would eat rice together and relax in the evening sometimes drinking green tea or just chatting in the darkness of the African night. People were always amazed by how far I had cycled and the journey I was making alone. And often they would ask how they to could do the same thing. Well, the truth is that they can't. While I am free to wonder  the open roads of West Africa on my bicycle these people take great risks trying to smuggle themselves into Europe on pirogue canoes from  Mauritania. I have heard so many tragic tales from Gambians, Senegalese and now Guineans of them trying to take the 'back route' to Spain. One Man sitting in the shade of a bridge by the Mangroves told me of how a group of them had walked 9 nights into Morocco to Casablanca and then took the boat with the Arabs. It costs them a thousand dollars but generally they seem to get lost at sea or on this occasion made it to Spain only to find the  police waiting for them on beach and were taken to the cells for 25 days. He talked about how they gave them good food and nice beds for their stay and then sent them back but with a bit of money to help them get home. So he did the whole thing again only to be caught once more and sent straight back to Bissau. Others were not so lucky and many die at sea. And so I am left to contemplate one of the many injustices of the African continent; and there are many.

From Mali into Guinea the road follows the magnificent river Niger and during this dry season many of the people in some of the villages that I stayed in were again searching for the precious gold dust that can be found in this earth. It is quite magical when it reveals it's self whilst you wash and sift the sand and there it is just a sprinkling of golden promise in the bottom of the guard.

From the river the road starts to climb and the climate gradually becomes a little cooler until up in the high lands of the famous mountains of the Fouta Djallo there are even forests of pine trees and green lush valleys, thick with jungle or tidy cultivated gardens nearer the villages. I cycled for days through these hills that are renowned for being a home for the Fulani people and enjoyed the calls of "Jaaramaa", "Nalatong", and "Jamtong" greeting folk as I cruised by. One afternoon while a little lost on the back tracks in the hills I happily spent my rest time of the afternoon heat firing a catapult with a young boy and our expert elder who could hit my plastic coke bottle every time with deadly speed and accuracy. These are the little gems of moments that make life on the road so rich. J have met so many folk all with their stories to tell and this journey seems to have become all about these people's stories as they meet my own as a cycling oddity. From the cool of the mountain forests in the high lands of the Fouta Djallo the road descends from Labe north west towards Koundarra on the border between Senegal, Guinea and Guinea Bissau, but the smooth Tarmac doesn't last long and for 3 days the road is a rough track of sand, rock and fine powder dust that winds its way through endless valleys of forest. When I finally did reach the lower lands it was like being catapulted into the roasting heat of an oven. The hot dry wind no longer so refreshing.

I had been warned by some police in Guinea that there had just been an election in Guinea Bissau and things were still very unstable. There were stories of shootings and an attempted coup and this together with the fact that I didn't actually have a visa to get in the country was enough for these guys to suggest that it really wasn't safe for me to go there. I thankfully ignored this advice as being just another occasion of people warning me about their neighbour countries that has happened at nearly every stage of this journey. The Spanish don't trust the Moroccans, the Berber don't trust the Arabs, the Arabs don't trust the black Africans, the Gambians thought it would not be safe in Mali and so on until it seems that no one really trusts their neighbours at all. In fact here it seems some times that no one trusts anyone and yet trust for me has to be the bottom line for any kind of relationship.

In the case of Guinea Bissau it is true; their politics is nuts. It seems to be an endless tale of coups and assassinations, corrupt politicians and army generals making millions from the drug trade. Guinea Bissau turns out to be where all the cocaine arrives from South America on its way to Europe and there is plenty money to be made if you are in control. Meanwhile the people get on with their lives peacefully. The country is very undeveloped with little infrastructure and a wild west feeling of chaos. The national language is a creole mix of Portuguese and local languages and the country has this exotic Latin feel with cultural connections with Cape Verde and Brazil having been a Portuguese colony. Their history is certainly wobbly to say the least and their war for independence during the sixties and seventies was apparently one of the bloodiest and Portuguese colonies were not given independence until the own fascist regime crumbled in 1974.

I loved Guinea Bissau and wished I had more time to explore. The climate is milder and the vegetation so much greener with subtropical forests and endless Cachu plantations that forms the countries biggest export. The coast line has hundreds of small islands that must be a kind of paradise and the land is divided by many large meandering rivers and mangrove swamps. I have promised my self that I'll return some day again soon. I stayed for a few days in St Domingo with some Portuguese and Spanish friends who are trying to run a small restaurant there but struggling to run a business as the reality of the system here doesn't make things easy for anyone. Having cycled through Spain and Portugal on my way here it seemed like my journey had gone full circle and my languages had become utterly mixed up and confused after weeks of speaking French. Unlike most of Islamic West Africa they do love to drink in Bissau, and have a reputation that they like to party hard and breakfast may well involve continuing the cartons of wine from the night before.

 “Every day is party in Bissau” they tell me back here in The Gambia and that is where I am now, winding down at my journey's end and preparing myself for the shock of returning home. And I know it will be a  shock for its been over 7 months now and I could happily stay. Maybe I'll be back very soon.

So as the counter touches 10,000 kilometres my final words of thanks is to my bike. My Thorne Sherper has never let me down and always seems eager to get back on the road. In all this time I have had just one puncture and every day people here try to get me to sell them or give them my bike. I haven't the heart to tell them how much it actually cost in the UK but it was definitely an investment well worth the expense and I look forward to the next 10,000 km of adventure where ever it may be.

Thank you so much for reading my blogs over the last few months and for all you support in many ways on this journey. I look forward to seeing some of you very soon back home in a week or so.
Much love to one and all.
Ed

The Road To Mali

Greetings one and all from Bamako, Mali.


Agrandir le plan

This is it, this is as far from home as i'm gonna go on this trip. 8000 km of peddling. Its my birthday today and i have made it to Bamako, thecapital city of Mali. Today is sunday and, as Amadou and Mariam, the now world famous blind Malian musicians sang in Dimanche a Bamako,  today is the day of marrages and I have seen plenty around town. There's one just around the corner with a band playing that classic relentless Mali sound as the griots sing the praises of all present and bless the famillies whilst they in turn are blessed with cash from the beautifully attired ladies dancing in the circle. The event is taking place in a marque on the busy, dirty street and for me appitimizes the contrasts of this place.
 I am very happy to be here and the first couple of days in this city has already been filled with playing music and meeting good folk. Having said that this is the dirtiest, poorest, most polluted hectic place i've been on this journey and life here is a hard struggle for many. Open sewers and streets litterred with rubbish and overwhelming amounts of crazy traffic, crumbling ghettoes, dust and fumes and the awesome hustle and bustle of city life. This is all a bit of a shock after 10 days of cycling through forests and staying in villages and, to be honest, i don't know if i can handle the stink and hecticness much longer. My birthday present to my self was a face mask that all the scooter riders ware (and there's thousands of them) and it somehow makes it bearable to be on the street.
What an adventure it has been to get here. Thats not to say it's all over in any way as i still have to make my way back to The Gambia and i'm planning to travel through Guinea Connakry, Guinea Bissau and the Cassamance to get there so planty more of the road to come but for the meantime i'm going to spend a week or so learning Mali style guitar and jamming with musicians. At least thats the idea but I'll have see if i can stand the stink first.

 I delayed my departure east to Mali for a week as there were so many worrying news stories of fighting in the north of the country as Toureg rebels who had been teamed up with Gadaffi's militias returned across the desert armed to the teeth with serious weaponry. The Malian army simply couldn't cope and the rebels have taken control of a number of nothern towns. Some 60000 refugees fled in all directions to neighbouring countries and retaliation demonstrations kicked off in Bamako causing the Tuareg resident in the city themselves to flee for their own safety. Some still believe that this could become a serious civil war and as a result of such stories on the BBC world service and the worry of my gambian friends i decided to go to a festival In Kartong on the the Gambian coast for a week and await further news. It was a little holiday away from the open road and great to dance into the night to the varoius Mandinka, Wolof  and Jula bands and just take it easy doing very little. I didn,t even take any photos so you'll have to imagine all the fun that i had. Go on let your imagination run wild!
Well even after all that the calling of the open road bekoned me on as ever so i loaded up the bike again and left the village of Kwinella heading up river into the uknown once again. The first night was spent in the compound of the regional director of Action aid, the next with a Fulani Imam, then a French hunting lodge, another Fula family, a community of migrant gold diggers and more villages of mud huts and grass roofs. Here's a few of my wonderful hosts.....

The experience of heading off each morning and not knowing where you will spend that night, or if there will be a village with food or water continues to be extremely rich and empowering. Somehow each day something or someone appears that just touches my heart and blows me away. The journey inland from Gambia takes you into dryer and poorer lands. Firstly there are far more Fula people and fewer Mandinkas. At least the Mandinkas become the Malinkis and then the Bambara of Mali. These peoples are all related as the Mandinka travelled from the great Empire of Mali many centuries ago. The Fula are a wonderful people and from my experience all ways very welcoming and accomodating when a rondom Engliush cyclists turns up looking for a bed for the night. They were traditionaly semi nomadic cow herders and continue this tradition of looking after the cattle all across west Africa.

 I have had so many great encounters with people and this internet is again painfully slow at uploading photographs that i'm afraid i don't have the time to tell all. Each lunch time has been an interesting routine of finding some place to feast on rice and then relax during the heat of the afternoon. So often people won't even let me pay for food which says something about their hospitality when they really have so little them semlves. We've had the guitar out on several of these occasions and one night the entire village was gathered in the compound to witness this crazy cycling toubab playing the guitar. We sang and danced into the night and the magic of music transformed our hearts and brought us together.
On the road to Mali i met a guy on  a bike heading home after spending several weeks unsuccessfully digging for gold. Then that night i stayed in little encampment of folk who also turned out to be gold diggers. We were at a noisy dusty junction as trucks passed by 24 hours a day from the gold mine to the processing plant. These men worked for an absolute pitence whilst the french owned company trucked riches out of the African soil. It seems sometimes that little has changed here and so often the experience of poverty becomes heartbreaking when the injustice is so blatant.
The landscape changed little for several days heading into Mali with hundreds of miles of sun baked forest with just a scattering of small traditional villages of mud huts and grass roofs. Strangely the road was one of the best I have cycled here and stretched all the way from Kedougou in Senegal untill Bamako. It turns out to have been built by the Chinese and travels straight through the heart of gold country....

So birthday greetings from me in Bamako.
The dude here has run out of internet tokens so times up.
Much love to one and all
Ed

From Senegal to Gambia to welcome in 2012

It was so hard to leave the wonderful crew from Guinea in St Louis but after a week on the beach the calling of the open road was to strong to resist. I left a couple of days befor Christmas trusting that i would be in the right place for the special day and excited to be on the road again diving back into the unknown, and that's really how it felt this time.

The first day back on the road was just a short trip down the coast to the next town of Gandiol. I had heard about a lodge on the water side that was meant to be very nice so I payed a visit to the Zebrabar. It was strange to be in a place with lots of toubabs (white people) again. The name apparently comes from 'two bob' as in money back in the day, and seems to maintain some of it's original meaning for sure. It was such a paradise that i couldn't resist staying a night and i spent the afternoon on the lagoon in a kayack borrowed from the lodge. It was bliss and well worth the cost of staying the night. Most of the other people staying there were driving 4 X 4s across Africa but there was also an English couple driving an old Morris Minor to Cape town. It seems that we really are an eccentric nation and long may it continue! Another way is always possible.
The next day the road continued along the coast for a while through fishing villages with palm trees and pirogues pulled up on the beach. This was my first day having to deal with the red sandy routes of West Africa and i rattled over the corrugated tracks and got stuck in the sand but i was so happy to be here it really didn't matter. Then the road turned inland and i was back on tarmac again. I cycled for hours through vast open bush with occasional grazing herds of cattle or sheep accompanied by their shepherds. There was very little traffic on the road but for the odd horse cart and overloaded mercedes vans that are the local public transport. Here they are wonderfully decorated and adorned with pictures of the great Marabout of Touba where i was now headed.
I decided to spend that night in a village but in the first place that i stopped and asked, people seemed quiet bemused by me and no one spoke any french so i continued to the village of N'Diagne. Here i was taken to the compound of Iba Guisse where i could pitch my tent and pass the night. Iba was a wonderful character who was both a vet and an artist. I witnessed him treat a sheep with a prostate uterus that evening and this was something i remember well from my own childhood growing up on the farm, but needless to say the approach to treatment here was quiet different and i don't need to go into all the details now.

We spent that evening chatting and drinking atire (sweet strong green tea) which is the favourite pass time around here. As an artist he felt apart from the rest of the village who were all farmers and saw the world in a different way. He had moved from the city to seek the peaceful life of the village and was actually quiet an enlightened character and we very much enjoyed our conversations together. This was Christmas eve and the next day i would reach Touba, the most holly city of Senegal.
Another day of riding through the dry bush of Northern Senegal on potholed roads and passing only a few small towns but plenty of small simple villages of thatched houses and the endless calls of "Toubab toubab, donne moi agent!" and i arrived in Touba. Iba's friend Talla had arranged for me to stay with a friend of his there called Magga Tall, so eventually i found his home among the sandy streets. Magga is a welder and a hard working man. He runs a metal workshop outside the front of his house with a whole bunch of lads working with him. Once again i was blessed by the great Wollof hospitality of 'Taranga'.

Touba is a very special place and probably the most holy city in Senegal and this is why i had decided to be here for Christmas day and visit the Grand Mosque of Touba. It was indeed a great blessing to be here on this day and also the day of the new moon that is of significance for Islam and the 'Baay Fall' here. The stunning mosque houses the tombe of the saint and Marabout; Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. There are wonderful stories surrounding his history involving great miracles including laying his prayer mat on the waters of the ocean to pray. This website has some nice info on the place and some stories of this legendary spiritual master if you want to know more as the stories are to many to begin to tell them here. check out: http://sacredsites.com/africa/senegal/touba.html/

From Touba it was another 3 days ride to The Gambia cycling through so many villages and open wild country side of bush land and flat delta country. I stayed one night in a bar-hotel in Fatick run by Christians which means that they were completely sozzled on boxing day but i reckon they are drinking there most days anyway. My last night in Senegal was back at the waterside but this time surrounded by mangroves on the river banks. And then to The Gambia!

For the final 40km to the boarder i felt like a long distant runner sprinting towards the finish. I had rested well the night befor and had the wind behind my so I cruised triumphantly into The Gambia.... well sort of. I was held up for quite a while by the immigration officers who seemed keen to get something from me; but the didn't, not a penny and on i went.

My first mission was to find an old friend I had met first back in 1995 here in The Gambia but then have had crazy coincidental meetings with both in the Gambia and in South Africa over the years since then. I have so many stories to tell of the fantastic Njankob Njob but you'll have to wait until the book is written for he shall have a whole chapter to himself. Any way, I found him sure enough, drunk and out on the street ranting at passes by. This did not bode well but we had some great times together over the next few days once he had straightened out a bit and was making more sense... well, a little more sense anyway for it seems that the years have taken its toll on this great man and many would call him crazy, or simply mad.

Still it was a pleasure to see him again, we played music together in the shade as the fisherman tinkered with their boats. I stayed at Lou's riverside compound known simply as 'Paradise' and it was beautiful and once again a lovely crew of folk living there who looked after me so well and again i didn't want to leave but i had it in mind to reach The Daffee Family for new year. Which i did, and this is where i have been staying for the last few days resting up and preparing myself for the next chapter of the journey.

In 1995 I came to The Gambia and worked in a little school up river in the village of Kwinella as a volunteer. I was the tender age of 19 and had never been out of Europe let alone the wilds of rural West Africa. The experience blew me away and became a profound time of learning and growth. Whilst here I lived with The Daffee family in the village and  have kept contact with them ever since. They treat me as a member of the family now and all the children are grown up doing all sorts of things all over the world. Lamin their oldest son now lives in England but has set up and runs a great little charity here called the Fresh Start Foundation and it is this charity that i have been raising funds for through this cycle ride.
Remember you can easily make a donation at  http://www.justgiving.com/ed-cycles-south 
Take a look at their website as they are doing some incredible work here. I will do a post soon all about what they are up to. I will stay in The Gambia for the next month and support a project that they are running offering workshops in schools around climate change. This as many of you know is what i do a lot of in the UK so it will be interesting to have a whole different perspective on the topic here.


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I feel like i have left out so many photos and stories from the journey of the last week or so but this post is plenty long enough as it is and what with the power cuts and the lunch break of rice and fish it has taken most of the day to write.

So I wish you all a wonderful 2012 and much love from The Gambia, the smiling coast as it is known.