Transportation

As if I didn't need more reminding... that I am in a whole new world here! Let me tell you a little story about the public transport in West Africa.

We left Banjul, The Gambia at 1pm saturday. We found a nice cabbie the night before who was very nice and said he would pick us up at our front door, take us across the ferry in the taxi and drive us the 3 hrs to Kaolack where we take our "direct" bus to Bamako, which should be about 16 hrs. Simple right?! haha...

When we arrive at the Ferry the queue was WAY to long and we would have had to wait for probably 4 or 5 ferries to go before we could get on. So we decided to ditch our nice cabbie and walk onto the ferry that was leaving in 10 minutes. So, far so good, we got off the ferry, found a bush taxi to take us to the border. From the border we road a donkey cart... literally a donkey cart with our luggage the 2k to the bus station. From the bus station we took a stationwagon, called a sept bus. Which all 7 of us fit comfortably in that took us the 2 hrs. We got to Kaolack in record time and had 2 hrs to spare until our 10:30 "express bus" left for Bamako. We went to find dinner, brush our teeth, and walk around and stretch our legs before the long bus ride... We chose to take Ghana transport, which left at around 10, there are a few other transport companies, like Sonef and Bani who all left between 10 and 10:30. At about 10:27 they came up and told us that we wouldn't be leaving tonight because the they hadn't sold enough tickets. Our only option was to spend the night on the bus and hope that we left early the next morning.

The night wasn't to bad, yet another time im super glad that I am short, I fit quite well on the bus seats. The bus owners swore up and down that we would leave at 7 or 8 am the next morning even if more people didn't show up. So, we went to sleep and woke up at about 11:30 the next morning. At around 10, we had had it! We had patiently waited for 17 hours and now we were done waiting. If we left last night we would be about 4 hrs away from bamako at that time!! So, we gave them and ultimatum... If the bus isn't pulling out of Kaolack at 11:00 then they WILL give us our money back and we will go to another bus company. Of courses they didn't want this to happen. All 7 of us had already bought our tickets at 24,000 mil each which is about $50 each.

We then argued amongst ourselves as to what we should do, because at his point is is just the principle of it, what Malians and aparently Senegalese people don't seem to understand. We just wanted to work on our cross culture! haha In America that would never happen, because people are acctually held accountable for things! Im sure if we didn't have a 23 hr bus ride ahead of us we would have held our ground and wondered off to find another company... but we didn't! Damnit! Next time!