Epilogue
On April 11, back in France, I still had not heard from the boys. They had left Mopti for Timbuktu on the 30th of March, attached to a motorized boat. They had been told it would take five days. I started to worry, mostly because of the increasing danger to tourists the closer you get to Timbuktu. North of Mopti had become a no-go zone, according to western governments, and tourists, aid workers and businesses were steering clear because of kidnapping threats. Knowing them, they would have arrived to Timbuktu, and just camped right in the open. They would be sitting ducks. When I realized how long it had been I tried calling them every day with no success. I even checked news reports to see if anyone had been kidnapped. The problem with that, though, is that nobody would have noticed that they were gone for quite some time. On the 13th, I finally got a hold of Jonathan, and they were all quite safe in Bamako.
I spent nearly three months in France. It would be hard for me to imagine a bigger change for my day-to-day life. I went from living in a tent to living in a house. My diet went from rice and camping food to baguettes and cheese. Days were filled with reading, lots of internet, relaxing, instead of…well, doing whatever I had been doing for the last six months. Whether I was in Paris or Lise’s home in a small town outside of the city, nothing about my life was the same. Except maybe the occasional meal made to resemble the recipes we had created on the river with the limited resources available to us.
Lise was working on her master’s thesis, so I was mostly on my own during the days. It felt bizarre and weirdly too calm. I enjoyed it for a while, though. In a way, I treated it like any other traveling experience that tosses you into weird situations and you are forced to adapt. Because Lise was always busy, I busied myself with a lot of housework. I did most of the shopping, cooking and cleaning, although I regularly failed at the last one.
Little in my life moved forward, not that it had in Africa, but being stationary in a foreign land left me restless. I didn’t really have a lot of desire to travel, though. Being stationary felt good for the moment. A big blow to me came when I found out that I did not receive the Fulbright grant that I had applied for in October. My life at that point had made sense. I would travel for a year, and then either have a grant to do a photo project in Kenya for nine months, or I would join the Peace Corps. I had hesitated, though, in submitting my Peace Corps application. In January I had been told I was a finalist for the Fulbright, which gave me a very good chance of receiving it. So when I found out that I had been denied in late April, it hit me, extremely hard, that I had no backup plan. Even if I submitted the Peace Corps application now, it would take a year. I also realized that I couldn’t stay in France forever. My visa would run out in the beginning of July, and I would have to be out of the EU for the following three months. I had decided that I wanted to be with Lise, but that was not getting me a job. Forget working in France; I looked into it and it seemed like a dead end. On top of all of it, I had had my 25th birthday, which led to all sorts of questions about how my life is actually progressing.
For days I moped around, feeling like I had no future. It was the first time in my life that I felt like I had no options. I began looking into other grants and photo jobs at newspapers in America. I applied for nearly a dozen jobs (all at tiny papers in towns you’ve never heard of), not even getting a response from any of them. I spent nearly a month looking for opportunities for the next stage of my life, with little to show for it. Yes, things seemed to make a little more sense paddling on the river.
Meanwhile, the former crew was slowly trickling back to Europe. When I left them, they all had grand ideas of all their future travel plans, the most ambitious being to travel to South Africa via a whole slew of dodgy and corrupt countries that are incredibly difficult to get visas for. I had a lot of doubts at the time, but was still surprised with how quick they came back. Blai and Fura returned home to Barcelona just days after selling the boat. Jonathan and Jordan spent some time in Guinea and Guinea Bissau, which of course made me jealous. Then Jordan caught a flight from Guinea Bissau to Marseilles a day in advance ($800!) to catch a concert with some friends. Jonathan was the last man standing, and saw little reason to stick around. He traveled up to Senegal, then The Gambi and back to Senegal to catch a cheap flight to Barcelona.
So now it was looking like everyone was converging on Europe, more specifically Barcelona, and they wanted me to come down for a reunion. Jonathan would be arriving on May 21st and Jordan would be getting there around the same time. I had a mission that seemed pretty clear-cut.
I left on the 21st with high hopes of being able to hitchhike to Barcelona in one day. It is about nine hours driving, but with my success in hitching to Marseilles, which is about the same distance, in September, I thought it was highly plausible.
After taking a train to the south of Paris, I had my thumb out by 10:00 AM. I was picked up by the third car, which seemed like a good start, but the young girl driving was only going a few km. I took the ride anyway.
A few hours later I wasn’t much farther. A couple of flamboyant young guys who had no idea which roads went where had ignored my instructions on where to drop me off had taken me about ten km in the wrong direction. I had them leave me at a rest stop where I asked a Macedonian truck driver to take me to the next gas station so I could get turned around. The Macedonian was super nice and it was a unique experience.
Some hours later, I still wasn’t that far from Paris. I was in some rural area surrounded by fields without a town in sight, and hardly any cars passing. I was getting frustrated. I started to wonder where all the cute young girls on road trips were that would love to have an adventurous guy young guy along for the ride, you know, like in the movies. I was usually getting rides by middle-aged dudes who had been in my shoes in their younger days. But then the travel gods smiled upon me and I saw a big van come careening around the on-ramp and seemed to head straight at me without hesitating. It screeched to a halt and the passenger window opened. The two girls asked where I was going and then invited me along.
Unfortunately they weren’t going to Barcelona, but they could take me as far as Orleans, an hour in the right direction.
They left me at a tollbooth at about 4:00. It seemed like a good spot, and several cars stopped for me. The only problem was that they were all heading north to Paris. I waited hour after hour. It began to rain, and then it rained harder. Thunder and lightning came, and things were not looking good.
Finally at about midnight a car heading south pulled over to pick me up. The guy was going an hour south to Bourges. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could smell alcohol on his breath, which normally would have made me think twice about staying in the car, but I was pretty desperate. He drove fine, though and all was good.
Waiting at the tollbooth, I was getting cold. Again, the first car pulled over, but it was going in the wrong direction. By three AM the cars had stopped coming. At five they started to trickle in again. I had thought about sleeping, but I didn’t want to miss any chance.
After ten rides, I was only 200 km south of Paris and some six or seven hundred clicks to Barcelona. I would only be able to spend a couple of days in Barcelona, and time was ticking. At 10 AM I gave Jonathan a call. He insisted that I stop wasting my time and hop on a train. I told him I would give it another hour. I had no idea if there were even trains that went from this town to anywhere near Barcelona. I was ten km outside of the town and had no idea how big Bourges was or how I would even get to the station.
At noon I gave in and tried to hitch into town (being Sunday there were no busses). An elderly man in a nice Citroen drove me into town and even took me directly to the station. He was great and said he had done a lot of hitchhiking when he was young. I kept being reminded that hitching was dying in France (or maybe all of Europe) but it really used to be a common thing that everyone would do. At least it didn’t die because of violent incidences like in America.
I got lucky with the train. There was a train leaving in thirty minutes for Lyon, from where I could connect to Montpellier, only three hours from Barcelona. It was expensive, though. 90 Euros! I hadn’t eaten in about 24 hours so I grabbed a doner kebab (gyro) before boarding.
On the way to Montpellier, I realized my train was going all the way to Perpignan, an extra hundred km toward Barcelona. The problem was that I had only paid to get to Montpellier. If I stayed on and a controller came to check my ticket, I would have a hefty fine to pay. I decided to risk it, and it worked. I got to Perpignan at 10:00 PM and found that there was no further transport to Barcelona until morning. Lame. So it was back to hitchhiking. I desperately wanted to make Barcelona by the end of the day, but I would have to get lucky.
I got a quick ride to the first tollbooth out of town. At 3 AM I got another ride, though only 20 km. And now I was close to the border at an enormous tollbooth. One van full of hippies stopped for me, but after they discussed it among themselves they said they didn’t want to cross the border with me since they didn’t have enough seatbelts.
I counted down the minutes to sunrise. I had been freezing. At 7 AM, just as it was getting light, I got into trouble. I had pulled two all-nighters in a row standing in freezing cold and was in seriously bad shape. At one point I dozed off and started to lean forward only to be woken up by a semi truck rushing past my head. If I had dozed a few seconds earlier, I might have fallen right in front of it. I was hungry and dehydrated as well. I started to hallucinate. I could see people moving around the tollbooths off in the distance, even though I knew they were unmanned. When I saw a dog run halfway across the 12 lanes, then just disappear, I knew it was time to give up completely.
I walked towards what seemed like a town, in search of some sort of café or gas station. Eventually I ran into a guy who was waiting by the side of the road. I asked if he was hitchhiking, and he told me he was waiting for a bus to Girona, just north of Barcelona. I waited with him, completely willing to pay the 20 Euro fare.
A few hours later I was changing into clothes more appropriate for the balmy Spanish weather at the Barcelona bus station. When I caught sight of Blai and Jonathan all of my feelings of exhaustion and delirium dissipated and I was raring to go again. We did a little dance in the street, all in my pink pants and went to find a beer. I told them I had barely eaten since I had left two days before and desperately needed food before beer. No worries, though; it’s Spain! Tapas! Food and beer, all for one low price. We knocked back a few beers, then went to go to the beach. Fura was waiting in Blai’s truck, and she was so happy to see me. She is also one of the few dogs that I would be so happy to see as well.
At the beach they filled me all in on what had happened on the way to Timbuktu and why it had taken them some nine or ten days, when it was supposed to take five. I should not have been surprised, as that is just how things go in Africa, or most developing countries for that matter.
Basically, the boatmen who were tying our boat to theirs got a little greedy. They were transporting sacks of millet and had overloaded the boat. I think they even wanted to load our boat with the sacks, but Jonathan wouldn’t let them. Because the boat was so overloaded, and the water was about as low as it could get, they were constantly getting stuck on sandbars. Repeatedly they would have to unload the boat, carrying the grain sacks to shore, clear the sandbar, then reload the boat. Not only did it take twice as long, they were moving 24 hours a day, so they were having these sandbar problems at any time of day or night.
Apparently it got pretty ugly, and there was not much camaraderie between the Africans and the crew of the Guidron Queen. It seemed that tensions were high most of the time, and by the time they reached Timbuktu, none of them wanted to see the river or that dry Sahelian landscape again. They sold the boat as quickly as possible, and the fact that they had been to Timbuktu was probably the smallest footnote of their trip. They ended up getting less in Timbuktu than they would have gotten in Mopti ($380 instead of $400). That was naturally annoying to me, since I had not trusted that business move in the first place, but it wasn’t my call. And the difference was insignificant. So in the end, after we calculated our loss, we got a boat for close to three months for a cost of less than $70 each. Not too bad, I think.
Hearing all this, I felt like I had dodged a bit of a bullet by leaving early. Honestly, I had really wanted to have the satisfaction of Timbuktu, and witness the change in climate and culture as the boat moved north. However, after hearing about this, I think I would have felt uncomfortable the whole time. It sounded like there was constant fighting, and Jonathan really had animosity towards the guys driving the boat. I would have been too forgiving of the boat drivers, even though they really did make an idiot mistake in overloading the boat. We hadn’t seen any other boats having trouble with this, so it was shocking to me that they had had this misfortune.
Anyway, Jordan had my share of the boat cash for some reason, and he wasn’t even here. They told me he was in Croatia for some reason, and wouldn’t be getting in until the 26th. I was planning on leaving before that, but decided that I would just have to wait. Not for the money, I wanted to see him.
That day at the beach would be the most united that the Guidron Queen crew would get in Barcelona. The next day one of Jonathans girlfriends, from Sweden, flew in to see him, and he spent the next few days with her.
I stuck around with Blai and hung out in home in the mountains outside the city. He is no longer squatting because he has this huge truck, like half the size of a semi, that he has made extremely livable. He has running water, a kitchen, a bed, a couch, shelves, a door, a window, and a psychadelic/anarchist paintjob on the outside. The setting was calm and beautiful, but was still close to the city. He was living the life, at least by my standards.
On our second day Blai started feeling sick. By the afternoon, he went to the doctor. They did some blood tests, and said he had something, but they couldn’t tell what it was. They said he needed to go to the hospital. His symptoms were actually very similar to something I had had a few weeks before. Nausea, weakness, sore muscles, mild fever. In fact, we had been sharing a lot of the same symptoms since leaving Africa. I had felt much healthier, in general in Africa, and we had both seemed to weaken upon returning.
The hospital tested him for a bunch of things. “Well, it’s not malaria, and now I know I don’t have AIDS,” he told me, “even though AIDS isn’t real anyway.” There Blai goes again with his conspiracy theories.
We spent some time with his family, giving me a good chance to exercise my Spanish (still better than my French). They were, like most people I had been with in Europe, hospitable and extremely kind. And of course, we ate very well.
Compared to my first time in Barcelona, I was really starting to like the place. It was far cheaper than France, the people, although sometimes a lot less friendly and a lot more gritty than the French, were definitely more fun and had a lot of attitude.
We also spent some time at a big protest going on at Plaza Catalunya. Basically there had been a consistent occupation of Barcelona’s biggest square for about a week, day and night. They had started by protesting certain candidates in the elections, but after the elections, they continued. The themes were, predictably, anti-capitalist, anti-war, anti-government, anti-shower (just kidding! But seriously…), and the people were far more…colorful than at the French protests I had been to. Blai, with his long dreadlocks, fit in, while I felt a little over-dressed. No matter, people weren’t judging too hard, and the free food vendors happily heaped on a big pile of vegetarian food on my plate.
The day Jordan was supposed to arrive, we waited for him to call all day. Finally, late in the day, after Jonathan and his Swedish girl had joined us, we got an email from him. He apparently had overdone his last night in Croatia, causing him to miss his morning flight. I was really disappointed. I just wanted to have one night with all of us together, but apparently it wasn’t meant to be. We stayed at the protest until late at night, though I couldn’t really enjoy myself. It didn’t feel right. We bought lots of 1 Euro beers from the Pakistanis roaming the square and played some of our old card games. When everyone started to pull out their sleeping mats (I dissed everyone that brought a sleeping mat, as I still think they are the most useless piece of camping gear ever, I am a snob), we decided to head home, saying goodbye to Jonathan for the last time.
I read in the news later, that the plaza had been evacuated the next morning. Apparently it is also where the city’s soccer fans gather to watch Barcelona soccer games on giant screens. Barcelona was playing Manchester United the next day for the finals of the European Cup (or whatever it’s called). Obviously the city had their priorities, and I watched video of riot police beating protesters with bats and shooting rubber bullets to get them out of the square. It was crazy that they would make it violent just because of a soccer game (not the official reasons I am sure). Jordan made it to Barcelona a couple days late, but just in time for that big soccer game. He got to enjoy the fruits of the riot police’s labor with Blai as they partied with fellow soccer fans at Plaza Catalunya.
I actually got to meet up with Jordan a week later as visited Paris before flying home. Anthony was in town* and we met up with Jordan for a few beers in the park. He gave me my cash, most importantly, and we got through most of the issues we needed to. Jordan is the kind of guy that really likes to know. He wants to know what you are going through and he wants to help or give advice. He also wants to share his problems. It always makes for great conversation and bonding and we really didn’t have enough time to get through everything. When we left, I wondered how long it would be before I saw anyone again.
Blai was already back in Africa. He was traveling to the Gambia to sell another truck and visit his friends that had been jailed there nearly a year before. His next move, after getting back, would be to fly to Canada, travel to America, buy a car, sell it in Mexico (my advice) and hitch all the way to the end of the earth in Argentina.
Jonathan was left looking for boat work in Barcelona’s ports. Last I heard he had found a job on a boat that leaked worse than our river boat. He would be sailing for Turkey via Croatia soon. He was also getting some sort of sponsorship with the boat owner, so he could actually get a working visa for Europe.
Jordan was back in Australia, doing a few months of work. He seemed like he had all sorts of business plans (he always does). The beauty about his work, though, is that he is always doing some high-priced contract work, leaving him to make a quick 10k, then escape to some part of the world for six or 12 months. Plus, the Australian dollar is now somehow higher than the American dollar, so he is doing very well.
As for me, when I left Africa to be with Lise, we had debated the idea of me waiting for her in Africa for her to be done with her thesis, after which she would join me. We decided, though, that I would come now, and afterword we could go somewhere, like Africa, although she said she had always wanted to travel Eastern Europe. During my stay, I kept making off-hand comments about flying to Senegal, or how we could hitchhike to Ukraine, take a boat to Georgia, and travel through Central Asia. She never responded to my ideas, until one day she finally said, “why do you keep talking about these things, you don’t have any money!” Apparently I had overstated my poverty (plus I had just gotten an unexpected heavy tax return (thanks Obama?)) and was ready to travel again. When she realized I was actually serious, she was shocked, but excited. She said she was too busy to plan anything, so I put myself in charge of creating some travel itineraries. Some included flying to Cote d’Ivoire, then traveling the coast (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Morocco, I call it the “instability tour”), traveling across Europe, Central Asia into China, then India, flying to Thailand and traveling overland to Australia, and a few others. They were generally a little too ambitious (read: hard on the wallet and the watch) for us, and we realized a better idea would be to pick one country that sounded good, and just rent a basic apartment and live cheap for a few months. I didn’t care too much about where we went, so I researched airfare to any feasible country. Senegal, India, Thailand, China, Jamaica, Guadaloupe, Haiti, Brazil, Venezuela, Ethiopia, etc. The cheapest flights turned out to be to the Philippines, Brazil and Ethiopia. So we thought and we thought and we thought. Lise wasn’t so interested in Asia like I was. She wanted Brazil, but after researching cost of living, we decided it was too hard. Ethiopia would have been too hard for me to get back home (one way from there to Seattle is off the charts expensive). Then we thought of India. It’s not too much like Asia, and it’s cheap. We discussed more and more, and then decided the Philippines was best instead. I don’t remember why, we just did. The ticket was about $550, one way. We hesitated for the day, and that killed us. When I went to buy it, it had shot up to $950. Philippines it was not. So I found a ticket to Malaysia for the same price. And since Malaysia has the Asian equivalent of Ryanair, we could get to just about any country in Asia for less than $100 if we wanted to. Philippines, Sri Lanka, Burma, India, overland travel to Indonesia or Thailand. It was the perfect location to get anywhere. So I booked the flight.
And I guess the long and the short of it is, that is where I am now.
I realized I had learned a lot on this trip. Although I didn't learn the types of skills that are marketable, I have found many of them useful in everyday life. Here are a few things I learned, in no particular order.
If you are going to travel with donkeys, don’t. But if you do, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT get a male donkey and a female donkey.
How to remove ticks.
A lot about who you can and can’t trust.
How to remove ticks from donkeys (considerably more difficult)
How to behead, pluck, gut, and roast a chicken.
A lot about who you can and can’t trust.
Not how to fish like the Bozos. Regrettable, but an excuse for another trip.
How to make a grill out of green branches.
How to clean a really dirty house. Yes, it took me going to Africa to learn this.
Sewing.
A little bit of Arabic, quite a bit more of Bambara and a whole bunch of French.
The paddle stroke to make your boat going straight while paddling on only one side.
That peaceful (and probably all) African countries are not nearly as dangerous as most people would have you believe.
It is rarely necessary to pay for a hotel room in Morocco if you play your cards right.
The most efficient way to move sand with grain sacks and less shovels than people.
Lots of good camping recipes that will make Malians’ (at least DJ Bako’s) mouth water.
That there is always a way. Whatever it is, even if it seems impossible or impractical, there is always a way. Believing this is true is more than half the battle.
That wine in a bag, even when hot, is still worth drinking.
To ask to make it sure it is a free ride when hitchhiking in some countries.
At least a little about sailing.
That mashed mango, fresh milk and sachets of rum can pass as a daiquiri if you refer to them as such.
Fashion, both desert and river.
Moroccan police can be some of the world’s best and worst.
That if you can actually get rides in Mali, they will be far more comfortable than public transit. I did not learn if this is true in Morocco or Mauritania, as I never took public transport.
That the turtle doesn’t really beat the hare, but he has a hell of a lot more fun.
How to make a mortar and pestle out of an empty gas canister and a stick.
How to make a whole bunch of clever things out of used 20 liter cooking oil jugs.
A lot about relationships and friendships.
Even more about camping.
The best way to sneak into a music festival in Mali (hint: I learned it after the festival)
How to seal a leaky wooden boat (to a point).
How to sand-ski behind a randy donkey.
If you have bad charcoal, mix it with good charcoal or throw it away. Don’t pour way to much gas on it and almost burn your house down.
Donkey travel is harder than you would imagine.
River travel is easier than you’d imagine.
*Somehow I had a steady flow of friends in Paris. I thought I was going to get lonely while Lise was working on her thesis, but, being the most touristed place in the world, I had enough traveling friends to keep me from being too lonely.
