As Mariah requested, a look at my pink river pants. They survived red wine, hot shea butter and hot tar in their first 24 hours. Reslient pants.As soon we had worked our way into the Niger’s lazy current, found a paddling rhythm and watched as Koulikoro slipped out of sight, the feeling of freedom, rather than vulnerability, kicked in. We had everything we needed. A boat that didn’t leak too much, a river, and high spirits. We cheered and danced for the simple accomplishment of making it onto the river.
In the days leading up to the trip on the Niger, I found myself increasingly wondering if it all seemed too good to be true. Just a little too easy. Even though the idea of traveling by boat on the Niger started as a pipe dream in Seattle, it seemed to be coming together all too casually. I read one book, “To Timbuktu” that was about a slightly similar trip, but it didn’t provide much for concrete river information. It was about a few Americans attempting to be the first people to travel by boat from the source of the Niger in Guinea, all the way to Timbuktu or potentially to the end of the river in Nigeria. Two of the men give up before even making it to Mali to go back to their (pregnant) wives, while the other two paddle all the way to the Atlantic ocean. Unfortunately the author of the book was one of the two who left early, so we didn’t get the valuable information about the stretch of river we were hoping to do. The biggest difference between our trip and theirs was the planning aspect. They spent months ahead of time planning for this, and bringing lots of equipment including expensive top of the line kayaks. We were going spur of the moment in a locally built large wooden pirogue. Although it may have been done before by travelers, I have yet to hear of this. I was glad for this difference as, when traveling, I would prefer when possible to use local techniques and methods.
Additionally, the book, as most travel literature does, made a big deal out of the potential dangers of the river trip. For those curious about these dangers, I will explain them, but also try to be a little more honest about how serious they really are. The most dangerous animal in Africa is the hippo. This would be a serious concern to anyone traveling on the Niger, however, we were fairly confident in the abilities of African hunters having long killed any wild life on the river. Crocodiles were another concern. The people on the “To Timbuktu” trip took guns to protect themselves from animals, or people. We looked into a locally made rifle (more for the fun of it and potential bird hunting), but it was a little expensive. Most importantly, though, was that when we asked people that worked on the barge that travels to Timbuktu, they said crocs and hippos were nothing to worry about until after Timbuktu. That was good enough for us. It is true, though, that the most dangerous creatures in Africa are the ones you don’t see; the parasites, the amoebas, the viruses, etc. The Niger, however is incredibly clean, and moves fast enough to relieve most worries of parasites and, bilharzia, the disease present in most standing bodies of water in Africa. Malaria was my biggest concern, mostly because after departing Koulikoro, we would be far from any roads for about 180 km. For the first time on the trip, Blai and I would start taking anti-malarial pills, and wear some bug spray. Jonathan, who has had malaria before, didn’t bother with the pills. We also packed a drug that is used to treat malaria. As for water, we had all been drinking tap and pump water wherever we had been, and didn’t feel a need to treat the water now. We had enough water in our jugs to last us 3-5 days, before needing to find a village with a water pump. It seemed that the longest distance between villages would be about 25 km, so that wouldn’t be a big problem either. Other than that, though, we were pretty much on our own. We heard no grave warnings of awful dangers from the locals, so we figured that the challenges that would present themselves to us along the way wouldn’t be so grave.
On our first night, we found a small sandy patch of beach surrounded by bushes and standing pools of water. Muggy; mosquito heaven. Blai and I attacked any dry foliage we could find with machetes and eventually had enough wood to make a fire for cooking and keeping the bugs away. The fear of a hippo charging us from out of the bushes faded after it didn’t happen in the first ten minutes. Supposedly there was one hippo that lived near Koulikoro, but none after that until after Timbuktu.
The next day we spent most of the day re-packing the boat. We had thrown everything in the day before haphazardly in order to expedite our departure. Now we had everything organized beautifully, with our food buckets labeled and our bags wrapped tight in vinyl, hoping that they would remain dry between there and Segou, 180 km. away.
We finally got into the river at 1:30. Jonathan and I paddled in the middle, while Blai steered us in the back. Most fisherman stand on the back of the boats and use a long bamboo pole to push themselves through the water. This is by far the most efficient method in shallow water, but it is also extremely tricky. One slight misplacement of the bamboo tip and you can send your boat into a quick 180. We knew if we wanted to make progress, we would have to stick to paddles for a while.
We paddled close to sunset due to our late start. It made for four hours of solid paddling and I felt at complete peace the entire time. I quickly found myself in a zone of tranquility that prevented me from getting tired. I was so enraptured in my surroundings that I knew I could continue that basic paddling movement forever, and it wasn’t even the honey wine. The river flowed casually, almost imperceptibly, as did the occasional fisherman, who would pole past us silently until one of us would wave. Inevitably he would stop what he was doing, wave with one or two hands and greet us emphatically. Sometimes it was a whole family in a boat, and the children would wave and yell greetings to us until we were out of eyesight (not earshot). Although it was only our first real day on the river, I knew this would never get boring.
When the sun hung low, we simply pulled our boat up to the nearest sand bank and began to unload. As this was the dry season, in which the river shrinks significantly, there was no shortage of sandy beaches to sleep on. We spent our evening collecting firewood, setting up our tents, cooking, making tea, listening to the BBC, sharpening knives and talking about a range of subjects so wide that it had to come from three guys spending every waking moment together.
As the sun was giving its last beams of light, and the colors of the sky were shifting magnificently, I watched as an old fisherman paddled across the river and pulled onto the beach a hundred meters from us. He and a small boy got out, faced Mecca and began to pray. I doubt that they came to this spot simply because it was the easiest place to stop, but because it was a breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful place that brings an intense calm and and an understanding of the honest goodness that can still be found somewhere in the world.
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