Actually sailing on the Niger

March 10, 2010

We woke to Westerlies, as Jonathan referred to them in his dubious sailor vernacular. Wind blowing from the west. After weeks of wind that came from the northeast, directly into our bow, we were now getting a tail wind, meaning sailing would be possible. I assumed that they would turn around any minute, but just in case they didn’t, we packed the boat and got out on the river as quickly as possible.

The wind filled our sails, and we were moving fast. It took a while for us to get the hang of moving the right direction, though, as we zigged and zagged, occasionally getting stuck on sandbars. After an hour, or so, we had the hang of it, and we were cruising. We were all surprised that the wind had held out in our favor as long as it did. I sat in the front, controlling the jib, while Jonathan controlled the main sail and Blai performed rudder duties in the back.

We had one small problem, though. Blai was worried about Fura, who was still producing large amounts of milk, but only had one puppy to give it to. She was leaking milk everywhere, and it must have been painful for her to have so much of it still in her. Blai was sure that she needed to eat parsley, which he said would stop her from producing milk. So we stopped in a small village to inspect their gardens for parsley. We were able to find it in Segou, but I doubted it would be in these villages, as it is not normally used in the local cooking. He walked around all the gardens in the village, asking everybody for “perejil”, the Spanish word for parsley. We didn’t know the French word for it, let alone the Bambara word. Of course, nobody had any idea what we were doing there, and Blai couldn’t see any herb that looked like parsley. So we got back in the boat and started sailing again.

Fura, you're so high maintenance.

Gardens were all along the river, so Blai soon decided to get out of the boat and just walk through all the gardens looking for parsley. He was almost in a panic over this.

Jonathan and I had to manage the sailing with a two-man crew. I tied off the front sail, and just controlled the main sail, while he continued to steer us. We managed to hug the bank tightly in the light winds, following right along with Blai for at least thirty minutes. The wind died for a few minutes and we lost him. When it picked up again, we never caught up, or perhaps we passed him, as we were making good speed.

We weren’t sure what exactly to do, until we saw a concrete building on the side of the river. I noticed the building had beer posters on it. This was no coincidence. “Jonathan, it’s a bar! Let’s stop!”

We figured word would spread about where we were and Blai would eventually make his way to the random bar in the middle of nowhere. Sure enough, he showed up within minutes of our arrival. We went into the dingy bar, curious what we would find.

This is probably one of the best bar discoveries of my life. Bars are fairly rare in Mali, so to find one in the middle of nowhere, right on the side of the river, on the day that you happen to be sailing instead of paddling, was a miracle. The reason it was here was because we were on a military base. This meant that the beers were sold to soldiers (and us) at cost. We sat around and drank a few of the cheapest beers in Mali. The décor was also memorable, leaving little to the imagination of what else was sold here at night. Shoddy paintings of scantily clad women, in suggestive positions, with sexy phrases coming out of the talk bubbles next to their mouths. There were also a few paintings of burley men in camouflage mingling with the wall women.

We sailed a couple more hours before sunset, making an estimated 17 km in the day without paddling. Blai still had no parsley, and he was getting panicked. As we set up our camp, we could hear gunfire come from the military base, that we may or may not have still been on. If it was not for the occasional cattle herder or fisherman wandering along the trails near our camp, I would have been worried that we were vulnerable.

That night we had our first taste of rain. A storm rolled in, wind rattled our tents all night and thunder cracked all around us. Jonathan, who had gone to sleep early, and had not put his rain fly on, was impossible to wake up when the rains came. So I put his clothes and things under my tent’s rain fly, but he would be left in the elements due to his stubborn sleeping.

Our good fortune, predictably, ran out, and our westerly wind was nowhere to be found. I felt thankful enough, though, that we at least didn’t have headwinds. We were thinking of arriving in Markala that day to meet Jonathan’s friend Jordan. We still weren’t sure if he would be there, but he had sent a text that he was on the way.

Meanwhile, Blai was on the parsley hunt. He tried all morning to find a path from our campsite to the highway. He was going to hitch back to Segou to get the parsley. Jonathan and I had long thought that this whole parsley hunt was a little ridiculous, but there wasn’t much we could do. Blai never found a way out, as we were trapped by swamp on all sides. So we would try our best to get to Markala that day, so he could get back to Segou.

We could see on the map that Markala had a bridge crossing the river (the only one outside of Bamako) and we had heard that it was actually dammed at that point. This would explain the complete lack of current that had been getting worse since Segou. In the early afternoon the bridge was within sight. So we stopped in a Banankoro, a small village, for a break and lunch.

Because I did not take notes on this part of the journey, I have forgotten the name of the young man who helped us around in this village, which I regret because I he was very kind. After he showed us around the village, we invited him to eat lunch with us. There were probably a dozen kids and a few adolescents and adults crowded around our mat to watch. I felt bad that we couldn’t offer lunch to any of them, but what could we do?

Our friend who showed us around the village.

Village Mosque.

The kids chased Blai into the river as he took a swim.

Our friend was very fond of Blai.

Eating lunch with an audience.

The last few km before arriving in Markala were miserable. Because of the dam, there was no current and the river bottom was made of deep mud, making it nearly impossible to pole our way along.

We got a hold of Jonathan’s friend Jordan, who had just arrived in Markala about an hour before. Perfect timing. When he saw us approaching, he dove into the river and swam out to our boat. I could tell that he would be a perfect addition to the crew. He was a hearty farm boy who looked like Brett Favre. He seemed enthusiastic about everything and always spoke in superlatives. Every mango he had was the best mango he had ever had in his life, and every jump into the river was the best swim he had ever had in his life.

He got in the boat with his incredibly small pack, and we paddled to the center of town, right next to the dam. They all headed to town looking for the proper materials for a welcoming party/goodbye party for Jordan/me.

While I hung out by the boat, I found the people in Markala to be extremely friendly and hospitable (no surprise, really). The guys that worked next to the dam, and seemed to have some control over the land we were parked on, said we were welcome to camp there for the night. One of the men even gave me a piece of old rope, which we could never have enough of.

Jonathan, Blai and Jordan returned an hour later, with a chicken, some mangoes, a bottle of wine each, and few bottles of beer. We did our normal chicken grilling routine, while getting deep into our wine bottles. Jordan couldn’t stop talking about how impressive our trip was. He is a seasoned traveler who has been on some serious adventures, and he said that what we had done with the boat trip, the donkeys, the hitchhiking, amounted to one of the most amazing trips he had ever heard of. I had almost forgotten that what we were doing was anything that unique. I mean, I knew it was, but we were simply trying to do what we thought would be the most fun. That’s it. It was a simple formula that led us into situations weren’t the norm for travelers. He thought the boat trip was especially perfect, especially how the idea of it could be replicated in so many other rivers in the world.

It was good to hear his praise, but it was also hard. I would be leaving the next day, and the last thing I needed was someone coming in to tell me what I was about to miss out on. There was something about his presence and the way he talked that made me really feel like I would be missing out on something epically great. Worse, he took up my cause. He couldn’t believe I was leaving all of a sudden, for what seemed like such trivial reasons. He had quickly figured me out, and saw how conflicted I looked about leaving, even though I held a firm statement about leaving the next morning. “No Joey, you’re meant to be on the river, I can just tell. It’s in you,” he would tell me as we guzzled our wine. This was so hard to hear, because I knew it was true. I had felt so free on the river. It was only the times in between that made me feel like leaving. The truth was, his presence had already changed the social dynamic of our group, and I somehow felt a lot better with him there. That three’s a crowd thing is always true, but I didn’t expect adding another character to our story would have evened things out.

That night I also had heart to heart discussions with both Jonathan and Blai about my departure. Jonathan and I were very emotional, and we both had serious spells of beer tears. I went to bed early feeling stressed and conflicted. I considered vanishing in the night, to avoid an even more difficult goodbye the next day and further pleas for me to stay, but fell asleep before I could leave.