Clams, Sand, Wind

Photo Credit: Jordan

Photo Credit: Jordan

March 20, 2011

Having a crew of four helped us move faster on the river for obvious reasons. On the other hand it also made the likelihood of someone getting tired more likely. Everyone would get tired or discouraged at some point, and if they spoke up, quite often the mood would spread, and it seemed that we were more likely to take breaks.

Passing by a small village.

On our first morning after leaving Ke-Massina we felt lucky to be faced with a calm day. There had been too much wind for the boys before they arrived in Ke-Massina, but the last two days, which we spent in the town had been calm. We hoped it would hold out. Almost immediately after setting out for the day, though, the winds picked up. We tried our best to power through, hoping they would die down, but they only got stronger. We were forced to pull into shore after less than twenty minutes.

See that sail boat? That's why we couldn't move. Photo Credit: Jordan

We parked the boat in a little cove with clear blue water, a sandy beach and some trees for shade. We squeezed into the little bit of shade under the bare tree while Jonathan prepared the tea. The dust blew into our eyes and the wind continuously disrupted our card games, usually revealing Blai’s dishonesty in the game “bulls**t”. By noon we were growing restless, and Jordan offered up some new games with the soccer ball he had bought in Ke-Massina. A few games of “500”, taking some shots on goal, and other games that usually ended up in a brawl over the ball in the water kept us busy for a while. But then we realized we were standing on a shellfish gold mine. While playing in the water, we started to notice the occasional mussel buried in the sand. Once we started to look for them, they were easy to find. Just wiggle your feet around in the sand, shimmy around, and eventually, a little scrape on your toe, and you had a wallet-sized mussel, maybe three. After we all searched for about twenty minutes we had enough for a huge meal, but we were having too much fun finding them.

Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

For the record, I never approved of Jonathan's Speedos that he bought in Italy before flying to Morocco. Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

Shucking the mussels. Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

After an hour we had a sack full of 233 mussels. Big mussels. We picked out about 50 and shucked them, putting the meat into a big pot. We made a stew out of them with some pasta and we were pleased with our resourcefulness. Our only source of protein, usually, was from peanut butter and the occasional eggs. We were surprised that nobody else in the area was utilizing this abundant food source. Could it be Islam? We assumed it was this, but now that I have researched this, Sunni interpretation of what is considered halal actually permits the consumption of shellfish. Maybe they just weren’t that good.

We found the mussel’s feet, the orange part that was sticking out of the shell, to be too tough and rubbery to eat, but we could suck quite a bit of meat off the base of it. We stuffed ourselves with the mussels and felt recharged. The wind had died down during our mussel hunt and we had actually wasted a few hours of calm river.

So in the late afternoon we hopped back in the boat and continued on our way with an enormous sack full of mussels. That night, we camped on a huge sandy beach. For Jordan and I, it seemed like a fine spot (Jordan likes a place where we can play soccer, I like a soft bed), but Blai worried that the next day there would be no shade for us if the wind was too strong.

We cooked mussels for dinner again, but Blai refused to eat them. They had made him feel nauseous. I wasn’t too hot about them either, but nibbled a bit for the protein, and so we didn’t needlessly harvest over 200 hundred shellfish. We still had at least half the bag left. The next day we all left identical soft green…deposits on the beach. That was the end of shellfish from the Niger for us.

Blai was right about the camping spot. Not only were we not able to move in the morning, the wind was so strong, it made cooking nearly impossible. I managed to make my famous soup for breakfast, though everything was covered in the sand that was blowing all around us. I was used to sandy food since October, but it is Blai’s biggest pet peeve. He had nothing nice to say that morning, and we knew we had to leave this sweltering sand pit.

We argued for a while about which way to go. We eventually decided to go across and up river to a spot that looked like it had some trees. When we got there, the decision to stay was definitely not unanimous. The little bit of shade that the trees provided was in a little thicket and the ground had been mud, then trampled by all sorts of animals, and left to dry, creating a ground full of holes and spikes. Blai said he wouldn’t stay there. Jonathan said he wouldn’t move the boat again. Jordan and I were apathetic. I wouldn’t have even cared if we had stayed on the sandy beach. So we ended up staying. We laid out our mat and contorted our bodies to wedge ourselves comfortably into the nooks and crannies below. We spent a lot of the day talking, which was annoying to all, because we all felt like reading. But every time we would start doing our own thing, somebody would pop some random question, like, “hey, do you know which countries in the world have both English and French as official languages?” which somehow would lead to a conversation about how various members of our families tend to feel toward our girlfriends. This would happen every time anyone got more than a few paragraphs into their book. Then we would play cards. Then we would drink tea. Then we would complain about our dire state. We weren’t necessarily in bad moods, just feeling a little defeated. The heat and wind were taking tolls on our spirits.

The wind never died, and we ended up camping there. It was our first day of negative progress (-200 meters). Fura barked a lot that night. She had grown increasingly protective of us, and any time somebody would walk near our camp she would start barking. I woke early to Fura chasing away a local woman that was coming to chop some branches off the trees for firewood.

Photo Credit: Jordan

Photo Credit: Jordan

Our lovely two day resting spot. Photo Credit: Jordan

The wind continued to blow that day, and we wondered if we would ever move. Our progress since leaving Ke-Massina could not have totalled more than 15 km, and this was the fourth day. Although things on our mat never got too tense, I think we all quietly thought that the extended amounts of time the four of us were spending on an 8 foot by 4 foot square would eventually be dangerous and we would probably kill each other, or worse, over time. Finally, a couple hours before sunset the wind started to calm. Begrudgingly, we carried all our belongings back to the boat. Although we were getting sick of that uncomfortable spot and just wanted to leave, the act of getting up, loading the boat, and paddling into the night was not enticing.

We had a precious thirty minutes of visibility before the night crashed in on us, and we were left to paddle blindly. This probably would not have been a problem in the rainy season, when the river was higher, and had far fewer islands and sandbars. Within an hour we had hit a few sand banks, but, after getting out of the boat, managed to steer the boat clear of them. An hour later, though, we were basically lost. We had hit so many sandbars and could no longer find a path that continued forward. We split up, scouting down river for a path through the shallows, but we found nothing. We also realized there was no current. We must have hit some sort of dead end. We could either turn around and look for right passage by starlight, wait another two hours for the moon to show the way, or give up and camp. Obviously we camped.

We couldn’t see where we were really camping, but the ground was dry, albeit rocky. It was a real mosquito den and we didn’t even bother to cook dinner or make a fire. Just hit the hay immediately, hoping for better conditions and a way forward tomorrow.

Photo Credit: Jordan

The morning light first revealed why there had been so many mosquitoes. Our camping spot, for some reason was surrounded by pools of standing water of various sizes. I was surprised we hadn’t fallen in them. Next, we saw, quite obviously, that we had paddled into a little dead end the night before, as we had assumed. The surprising part was how minor the obsruction, and how obvious it would have been in the light of day. In the darkness it felt as if we had paddled off some remote channel and fully removed ourselves from the actual river. In reality, we could see the main part of the river over a small sand bank just 50 meters from us.

Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

Jonathan and I bought some sweet new hats at the Ke-Massina market. Photo Credit: Jordan

As we cooked breakfast, a man with a bike appeared out of the bush. Fura barked, but we calmed her down. He waved to us enthusiastically. Blai went to speak with him, but very little was communicated, and he went on his way.

The random man and his bike. Photo Credit: Jordan