Je ne parl pa

So far, all good things about francaphone africa.

Bobo is a very relaxed town and we had fun wandering the big market and chatting with people. food, they put everything in baggettes here and make a sandwich. In ghana, it's only the egg sandwich that is recognised as legitimate, but here you can throw what every you have into some long crusty bread and eat it that way. We also met a nice lady on the bus who wanted to introduce us to her daughters. We accepted of course, and ate with her one night, and the daughters drove us around on motos.

On a map, the trip from Bobo to Bamako doesn't look too bad, and the roads are all good, so it shouldn't take 14 hours, but it did. After crossing the Mali border, our bus was repeatedly stopped and made to wait at "security checkpoints" where the driver and conductor had to deal with officials who occasionally wanted to actually check the bus for something. The conductor took a collection on the bus to make up for all the bribes he was paying. Overall, almost half our time was spent waiting at a standstill for approval to continue. Eventually we got to Bamako.

Bamako is a very nice city and Mali just celebrated it's 50th birthday so everyone is happy and the place is all decorated. The only downsides are that it is really hot and beer is hard to find. Also, Jack is getting tired of bagettes and brochettes. But i'm not, and my antibiotics are making me feel powerful. Tomorrow we will take the train to Kayes and from there continue on to Dakar and the beach. I'm looking forward to the water.

All the best to all my bestest,
-Toby