der "patron" der müllhalde
und sein haus
zwillinge und eva
dividenden
Montag, 21. Dezember 2009
FOTOS weg nach mali
on the road
malariawarnung
offroad
ein bauer, der mit einfachsten mitteln sein feld bestellt, freut sich wegen des geschenkten pullies
dividende spielkarte
19. 12. Bamako waste deposit site
At 9 a.m. Momo showed up and lead us to a place about 5 minutes driving apart: the dump site of this borough. Each of Bamako´s s boroughs has their own dump site, and there are still huge piles of waste along the fringes of the city. Momo introduced us to the custodian of the place, who explained us the system of the site: he got a permission from the mayor of Bamako to take care of the place and organize it. People with carts full of trash kept coming, running up the mountain of trash with high speed. They get paid from the private househoulds to collect their trash regularly, and they paid the custodian a small amount for deposit it on the waste site. The custodian and his family lived in a shack on the dump site, and he knew, that it was a lousy job, but he had no choice: when he was young he was in a street gang, got arrested and spent about 20 years in prison. So it was an ok way to survive.
Suddenly a herd of cows appeared and went up on the hill of trash, “browsing”.
Men, women and children where allowed to “browse” there as well: the inhabitants of the nearby huts were looking for food and “valuables” like plastic they can sell, or metal. A cart brought rotten oranges, and cows, children and women were happy.
Stefan interviewed a women who told him, that she had 6 children, and she lost her husband last year. She walked 10 km to come here and look for things to eat, use or sell. And there are more and more people living like this.
18. 12. Bamako chillout
Standard African breakfast: Nescafé, milk powder, Belgium cheese ("La vache qui rie"), and a baguette. Then leaving the nice place for a cheaper one: Youth hostel, dirty, loud, in the centre of Bamako. At least 3 bands rehearsing somewhere in the area all day. Skinny, tall men in yellow shirts playing basket ball and asking for “cadeaus” when you want to take a photo. So no photo. I went to feed the blog in air conditioned, spacey internet place, while Igor and Stefan finally started to paint our Steyr with the sponsored colors. I joined them between the rhythms of basket ball and drumming, people dropped by all day laughing at us, taking photos with their mobile phones, telling where to put more color, and at the end applauding: we had a brand new car, finally OUR Steyr, in shiny white, orange and chocolate, laughing at us. Our guide from yesterday appeared and promised to bring us to the Bamako dump site next day. He introduced himself as ”Momo le Magnifique”, and he would bring us everywhere we want: “Welcome to Bamako, welcome to Mali”.
17. 12. Arriving in Bamako
Early up and trying to exchange money, but exchange rates were terrible. After a stop for gasoline, the Steyr did not start again and had to be pushed. So nonstop to Bamako – without local money, almost no water, boiling heat. Landscape is the same all time, mostly savannah, strong old trees and bushes, only a few small clay house villages from time to time. Not so many donkey anymore, many horses and long horned cows. Then more and more rivers, it becomes green, and around 3 p.m. we reached Bamako. After hours in the traffic jam, a young man we asked for directions brought us to paradise: nice hotel/camping site on the bank of the Niger, huge terrace, huge swimming pool, all of us jumped into the water immediately.
16. 12. Crossing the border to Mali
Heading for the border to Mali, reached it around 2 p.m. and everything was laid back and easy. In Mali suddenly a different world: buildings are made of clay and match with the yellow-orange land. At the insurance company we asked for a toilet, the answer was: “au brousse”. A new, very important French word for us: in the bush. The times of the “civilisation” as we know it were over. No more washrooms, no more dustbins - only the brousse. Here we also found wonderful dividends for our lucky shareholders, because everything “useless” ends up there.
Around 5 p.m. we found a nice, old little village to stay and start our Mali explorations. Again it turned out, that the animals do their best part in separating organic waste from the rest.
15. 12. Route de l´Espoir
Starting early again and driving, police stops every now and then, and animals on the street. Policemen ask for „cadeaus“, small presents like pens or lighters, some of them insist on T-Shirts or pants, preferably new ones. We were a bit tired of this official street-robbery and gave them old clothes we got from the French travellers we met at the beginning of our journey in Morocco. It worked.
Around 5:30 we got stuck at a control post: they saw Stefan with the video camera on the roof of the truck when approaching. They insisted to watch the video, and Stefan showed them. “C´est ici?” – “Is this here?” No, this is Mauretania, beautiful country, beautiful landscape! They were satisfied and let us go.
We were amazed by the green of the land, when suddenly we noticed, that there was a huge flood, one village almost completely under water. The street was closed for traffic, but a Toyota Landcruiser ahead of us tried, so we did the same – and succeeded.
Spent the night in the desert.
14. 12. Leaving Nouakchott, Route de l´Espoir
Starting at 8 a.m., first shopping for bread, vegetables and fruit, which is quite expensive in this country. The fruit turned out to be mostly old, everything is imported and therefore overprized and tasteless. The national food is camel meat.
After finding a great goodbye-dividend for our shareholders, we finally left Nouakchott.
The „Route de l´Espoire“ starts with intensely red sand dunes, going into deep yellow sometimes, spotted with juicy green bushes and trees. It goes through small nomad villages with mostly tents, over lush oasis with ponds and brooks, through villages with teahouses along the road, men as well as women lying there lazy, drinking tea and playing with the children. There is less and less trash around the villages, everything is quite clean. Later it becomes the „Route des Cadavres“, because all those donkeys, goat, camels and cows insist, that it is their country, so they stand on the street and don´t move away. At some parts of the road, you find dead animals every few meters. It is as bad as going through the Australian outback, where you can find millions of dead kangaroos.
At night we went offroad again to hide between the dunes, as a young man with a camel approached as. He spoke no French, and we invited him for tea and bread. The camel war really young and shy, so was he. After a sip of tea, they went away quickly, leaving us with a firework of red and orange sunset.
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