24th May - South of Diourbel

Last night’s dinner was butterfish & one of the groupers I caught, for me, and a prawn for Nicki. One prawn sounds a bit stingy, but the thing was about the size of a lobster, so was a meal in itself. The teachers were at the camp for dinner, so we all sat around the fire and drummed into the night.

Today we said a fond farewell to Fansu and the crew. Having packed and breakfasted, and found a storage place for our two drums (I mentioned it would be nice to have another, more bass-y, one, so Fansu got us one), we drove off down the beach for the last time. We stopped for one last fill-up of water at the well; happy memories! Onwards to the north we went, dropping by once more at the Land Rover dealer in Fajarah, who didn’t have quite the exhaust mount I was looking for.

This time we made it to the ferry queue without the palaver round the one-way system we had last time, and Nicki went to buy the tickets whilst I was hassled by all the local people. When I say hassled, they’re just a bit persistent; notwithstanding the moron we met in Barra, nobody is pushy or physical, they just try hard to get us to part with money, and they’re usually unsuccessful, apart from a woman selling bananas. When Nicki was back we waited quite a while for the ferry, considering the queue was short. A man stopped to talk to us, and was remarkable for two reasons: firstly he was a Christian, the first African Christian we’ve met, and secondly he had leprosy, which meant his feet were not a pretty sight. He said the local Catholic mission cared for him, although he still had to buy his own bandages. As leprosy’s not a whole barrel of laughs, we gave him what we had left of our Gambian small change.

Shortly before we boarded, Nicki noticed a girl selling cashew nuts, so I did the local attention-grabbing thing and hissed at her through my teeth. It’s a bit annoying when people do it to us, which they do frequently, as it sounds rude to our Western ears, but it had the desired effect and she was over like a shot, to Nicki’s amusement. The nuts were nice, but pricey by local standards.

We made it onto the ferry at length, having watched it actually depart empty and come straight back at one point, for reasons unknown. We stopped in Barra for fuel, and spent all our remaining money apart from a 50 Dalasi buffer (about £1). When I went to restart the engine, the battery was flat! Nicki had turned the fridge on this morning, but because we’d been hooked up to the solar panels yesterday, the second battery on the truck wasn’t set to charge up. So the fridge had flattened the battery, and for some reason I can’t quite fathom, the main battery had flattened too. It may be the battery is caput, or it may be that the main battery discharges into the fridge when the ignition’s turned on, I’m not sure which. I’ll do some investigations to find out at Zebrabar. The garage had a spare battery, so we jump-started ourselves off it, and forfeited our last 50 Dalasi for the privilege!

The drive to the border was straightforward, and the border crossing itself was quite busy but not problematic. Immediately back in Senegal we noticed the roads improved, which is the case right up as far as Kaolack, where you then go through a few miles of big potholes where most of the traffic diverts off into the far smoother lake bed next door. We entered Kaolack through the least picturesque route, and drove through the centre of town to find a bank to change some money.

We stopped at the bank, but it was shut. A local man latched on to us and offered to take me to a nearby exchange office. They wouldn’t take travellers’ cheques, so on we went, to three different places through the town. None of them would take them either. So, we walked back to the truck, and I got some dollars in cash, we walked back across town… I finally got them exchanged with a Lebanese shopkeeper, but I don’t think the rate was as good as it could have been, even though I negotiated quite successfully. On the bright side, I did find a shop selling ice creams, so took one back to Nicki.

Meanwhile, Nicki had been sitting in the truck attracting all sorts of attention from people either interested in what we were up to, or who had something to sell. Again, they weren’t physical or anything, just persistent, and it does get quite wearing after a while! “Where are you from? What is your name? Will you give me your car? You are welcome in Senegal!” I think we’re getting better at distinguishing who is just interested and who has an ulterior motive. But Kaolack was hot, and after paying off my guide, who then tried desperately to sell us some necklaces, we departed north towards St Louis.

By this time it was early evening, so we pulled off the road as the sun set, just a couple of kilometres south of Diourbel, and drove a few hundred metres across the savannah out of the way of the road. We’re close enough to hear some of the sounds from the town, but hopefully we won’t attract much attention now it’s dark. Dinner was carefully formulated based around a surfeit of tuna and baked beans, and was: tuna in baked beans. With curry powder to liven it up a bit. Disastrously, we have left our brand new and most excellent tin opener at Fansu’s; we’re obviously destined to finish the trip without a tin opener, as the one we bought at Camping Sukuta broke.

Observation of the day: two policeman so far have mistaken us for somebody else. In a huge multi-coloured truck! I think it’s quite unlikely that there is somebody else driving round in a truck like ours, so I think it’s just that a big multi-coloured vehicle like ours is quite unremarkable out here, where bright primary colours are the order of the day.