I got up and headed down to the gare routière near the traffic circle of the prefecture. I was quickly shepherded to the car to Malanville, the city right on the border with Niger. CFA 4500 (US$9) would get me to Malanville in a sept-place that would carry 9 people. I got there perhaps a bit late since there were still quite a few places to fill. If I had been an hour earlier, I probably could have gotten a previous sept-place. Oh well. It was about 8:30 and even when I'm early, we often wait until nine. I chatted with a woman named Martine who works for PAM which is the World Food Program. PAM is probably Programme d'Alimentation Mondiale, but that's just a guess. We were there a long time and Martine was as anxious to get on the road as I was. We finally left at 11:20am. I got a supremely uncomfortable back seat but it's better than the even worse front seats. The two people in the front seat were a big woman and a big man. But the driver objected and swapped the big man with a skinny man so he would better access to the stick. Then we were off. We didn't get very far when we stopped for gas as is usually the case.
The gas stations in Benin tend not to be the Western style gas stations but people on the side of the street with old bottles of Pastis and whatever other alcoholic beverages filled with gas sitting on a rickety table. Also, they usually have one or two large ~3 gallon spherical jugs. When we stopped, the gas man put a funnel in the gas tank and laid a cloth across the funnel. Then, he glugged 2 of the big jugs into the funnel. I'm not sure what this system is. Maybe it is tax free illegal smuggled gas from Nigeria, Benin's next door oil rich neighbor? It can't be too illegal because these gas stations abound and they are pretty damn unregulated--being nothing more than a wooden table and a dozen old liquor bottles and a couple of big jugs. They don't even have caps on the bottles usually. When you walk by one of these it always smells like gas.
The road between Parakou and Malanville has roughly two halves. The first is pocked with potholes. We were swerving and trying to pass trucks that were also swerving to avoid potholes that they could see but we couldn't. It was pretty bad in the back seat which is right over the rear axle. On top of that, the driver usually erred on the side of hitting a pothole on the passenger side to reduce his own level of discomfort. The air coming in wasn't refreshing at all, but hot. It was just like being back in Guinea-Conakry. Overcrowded, hot, uncomfortable, and miserable for 5 interminable hours. But that's the Africa I like. That's why I came.
We passed many many trucks overturned on the side of the road. I see trucks overturned from time to time, but there must have been half a dozen on this 300km stretch. Unbelievable.
Finally, we passed a police checkpoint and that marked the change in the road from potholed as hell to paved as heaven. We only had to slow down when passing stalled trucks with oncoming traffic. But after that it was smooth. The breeze from the window was still hot. The few times we stopped for a bathroom break or to let someone out, it was actually somewhat pleasant outside. But the wind was just hot.
The architecture started changing to the familiar architecture of Mali. I'm back in the Sahel. I'll try to blow through Niger pretty fast since the Sahel doesn't agree with me. Besides, I have one month till I board a plane to Accra. That's only 30 days to get through Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon. And I need to get a visa in Lagos and avoid the Niger river delta area so I'll enter Cameroon from the north. I have to play it safe and pad some margin into my schedule and blowing through the Sahel seems like the most agreeable way to do that.
A little after 5pm we arrived. I got out and took a moto-taxi to the Rose des Sables hotel. It took a few tries to get a room in my price range. The first room he showed me was an air-conditioned bungalow. The second a fan cooled bungalow. Finally the third, a death-row inmate cell. I took the prison cell for CFA 7000 (US$14). Sadly they didn't have beer there so I had to walk to the other, more expensive hotel, to have a beer and a big bottle of water. I also had Sauté de Lapin à Provencial. Then I headed back to my hotel just up the street and got ready to wake up and head to Niger.
It will be good to be in Niamey because I need to get to the internet. My parents are probably starting to freak out since I haven't been online or made a withdrawal since the election.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 20:42 Benin local time
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2 comments:
hey mark! your parents wouldnt have been the only ones wondering where in the heck you were :) we were beginning to wonder if you partied wayyy too hard after the election. haha! =D
Well, I partied enough to catch a cold.
The thing about parents is they always fear the worst while everyone else just thinks I'm partying and having a good time. ;-)
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