Tuesday, October 26: Kara-Ouagadougou

This is the message I managed to shoot out from my Ipod in Ouagadougou on the first night:

"Leave at 6:30, no gas in town, Rain but no rain gear! Monkeys, nats ,
bees, Daapong by 9,alergies going crazy, 1hour crossing border, my
first flat (rear tire nail), busted crotch out of only pants, runaway
cows, my aching bum!!, heavy equipment, arrive in Ouaga 4:30. 10 hours
on the road. Manganese mine, Brits, bungalo, drinks, job offers,
pizza, lost in Ouaga, 10:30 back to rooms, allergies, rats in ceiling,
can't sleep. Pull out for Mali 5:50am."

We hit the road at about 6:30 a.m. from Kara. JJ hadn't filled up the day before (cough*likehesaidhewould*cough) and as Africa would have it there was no gasoline at the stations in Kara. We headed North towards Niamtougou with his gas light on and filled his bike up (topped mine off) there. At about 7:30 we started cruising through big wads of nats hovering over the road, attracted to our headlights or the heat of the asphalt, who knows, but that brought about some misery. I, at this point, was wearing my sunglasses, which were completely blacked out by these bugs. I got a big kick out of the Gendarmes' response when they stopped us for a "random" check. It's not often you can gross a Togolese man out! I kept riding with the sunglasses on, which was stupid, and began to laugh about my then flaring allergies and all the bugs. I thought "what a great start!". Then the rains started, for which we were completely unprepared. My helmet is an open dirt-bike helmet so lots of bugs got in and now lots of stinging rain were washing them off! The powdered red dirt turned to mud and by the time we got to Daapong (2 hours of rain) I looked the part. From Daapong it's about 30 minutes to the border. At the Togo border I spoke some Kabiye, told people what we were doing, and we were through in no time. Burkina, however, was a different monster. In preparing for the trip I'd gotten international motorcycle insurance, a vehicle inspection sticker, an international car registration paper, letters of employment, visas for all countries, etc. The only thing we couldn't get, and were warned to get from another Ex-pat., were the permanent "Carte Grise" from Togo. Unfortunately, they are out of the forms in the country... Wouldn't you guess that in crossing the border that's the one thing they were looking for. We did the bureaucratic dance, told our story to everyone about how hard we'd worked to get it, how we appreciated the organizational desires of the country, etc. 30 minutes later we got our Lassez-Passez for Burkina, went to get our passport stamps, a police verification, another Gendarme verification, a toll booth argument (since apparently the toll only apples for light-skin motorcyclists...), and 20 minutes after that I got a puncture in my rear tire. I blew through a pretty rough stretch of potholes and on the other side noticed the bike steering a bit rapidly. My first flat ever on the bike! It was a rough go getting rolling in Burkina. I tried pumping the tire up to limp back into the small town we passed through to no avail so JJ rolled in to see what kind of help there might be. I don't know why I even asked for that, other than nervousness at my first tube changing on the roadside. The mechanic jumped in his car and throttled out toward me, overshooting the bike, almost causing an accident making a u-turn, and then throttled past to slide to a stop 100yards past the bike. It was a real scene. Of course they had no idea what they were doing or the tools to do it so I broke out my tool kit , my 1/2" wood "jack", and went to work. It was good having help to break the bead on the tire and getting one side off. I pulled the tube and saw quickly i'd hit a nail, which was still sticking through. We slapped the spare tube in place, put the chain and rear wheel back on, got it adjusted and were ready to go. I'd decided to just carry the tube to get patched later or patch myself incase I needed it.

Once rolling we shot down to a little town called Tenkodogo, where we found a Total station, cold cokes, and decided to take a 5 minute break. We were 110km into Burkina, 355km into the trip, with 187km left to go (642km for the day). For those used to miles, the kilometer system is used all over Africa, and we tried to average 100k an hour where the roads were good. Energized, tanks full, and ready to go we headed out at around 1pm with 187km left to go. It seemed so much longer! When we turned toward Ouaga at Koupela the asphault was nice and smooth so we decided to take it up a bit and rode 110-125kmh for the majority of the trip in town. I'm not sure why, but we ended up arriving at Burkina Manganese at 4:15pm. The bikes had done great and I was enjoying meeting Chris and Ron, big-wigs of a mining company in Burkina and Mali called Burkina Manganese. I really didn't even know what Manganese was, much less that there was so much of it in West Africa. Chris was a big guy, a Brit, a lover of British cars like my dad, and familiar with the Top Gear Vietnam special and Long Way Down with had inspired much of my trip. He was friendly, offered us coffee and tea and showed us to our air conditioned bungalows for the night. We got taken out to a bar for drinks (yes all my teetotaler friends, I had 1 beer and no more, a great draft of some kind), chatted it up with Ron and his brother (both of which are from Australia) and after some time I got offered a job with Burkina Manganese. They need someone with some mechanical background, basic computer skills, and a French speaker to fill a position. They even offered to buy me a BMW motorcycle and pay for wells to be drilled in Togo. Man was that tempting! To be honest, the idea of being self-employed and serving out of my own means is a dream. The job, really, was a dream. But promises made to people in the States and in Togo mean I can't just drop things and make quick changes like that. It'd be losing a piece of myself I couldn't ever buy back, not with the best of jobs. JJ and I headed out to an Italian restaurant the guys recommended and ended up eating some awesome pizzas, cokes, and by JJ's recommendation double espresso machiatos. Not that I don't love coffee, I was just afraid what happened, would happen. We got lost coming back to Burk. Mang. and ended up finally finding it at 10:30pm. With a 6:00 a.m. departure set. I showered and fell into bed, only to be woken up at 12:30a.m. but awful allergies (my eyes swelled shut), diarrhea, and espresso madness. I took Benadryl, Allegra, and allergy eye drops but nothing seemed to be working. I was up until 4:00 a.m, fell asleep, and then woke up at 5.