A note to the reader

If you're reading this for the first time, go ahead and scroll down to the oldest posts and read forward to the new ones. It'll make the story make more sense, unless you're a big Benjamin Button fan. Thanks,

matt

The "Big Picture"

This entire trip I was so incredibly encouraged by people I encountered. The guys who came to help me change my tire in Burkina, the kindness and generosity of the guys at Burkina Manganese, the constant parade of kids giving me thumbs up, clapping, and screaming "RALLY!", our wonderful Dogon guide Gabriel, Miranda and Shindook, Mac, the Norwegian fellows (heaven help me remember their unique names!), the Europeans who seemed inspired by our journey, and the slew of Tuaregs and Muslims who showed me love and respect when they were the ones who were said to be those who wanted to abduct and kill me. It was an amazing time of culture, learning tons about the uniqueness of Mali. It was an amazing ride; pushing my bike and my body to it's limits, I had so much fun I lost 13lbs in 8 days and didn't even know it! I smiled countless times at the thrill of having my hands glued to the throttle. It was an amazing start of a friendship; born between JJ and I, who both come from different worlds but found unity in the challenge of adventure. And finally it was my pilgrimage. I'd left with the mission to be changed on the journey. I think I was more changed at some points than others but there's no doubt I returned different than when I left. I thought about those I love more than any other time in my life and had hours of uninterrupted time to tone out the roar of the motor and tone into the voice of God. I had someone ask me if I went just for the sake of going and I can say without a doubt "maybe." I went because I knew the trip in itself would be awesome but I pushed everyday to be changed, to reflect, and to repent. I found joy in telling people what I do and realized how much I love my wife, job, and teammates here. I even found greater joy than ever in sharing my faith. So for you skeptics I'll tell you "no, I didn't go just to go" but for all you guys who've ever ridden until your strength gave out, you'll understand the other part of the story others will never be able to understand. So that's it, Togo to Timbuktu is over but I doubt adventure riding is.

Day 9, November 3: Ouagadougou to Kara

We pulled out at 6 a.m. and made good time back. We stopped and got cokes again in Tenkodogo but this time had to adjust my chain out a notch. The bike was still consuming a little oil, but I was glad to be almost home. By this time sores that had began to appear on my leg/butt on day three were almost unbearable. They had turned into blood blisters by day 5, which I popped and were now unbearably painful, 3", open sores. I struggled to shift my body off them but we made it in one piece to the border by 11 a.m. The Burkina guys laughed that we'd made it back and I reassured them there weren't any bandits like they'd warned us of going in. None of them had ever even been as North as Ouagadougou but they'd been sure of the banditry because of the television. At this point I began to need stops at about every 50 miles because of the pain. We stopped 50 miles south of Daapong and I pretended to need to pee so I didn't look like a wuss. Two guys came up to look at my bike while I was peeing and I came up staring at them. JJ said I had this dazed look on my face and he thought I was angry (really my butt just hurt incrediby) so I began to pretend not to speak french and mimicked my butt agony out to them. They got a good laugh and so did I! We made it as far as Kante but when I pulled off my helmet my face was white and covered in sweat. It'd turned to agony. I took a 10 minute breather and decided to take off my backpack and strap it to my bag on the bike. That helped enormously (not sure why) and we made it no stops the remaining 60k to the house. Oh, I almost got taken out by some guy in Kara who made a no-look, across the lane, left turn. I thought about how ironic it'd been to be taken out after 2,000 miles in my hometown. Seeing Grace at the gate was amazing and my dog Penny nearly killed herself with excitement. Grace had cleaned and organized the entire house, done yard work, and really worked hard while I was gone. Seeing her was good enough, but how great the place looked really made coming home a wonderful thing. JJ came over that evening and we swapped pictures and had coffee and that was it. The trip was over. I had the runs that entire night and had to drain what were now cysts on my backside but my trip of a lifetime had been completed, in amazing style, and I was a better man for it.

Day 8, November 2: San to Ouagadougou

No pictures for this day...it was awful. We left at 6 a.m and headed South toward Bobo Dioulasso. The road made a "y" at one point and we asked the gendarmes where to go. They said straight was 80km and rough while right was 80k and smooth. Easy decision! We thanked them and headed off. My gps was on the fritz and after about 20 minutes I got it to kick back on, showing that the turn right wasn't the same, actually it made the route 190k instead of 80k. Again, dodging the rough road cost us big time We arrived at the Mali border around 10:30a.m and got across into Burkina after some confusion at the border. Of course nothing is marked and no one helps. In Burkina for some twist of fate the two guys were type - a and anal, one guy twisting his face at the dirt from my hand that'd gotten on the form. He took it from me and attempted to wipe it off, to no avail. He didn't know i'd been using my glove (still on) to wipe the dipstick off all week :). We got asked 80 questions and when asked if i'd ever served in the military I told them that I was a private assassin, not government. They shrugged and checked no, letting us pass on into Burkina. It took us about 2 hours to get to Bobo, which was under heavy construction. The asphalt had been torn up and the road was very dusty. I loved it. We gassed up and asked where we could find a supermarket. The guy didn't know but directed us to a bigger Shell station with a "Shell Shop." It was on the way but the roundpoint where we needed to turn was blocked off, blocking the Shell station off too. We zigged and zagged down some alleys and ended back on the main road, doubling back in search of our cold cokes. When we got to the roundpoint (blocked off on that end too) I'd failed to notice that bikes were going up the wrong land of traffic, forming a two lane road on one lane of asphalt. I saw my error and jumped the 10" curb, putting me in traffic and on my way to the Shell. JJ tried to follow but crawled really slowly up onto the curb (i think it was his first time), I waved to come on, but he went so slow he ended up with both wheels off the ground. I'm sure he thought it was my fault! I got a good look, got off my bike to help but by the time i'd gotten there two Africans had helped him over. We bought two big cokes at the Shell and enjoyed our K-Cliff bars for lunch. Neither of us finished our 1.5 liter cokes (surprise) so we gave them to the street kids that had come up to stare at us.

The road from Bobo to Ouaga was long, really long. Ok, it was only 360km but after having already ridden 7 hours, the 4 that were left seemed like eternity. The ride was uneventful, other than being forced off the road by an 18 wheeler and we made it back to Burkina Manganese around 5:30 pm. We'd ridden nearly 12 hours all to avoid a dirt road that'd put us there at 2... The guys at Burk. Manganese were kind as usual and took us out for drinks again. We talked to Ron until about 8:00 and then headed to eat at a local restaurant called Espace Gondwana, which is a sand-floored outdoor/indoor restaurant that feels like it's Moroccan themed. The atmosphere is really unique and calming and both our meals were amazing. We called it a night and went back to sleep at around 10 pm with a 6 a.m. departure the next day.

Day 7, November 1: Djenne

The drive to Djenne was pretty straight forward until you have to find the turn, which is unmarked. Luckily my GPS was working at the moment (it didn't always cooperate) so I saw the road on the Africa base map and turned in. There were roadblock barrells there and a guy said we had to pay the $2 tourist tax each. I wondered how true that tax was. We pulled forward and quickly began to pass vans of tourists, a rare site in West Africa. As we got close to the ferry the road turned to mud, which I loved, so I jumped through some mud-puddles and jumped the line to the front of the ferry. We got lots of attention from the guys there and even the europeans who were eager to hear about our voyage. JJ got off his bike but I stayed on since it kept sinking in the mud and let the locals ask all the questions about the gps, top speed, tires, etc. The ferry guys were being real jerks and ended up holding us from getting on until all the cars loaded, which didn't leave room for our bikes so we ended up holding the breaks the whole way with our rear tires hanging halfway off. Getting off the ferry I noticed that on my side of the boat the car's drivers tires were dropping way down into the water. It looked like he'd come in at a bad angle. I saw this as an opportunity for fun and gassed it off the boat, plunging into three foot deep water, up the sides of my bags and gassed out of it like a kid. It was my first time driving in deep water and I loved it. We drove down the causeway and turned left into Djenne. We putted past mud buildings (the city is walled in) and got to a big market. It was market day. I took out my map to find our bearings and where we were in relation to the Campement we planned to sleep at. A guy pulled up on a moto and asked where we were staying, told me we had to go around and back out of the city to get there. I told him it looked closer and he asked if we needed a guide. I told him "no thanks" and headed toward the market, the opposite direction of where he'd indicated. This guy then perceded to chase us, yelling at us that we couldn't go that way. He gassed up next to us then I heard his motor rev one more time and I hit the brakes to turn around and let him have it. He was gone. I suppose it's best not to throw a man in the middle of market day when you're a 6'3", 300lb white man in an African town so i'm thankful he wasn't there. We pulled forward and realized we couldn't find the camp so we headed back out following the guys first directions. Turns out they were totally false, he just wanted us to get lost so we'd ask him to be our guide. We asked around and finally found the road to Campement Chez Baba, where we'd agreed to meet the guys for lunch. We decided it'd be just as good to stay there and talked to the owner, Mr. Baba about the following day's routes. JJ was concerned about another gravel road and wasn't impressed with Djenne. I was however and love gravel roads but somehow knew i'd end up cutting my visit to Djenne short. We walked through the market and then went up on the roof of a house next to the Mosque so we could take pictures. It's an impressive building really. We walked around and then found the Campement, the original place we'd been looking for. We decided to go in for a coke and were blown away at the number of white Europeans sitting outside at the restaurant. I sat down, feeling a little like i'd left the planet, and i'm sure stared at a good number of them awkwardly. There was a french family we'd seen the night before who we greeted and we finished our cokes feeling "blended in the crowd" for once instead of the usual life of outsiders.

We walked back to Chez Baba's for lunch, where we'd already put in our orders, and were delighted to see our new friends walk in. We had chicken and fries which was good, and chatted with the guys about their travel preferences. One was like me, who likes to soak in places, taking time to feel a places energy and meet uncommon people while the other was like JJ who likes to snap a photo, stamp a passport, and move on. I thought it was funny listening to them argue when JJ and I had been doing the same thing the whole trip. They bought us lunch and we said goodbyes. JJ and I walked to the bikes and started talking about whether we should leave or not that day, since we found out the ferry sometimes doesn't leave until 8 a.m. We were worried that'd set us back so we talked to the hotel guys again and before it was over i'd agreed to leave right then, head to San, and take paved roads through Bobo-Dioulosso all the way to Ouagadougou. If i'd only know. I think the dirt roads had beat the BMW and JJ up to the point that he had a bit of an irrational fear of them, but that was part of the partnership of the trip together and I kept reminding myself he'd saved my ankle. We geared up, thanked Baba for letting us lock our stuff in the room for the day, and pulled out catching the ferry as soon as we arrived. We were better positioned this time but I was pretty bummed about not being able to soak in Djenne, which had a unique energy of it's own. I'd loved to have sipped coffee and watched people leave the market to go home. It'd been beautiful at sunset. We tore up the asphalt and got to the turn which i'd planned earlier on in the trip. The city was Tominam and although the road was paved on the Mali side the police said it'd be dirt in Burkina. I could tell JJ didn't want to make the ride so we rode on to San, an odd city with a huge stadium close to the Niger river. We stopped for gas and asked the gas guy if there was a campement in town. He said there was and that we should follow the main road until the next round point with a shell station and take a left. About 5 miles later the paved road, mind you the only paved road, turned into a market. People had tables set up on the road, beach umbrellas on stands and tons of pedestrians browsing the local produce. I turned and looked at JJ and shrugged, thinking what the heck. So I began crawling forward on my bike and eased under umbrellas, past tables, and gently passed people. Everyone stayed in a good mood about it (which isn't guaranteed) and after a few minutes we'd come out at our roundpoint. The campement turned out to be run down buildings with no electricity. Like a 1/3 the way finished guesthouse they were calling a camp to make some money. We decided to turn back toward the road for the next day and check out two hotels we'd passed on the way in. This time we found a way to take back roads circumventing the market. We stopped at Hotel Teriya and they had a double "room" with a fan and bathroom for $25. We took it and hit the bar for cokes and water. By this point I really enjoyed talking with JJ, despite how differently we tended to think. I really felt like we'd taken care of each other this trip and sacrifices made me enjoy getting to know him. We crashed at 8:30 and looked at the next day's route....over 800km and a border crossing...we'd better get some rest.

Day 6, Oct 31: to Sevare

We pulled out at 5 a.m. as planned and drove in the dark out of town. It was kind of eery driving in the dark, since I hardly ever do it since i've moved to africa. At one point the road did a "y" and I took the wrong direction but after several minutes realized what had happened. By 5:40 we'd pulled up at the ferry dock, weaving through a 20 car line that had obviously been there for hours. I arrived first and got yelled at by a truck driver who said I should go to the back of the line. This was absurd, since all pedestrians and motorcycles always jumped the line since they could squeeze in beside the cars. I decided that because of the heated tones these guys were giving me i'd get off there and walk the rest of the way to ask the ferry pilot. He said "no problem" so we zig-zagged the rest of the way to the front. When the ferry guy gave the signal we boarded the big ferry and got turned around, all the other cars, however, started getting on the smaller ferry. We watched 4 cars squeeze on, cranked the motors, and made a dash to get on the smaller boat. There just was enough room but that decision saved us 30 minutes because the larger boat took forever to get loaded and to pull out. The sunrise on the ferry was beautiful and before we knew it we were on the other side. We got off the boat quickly and soon the trucks were blocked by a big lorry who'd broken down on the causeway. We pulled around him and as we were hitting the straight road South I decided i'd better stop and soak in what had happened on the ride up. Just to soak in the fact that i'd done it and from here on it was the ride home. I took my helmet off and reflected a few minutes, thanking God for where I was, took one last look at the water and got ready for the awesome ride out. I was passing JJ in no time and decide to ride about 10-15 miles this time (from the point I passed him) without stopping. I figured at that speed no fall could do too much damage :). The larger distance gave me more time off the bike to wait so I talked to more Tuareg and got to see them draw water up from a well with camels. The squeal of their wooden pulleys as the sheep-skin-bag was pulled up out of the 100 foot well was a unique sound. Being in the water "business" I enjoyed seeing how they'd adapted to the difficulty of deep hand dug wells. The next stop I got off the bike and sat on the ground on the right side, letting the bike made shade for me from the morning sun, and enjoyed just watching the nothingness aside the road. Little by little, though, JJ began to pick up speed and before I knew it my 15 minute waits had turned to 5-6 minutes as he began to get in the groove. I felt like a coach seeing his rookie player hit a home run! This made things go faster and before we knew it we'd passed half way and were on our way to Douentza. We made it to Douentza this time at 11:30 a.m (which was much better than the previous 4p.m arrival!) and went to a campement to get some cold water and eat our K-Cliff lunch. (For all you XR650L guys reading this, with the road in it's current state you could easily make it in 3 hours, maybe 2.5 hours if you really pushed it). We pulled out of Douentza and made the run back to Sevare (stopping once to rest under a thorn tree) and arrived there around 3 p.m (driving at 100kmh you can make it in 2 hours). We drove around trying to find gasoline and then tried to find Mac's Refuge based on my guidebook map. I went toward Mopti and turned at the watertower just like the map showed, except that road was essentially a line of giant puddles and thorn tree limbs. We zigged and zagged until finally coming upon a man pulling out on his motorcycle. He said he knew where it was and would lead us there. It was funny struggling to keep up with him as he masterfully zigged and zagged past water and thorn branches on his Yamaha Mate 50. It wasn't the first time we'd been embarrassed by the pace of an African on a tiny bike! We arrived at Mac's and decided to get a shared room with a fan ($12 with breakfast) and signed up for Mac's famous dinner. That night was Indian Night. Mac is the son of missionaries to Mali and was a missionary himself for some time and now runs a guesthouse in Sevare. He's a food fanatic and makes some of the best food you'll ever find in West Africa. Eating is family style, with Mac at the head of the table, and he runs an efficient table. We all had more food than we could handle. It just so happened that there were two Norwegian guys staying the night too, doing a Dogon tour before heading to Douentza to meet an older friend of theirs. Our guide from Dogon land was there with them so I caught him up on the trip we'd had and introduced myself to them. They were early 30's, extremely successful, and came from a culture maybe more materialistic than even my own. It's not that they were that way, it's just that in talking I realized they wrestled with so many of the same things i've wrestled with because of our impoverished atmosphere here. It was one of the guys first time to travel to the third-world while the other had done extensive travel in impoverished Asia. He did this for his vacations and was part of his volunteer work with the Lions Club. Both guys have great hearts and I really enjoyed our evening conversations with them. We finished dinner and talked to Mac about the route to Djenne and found out the Norwegians were going the next day too. So we set a rendezvous at Chez Baba for lunch and crashed for the night.

Day 5, Oct 30: Timbuktu

We started out to explore Timbuktu at around 7 a.m, which was foolish since everything stayed closed until around 9:30 a.m. It was nice to ride the bikes "naked", the bikes being naked not us or course. By 9:30 we'd pretty much cruised the entire place, every alley, and it was getting hot. We stopped at Hotel Columbe (there's three of them there) to get cold water and got to talk to the UNICEF director for Mali again, who was staying there. We'd talked to him the day before on the ferry (he was part of the two car group that came, letting us get on the ferry). He used to work in the Malian government and retired to work with UNICEF. I told him I was familiar with his Landcruiser, which was a new model like a former teammate used to have, and he said that while it was nice and powerful, it was difficult to pull into the villages he worked in with that vehicle. I'd never heard an African with that insight before. I'm not labeling people and am certainly not racist, but that pulling away of the "chief" mentality really made an impression.

We'd seen the Grand Marche, which actually isn't so Grand, the Sankore Mosque north of the Grand Marche (which was build in the 16th century and was one of the largest schools of Arabic learning in the Muslim world with some 25,000 students), and decided to herad to the Dyingerey Ber Moque. This mosque was just restored to resemble the large mosque in Djenne, with a smooth sand/mud/cement finish. We paid 500fcfa to climb up on the roof of the Biblotheque Al-Imam Essayouti to see it from the top since we couldn't go inside. Downstairs we got to go inside and see some of the 4,000 manuscripts present there. The guide was really well informed and since i've studied Islam quite a bit, the discussion and history of the manuscripts was fascinating. Some were of the Quran, some commentaries of the Quran, some the Hadith, some about math, others about astrology, and others about civil laws. I had a great time seeing and learning about the restoration process and how they've found so many of these ancient documents. On our way out we decided to go to a local museum that was around the corner, the Musee Almansur Korey (sidi.omar.toure@hotmail.fr), which was loaded with rooms of old timbuktu artifacts. The museum is actually a house that's been kept in it's original condition and conatains artifacts pertaining to each room (which served different purposes and was for different genders/social classes). We spent a good hour looking over and learning about things there. We walked to Gordon Laing's house (the first European to reach Timbuktu), then to Rene Caillie's house (the first to make it to Timbuktu and live to tell the tale), and then finally to Heinrich Barth's house (who made a 5 year trip from Tripoli across the Sahara). From there we went back to Sahara Passion to get my passport and then went back to Hotel Colombe for lunch. I had beef, red sauce and rice there. It was around $7 and pretty good for African cuisine. We left Hotel Colombe to go to the tourist office to get our passport's stamped to say we were in Timbuktu, ended up going to the guy's house to get him and then got our stamps. From there we decided to ride to the post office so I could mail some postcards but the post office was closed on Saturday. As we learned, this was no problem in Timbuktu. I simply went to the director of the post office's house, told him what i needed, and we went back to the post office, bought stamps, dropped the post cards and parted ways. It'd been the same way with the Almansur Korey museum. We decided to go and fill up and then went back to Sahara Passion for the evening. The sun was setting and I went out to sit in a Tuareg tent with three guys I'd met the day before. We were talking and in no time they were pulling our balls of fabric containing Tuareg items for sale. An old Tuareg pipe caught my eye so I got it for $10. An older Tuareg man wanted me to go to his house to see "desert roses" he'd collected over the years, which I did. I have to say being so far out at dusk was a bit unnerving, but a young guy who was related to Shindook (Miranda's husband) was with me so I felt ok. We talked for a while and I think he finally realized that I was actually poor so he let me go and thanked me for the visit. Walking back across the dunes at dusk, with the call to prayer sounding out across the city was a beautiful scene. As I approached the city there were lines of men on the dunes bowing down in worship, it certainly put a more beautiful image of Islamic prayer and people that i'd had before. I came back to S.P. and ate a K-Cliff bar and some beef jerky and talked about wake up for the following day. Apparently the ferry would pull out at 6 a.m. but some people arrived at 3:30a.m. to get in line. We decided to pull out of the hotel at 5 a.m. (about 30 minute drive to the ferry) so we set our alarms for 4:30 a.m., i sprayed my head and neck with 100% deet and put the earphones in and slept like a baby.