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Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Answer to the Question
I received word today that I've been offered funding for my Ph.D at Leeds, in the form of a University Research Scholarship, which pays fees and maintenance for three years (subject to my satisfactory academic progress). This is fantastic news! As you'll know if you've been reading this for a while, I've been up in the air with respect to my immediate future for a long time now. If I accept this award, which I most likely will, then I'll have three years of relative security ahead of me -- and that will be a great relief after almost two years of living on the edge of my seat, waiting for the next admissions decision.
So I'm facing up to another three years in Leeds. I've been here for four years already, and I'm not fed up of the place yet (which is just as well). I had, of course, already committed to living here until June '09 because of a housing contract.
Things almost worked out very different this year -- I was, as you know, very nearly accepted to the University of Michigan. I'm a little regretful about that, because the department and the university seemed amazing, as did the city of Ann Arbor. I'm sure I would have had a fantastic time there. But nevertheless, Leeds' Philosophy department is excellent and incredibly well suited to the research I want to do (which I'll say more about another time). I'm very pleased with the way things have worked out, and I'm not going to sit about wondering what might have been.
On a different note -- there are still two chapters of the West Africa tale to come, and I'll try to get them online soon.Labels: philosophy, uni, what i'm up to
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Sunday, July 13, 2008
China is fuelling the war in Darfur
Report from the BBC.
Another notch to chalk up in the column of 'reasons why we should be more wary of China than we currently are'.Labels: politics
1:12 PM
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Thursday, July 10, 2008
Road Tax: Headlines vs Reality
I've been following the media reports of today's Road Tax increase headlines, and have been unimpressed with the standard of debate about this issue, both in the reports and amongst the politicians. Much of the blame lies with the opponents of the plan, I think, who seem to have misused the relevant figures in order to make a political point. It's worth our while to take a few minutes and try to make sense of it all.
To summarise the proposed legislation: road tax is going to be more closely linked to the CO2 emissions of the vehicle, with the most eco-friendly cars paying nothing, and the most polluting marques will pay more. The gas-guzzlers will also be subject to a 'showroom tax', which amounts to paying more road tax in the first year that the vehicle is registered. (More details here.)
Let's start by looking at the key headline which everyone is running with--that 9.4m road users will pay more tax as a result of these plans. That's about 45%, I believe. The trouble with this is that the relevant figures apply to the 2010-11 tax year, which is two years in the future. Now presumably the price of road tax goes up by a small amount every year anyway (this is a guess--can anyone verify?). If that's so, then without this new legislation every road user would be paying more tax in the 2010-11 financial year. So if the new legislation means that only 40% of road users will be paying more, then Gordon Brown was correct to say that most motorists will be better off because of the plans. Those road users whose prices are the same in 2010 as they are in 2008 will be better off, relatively speaking. If I'm right about this, then Brown didn't mislead us, contrary to the opposition claims.
What's more, none of the media coverage I've encountered addresses the environmental issues here--the assumption seems to be that the only merit this tax could have is to make the motoring community better off. But surely the object of the legislation is to provide a disincentive for buying and owning polluting cars. The fairest way to do this would be in a revenue-neutral way, so that the total tax collected remains about the same, and that seems to be more or less what's happening.
There's also been no mention of the fact that road tax is now effectively a voluntary tax. You need only pay it if you choose to own a polluting car. The claim is that poor families are the worst hit by the new legislation, but this seems hard to support when most hatchbacks and small cars fall under the categories of vehicles whose tax will fall in 2010. [Tangentially: this is much like Boris Johnson's recent claim that a high London congestion charge for gas-guzzlers would hurt families most. Are we most concerned, I wonder, about the livelihoods of families who drive Chelsea Tractors or Porsches?] Most families have the capacity to downgrade their car if the new tax rates are a problem--though, I concede, not all.
Of course, the motivation of the misleading critics is political. The opposition parties know that Brown is walking on thin ice, and that it doesn't take much for people to lambast him at the moment. They're clearly trying to make this affair look as ridiculous as the abolishment of the 10p tax rate. I think this is irresponsible, since the two cases are clearly very different. It undermines any claim that the New Conservative Party might make to be driven by anything but political goals.Labels: environment, politics
11:18 PM
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Discussion about Character Building
Tonight's Analysis on Radio 4 was fascinating--I recommend it highly. The subject was the notion of character, and building character in children. You can read about the show here, and listen to it here.Labels: media, philosophy
9:58 PM
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Wednesday, July 09, 2008
West Africa, part 7: Dogon Country
 The Dogon people live on and around the Cliff of Bandiagara in central Mali. The spectacular scenery, along with the unique culture and religion of the Dogons, means that Dogon Country is one of Mali's most popular tourist destinations.
We originally thought we wouldn't have time to visit this area, but after the Timbuktu trip fell through we were left with a couple of spare days--ideal for a trip to Dogon Country, which is around 80km east of our location in Mopti. We arranged a two-day trek with a travel agency, who provided us with private transport and an English-speaking guide. It's pretty much mandatory to take a guide with you--most Dogons don't speak French, let alone English, and without a guide you won't appreciate the significance of many cultural artefacts. And you're likely to tread on something sacred by accident.
Over the course of two days we visited four Dogon villages (none more wonderfully named than 'Djigiboumbo', meaning 'too many babies'!). We trekked between some of the villages, giving us a chance to take in the incredible surroundings and marvel at locals with camels, etc. Our guide, Ogo, was young and pretty crazy--he kept quoting the 'only gay in the village' sketch from Little Britain--and he kep t us entertained as well as incredibly well informed about the history and culture of the Dogons.
There are many tales to tell from our time in Dogon Country, but I'll limit myself to a few highlights that stick in the memory. One village hosted a shop of artefacts which was the most amazing treasure trove I've ever seen. (See picture. I've made the pictures small so I could fit more in, but if you click on the thumbnail you'll get the full size version.) Dozens of masks, bronze statues, stone statues, hats, as well as little trinkets like bracelets (all very small, bizarrely) and larger things like wooden sculptures and chairs. Absolutely incredible.
In the village of Teli, we walked partway up the cliff to visit some 500 year-old houses--now deserted--which are built into the cliff, rather than at the base of it like most of the villages. There's a picture to the right. These houses were inhabited by races who lived on the cliff before the Dogons, and were designed to hide from Islamic invaders--houses are less likely to be spotted if they're built directly into the rock. We spent the night in Teli--the village on the plain, not the deserted village in the rocks--on the flat roof of a mudbrick house. Needless to say, what with the setting of the cliff and with the quaint Dogon village, it was quite an amazing experience.
 The trip was a fantastic break from the pace of our West Africa trip. It was still very tiring, what with all the walking and the heat, but we had a two-day break from irritating touts. People still tried to sell us things--and we bought many of them, since the goods were high quality and we thought that buying directly from the people who made them was probably a good thing--but they were far less aggressive than the sellers we found in the cities, possibly because they couldn't communicate with us verbally since they only spoke Dogon. That said, I won't forget in a hurry the time a whole family--who make their living from indigo fabrics--surrounded us and tried to sell us all of their wares at once, by piling their scarves and blankets on us one at a time! You couldn't buy much closer to where the fabrics were produced, though, since we were sat next to a large pot of indigo dye at the time. In another village, Becky had a go at the cotton-weaving machine which they use to make scarves of the same sort!
We returned to Mopti exhausted at the end of the second day, but relaxed by taking full advantage of the swimming pool at our hotel--the wonderfully-named 'Hotel Ya Pas De Problem'!
No time or space to go into the culture/religion of the Dogons, I'm afraid. If you're interested, I suggest the Wikipedia section as a starting point.
Also, for more photos--it was a very photogenic trip--check out my album on facebook.Labels: travel, west africa 2008
10:50 PM
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Thursday, July 03, 2008
West Africa, part 6: Mopti
 You might recall that, before the trip, I trumpeted the fact that we would be visiting Timbuktu--surely the city with the greatest reputation for inaccessibility. Well, it lived up to that reputation, and we didn't get to go. Mainly this was because of the horrendous journey of the day before (see part 5)--we had hoped to arrive in Mopti in the afternoon and arrange transport to Timbuktu for the next morning, but we arrived much later than expected and were unable to arrange anything. Timbuktu is at least a three-day trip from Mopti (the journey takes the best part of a day), and our tight schedule meant that we couldn't afford to wait an extra day. We were obviously pretty disappointed about this.
So we unexpectedly spent a full day in Mopti--a large-ish city which lies at the intersection of two major rivers, the Niger and the Bani. Because of this, they call it the 'Venice of Mali'...which is a pretty optimistic claim, but we'll let them off.
We had a very mixed experience in Mopti. Don't get me wrong--on the face of it, it's a really nice place. The harbour is picturesque--colourful pinasse boats sail in and out, dropping off their wares brought from further up the Niger, and you can walk through the port and see endless slabs of salt, huge piles of spices and dried vegetables, as well as dozens and dozens of ceramic pots. It's really quite something. What's more, there is a nice mosque, and we got some excellent views of the city by climbing up onto the roof of a nearby house (having paid some kids 500 CFA--62p--for the privilege).
All of that was great. But the biggest problem with Mopti was, I'm afraid, its inhabitants. Not all of them, mind--just the minority of extremely irritating touts. There are any number of these stories to tell from Mopti, but here are just two. On the morning after our arrival, we walked to the city centre and quickly picked up a hanger-on. He didn't speak English, but we deduced that he was offering his services as a guide/general assistant. We made it fairly clear that we needed no such help, but this didn't discourage h im. While we were having a snack, he returned with an English-speaking friend, who offered his services on behalf of the other guy. We politely declined. But the first guy remained. We went to the internet café for an hour--and he waited for us the entire time. After this we told him again that we didn't need his help, but he continued to follow us--before inexplicably disappearing. But for the remainder of our time in Mopti, he kept appearing occasionally, just for thirty seconds or so at a time, as if to remind us that he still existed. Very odd.
Which leads on to story number two. Having shaken the first guy, we went to lunch at a restaurant with a balcony overlooking the Bani river. The food was fairly slow to appear. During the course of the wait, and then the meal, we were approached by no less than half-a-dozen different touts. Some were selling boat trips on the river ("Come see my boat! Just look, is no problem!), or other tours, and some were selling jewellery. They came in waves, and nearly all of them stuck around even after we'd politely refused. This photo was taken  at that meal--you can see two or three of the touts waiting in the background, and Becky looking hacked off in the foreground. It simply wasn't possible to sit and have a meal, or a drink even, without getting pestered by somebody. (In fact, the same people kept turning up at different establishments...! We heard from some reputable agents that these characters are notorious and that the tourist office are after them.)
The main trouble is that the really bad ones were extremely persistent. We didn't mind being approached, generally--some people were friendly, and seemed genuinely interested in who we were and what brought us to Mali. But too many of them wouldn't take no for an answer. Those selling trinkets don't understand "we don't want them"--they simply keep asking you to name your price. Those offering their services as guides won't go away when you refuse--they will tell you (false) stories about how dangerous Mopti is during broad daylight. But worse still, when you eventually (inevitably) lose your patience and raise your voice in an attempt to get rid of them, they will take great offence. They seem to think that it's your touristly duty to put up with them for as long as they choose to bug you. They can't grasp why you'd be at all annoyed by having them following you for fifteen minutes, even though you told them immediately that you didn't need their help. It's all very puzzling.
All of that rather tarred our time in Mopti. A shame, because, as I said, it's a nice place.
More photos from MoptiLabels: travel, west africa 2008
6:05 PM
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Four Years
My flatmate Luke and I have lived together for four years--since the University of Leeds' hand of fate placed us both in Montague Burton Block A, Flat A12. That era comes to an end this week as we go our separate ways--after his MA, Luke won't be living in Leeds any more. So I need to find a new flatmate for next year!
More importantly: in case you've lost count, Becky and I are celebrating four years together today! Celebrating from afar, of course, since she's in Zanzibar swimming with dolphins and all sorts of exciting stuff--but she'll be back on English soil at the end of August.
2:49 PM
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Tuesday, July 01, 2008
West Africa, part 5: The Dusty Road to Mali
 We'd have liked to get from Ouagadougou into Mali in one day. This turned out not to be possible, so we stopped over in another excellently-named city in the north of Burkina Faso: Ouahigouya (pronounced, as far as we could figure out, Wa-yi-gee-ya).
While in Ouahigouya we took a walk around some of the back streets. We were looking for a significant religious building of some kind--I forget whether we found it or not, but the walk was more interesting because we experienced the most abject poverty that I think we saw in the two weeks. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world, and this showed in the backstreets of Ouahigouya. Open drains were a common feature everywhere, but here they were more like moats, full of scrawny goats and chickens feeding on the rubbish--which puts one off eating the meat in such places. It's difficult to describe, exactly, but it was quite an odd experience.
The following day was our most horrendous day of travel, not to mention the dustiest. The goal was to get from Ouahigouya to Mopti, in Mali--a journey of only 180 miles. But it took almost thirteen hours. We left at 7am on a crowded minibus, which took us over the border to a town called Koro. There were no dramas on this part of the journey, and we arrived by 10am. Koro is a gateway to Dogon Country (of which more later), so we were descended on by half-a-dozen or so potential guides as soon as we left the minibus. Getting rid of them is something of an art, and Becky has some good techniques--if they were smoking, as many of them were, she would exclaim "Je suis asthmatique!", which was usually very effective in getting them to clear off!
After a wait of two hours or so at Koro, we boarded an even more crowded minibus to Mopti. It was around 11:30am at this stage--but the journey to Mopti which should have taken four to five hours in fact took eight. After an hour or two's travel (during which a baby sitting next to me attempted to grab all of my possessions) we stopped at a placed called Bankass. The driver threw us all off and then drove away with all our luggage still tied to the roof. Slightly worrying--but since none of the Burkinabés/Malians travelling with us seemed perturbed by this, we decided not to panic and instead to wait with them in the blistering heat. After an hour, the driver returned (with the minibus), and we went on as if nothing had happened, with no explanation. I suspect he was dropping off some  freight.
The journey was slow. Until the last section, the roads were unpaved--and it didn't help that the driver stopped at every opportunity, often for no apparent reason (though there were more police stops than seemed necessary, too). We and all our possessions were covered in red dust by this point--see the picture of Becky's top. We eventually reached Sévaré, which is only 12km from Mopti, only for the driver to decide that he wasn't going any further. So we changed minibuses, again....but then it got worse. A storm began! Our new driver demonstrated his apparent fear of rain by driving into a (covered) petrol station and turning off the engine--seemingly waiting until the storm had passed.
This was clearly a bit of a shock to us English--stop because of rain? We'd never get anything done in England if we adopted that approach...by this stage of the day we were exhausted and frustrated, Becky especially, and she made her feelings known to the driver in (limited but commendable) French. She had to shout at him for quite a while--the highlight being her proclamation that it rains "two thousand days per year" in England--but eventually she convinced him to drive on. So drive on we did, through the huge storm, eventually arriving in Mopti at 7:30pm-ish. The storm had taken hold, and the streets of Mopti looked like shallow streams. We went to a hotel, which turned out--like most of the city during the storm--to have no electricity. So we sat on a balcony in the dark, eating spaghetti, watching the incredible storm. African storms are not like our storms: the lightning comes every couple of seconds, and when the sheet lightning is strong, it lights up everything as if it were daylight again. It's quite something to see.
It was not the kind of day that we want to repeat in a hurry! The heat, dust, and constant delays, combined with the discomfort of minibus travel and the storm, made for a bad day all round.Labels: travel, west africa 2008
3:06 PM
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Saturday, June 28, 2008
West Africa, part 4: Ouagadougou
 Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, is one of those places which has captured my imagination since I was very young. When I saw it in atlases, I wondered what on earth might go on in a place with such a remarkable name.
Becky and I's first proper experience of Ouaga--as everyone calls it--was of being lost. We had arrived at 11pm the night before and collapsed into the nearest hotel. But on rising the next morning we really had no idea where we were. Lonely Planet's maps are excellent, but they're little to no help if you don't know where you're starting from! It took us a while to get our bearings, too--mainly because we mistook a large mosque for the Grand Mosque (left--we found it eventually), and so we went around in circles for a while based on that mistaken assumption.
What struck me about Ouaga is that it felt far more like a capital city than Cotonou (which is apparently Benin's capital in everything but name). Despite Benin being a generally richer country than Burkina Faso, the poverty was much less evident in Ouaga than in Cotonou--at least in the regions that we visited. Similarly, in the regions we visited, there was far more evidence of the affluent minority (e.g. refreshing air-conditioned ex-pat supermarkets). At any rate, it was the kind of place that we found ourselves liking without really being able to put our fingers on exactly why.
As well as exploring, we spent a lot of time in  Ouaga catching up on essentials--stocking up on money, because we'd heard (mistakenly, it turned out) that there were no ATMs in Mali. We also had to pay a visit to the Malian embassy to obtain visas, since we'd heard that officials get shirty if you try to get them on the border. We arrived at the embassy after closing on our first day in Ouaga, but were told that if we came first thing in the morning the visas would be ready in one hour. We turned up at 9am, in plenty of time for our 1:15pm bus north--and were then told that our visas would be ready at 2pm! Luckily, Becky managed to persuade the official that they were urgent--and we left the embassy before 9:30am, visas in hand. What was he going to do with them for the other four and a half hours?! We'll never know.
Two other remarks about Ouaga. They have fantastically green taxis, and the restaurant Le Verdoyant serves some of the best lasagne I've ever eaten. If, for any reason, you find yourself in Burkina Faso, you should pay them a visit. Speaking of food, it occurs to me that I haven't said much about local food. Some days we gave in to the pull of European restaurants, but often there was no choice but to eat locally. By the side of roads you will find countless 'rice ladies'--women with a big pot of rice and a smaller pot of sauce--selling their wares in small black carrier bags to passers-by. The sauce was invariably very spicy...but these meals were normally good, except when the sauce had dried fish in it! A large bag--enough to feed both of us--would normally cost no more than 300CFA-400CFA (37p-50p).
In part five, you'll get to hear about our horrific day of travel over the Mali border, as well as our final stopover in Burkina Faso--Ouahigouya.Labels: travel, west africa 2008
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Friday, June 27, 2008
Wimbledon
I've found Wimbledon surprisingly engrossing these last few days. Tennis tournaments don't suck me in in the same way as snooker tournaments, or the Winter Olympics (18 months to go until curling is back on our screens....sigh...), but I did enjoy cheering on our Brits yesterday. That said, it's raining right now...
I've also enjoyed the BBC's excellent online coverage: sometimes as many as six matches available to watch live online at once, as well as the amusing text coverage of the general picture at SW19. Here's hoping that the Beeb does a similarly good job with the Formula One coverage when it takes over in 2009...Labels: computing/internet, sport
2:13 PM
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Thursday, June 26, 2008
West Africa, part 3: Natitingou and the Burkina border
 This part of the story documents two long travelling days--not the most thrilling of all, but there are still tales to tell.
We were lucky to catch the bus north to Natitingou: we turned up at the main junction in Dassa-Zoumé at around 10:45am, knowing that the (once-daily) bus had left Cotonou at 7am and that it could be upon us any moment--but not having any clue where it might depart from. Fortunately it sidled up just as we were asking a zemidjan driver where we should wait. Just as well, too, because had we missed that bus the journey could have been much longer and more arduous. As I mentioned in part 2, buses are a far more comfortable way to get around, so long as they're well ventilated. On one bus we took later on in the trip, all the other passengers inexplicably closed the windows, denying us the wonderful draught! I guess they must be used to the heat...
In every town and city along major routes, there is an army of (mai nly) children and young people waiting to descend on any bus or bush taxi which stops, however briefly. They'll surround the vehicle trying to sell you various items of food and drink--often thrusting their wares in through the windows and sometimes even boarding the bus in an attempt to sell. Most of the time this was welcome--we were usually ready for sachets of 'pure water' (as opposed to mere chilled tap water) and for a snack or two. The food varied in quality. We avoided most meat sold this way, because it was usually pretty dire. Millet cakes, deep-friend bread-style snacks and cakes were often available, and were normally at least edible. But the best roadside food, by some margin, was the mangoes: far smaller and sweeter than the mangoes we get here, they're wonderful--and they cost around 150CFA (19p) for six! And look how much Becky is enjoying hers in that photo. Sadly they grew scarcer as we went further north through Burkina Faso, as the land became gradually more arid. We really noticed the gradual decline in the quality of roadside food as we went through Burkina Faso and Mali, which are both poorer and less fertile than Benin.
We didn't spend long in Natitingou, our last stopping point in Benin, but it seemed pleasant enough (see photo of mosque). I was amused by the speakers on the outside of the Cathedral blasting out what sounded like choir practice--obviously in a bid to compete with the mosques which always have loudspeakers for broadcasting calls to prayer. We saw both churches and mosques in nearly every town, despite the fact that from Natitingou onwards the populations were overwhelmingly Muslim. On the face of it, the two religions seemed to be coexisting impressively--but obviously as fleeting we aren't in a position to make accurate judgemen ts about that sort of thing.
The following day was another long day of travel, but a successful one--we made it all the way to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, though it took 13 hours. Most of this was spent crammed in a Toyota Hi-Ace van with around 22 other people (yes, really)--and what's more, the van was piled up to twice its original height with luggage, and every time we stopped the driver had to go and tug something in the engine in order to get us started again! It was probably our most uncomfortable journey, since for large portions of it, there were five people squeezed onto our row of seats which would most comfortably have seated three. Luckily there were no other major troubles--we crossed the Burkina Faso border without drama, and obtained a visa without any requests for bribes or anything like that.
We arrived in Ouagadougou exhausted; nevertheless, we managed to drag ourselves out of bed to explore the next day. But for that, you'll have to wait for part four!Labels: travel, west africa 2008
9:40 PM
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Wednesday, June 25, 2008
West Africa, part 2: Abomey and Dassa Zoumé
 Independent travel around West Africa is no walk in the park. One of the reasons for this becomes apparent as soon as you try to travel any distance between cities. While there are some scheduled bus services, they don't exist everywhere--and where they do exist, they're not normally frequent. So, more often than not, you will find yourself travelling by 'bush taxi'--typically a Peugeot 504 or a Toyota Hi-Ace. These usually operate on no fixed schedule, but instead will depart when (and only when) they are full. Rarely will you depart from a bush taxi station ('gare routiere') within an hour of arriving. So the first virtue that one needs to develop in order to cope with travel in Africa is patience.
But that's not all. I said that bush taxis leave when they are full. Now you might think that a Peugeot 504 estate is 'full' when it has seven occupants (including the driver)--two in the front, three in the middle and two in the back. But no. If you're lucky, a driver will consider the 504 full when it has ten occupants--if you're unlucky, more. So, journeys in this mode of transport are apt to be highly uncomfortable!
I began to discover all this on day two as we headed north, in a bush taxi, from Cotonou to Abomey. The Royal Palaces of Abomey are a UNESCO-listed heritage  site. Abomey was, for a long time, the seat of the Kingdom of Dahomey--a very powerful force in the land which now makes up Benin. They Kings of Dahomey were notorious for making deals with the colonial invaders, rather than simply letting themselves be plundered--i.e. they would give up slaves to the Portugese in return for guns and other benefits. This is apparently one of the few examples of the native rulers being complicit in the slave trade.
The museum which stands at the palace today features restorations of many of the centuries-old buildings, as well as artifacts from the Kingdom of Dahomey. One room housed the thrones of all twelve kings who ruled there between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries (each had a new one made for himself). The most striking of these was the one which was built on a foundation of the skulls of the enemies! The guide for the museum spoke only French, but Becky did an excellent job of translating so that I wasn't completely clueless.
After spending a few hours in Abomey we headed 100km to Dassa Zoumé, where we spent the night. Dassa was nothing more than a stop-off for us on our journey north, but it did have some nice rocky scenery nearby (see photo).
 One other bush taxi anecdote before I finish (there will be more in the course of this tale!). Bush taxis rarely only take passengers--they will normally load themselves up with freight, too. And offloading this freight is, it seems, often a much greater priority than delivering passengers to their destinations! On the way to Abomey we were treated to a precarious drive through narrow market streets in a town called Bohicon, eventually reached a stall where the driver got rid of much of his freight. While he was offloading, a group of local kids gathered, amazed at the spectacle of white people in their territory. This was a common theme in Benin, and Burkina too--though I think that we attracted less attention in Mali, which is probably because of the greater frequency of tourism there.
Next up: travelling north to Natitingou, and crossing the Burkina border.Labels: travel, west africa 2008
9:46 PM
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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
West Africa, part 1: Cotonou, Benin
My West African journey started in Cotonou - a city on the Atlantic coast which is the capital of Benin in everything but name (Porto Novo, 30km to the east, is the official capital, but all administrative and financial centres are in Cotonou). Becky had spent a week travelling overland from Ghana, where she'd been volunteering for two months, to Cotonou, where we met at the airport (needless to say, we were both relieved that the other had arrived safely!).
I flew via Casablanca (whose airport can be adequately described in two words: disconcertingly shiny), and touched down at the ungodly hour of 3am. But we had to rise early the next morning for my first taste of visa-related West African bureaucracy. Since Becky came into Benin overland from Togo, she was issued a 48-hour transit visa on the border - a visa which she needed to get extended in Cotonou. But the immigration office, in their infinite wisdom, professes to take two days to extend these 48-hour visas...! I wont dwell on the dull tale of our visa hunt, but suffice it to say that we spent several hours waiting at the immigration office that day (although a suitable amount of complaining significantly reduced the time required to extend the visa -- a pattern we saw repeated later in the trip, too...).
The visa trouble unfortunately put paid to our plans for a day-trip to Ganvié, a village on stilts in a lake -- instead, we explored central Cotonou. Cotonou is a grubby and polluted city. Perhaps it seemed more so when I was there, because of the rains which arrived shortly after I did. Nevertheless, as my first taste of the developing world, it was quite an eye-opener. While future destinations were far more interesting, there are two particular experiences from Cotonou which stick in my mind:
- My first ride on a zemidjan - a motorcycle taxi - was quite something. Every town in Benin is full of yellow-jerseysed moped drivers waiting to drive you - quickly - to your destination, for around 200-400CFA (£0.25-£0.50). My first views of Africa in daylight were from the back of a zemidjan, an invigorating yet pretty scary ride that I won't forget in a hurry. The scariest one was later on in the trip, when both Becky and I were on the same zemi, along with our big backpacks and smaller hand luggage...!
- Our visit to the Grand Marché which is, I think, one of the biggest in West Africa. It was soggy (several hours of rain had passed) and filthy - but what a spectacle. For a start, Becky and I were celebrities inside the market. Every head turned as we walked down the increasingly narrow and dirty aisles between stalls - we sensed that the deeper into the market we went, the more surprised the proprieters were to see white people - and almost every child would run and greet us, half-excited, half-petrified. The market sold everything you can think of - even a lorry tyre if you fancied it. We didn't manage to find the fetish market, which sells dried animal bits (e.g. monkey heads) for use in traditional ceremonies, but we found one of these later in Bamako. (That reminds me. Benin is believed to be the ancestral home of voodoo. I didn't see much evidence of this, but Becky visited Ouidah, a more renowned centre, before she met me - perhaps she'll blog about it another time.)
I only spent 30 hours in Cotonou, but it was enough to get a taste of the chaos and bustle of urban West Africa. Early the next morning we were ready to move on to more exciting desinations - namely, Abomey - which I will describe in part 2!Labels: travel, west africa 2008
10:01 PM
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Back from West Africa
I've safely returned from West Africa, albeit one day later than expected due to some unforseen problems just before I left Mali (more on that at a later date).
The fortnight was hard work - West Africa is very challenging. Nevertheless, it was excellent, and Becky and I have many tales to tell about our travels! Since she's still accumulating travel tales (she's about to start a seven-week overland tour from Nairobi to Cape Town) I think I will post various anecdotes here from our experiences in Benin, Burkina Faso and Mali over the next week or two. Hopefully they will be interesting!Labels: travel, west africa 2008, what i'm up to
3:01 PM
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Wednesday, June 11, 2008
West African Travels
Here we are in Ouagadougou, 5 days after Becky and I met in Cotonou, Benin, to start our epic tour across West Africa. We're having a great time--not much time to write now, but I wanted to post this map which I meant to post last week. (Hope it works, if not, the link to it is here)
We're off to Mali either today or tomorrow--including Timbuktu!
Agrandir le planLabels: travel
11:40 AM
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