Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Le Voyage of West Africa

This will be short post, since im on limited time with a terrible keyboard at an internet cafe in Bamako, Mali. Left Ghana last tuesday after finishing my last exam on the saturday. The last days were spent packing and saying good bye to all the fantastic people i studied and lived with, many of whom ill probably never see again.
My travelling companion for this trip is Halea from UC Berkeley - whom I met at my time in Ghana and who, like me, have a big passion for travelling. In addition she, like me, had time to travel through west africa over christmas, so we decided to plan our "voyage" together. French is intruding my vocab here. A note my mother: Im getting by everywhere in french. Halea speaks less than me, so Im the french speaker, which doesnt say a lot. but hey - were still alive. !!!

So our voyage so far: We went from Accra to Ouagadougou, and then on to Mopti in Mali. From there we took a boat up the river to Timbuktu. Fantastic 2 day journey, on a public african transport boat. In other words Epic!. After a day in Timbuktu, which included visits to old mosques and a camel trip into the desert, we spent all day yesterday making our way to Bamako in Western Mali. (check google maps).

Tomorrow we are heading to Dakar, before leaving towards Banjul on the 25th, to catch a flight to Sierra Leone. in Sierra Leone we'll spend two weeks doing a mosquito-net-usage survey, as a follow-up to a distribution this past summer(see www.gmin.org).

When I have more time, and energy, ill elaborate more in detail. Upload some pictures, share some funny anecdotes etc. But that will have to wait for now.

Cheers,
Jacob and Halea in West Africa (currently Bamako, Mali)