Yalla Yalla Maay Nu Bennen Auto!

The title of this blog means "May God give us another car!" in Wolof. In case you hadn't guessed, this entry is about the Senegalese trasportation system, which I have mentioned randomly in previous postings. Transportation here in Senegal and in many parts of Africa is infamously unreliable and crazy, although until Wednesday I had been having pretty good luck with it all. I live in between the two largest cities in Senegal and so my transportation situation is nothing to complain about, at least not for me. At first, the system took a little while to figure out; where to go, what to pay, how to ask for things, schedules, etc. However, a year in I've got it (almost) figured out. Or so I thought.

Having just passed the year mark, the group of volunteers that I arrived in Senegal with decided to throw ourselves a reunion party where we would come from all over Senegal to Kolda, located in the south of the country. I was really looking forward to the opportunity to see a new part of Senegal and to get to travel through the Gambia, which is necessary as the Gambia intersects the middle of Senegal (well planned, Brits). I met up with some other volunteers in Kaolack, a three hour trip from my site, so that we could all travel together. We had heard it would take us around 8 hours to get to Kolda from there so we were at the garage by 8 ready to rent a car and leave.

When we pulled out of the garage, we noticed that the exhaust from the car wasn't going out the back but into the car which made it kinda hard to breathe. This is not an uncommon occurance here in Senegal and we thought about asking for another car, but decided that even if we did we couldn't guarantee the new car would be any better so we decided just to stick it out. After all, by now we were all seasoned 14 month in volunteers and could handle anything, right?

The first two hours passed quickly and at the Gambian border the driver stopped at a mechanics shop to get the car repaired. This was a typical Senegalese mechanic shop and so all the work was done outside while we all sat on a bench in the shade. We had been there about half an hour when our driver told us he would be back in 2 minutes and took off. With all our stuff in the car. We didn't think much about this at first, but were getting kind of nervous after an hour. He finally showed back up and we were off again.

Passing through the Gambia was easy enough and we got to take a ferry across the Gambia River. After getting off the ferry we made it all of 20 Km before our car broke down. The road is an absolute maze of potholes and while driving through them we had lost several lugnuts on one of the tires and it was hanging on by one. So we plopped down in the shade again to wait for our driver to go to the next town over to get some parts. This of course happened during the hottest part of the day and we quickly ran out of water. Three girls went to find a village where we could ask for water. While we were gone a man drove a donkey-cart past with full bottles of water. Only problem was, we had sent all of our empty water bottles with the girls. He was nice enough to give us a few cups of water and the girls got back soon enough so that we could continue sitting in the shade. After three hours, our driver came back and changed the tire with a borrowed jack, as he didn't have one in the car of course. We managed to get out of there around 5:00, which was just in the nick of time as we had to make it to the border crossing before close since we didnt have an overnight visa to stay in the country and there are hyenas.

As soon as we reentered Senegal there was a loud pop in the back of the car and the exhaust pipe had fallen off and was dragging on the ground. Driver acknowledged that it happened but didnt stop to do anything for another hour or so when we stopped at a big intersection known as Carrefour (French for intersection). Our car was obviously not doing so hot, so we asked around for another car leaving to Kolda, but were told there weren't any more leaving until the morning.

While there a group of men came up to help with the car and as it was already dark asked if we had any flashlights. There is one on my cell phone and so I lent it out. After dinner, I came back to the car and asked where the man with my cell phone had gone and no one seemed to know who I was talking about. Awesome. I hadn't gotten his name, all I knew was that he was really short. Shorter than I am. The Senegalese men at the garage yelled at me about what an idiot I was to give my cellphone away, which I was PERFECTLY aware of at that point. I was so upset I started crying. Daniel had been calling my phone repeatedly and we finally got ahold of the guy who had it and asked him to come back. We had a Senegalese communicate that part of the message so there was no misunderstanding. Nobody can yell like a Wolof, after all.

When Lamine got there all the men at the garage who had been telling me what a ridiculous, stupid tourist I was suddenly switched teams and surrounded this poor little man like a lynch mob. Everyone started yelling and I thought they were going to beat him up. All I could do was stand there yelling that I wasn't angry, I forgave him and wanted to go to Kolda. The moral of the story is that it was really quite frightening, but eventually ended and we finally got to leave that Godforsaken intersection heading to Kolda, after spending 2 hours there. We finally found a driver who was driving home to Kolda and agreed to take us. We had already paid the price all the way to Kolda, but had to pay an additional fare on top of this one to get there. After the day we had had, none of us objected. We just threw our money at the driver and begged him t get us out of there.

Praise be to God we pulled into Kolda around midnight, 16 hours after leaving. It was such a long day and I have never been as glad to be anywhere as I was to pull into Kolda that night.

One positive thing is that having lived here for 14 months., I was really well equipped to handle these situations and could laugh about them and hang out on the side of the road for several hours knowing (well, somewhat hoping) that things would work out, which they did. If this had happened at this point last year, I would have completely freaked out. I am very proud of the ways in which I have grown over the past year.