Alienation @ hartelinie.mil

This Is Africa

qui en africa parliamo il Italiano ... not quite but as i speak no French Italian works well.

After staying in Dakar for two days our roadbook led us up to St.Louis close to Mauretania. One day trip to Djoudj Nationalpark: except for seeing millions of birds and millions of Flamingos I met my first Waran and my first Python.
Next day Trip to Lampoul Desert. This miniature Mauretania is a nice little show. That the real desert around is the poverty of the people living there is well hidden behind the curtain of traditional village life.
The Billard, soccer; beer and cigarette situation is quite well. No problems playing billard with cigqrette and beer aside while watching Champions League. Food is suprisingly diverse and "Fanta cocktail" is something we really miss in Europe. Up to now - and we will get to more isolated places - roads are once in while like home and traffic is a lot more relaxed than in India. Culture shock is something that i will be missing most in my life.

We are going to skip south Senegal for safety reasons and head straight down to Kedougou from Gambia - passing Nikolo Kombo Nationalpark. Visa for Mali was so easy and fast to get that i am even a little disapointed how simple and fast things get done.

Today strawling Dakar with a short visit to Isle de Goree. Nothing special ... only one thing seems impossible: loading up my pictures to facebook

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T.I.A. 2.0

things are not easy but easy here. trying to upload pictures to facebook here in tambacounda/senegal ... but. CardReader, forget it, no DVDPlayer, no cables, Firefox never seen, DirectX absolutly NO. So i stick to what i have.
Dakar was an easy start off, a wicked African capital of a centralised country. Lots of Toubabs (white people) Spaghetti for dinner ... same for St.Louis in the north Senegal. Billard table and western jukebox music. As its not the tourist season yet we suffer the whole load of sellers concentrating on us - and they are even more desperate than in India.
things changed going down south. my personal problem not speaking French doesnt really make things easy. travelling we spend half the day for the Minibus to fill up as it leaves only with all seats taken ... and there are loads of seats in that cars. the rest of the day we spend in the car going slalom around the billion holes in the road.
In Mbour we crashed into a nice hotel with a pool and full of unexpected nurses volunteering at the local hospital. Outside that tourist hotel we havent seen any tourist yet.
So without a glue of what we should expect we stranded in Soma bargaining with the customs on the Visa which we officialy didnt need. Moses Motel is a more than basic truck-stop but friendly like hell. It doenst take half a day to have more than a handful of best friends that all play best soccer and always wanted to go to Munich. But even their help wouldnt accelerate the bus to leave - so hang out under the bus-stop-tree with the village eat their food eat their icecream drink their water. Since Mbour there is no use for a watch or time. things happen apart from a schedule.
U might be scared of sicknesses before u go ... once u r there the heat eats ur last brain cell and you just dont care. You dont mind cockroaches running in your food plate u dont care for unknown flying objects hitting your face constantly. The Mosquitos are horrible and i cant get used to ... espacially in the "stinking fever-belt of Gambia" as T.C.Boyle calls it.
No wonder all Gambia is by far more stoned red-eyed Reggae-Rasta than Jamaica as its an easy way to cope with things. right now i get bombarded even here in Tambacounda with gangster rap and reggae to be impressed. hard to stay focused on the text.
Long live Rock N Roll !!!!

So next chance will probably be Bamako/Mali where we plan to be in a few days after Kedougou and Nikolo-Koba NationalPark. Thats when my senegal number will die again.

It's not easy, my best and ever oldest toubab-friends, but it's easy