After a good break in Bamako

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After a good break in BAMAKO, the capital of Mali, straight, tarred roads and large multi-story buildings, it was back to the mud-brick buildings of SEGUE, a village North East of Bamako and on the magical Niger river. In Bamaku the green, polluted sludge (yet reflecting cool in that hot city) was hardly moving.
The rainy season was still to come and the river was at its lowest. By the time it has reached SEGUE though, the river was flowing relatively swiftly and the water seemed clearer. I was arguing with an ancient taxi-driver near the river where I’d read that there was a roof top facility for sleeping. These taxis are a world apart. On arrival off the bus, I was hassled by a man who said he’d take me for 500. A bit steep, I thought, but I am a white-skin. However, the practice is then to summon another man to actually execute the drive in exchange for paying a backhander. This I accepted, but when we got to the river, he demanded 2000. Outrageous! I refused and he stood firm. An English speaking man came along and helped me out. He also, conveniently, knew that the rooftop was not available and then offered me a room where he lives for 4000. Again, a bit steep for Segue (that is what I had paid for an air conditioned, large room with decent shower facilities in Bamako), but I agreed.
If an enclosed mud courtyard with 4 families sharing the rooms off it can be compared to a luxury flat in Docklands, this was it. Mr. Ex, as I later called him in my mind, rented two rooms for himself – a real word of luxury living!! The rooms were so hot and stuffy that, although I was offered the bedroom. I chose to sleep in an alleyway behind the “flat”, where the washing line is. Mr. Ex. had explained that he is a guide and that he4 had just had Americans for 3 days, but had no money, so I had to pay for the petrol to his room and was subsequently charged for all kinds of amounts on top of his fee for a ½ day guided tour the next day. This was to a village a few miles south of Segue which has ancient mosques and where the people still live “traditional” lives. But of course, you have to pay the headman to visit, the mosque-keepers to look, the women to photograph and the local guide to walk you back to the car, my guide having conveniently gone to do something urgent:
Mr. Ex’s English was really appalling and I struggled to communicate. When he said something about the mosques, I just couldn’t understand. He repeated ‘ex’ a few times and I gave up. “The Americans understand me” I was told (I think they are polite). Eventually we came to and old mosque and he pointed to the roofline where part of the decoration is an ostrich egg. “Look, ex”, he said;
In the middle of the village is a structure in strong contrast to the mudbrick buildings.
All concrete and metal. I looked at the erected plaque: Donated by the people of Saudi Arabia. I can just imagine the self-satisfied dignitaries who precided at the unveiling ceremony 5 years ago. They lad dug a well and given it to the people of the village. The only problem, in a village which has survived for over 1000 years, is that the well was dry after 3 years and just stands there as a monument to interference by do-gooders.
Sorry, you will see my cynicism constantly aroused on this trip!
Because Mr. Ex has a car, he is a very successful ‘guide’. But it breaks my heart to see my profession so mutilated! If you can ‘speak’ another language, no matter how badly, you can call yourself a ‘guide’.
Tourists know no better and they are all happy to pay extremely high prices for no ‘guiding’ whatsoever – only being taken to and the things being pointed out. By now I have encountered many so-called ‘guides’ and not one has ever been able to coherently give me e.g. the country’s history or the reason why a place is where it is. Neither is the concept of getting together to protect their status through an organization as it is each one for himself.
Mr. Ex. watched TV in his room and I thoroughly enjoyed joining in and watching the women and children living in the courtyard. There is the usual well for cooking and washing water and they bring out portable charcoal burners for all cooking purposes. I tried some millet pounding. Very hard work!
The people are very conscious of cleanliness and, although no toilet paper in used are ever go to the hole without a jug of water. Regular daily full-bodied washes with a small busket of water and soap are part of the ritual and children soon learn to soap themselves all over in large basins of water. The little once are lift to play with water and that’s keep cool. Food is scrupulously sifted and sorted for impurities and repeatedly washed as rained before preparation. The flows are constantly swept on there is no contains for peelings etc. But the irony is that the piles of detrius are then left to redistribute themselves………………
I thought “how clever” when one of the mothers of a small baby brought out one of these net cake-tents we used to put over newly-baked cakes or food to keep off the flies. This one is oblong and is designed for a baby laying on the floor. No such things as cots or prams or special beds. Babies are hardly ever heard to cry and are carried on the back and suckled openly as part of daily living.

Mr. Ex Soon became a memory as I encountered the next male to take over my life. But this was different.


SECDOLO, know as Sec., was forceful enough with his English to persuade me to sleep on his roof when the place I had been looking for in Mopti turned out to be closed for the season. These ‘guides’ know just where to hang out in case a hapless tourist appears…
Sec shares a very small backyard with his brother and a French-speaking guide. My mattress was hauled onto the roof and I spent many hours there grappling with head-torch, book, mosquito net and radio.
Sec is highly intelligent and very willing to learn. It was a pleasure to see the sights and sounds of Mopti with him. We walked for miles through back-streets, stopping very frequently to inspect an activity, which most ‘guides’ would ignore or think as of no interest to a tourist: how to cook a certain food; how to make the dough for fried buns; how to create a sieve or construct a shoe; how to sell drinking water; how to make furniture or to dry fish; the list is endless and my delight in seeing and often trying these activities, boundless. Can you imagine trying to shape a nail for boatbuilding from a small piece of red-hot metal? Or peel an orange with a razor blade so that all that zest is removed? Or make a weight for fishing nets in sand with molten lead and a piece of straw? Who thinks up there wonderful solutions?
I am constantly filled with awe when confronted with their ingenuity. One of my favorites was along the river bank when we came upon a temporary home (the Bozo people are fishermen and move down the bank as the river empties in the dry season). The women had a basket of freshly-caught small catfish. She would pull out a side-fin, which has barbs on it, bend the fish sideways until she can insert the tail, firmly into the fin, thus leaving a round object to die and dry and be sold as a delicacy on the streets.
Sec knows his limitations and is delighted to learn about Tourist Guiding as a profession.
By the end of our time together he was assuring me that he would to the best Tourist guide in Mali!

But his English was still African; despite his delight in accurately remembering and then repeating my phrases to me; vis ‘the most important geographical feature in Mali is the river Niger which has its source in Guinea and flows in a North Westerly direction towards Timbuktu where it then turns upon itself and flows southwards through Niger and Nigeria into the Atlantic ocean’. Another favourite which he enjoyed using wherever he could came after I had asked him about the loud-voiced conversations of women, which often sounded very argumentative. He explained and I interpreted; “They are just indulging in a bit of banter”.
And so we too, indulged in banter as he took me to Dogon Country. He himself is Dogon and could give me a very good insight into the way of life in these isolated villages along a sudden escarpment in the Mali Sahel. There are very many villages, but as they were isolated for so many years and there is still no motor road between them, they each developed a unique way of life. The escarpment in 300-400m high and villages are situated both above and below this formidable sandstone cliff where the agriculturalist Dogon people ousted the small, red haired Tallum cliff-dwellers at the end of the 12th century. They destroyed the trees which provided animals for food and the Tallum had to flee southwards, leaving caves within the cliff faces which no-one can reach today. The climate was probably such at that time that there were vines growing up the cliff which could be used as ladders. Today the Dogon villages are connected via steep rock paths in the fissures of the escarpment or little sandy paths on the plateau. The stonework is perfect and there is never a loose stone on the paths – when you think of the women carrying heavy water…

I had been too active in the sun, having, on two consecutive days, hired the long narrow pirogues on the river to be ‘poled’ to islands where we could swim in the river in the clean, fast flowing water. And this during the hottest time of the day. So it is not surprising that I succumbed to heat-stroke and was not physically as fit as I should have been for the 5 days of walking. I struggled up or down the escarpment. Sec made sure that we spent the 6-7 hours of midday heat resting and sleeping in a village and then, wherever possible, we rented a bullock or donkey cart on the plateau to take us 5-6 km to our next village stop. It was a magical time though, despite the inroads of tourism and western goods, I remember one night listening to the banter from below my rooftop bed and asked Sec to translate. Our host had recently been married and the local young wives had been invited to meet the new bride and inform her about the village. Much laughter and banter and things were said like “she did not come to my child’s naming ceremony, so you must not invite her...”. As I drifted off to sleep I could hear a few familiar words coming from them: Nokia, Orange, Samsun….
My cussedness as a non-tourist came to the fore in Mopti. It is not far to Djenne with the largest mud-brick Mosque in the world. And it is only a few days’ desert-track ride away from Timbuktu. By this time I had seen enough mud-brick Mosques to last a long time and I had also seen a TV programme all about Djenne a few months before. Information about the fees elicited just to enter these villages and then all the other taxes and entrances fees with which the tourist in hit, put me off visiting there. Instead, I hired a reed-covered boat and for 4 days, had the most magical trip on the Niger. I had told the owner, Warra that he could bring a child or two along as the only passengers would be Sec and myself. He duly turned up with a little boy who was a delight and absolutely necessary to bail out and the ever-seeping water. As the deal struck was that he would supply the food, Warra also brought along a “cook”. Another charming young man who also shared duties at the tiller or pushed us off the sand when were often stuck in the shallow river.
It was “my” boat and I could do as I wished: stop to fall overboard if too hot, stop to visit a remote village or stop to just walk along the banks to get dry or see what the people were doing and meet the boat further up or downstream. As always, Sec could translate my questions and the answers and I simply enjoyed the freedom of having meals prepared on the boat and then stopping to eat in the sudden silence when the engine is switched off. Or to find a suitable beach on which to sleep under the stars and eat/drink freshly prepared food.
The deal was that we would go to Lake Debo, half-way to Timbuktu. It is an enormous lake, and at this time of the year, extremely, confusing with all the islands and inlets. I know that we only entered towards the southern part, but that was good enough to give one an idea of what it must be like when the river is full. The morning after our night on the lake-shore we watched the hippos cavorting in the water opposite our beach.

So far, after 2 months of traveling, I have not uncounted any hostilities, or felt threatened. It could be of course because of the delightful ‘minders’ I collect, or just because I am determined not to be intimidated or treated like a stranger. Thus my clothes are low-key or traditional and I eat, live, walk amongst the locals and I definitely do not have a camera. There was only one incident which I would not have noticed if Sec and Warra had not reacted so angrily. In London, I had read about a very courageous woman who had kayaked on her own down the Niger to Timbuktu via Lake Debo. She had entered a village to get food and was treated with suspension and hostility. The three of us were in a Fulani (heardsmen) village. I was in my full Mali outfit with 10 children hanging off every finger and thumb and more surrounding us. It is at times like this that Diana, Princess of Wales comes to mind (the Queen is untouchable). One has to smile and wave and let them touch and grip wherever they want to. Here I was, in full flight and arrogantly walking though their village. A youth, probable surprised by this sight as he looked down from repairing a mud-roof, threw a clod of dry mud in my direction. It missed, but my minders were furious and I was forced to consider what it looked like to them. I tried to imagine an English mediaeval village and how those dwellers would react to a stranger marching through their village. A few more cow-pats no doubt…


The day I left Mopti Sec was very upset and in a frenzy of trying to show his concern, showered me with things. I was jammed into a corner by a broken window and we were still waiting for more people to arrive/load up. Sec had bought a fan, which I lost in the scramble to get a seat, so another appeared thought the window. Then cold water then some buns then a packet of meat was offered and I declined. To him, eating meat three times a day was essential. So he brought some biscuits, mangos, more water.
Lastly, because I could not resist those liquid eyes behind the turban of a Tuareg turban-seller, a bright blue turban was thrust though the window. The vehicle is pushed and away we go!

Another country and another minder...

OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO
In Ouagadougou, early one morning, I caught the bus that would take me all the way through Togo from the North to Lome in the South. Sitting next to me was a young man from Cameroon who had been studying in Rabat, Morocco, until a stroke left his left side paralyzed. He was now on his way home. I had promised his friend who put George W onto the bus, that I would keep an eye on him. So for once I was the ‘minder’. This did not last very long, as Larry, at the bus-station of our arrival in Lome told as where to get an hotel. The next morning he was there to show us around town. No surprise there, except that Larry had a friend who was also free and spoke better English. Again, nothing new! The four of us slowly explored (George W. on a crutch was remarkably courageous) and enjoyed each other’s company. George W. stayed on for another to nights and as always, email address were exchanged. Larry and Candide continued their minding – not for money, as while I paid for taxis and food, they never, asked for anything.
When I decided to go into the hills near Kpalime, about 120km N/W of Lome, it seemed logical to take Candide along.
Candide and Larry are both from the Ivory Coast and left there over 3years ago as refugees to escape slaughter or forced conscription. Life has not been easy and every small thing is appreciated. They, like most Africans, have a remarkable talent for languages. Candide speaks six African languages apart from French and English and within two days of us been in the mountains, he was managing to understand and begin to converse in the local language. My jaw just drops at such talent!


After a night in the main town of Kpaline, we walked the 16km up into the hills where we were given a ‘house’. I had a bedroom and Candide slept on the settee in the large living room which had a substantial table and chairs – ideal for eating in luxury and playing cards.

Candide is an artist, but his talent has not been exercised in Togo. Being in prison as a stateless person, without fixed work and homeless doesn’t help. However, as soon as we were in the hills and he could breathe fresh air and see abundant foliage, his creative juices began to rise and he ended up making the most eye-catching stone sculptures from stones gathered on our walks. Our ‘landlord’ is unfortunately one of those ‘artists’ who caters for the tourist trade with ‘African’ paintings. Sadly not good, but painted on banana leaves with the must amazing natural colours. He is also unfortunately responsible for glass-fronted picture boxes with mounted butterflies. Men with butterfly nets are constantly being bumped into on whatever trail one takes through the hills. The butterfly displays are created without any sensitivity and I was quite upset at seeing such a striking natural resource being indiscriminately reduced. Already the lush foliage on the hillsides is being denuded and the trees which are ‘protected’ stand out in the bare ground without their natural base cover. On a Saturday, when the police/guards are not on duty one hears them being illegally felled. There are generally only very small birds in the air and no animals apart from small rodents and lizards. A nearby hill is call Kloto --‘to’ means hill and ‘klo’ means tortoise and the hill used to be teaming with these harmless animals. Now totally extinct. All that was left was butterflies and now these are being caught and mounted for the tourist. But even our unscrupulous landlord (who also called himself a guide) was impressed with Candide’s art. We left the home decorated with many pieces of ‘rock art’ and Candide’s rucsac was heavy with stones!
Being in the hills with lush foliage and fresh air, was a lovely contrast after the desert and dusty cities. An added bonus was that one of our local minders (‘guide’ to him) Didi, had a grandfather who was a herbalist. He therefore had inherited a tremendous knowledge about plants. And with Candide’s reawakened memory of life in Cote D’Ivoire where he had planted and lived in the countryside, we were constantly discussing and looking at, smelling and rubbing between our fingers the leaves, flowers, stems, barks and roots of plants we passed. One day my hands were blue-green from crushing certain leaves and the next day, bright red from the young teak tree leaves. Candide happily kept a special root in his mouth which Didi assured him would keep lions at bay. And it worked! It was a happy week of carefree walking, talking, playing cards and never stopping from eating mangoes. ’twas the season… The roads and paths were yellow with the fruit and after every brief spell of rain, just more yellow. I called the place mango heaven.

Accra, and another world, is just 2 hours drive from Lome. Candide came with me as it was worth my while to pay for his return fare. He can speak the language; find an hotel, money-changer and a washer-woman. He can explain the intricacies of the city and how to get where and what to pay for taxis. As minder, he was invaluable.




CLOTHES.

The recent visit to the local Ghanaian village chief’s, audience with petitioners, reminded me of the impracticality of some Africa dress The elders surrounding the chief sat on low stools. Every time they rose to say anything, the elaborate toga, wrapped around the waist and then over the shoulder, had to be lifted and adjusted. Hands were constantly rearranging the folds.

When I wore a milufa in Mauritania/Mali, I really never felt totally at home in it. My smooth hair meant that the cover constantly slipped off my head and although I learnt to push my arms through the appropriate folds, it was often at the expense of dropping the material on my shoulder or exposing too much arm. Sahel Arabic men wear voluminously white and blue Niele which are worn over very ordinary T-shirts or jeans. The extended sleeves which reach the ground are folded over the shoulders. The structure trails on the ground. Both hands are needed to lift and shift and the shoulders are constantly being hitched into place. The reason for the strange garment apart from the circulation of cooling air is that it can be worn as a blanket at night. An intricately embroidered panel on the front is a pocket for money.
Thus both sexes are in contact interaction with their clothes: pulling and tucking, plucking and scrunching, pinching and swishing, pushing and lifting, smoothing and folding, throwing and dropping, holding and releasing, waving and wiping, dropping and clamping…Oh for a Thesaurus! I could go on further, but you get the idea.

In Mali, the women of the local tribes all wear only a skirt, yet not far away, culture changes and dictates different values. To cover the bosom becomes essential.
The elaborate clothes (why on earth the puffed and stuffed shoulder pads? But then I think of 18th Century dress in Europe and nothing is new) of Ghana are very striking. The material used in colourfully patterned and a piece of the same cloth, tied in the most amazing ways, decorates the head. In the Ashanti Region of Central Ghana, the styles of woven Kente cloth are sewn together to create the men’s togas. Today, many printed versions of these are used in everyday dress.

Despite the lack of bathroom, everyone is scrupbuly clean and I delight in seeing small children stand in a bowl of water and thoroughly scrub themselves from top to toe.
The same can be said for clothe. They are constantly being washed wherever a water supply is available. In the middle of the towns, by the riverside, where communal taps and wells are, on weekends when the market sellers are absent and the drying space can be utilized. Clothes are dried on grass, sand, rocks, and bushes and from washing lines.
There seems to be a special emphasis on clean feet and shoes. So far in West Africa I have not seen a shoeless person. Plastic sandals are clean and leather shoes are highly polished and proudly worn. Displayers of shoes are full of inventiveness as each sellers tries to outdo the next. In Lome on a Sunday, a vast area is used for shoe selling with extraordinary displays. The only time I raw a dignified row of polished secondhand shoes--- as though they could not be too exhibitionist--- was outside the refugee centre in Lome. This is where people with nothing go for hope and maybe a presentable pair of shoes.

On my way to school one morning, I passed a tiny girl in school uniform and yellow plastic sandals crying her heart out. I asked someone what the problem was “the grandmother forgot to clean her sandals”- and she was not going to leave the house until they were clean.




PLANTS


No one could love trees more than I do and I have been known to cry when a tree is being felled. But I have finally seen a tree I hate! In this subtropical climate it is very common in built-up areas where it is planted as decoration. The leaves are long and thin and the tree itself is just a simple ‘pole’ up to 10m tall with these bright yellow leaves hanging down from the top like a stack of regimental bearskins-no character or use. They also remind me of those garish car wash brushes at petrol stations.

Trees provide much needed shade and shelter and it is always a pleasure to see how they are respected and used extensively for those purposes. The cool shade of a tree cannot be reproduced. However, I did see a bad example of urban planning/clean-up in Ouagadougou where the authorities had decided to regulate the haphazardness of the street market. They built a vast edifice of concrete to supply shade. The stall-holders obviously did not like the restrictions nor the oppressive heat the concrete roof created. It mysteriously “burnt down” one day and stands as a forlorn edifice to misguided do- gooding, the gates firmly locked and happy stall-holders selling on its steps. At the end of the day, women wearing municipal jackets, come with their hand brushes and flat pieces of cardboard to sweep up and place the day’s messes in special containers. Victory to free enterprise! Trees are also extremely useful to clothes sellers, who display their wares from the branches.

One of the most extraordinary trees is the calabash tree. It looks like any other but the ‘fruit’ is enormous! If anybody has seen the great calabashes which are used for beer making, you can imagine what the tree that produces such monsters, must look like.
Imagine a very ordinary tree with vast balloons hanging off it. The very large calabashes are obviously prized, so if one develops a crack (usually from the top opening)it is taken to a street mender who carefully drills holds on both sides of the crack and then plugs the opening and ‘stitches’ the sides together. The calabash vine produces smaller, oblong calabashes which are often split and used as ladles. I am a great believer in herbal medicines (the source of most of our chemical substitutes), but sometimes one’s faith is stretched. I watched a man shaping round pieces (the size of a large checker-board piece) from dry calabash parts. These were then drilled in the center to create a round thing with a 1cm hole like a washer. Yes, they were interesting items but what on earth were they to be used for? “They are going to be sent to Ghanaian women in the U.S.A”, I was told. “What for?” “To cause an abortion”. I was totally nonplussed. But then I began to think about it. The flat ring is large enough to cause great discomfort as it travels through the body. As it will not disintegrate, the faeces can go through the central hole and the large item can well cause pressure/injury to the sensitive uterus which can result in a miscarriage. Can anyone solve this problem for me? The other major use of calabash pieces is for the intricate cutting out (about the size of two playing cards side by side) of traditional Adinkra cloth designs. These are then turned into seals which when dipped into dye are used as designs on the cloth.

Talking of mysterious uses, I wonder where the belief comes from which come from that if you put the root of a certain root in your mouth, it will keep away the lions. We happily walked the hills with roots in our mouths. But as there never were any lions in that area, are not quite sure how effective the root really was.

My agony goes out to those protected trees which stand sentinel amongst the exposed areas of cultivation. The forests are lush and the layers of canopy all interrelate with each other and are mutually dependent for successful growth. When everything except the large buttress trees is removed, those 100yr old trees cannot last very long without their groundcovers. And they just do not seem happy. Illegal logging is a perpetual problem, and in Togo, on a Saturday when the police are off duty, we could hear the chainsaws felling trees.

It is remarkable how lush the forests of Central Africa are. Here in Ghana I spent a day ‘farming’ as they call it. Plots of cultivated land are often quite far form the compound so a decision has to be made to walk over there to spend a day farming. Inevitably, one returns with a sack of yams or cassava and large green leaves and chilies. Every plantain tree or cassava stick belongs to someone. I noticed walking along a lonely road that there were some very desirable maize corps coming into ripeness next to the road. The following day, when I passed again, there were mysterious piles of stones with protruding sticks as well as a brown medicine bottle tied to one of the stalks. I wonder if that was some kind of evocation of the spirits to protect the crop and keep thieves away.

Teak trees are planted quite close together so that they grow straight and tall. These trunks are then used for telephone poles. I take great delight in releasing the vibrant red/orange of the young teak tree leaves. The color is so bright that it does not seem natural. But it makes a very successful paint! I wish and could remember all the plants, leaves and roots that supply a great variety of colours.

My favorite plant is the ‘sensitive plant’ (part of the mimosa family and not carnivorous). It has pink fluffy flowers. When one touches a feather-like leaf, it instantly starts to close and a little more touching and the whole leaf bracket instantly wilts and lies down as though ‘dead. How on earth a plant with no central nervous system can react so quickly is simply inexplicable to me. I tested the plant one day; after a vigorous wave across the plant, it took 3 minutes for the leaves not directly hit to start opening again and the leaves that suffered the most impact from my hand, started to open 9 minutes afterwards. In total it took 23 minutes to return to it original shape.


I was chatting to the headmistress of the infant school, comparing life here to that in England. “Do you have maize?”. “ Well yes, over the last 20 yrs due to global warming and chemical manipulation”. “What about cassava?”. “No, that is a subtropical plant”. “So then do you grow rice?” “No too cold”. “But what do you eat?”. “Potatoes!”. Difficult for people to understand how different our lifestyles are. Here your meal is mainly a carbohydrate like cassava, yam, cocoyam, plantain or rice and a sauce to go with it. The sauce (soup as it is called) always has chili as a base and then whatever is available that day --tomatoes, onions, large green leaves, ground nut paste, okra, garden eggs (egg plant - small round white objects). Most of these items are grown on the farms and freshly picked or dug out of the ground when needed. When I say to people that our ‘fresh’ fruit and veg in London is often days if not months old, they are quite horrified. And I know myself how healthy I feel as a result of only eating local, fresh foods. Digging cassava root out of the ground is quite hard work. The tubers (like a dahlia plant) can be very large and heavy. The plant above ground has a long stem with umbrella-like leaves at the top. When the root has been removed, a piece of stem is cut off and reinserted into the same earth. That will soon start to sprout. Farming could not be easier! Yams are vine plants which are planted in mounds because it is the root that is cultivated. Like a carrot. These can be enormous and are big business. They are very heavy and to see the overloaded lorries in the North of Ghana, which is the main area of cultivation, struggling to move makes one wonder whether they will ever reach Accra markets.


Medicinal plants are everywhere and one just needs to know what to do! Bark, roots, seeds, and so on cure constipation, remove the malaria fever… Larry’s brother was suffering with a malaria fever, so we took Lantana (a weed in South Africa) leaves and dried them. The crushed dried leaves are then made into a tea to bring down the fever. I was shown two other plants which have the same properties. The nime tree keeps mosquitoes at bay and various parts of the tree are used in anti-malarial medicines. It is also a good supply of wood for charcoal and where the nime trees are abundant, one can see small clouds of smoke rising where the charcoal burners have lit their stacks of branches cut about a week before. These stacks are built above the ground after the topsoil has been removed. The pile of wood (about 2m x 4m) is covered by fresh grass and the earth from the topsoil and a corner left exposed where a fire is lit. This slowly spreads into the wood and after about a week of slow burning, the stack falls in on itself and the charcoal is ready to sell. As a major source of energy, it is remarkably clean and efficient both in the production and use.
In the Sahel, farming is carefully managed near sources of water and it is heartbreaking to see how cans of water are carried from afar to nurture a plant. And of course, planted areas, have to be well protected from goats! Subtropical farming just needs to keep the goats way. Every tree has an owner, no matter how ‘wild’ the area may look. When I helped to weed a patch belonging to my family, there was an unseen line between her and her neighbour’s land. I was happily wielding my panga between the cassava, maize, chilies and plantain when she told me to move to another area as I had stepped into the other person’s farm. I really could not see the difference!


The coco-nut tree produces an oval-shaped yellow fruit from the trunk of the tree. Ghana is famed for its cocoa production and farmers, who may only have a few trees, are encouraged to produce good crops with fertilizers. There seem to be endless middlemen who would buy the dried kernels from the small farmers and sell them on to agents in town……… everyone making a living.


Large containers of bright orange palm nuts are sold in the market. If these are carefully pounded, the hard black kernel does not disintegrate, but the fibrous red outer shell is separated to give a reddish oil and is used to make a delicious soup. The kernel is finally pounded to extricate the palm oil.

In Lome I was taken to the outskirts of the town to see the commercial production of croton (those plants with multi colored leaves.) and delicate ivy which sells so well in Europe as indoors plants. Here the ‘root’ plants are grown in vast quantities under flame trees. The flame trees are carefully pruned to provide even shade to the plants which are then harvested of cuttings which are then expertly planted and left to mature in shade houses with controlled humidity. Once the cuttings have reached the right size, they are packed and sent by air to the flower markets of Holland. This vast enterprise, started by a Swedish man, is a major export for Togo. And the unwanted branches from the thousands of flame trees has created its own industry. Lines of women come to collect the branches and tie them into bundles to be carried on their heads to be sold as sought-after firewood.

In the North of Ghana, grow the Shea nut trees. The fruit is like a ping-pong ball and the fleshy layer of fruit is reasonably unpleasant to eat. However, through a very elaborate process of drying, boiling and grinding of the large nuts, there eventually appears a good ‘butter’ which can be used in cooking as well as on the skin. The Body Shop has exploited this market.


Although the subtropical plant-cover is so lush, there is a total lack of animal life. Apart from lizards, hardly anything moves. There are small birds above and butterflies, but generally anything edible has long since disappeared or is burnt to extinction. However, fruits are a joy. When the Germans were living in the mountains of Togo 100 yrs ago, they planted many mango trees. It was the season for ripe mangos to regularly fall from the trees and I was in Mango Heaven! Both sides of the road would be yellow with fruits and I dare not confess how many I ate every day: Apart from mangoes, I had eaten freshly picked pawpaw, avocado pears, star fruit, custard apples, strawberries, bananas, coconuts, oranges, lemons, guavas and pineapples. Coconuts are all over and the palm trees are laden. The coconut sellers use a panga and the green, heavy object is deftly reduced to the central nut area with a few judicious slashes. Then the top of the nut is quartered off so that the refreshing milk can be drunk. If you wish to eat the soft fruit inside (what we know as the hard dried white stuff which is turned into desiccated coconut) the nut is deftly sliced in half and part of the original cover is turned into a scoop which you can then use as a spoon to extract that delicious fresh fruit.


MOHAMMED ALI AND THE LONGEST TRAIN IN THE WORLD (MAURITANIA)

Well, one cannot miss a chance to have a ride on what boasts to be ‘the longest train in the world’. In California I used to count the wagons of the very long trains in the central agricultural area. My record was 120 wagons. This train is said to be about 3km long. It plies between a town in the desert called Zouerat where iron ore is extracted and its own
port in Nouadhibou and the journey lasts 17 hours.
After I had bought my ticket in the bare dessert area a tall young men presented himself as my ‘protector’. Wearing an elegant brown, full-length robe and a black turban around his head with only the eyes exposed, it was the look to turn one weak at the knees! (Sorry, Peter O’Toole). He said his name is MOHAMMED ALI and that he lived in both France and Mauritania. He had a haughty, commanding air and told me that he knew who the well-known thief was among the passengers who were gathered under the only shade besides the bare rail tracks. But he assured me that I would be looked after. Did I say I was weak at the knees? My saviour!
The train finally arrived and I was overwhelmed by the sight and sound of this incredibly long and hissing ‘monster’ from no-where slowly passing us and nine minutes later, coming to a shuddering halt. I had counted 144 wagons plus the two front engines and the end carriages, one of which was a passenger coach.

The subsequent melee to climb the high step into the coach was exhilarating if not a bit frightening. Everyone with a free arm was grabbing, pushing and slapping his or her way onto the narrow steps. Combined with bags, baskets, suitcases, 5-liter bottles of water, all manner of plastic containers, babes in arms, it was worse than any flight from a menacing monster. I doubt if Hollywood could recreate it and Michael Palin certainly did not experience it!

In all of this my saviour managed to get my rucsac passed over and demanded there and then that I give him the equivalent of 1/3 of the train fare for “protection”. How could I refuse in all that chaos? Protection was not mentioned again and as I was in a compartment with mainly women and children and endless pieces of luggage stacked in every nook and cranny, blatant thieving would have been impossible. Anyway, at night, as there are no lights, there is a watchman who patrols the carriage and MA never came near our compartment. While trying to find luggage space on the rack above my seat, the train begins to move and I hear the lady behind me, dressed in traditional clothes, talking in Arabic. I assume it is to her son, but I turn around and I’m back in London: “hello dear, the train is leaving and its only just over an hour late. See you in 17 hours. Put the kettle on”. The mobile phone is everywhere! And then she lit a cigarette… Later I show her son my Japanese fan. To him it is magic and he hides his head under his mother’s arm for ages, afraid I might produce more magic. And of course, my white skin is off-putting…and later I show him how to soften an orange and turn it into a “drink”. He is delighted-- but scorns my paper cut-out magic.
The carriage windows are uniformly either permanently stuck up or down, mostly crazed, so filthy that one cannot see through them or totally missing.
The 6-seat compartment in which I settled, was one of the best: remnants of the original velour remained on the backs and some of the foam seats were still partly covered by tatty pieces of cloth. Others are well-worn one-square pieces to protect one’s posterior from the erupting springs and hard wood dividers. That night, on the lurching and bucking train (empty iron ore wagons) I nearly cracked all my ribs on one of the divides as I tried to sleep across two seats.

During the evening, M A removed his turban and his exposed face lost its mystery.
He came into the compartment and helped himself to my oranges without a
‘pour favour’ and I began to feel distinctly ‘taken over’. I could never manage a conversation with him and I began to realise that his French is limited, despite his boast that he lived in France. On another occasion, when he was giving me a ‘tourist ride’
I asked “pourque ici le route demande voitures va au a gouche? “- to me so
obviously “why must vehicles drive on the left side of the road?” He did not understand the question and made no attempt to explain anything. However in the train I
managed to communicate in sign language and when we arrived in Zouerat, the taxi to town cost 400 each rather than the 300 each I had been told about by others .Naturally, MA took this money from me and I later learnt to observe him silently pocketing the difference every time I paid for something.

We took another taxi to his ‘home’, but I never found out the relationships, and assumed the women were ‘sisters’. The women were very understanding and accepted me without question. I was exhausted and had a delightful scrub in a hamam with one of the girls, but by the end of the day MA had summoned me for various projects and we had 11 taxi rides, which of course meant that I paid for both of us every time. In most of Africa, taxis charge by the person and never seem to move unless there are 7 adults in them and the luggage spaces are impossibly crammed. None of the taxis have a smooth section of paneling