The Long Ride Home

In the morning, we found a taxi bachée (i.e. a pickup with wooden planks for seats in the box) that would take us to the Burkinabe border. I spent a hectic 20 minutes gathering all of the souvenirs that I had thought I would have time for to buy. It was crazy, but guess who came out of the woodwork? The Wizard! He helped me get a salt block (from the mines of Tadoueni), a teapot and another turban cloth – and he didn’t even ask for money. The only way I could thank him was with a tip, even though he seemed to not want one. Too bad I couldn’t buy him a beer or something…

I got there 10 minutes before the taxi left and Joe wasn’t pleased. In fact, it was the only time he’s ever been angry at me, although I’m pretty sure it was the not sleeping for two days thing. I tried my best to hide my smile the whole time.

The taxi ride through Dogon Country to the border was beautiful and surreal – like being on Mars. And just as dusty. Our turban cloths came in handy.

If I thought Joe was mad in the morning, it was nothing compared to us trying to get a tro-tro to the border and into Ouaghiya. After waiting for one to fill up after three hours, at 6PM the owner, a most arrogant and thoughtless character who laughed at our predicament, told us that it wouldn’t be leaving that night (which, at 3PM it was). This was the final straw. We already had no money (literally, my fare was on credit until we got to an ATM in Burkina) and were putting up with their antics. Joe flipped out and we ended up paying for all of the empty seats, so that we could leave before the border closed.

Once we actually got across the border, it was much smoother sailing. We got to Ouaghiya and then got a bus to Ouagadougou that arrived in the middle of the night. We slept in dorm beds in a crummy place with other backpackers (there was a piece of paper on my bed with crushed marijuana and mosquitoes in my net – charming!) and got out the next morning, finding a bus that would take us all the way back to Accra.

The ride home was generally uneventful, save for us having to switch to a tro-tro in Kumasi at 2:30AM. I was in a zombie-like state and apparently didn’t notice a number of near-death incidents as a result of our reckless driver – we also got in at 6AM, three and a half hours later. Considering the drive takes 5 hours at normal speed, I’m glad I was sleeping through it!