On Sunday at 9.30am Ba Sarjo came to collect me and Ebou to
start our journey up to Basse – the furthest point in the east of the country
that VSO has volunteers.
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| Ba Sarjo |
We gave Ellie a lift back to Soma, so I had Ellie’s company
for the first 3.5 hours of the journey, and it was fun to chat with her as we
travelled. It was also good to take her recommendation of buying some biscuits
from a little shop we stopped at, because they turned out to be the only thing
I would eat until we got to Basse!
The journey took 8 hours, but included quite a few pit stops
along the way, such as; dropping supplies off to Ba Sarjo’s family, calling at
Soma to drop Ellie (and looking unsuccessfully for food), stopping at
Janjanbureh to see Beth, Cath and Eleanor and to pick up supplies that needed
to go to Basse, and calling in on Asha at Bansang, before finally arriving in
Basse at 17:30.
The journey to Basse by public transport can take eleven
hours or more, mainly because getting through the police check points in a
gelli takes so much time. Thankfully for us, with NGO licence plates, we were
able to sail through them without showing our ID or having all of our luggage
checked.
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| Military check point |
The road was good – we travelled along the south bank and
there is only one stretch that isn’t tarmacked and is just sand. This section
took us about an hour, but I can imagine it would take a lot longer in wet
season.
It was really interesting to see the scenery change – from
urban to rural, past termite mounds that made the landscape seem like one big
sculpture park, and past different styles of houses, such as these round houses
with thatched roofs.
We lodged at a rest house, and after dropping our stuff went
out to get some food. We dived into the closest place we could find and had a
rather small plate of chicken and cold chips for a steep 100 dalasi, which left
Ba Sarjo and Ebou still feeling hungry! After arranging breakfast for the
workshop the next day we headed back to the rest house and chilled before
bedtime. After all the travelling, and being up late at the gala dinner the
night before I was shattered and slept through from 10.30pm to 8am, only waking
briefly at the call to prayer before falling straight back to sleep!
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| My room |
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| Our rest house |
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