It would have been too easy simply to catch a plane home.
Easy? May be that takes one or two things for granted. Try telling the Wright Brothers that flying is easy. Try telling an emu or a penguin for that matter. Or try telling the vendors at their stalls in the market at Latrikunda, who could work solidly for twenty years and still not earn enough for a flight from Banjul to London.
But for a pair of toubabs at the end of their volunteer placements, flying home would have been too swift, too uncomplicated and too uninteresting. So we set out via an alternative route. We covered over five thousand kilometres during five weeks in six countries. We drank 180 litres of water and slept in 23 locations. And we used sixty separate means of transport (namely 4 buses, 19 minibuses (known as geli-gelis or tro-tros), 4 sept-places, 7 shared taxis, 9 hired taxis, 1 train, 2 ferries, 3 pirogues, 4 lengthy walks, 1 NGO vehicle, 1 Landover, 1 oxcart, 2 articulated lorries and 2 hotel minibuses).
And then a plane, which makes sixty-one. But that’s a long way off. Let’s go back to the beginning. I plan to write about our trip country by country, more-or-less chronologically, so if you are interested to follow our story, please click on the links below.
Louise and Justin were joined on their journey by a third travelling companion, a pink plastic inflatable horse, whose name is Horsey. Horsey enjoyed her journey across West Africa, and you may find that she appears in some of the photographs.
I am a male. Please correct the gender of your pronouns accordingly.
Comment by Horsey — December 26, 2008 @ 11:50 pm