Reverie

Thursday, July 10th

...that sudden sense of happiness which comes to one in Dakar doesn't last... a happiness that tingles behind the eyes, beautiful and insecure, a wish fulfillment... Undoubtedly the other Dakar... the [Dakar of] despair and injustice... was there, but something else was momentarily shining through...
-Graham Green, Journey without Maps


It's been a week since I landed in Africa and I picked up my bike today. The dealership is a shiny new metal and glass behemoth that makes American dealerships look grimy and unkempt. They sell expensive "African" models of European cars and hence cater to the wealthy elite: Senegalese VIPs, expatriate French and Lebanese merchants. They don't have room in their business plan for American backpackers who need cheap transportation. The dealership had been telling me for three days that it would be ready, "the next day." So I was prepared to put my metaphorical foot down with a slow paced game of chicken.

I walked in a 9 am and sat down in one of the chairs in the middle of the showroom floor. Around me there were a menagerie of off-road motorcycles, 4x4's and a full-size Mitsubishi truck that I didn't recognize from the U.S. The motorcycles were arranged in the front display case, ostensibly to catch the eye of potential buyers. But in a land where the government violently puts down food riots, there are no impulse buys. In my three days at the dealership, I never saw a customer look at the bikes. I was their sole admirer and I drooled over then. These bikes were the real deal and my economy sized suzuki looked like a 98-pound weakling struggling to make varsity. I played the "what kind of adventure could I have with that one?" game over and over. I looked at the Yamaha with the off-road tires and the front and rear luggage racks and imagined carrying 5 days worth of food and gas onto the little dirt roads that dot the African backcountry. No maps, no GPS, no backup plan. I would then look at the Honda with the enduro hand guards and engine plate and imagine catching air off a sand dune in Mauritania before meeting toureg nomads who would insist that I have tea with them. After a filling dinner of rice and fried sand viper, they would invite me along on their next desert trading caravan. Four weeks across through the Sahara to trade small arms with Chadian rebels in exchange for gold that comes from unmarked mines deep in the sand dunes. I would then trade my share of the gold to a South African mercenary in exchange for safe passage into the fabled Hoggar Mountains where uranium dealers send coded messages to Al Queda operatives. Our plane would be a Cessna 2-seater. The engine trouble would start 100 miles from the nearest oasis...

"Excusez-moi monseiur, what are you waiting for? Can I help you?" The chief security guard spoke in an officious tone that he would only dare use with American travelers and schizophrenic Africans. It was now 9:05 am. "I'm waiting for Mimo," I replied, using the nickname for my sales contact. "Ahhh, Mimo will not be in until 11," he said, with an air of triumph. I replied, "thank you for the excellent information. When he comes in, could you please let him know that I will be sitting here?" I was sitting 15 feet from the entrance that Mimo would be using on arrival and the irony was not lost on the guard. He left me alone to read my french comic books in peace.

Mimo arrived on schedule. When he saw me, his face dropped. I greeted him cheerily and asked what time today I would be able to pick up my bike. Mimo is a Senegal-born Lebanese who had recently spent 2 years in Houston. He spoke great English and was thus the unfortunate chap assigned to me. He knew that my bike was not ready. I knew that my bike was not ready. But, he had half-heartedly offered to have it ready today. I had a hunch that my presence would force him to make good on his offer. In a country that relies on patience and good will in order to conduct business, my assumption was particularly guache but it worked. By 5pm, he said that I would have my bike.
Just before I rode out of the showroom
It is impossible to be impatient in a hot country. This does not mean that is impossible to feel impatient, just that it is impossible to do the things that normally come from being impatient. I got up. I paced around. I started sweating. I sat back down. I had 6 hours to kill and only a comic book, a French-English dictionary, and some note-cards. I fidgeted and paced around and tried to write note cards for new French words for 21,600 glacial seconds of Senegalese time.

But then my bike came and a lifetime of christmas mornings came flooding back. The bike started on the first try. I rode it in little circles in the parking lot grinning like an idiot. Dopamine neurons flashed in my head like fireworks. Believe the hype. Motorcyles [1] are fun.

So, hold on to your berets, handrolled cigarettes, and superior attitudes. Paris, here I come.

[1] From here on out I will call my contraption a 'motorbike' instead of a 'motorcycle.' My bike had a 1/10th of a liter sewing machine for an engine. The smallest bikes sold in America are 1/4 liter and most Harleys are over a liter.

The Chopshop

Saturday Continued

"I think of John N. R. Wayne... standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father's head."
-Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

I met Mathieu in an online message board. In my broken French, I'd posted some requests for information about buying a motorbike in Dakar. Mathieu posted a response and then sent me an email offering to help me out once I got there. It turns out that I'd hit the random "guy-I-met-online" lottery. Mathieu is a French orthodontist who had spent three months in DC taking classes and working on his English. Instead of an axe-murderer or drug runner, I'd lucked into the best connected Frenchman in Dakar.

"David, if you are not busy then you should come to my house and have lunch with my wife and I." This was the first phone call that I'd received while I was in Senegal. Mathieu had patiently explained how to buy a phone card--I overpaid despite his best advice--and use it in my phone's SIM. When he called, I was hesitant at first. I was going to ride on the back of some dude's motorcycle over to his house. But I was in Africa, the stores are closed on Saturdays, and I had jackshit to do. Glad things worked out and my parents didn't have to identify my various body parts to an unsmiling consular officer.

I tried not to fall off the back of his bike as we gunned it through downtown Dakar. This was the second time in two days that I'd been on the back of somebody else's motorcycle and I could hear the sputtering sound that my life-expectancy was making. We parked outside of his apartment building which was located next to the morgue of the main hospital. We could hear regular pounding coming from inside. Mathieu assured me that it wasn't the caretakers making coffins but rather local women beating manioc into meal.



Their apartment was nothing less than stunning. They had the top floor of the second tallest building in his neighborhood. Their nearly wraparound porch has views of the entire city and the surrounding ocean. Julie, his wife, was home and we ended up eating mexican food with two of their French-expat friends. We talked about Senegal, DC, and my plans. I told him about my goal of going north through the Sahara and finishing up in Paris in time to sell my bike and get back to the U.S. Mathieu thought about how he could help me. He'd already made the trip from Paris to Dakar three times and he was currently planning his fourth trip with his rally racing partner. But he had never gone north--or alone for that matter. He had two racing partners, both of whom were well-connected. One was the son of the biggest auto dealership in Dakar. The other was the daughter of the President of Senegal. (fyi, I drop names like Usain Bolt drops records.)



Mathieu made a phone call to his friend and negotiated a good deal on a new Suzuki motorbike. It was small--only 100cc--but it was a genuine Suzuki and the price was right. It was about as much as a new low-to-mid tier road bicycle would cost in the U.S.

The next few days were not pleasant. I knew it was going to take awhile to get the bike assembled and get all of the paperwork processed, but I wasn't mentally or physically prepared for the delay that I faced. If you have an image in your mind of incomprehensible African bureaucracy, then you can imagine what my next few days were like. If you don't, I won't bother. Needless to say, I survived. Thank you, Mr. Bureaucrat, I am now a more patient and humble person. But I would rather remove my left little toe with a ball peen hammer than spend another 3 days in your office.

Communications Breakdown

Saturday July 5

I started studying french before I came to Africa. Or, more accurately, I started studying French so that I could come to Africa. Back in January, I started listening to the 90-lesson Pimsleur French CD's and I finished the series the day I left DC. I'd also bought 1000 preprinted vocab flash cards and a "vocabulary builder" comic book. The comic book is intended to help teach "real" French to disaffected teens who are presumably taking high school French classes. So you follow the main character--a 15-year old girl--around her daily life. I learned such useful phrases as "but, everyone else is doing it!" and "no, Mom, he's not my boyfriend." From a vocabulary perspective, French is a great language to learn as an anglophone. By some estimates, 50% of the words are direct cognates with English and I went from not knowing french to reading easy passages fairly quickly. Unfortunately, spoken French is a completely different story. And spoken French in Africa where the dialect is different and the accent is strong is even more difficult still. For the first few days no one understood me, or vice-versa. Fortunately, I slowly learned some tricks with the local dialect that helped me out. For example, the soft "ooh" as in deux becomes "ay" in Senegalese French. So you count, "unh, day, twa, kat, sank, sase" instead of "unh, deux, twa, kat, sank, sees."

I also found out that many cab drivers don't speak [much] French. This was a shocker as French seems to be a pre-requisite for anyone in the tourist or transportation industries. However, the caliber of a Senegalese's French is usually correlated with his or her education level. More educated = more french. Cab drivers aren't awarded a license based on education level, but on their ability to pay baksheesh to the commissioner or their personal connections.

Estimates vary, but I would guess that relatively few Senegalese speak fluent French, maybe 20%. Approximately 80% of Senegalese speak Wolof as their native language and the balance is filled out with such sonorous sounding languages as Diola, Mandinka, Soninke, and Fula. The language hodgepodge is relatively unimportant in Senegal which relies mainly on Wolof as the basis for daily business. Unlike other African countries, Senegal has relatively few native languages, so French is less important as the de facto language of commerce. Togo, for example, is smaller than Senegal with respect to both land area and population and yet Togolese speak more than 30 local languages. French becomes more important as a common language.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that communication is difficult in Senegal. Add in complex cultural mores and American dollars and you can fry your interpersonal circuits at a moment's notice. Luckily, I met someone who [briefly] took my communication problems off the table.

The Senegalese National Workout

Saturday July 5
========

It's been 90 days since I last wrote a blog post. I am going to be a whiny bitch and play the "I-don't-have-any-time-since-business-school-started" card. Thankfully, my friend wrote me and inspired me to keep going. So, no excuses. I am going to finish this blog.

=========

SCOTT: There's somebody following us.
CURTIS: How do you know?
SCOTT: In the city, there's always a reflection. In the woods, there's always a sound.
CURTIS: What about the desert?
SCOTT: Don't go into the desert.
-Val Kilmer & Derek Luke from David Mamet's "Spartan"

When I landed in Dakar, I took a taxi to my hotel. The ride seemed to continue a brief nightmare that I'd had just before we landed. People stared intently at me as I drove by. Wayward springs poked through the fabric of the cab's seat. The axels groaned every time they met a pothole. The cab driver didn't understand a word I said and the air had the low-grade menace of a Damid Mamet movie. Every street turned into an alley and the lights were never bright enough to see the faces of those who watched me.

I got to my hotel and checked in. My room was stifling, but fatigue is more powerful than comfort, so I slept soundly.

I woke up around 6:45 and went for a run on the beach. There were hundreds of young men--and even young women--out doing what I call the Senegalese national workout. It involves running for a couple of miles, stopping every quarter mile or so to do situps and pushups. In the meantime, you also do fun things like windsprints, running backwards, sideways crossovers and bear walks. From 6 am to about 10 am, all of the beaches around Dakar look like a very black version of Muscle Beach in Venice, California. The beach is filthy and trash strewn. At first, this seemed normal for a developing country with intermittent trash service. I assumed that trash washes up and stays there until a big storm. I would have continued to think that except I happened to be on the same beach one night before nightfall. All of the local women brought their buckets of trash down to the beach and threw it at the tideline. This was their trash service. Luckily, Fishheads and plastic scraps weren't going to keep me from training there in the morning. Though they did make think about the diseases I was courting.

On my first day, I tried to do too much in the heat and I was struggling. A cute Senegalese girl jogged by while I was trying to do some pushups. Whe was wearing a headscarf, long pants, a tight fitting soccer jersey, and clean Western running shoes. She chuckled at me and said--my french was rusty--"You don't have to do it all in one day."

Kung Fu Camp

Friday, July 4
Dakar, Senegal

My guidebook to Dakar is worthless. I found this out after I spent two hours trying to find the "must-see" Piscine Olympique. It's a swimming pool. And my map is wrong more often than it is right. Thanks, Lonely Planet!

I went down to the main local's market to try to buy a motorbike today. There's a Chinese brand called "Sanili" that is pretty popular in West Africa. The bikes aren't high quality but they aren't bad either. For $1,000 to $1,500 I'm not expecting a Honda Africa Twin. I got off the bus and started asking around for motorcycle vendors. I got pointed in a number of different directions, not all of them particularly helpful, but nevertheless I had a great time walking through the market. It was my first "real" African market. Since it's a market for the local people, not tourists, no one hassled me. I couldn't find the moto vendors but I did stumble upon the cow head vendors. Finally, I came to a break in the market and stumbled upon a guy driving a Moto Sanili. I found out that his name was Cheick Kane and that he is a business school student at the Dakar International School of Business. I asked him where he bought his bike and within two minutes, I was on the back heading for the dealership.



Of all of the stupid things I've done--running with the bulls, going to Mauritania, not buying stock in google--getting on the back of this bike is at at the top of the list.


CHEIK: David, hold on. Inshallah, we shall arrive at the dealership.
ME: I'm ready.
CHEIK: Driving in Dakar is very dangerous.
ME: Shouldn't we rely on your driving skills and not Allah?
CHEIK: Allah knows best.
ME: Fuck.

Somewhere between the time we drove about 8 inches behind a dump truck and the time we drove 40 mph against our right-of-way into a blind intersection, my heart rate hit about 200 beats per minute. I didn't know the French word for "heart attack" so I mimed for Cheik to slow down. When this had no discernible result, I began to calculate the damage from jumping off the bike and taking my chances with the pavement. Not worth it. I stayed put and we arrived a few minutes later at the Sanili shop. Cheik negotiated a great price for me on a new bike. I told the dealer I would be back on Monday with the money and I returned to my hotel to try to figure out how to get enough money in cash.

To the Shores of Tripoli

July 3rd
Tripoli, Libya

30 hours by air from DC to Dakar, Senegal. DC to Munich. Munich to Paris. Paris to Tripoli. Tripoli to Dakar. Needless to say I got my flight from a cut-rate discounter. The only benefit outside of spending 5 hours in Charles De Gaulle airport--pronounced shar d gaw in French as best I can tell--was spending 3 hours in Tripoli. For a scary sounding place like Libya, Tripoli was surprising. Neat, orderly rows of houses and olive trees as far as the eye could see. Though the Sahara rides herd on the small fertile belt by the Mediterranean. At times the desert is only a few kilometers from the shore. The farmers and shepherds have to subsist in that narrow band. At the airport, I poked my head outside, walked around for a bit and then retreated out of the sun to send a postcard. It was a kitschy tourist print of a nomad riding a snowboard down a sand dune. Nothing but the best for my friends.

While I was on the plane to Tripoli, there was something about the enormity of my upcoming trip that stuck with me and made me tear up a bit. I'd been reading a biography of Warren Buffett for business school. That reminded me of a friend of mine who had died a few years ago in a swimming accident. My friend was the only person who I've ever met who could truly think for himself. He was someone who brought a unique perspective to *everything* from April Fool's day pranks to the stock market. In the seventh grade, we'd played the stock market game in our math class. I bought the standard run of blue-chip stocks--IBM, Caterpillar, Coke, etc. He bought Berkshire Hathaway. Sixteen years later that is so awesome it is hard to describe. Whenever I think about independent thinkers, Kyle Hurdle and Warren Buffett always stand above the rest.

Before we took off from Tripoli to Dakar, two African passengers got into a fistfight over their seats. One man had to be restrained by the flight attendants. I wasn't sure whether to cheer or fear for my life. Thankfully there was no more violence over the next five weeks.

The flight to Dakar was interminable--massive thunderstorms blocked our path, but we finally arrived. The Dakar airport is the smallest international airport I have ever seen. If there were more than two terminals, I would be surprised. I walked out into a smothering humidity that seemed to suck the light out of the air. I paid a guy 1 US dollar (an actual dollar bill, mind you) to help me find my guide. 4 minutes later, I was in a cab to my hotel in Yoff, a surprisingly run-down neighborhood 6 km outside of Dakar. When I got to my hotel I drank a beer, turned on my fan and slept like a rock for 10 hours.

It Doesn't Take a Weatherman

Wednesday, July 23
Nouakchott, Mauritania

Before I start, let me say three things:

1) Bald Pete has now taken to calling me "CIA Dave" because of my unrivaled capacity for misinformation (see previous posts)
2) Apologies to my two faithful readers (thanks Mom!). I have been sidetracked by school. I will try to do better.
3) My blog has more time changes (past, present, flashbacks) than a Christopher Nolan movie. I will take steps to correct that in today and tomorrow's post.


Today is the big day. The day that I have to head either north into the Sahara or south into Senegal. Last night I finally met some travelers who are making the overland trip north by car. They are two 20 year old girls who are driving back from their 6 month volunteer job in either Togo or Benin. I can't remember. Since then, they've driven their super-micro mini van here to Mauritania and are planning to make the run all the way across the desert back to France. One girl is French, one is Canadian, and both speak fluent French, definitely an asset in the desert. This is a big step. I've been waiting four days now for travelers who are heading north. However, they don't have any room for me in their car should my bike break down. The best they can do is bring some extra gas for me. And they don't have a cell phone. For a backwards country, Mauritania has an excellent cell phone network, even in the middle of the desert.

One of my friend's forwarded this YouTube post to me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6VrzGWCq2I

You only need to watch 30 seconds of it, but it will give you the queasy feeling about Mauritania that I've been feeling for the past 9 days. I feel like there's always something creepy around the next corner.


I woke up this morning undecided about which way to go. My mind raced all night about what to do and as a result, I slept like a mexican jumping bean. I'm generally pretty risk-averse--some might say reckless--but Pete's stories about the bandits have stuck with me. At the same time, if I can just make it 1000 kilometers north, I will re-enter civilization in southern Morocco where there is a bus system, highways, and even such luxuries as hospitals. on my bike, I can handle about 500 km per day as an absolute max. That puts me two days out from Dakhla, a sheisty resort city/border town/windsurfing mecca in the Western Sahara. There are no easy choices here and nothing underscores that fact like the lack of gas for the next 600 km. I woke up at 5:45 am with a jolt. The Mosque next door was *blasting* ALLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AKBBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAR at the ear splitting level of a Guns 'n Roses concert. There was no hope of sleep after this. I rubbed my eyes for a second and decided before getting out of my tent that I would go whichever way the wind blew. Riding against the wind is unpleasant on a 7 Horsepower motorbike, and after the last few days, I needed nothing more than the solace of few hundred desert filled kilometers--north with the girls into the Sahara or south into Africa...