Following the Senegal RIver

Saturday 15 January

Morning brings breakfast with the priests, who I find out are from Cameroon & Niger while the 2 nuns are from India & Japan! All spending 5 years here serving the spiritual needs of a very small Catholic community & facilitating the education of the wider community with their library & computers. The priests mention that because I did not return early last night, they had feared that I had been taken by Al Queda! hmmmI ask them if there is anything i can do to help them, as well as paying a fair price for the bed - end up doing the dishes and cleaning up their kitchen a bit... Then the priest gives me a lift to the moto park to get transport in a sept place back to the highway, where we wait for a bus that is great - I had a choice of seats, got a lovely window seat near the open back door - I didn't care how often is stopped! EXCEPT when we stopped at a place called Richard Toll. Where we stopped & stopped and then found that we passengers were subcontracted onto another bus because the bus we were on had so few passengers it wasn't worth their while taking as far as they had taken money for! So more fighting for a seat and nearly the slowest 100kms that I've travelled yet - 6 hours - to St Louis. Get off feeling s little weary now, got a taxi into town where the hostel owner watched me get out of the taxi with my pack, send the taxi away, let me walk inside and then inform me that the hostel was full - no beds. Oh well, walking a few blocks in the cool breeze cooled my temper a little and I got a very flash room for more than I wanted to pay, but what the heck! Turned out to be the best mattress I've slept on since leaving home and hot water in the bathroom. I head back to the hostel to negotiate a bed for tomorrow, get talking to a German guy, Michel who had brought a surfboard that he made himself, to Senegal looking for somewhere to surf!! I was gobsmacked. But he was heading to an encampement tomorrow, and I debated whether to join him just for change of scenery. We decide to meet up again later to listen to music over @ the French Cultural place as he is also travelling alone. The french organisers were very full of themselves (unusual, you ask?) because as we are finishing our beers we are told that it is now or never to go in & listen to the music. And no we cannot take our beers in!! WOW now I know I’m adjusting to Africa because we cannot believe such a thing. We sit and drink some more whilst debating will we go in when we watch a few other groups approach the now shut door. They are obviously negotiating with some success so we leave our dregs & enter the outdoor auditorium. Then we have to listen to the frenchie rabbit on & on about how privileged we all are etc etc. Then the solo guy comes on & sings in french & english! Not really the advertised african blues… He is joined a later by a very good kora player, but we still leave early, and Michel & I arrange to meet the next morning to travel to the Parc di Barbarie together, he to stay & me to visit.