127. Bus to Nigeria

127.

Bus to Nigeria

When I eventually climb aboard the bus to Nigeria I actually get a seat!

The bus travels across a flat smoke-tree covered prairie until late at night when it halts in what might be called “Mudtown”.

All the passengers and the driver get off the bus and disappear into the pitch-black darkness. I am the last person to leave the bus and as I step out, I catch a kid picking my pocket. I jump back aboard the empty bus and slam the door. Nobody follows me and I soon fall into a restless sleep in a back seat to dream of getting robbed.

Morning. I leave the bus and buy coffee and bread squatting in the mud with the rest of the passengers.

In the vague early morning light I make out many groups of pedestrians moving in the street: Arabian Knights dudes in blue robes with scimitars, work gangs dressed in brown and carrying short hoes—just all kinds and lots of people. Most of them who pass close to me say: “Bonjour, Monsieur. Cadeau?” “Cadeau” means: “Give me a handout.” It is one French word I am absolutely sure of because I hear it about a thousand times a day.

There are hordes of begging children. The normal ones don’t do too well, but the oddballs, like this one here with no arms passing his bowl with his teeth rates pretty high on the freak scale so he gets the coins. There are more bizarre freaks per square yard out here in the desert of Nigeria than in any other plot of real estate I have experienced.

...

126. Traveling Associates

126.

I meet three more VSO’s (Volunteer Service Overseas, I think.) who give me more information about traveling east.

These British “Volunteers”, two girls and a boy, are not much older than teenagers and they are having a ball! They have bought black Tuareg robes which they wear shopping and to dances in the evening. I join them swimming at the pool at one of Niamey’s posh hotels and really enjoy their energy and enthusiasm.

Since I am facing what may be the most difficult portion of my journey across Africa, which has already been pretty harrowing, I can use a little of the good health and joy they radiate!

The New York schoolteachers have the opposite effect on me.

Whenever we meet they talk about heroin addiction, the twenty-square block burned out section of central New York City and other streetwise horrors. They seemed determined to bum me out and I don’t know why though “misery loves company” and they certainly make themselves and try to make me miserable.

I avoid them as much as possible.

...

125. Yankee Doodle Dandy

American Eagle. (Tanya Photo)

125.

We walk over to the large air-conditioned American Cultural Center for the latest news from the states.

President Ford’s photograph is already on the wall and there is no trace of Nixon!

When I left America I was very discouraged with my country but these months of solo travel have shown me that most of the world which I have seen is in far worse shape than I ever knew in the states.

Being “without a country” has made me a lot more patriotic--like the man in the short story “The Man Without a Country.” There is truth in that story.

The two New Yorkers are teachers from a black ghetto on their summer vacation. Whenever I speak to them about America in somewhat hopeful terms they counter with: “American progress? Nuclear Submarines! Viet Nam! Watergate!” But they would have to be blind not to see the terrible condition of the people around us here in West Africa.

When the black man is short-changed for a ten dollar loss in the local post office, instead of being angry about that, he focuses his anger on what he calls “Fascist America’.

Perhaps they should stay longer than the week or so they have for their vacation.

I have not yet met anyone who has been out of the country for many months that does not appreciate some of America’s good qualities.

If you are an American citizen feeling discontented with your country, try my personal cure: carry your backpack around some of the rest of the world for a few months and see what it does to YOUR head!

...

124. Niamey, Nigeria

Tricky Dick Out.

124.

Niamey, Nigeria:

I find a “youth hostel” operated by the Nigerian government and collapse!

Two New Yorkers, a black man and a white woman traveling together, and a girl I met in Ouagadougou who came here a few days ago wake me up to listen to an important newscast in English from a portable transistor radio one of them carries.

Nixon has resigned and a man named Ford is now President of the United States. Good luck to him.

This unexpected good news calls for a celebration!

I fix some noodle soup and my fellow countrymen provide bread and beer. I propose a toast: that the new national leadership will help Americans gain a new sense of direction for the safety and preservation of the human species and the rest of the earth’s life forms.

The New Yorkers almost die laughing at my naivete. They claim that political power is economic and is always based on greed and self-service. Good American leaders, they say, are always murdered. They expect very little in the way of change from a Nixon-appointed president.

...

123. Middle of Nowhere

123.

In the middle of the night when I think I am finally going to flip out, the bus comes to a halt. There is nothing around. —No bus station--Nothing at all.

This is the “Middle of Nowhere” I have heard about all my life but this is my first time to actually visit the place.

Everybody exits the bus and walks off into the fields to lie down and sleep.

I climb on top of the bus and sleep on my backpack, which is piled with the other bundles and bales up there.

Morning. The bus driver honks and we all climb back aboard.

I have cramps in both of my feet and my both my knees are bruised on the inside from being pressed so tightly together for so long.

Late in the afternoon we arrive in Niamey, Nigeria. There are lots of camels walking around the bus and the people seem to me to be dressed entirely in white bed sheets.

...

122. Leaving Ouagadougou

122

Leaving Ouagadougou:

I am sitting in what they call a bus. It is a big old delivery van with holes cut in the panels for windows and with wood plank benches bolted around the sides.

There’s a guy outside under my window trying to light a cigarette but leprosy has eaten most of his hands off and he’s having a tough time of it. Ahhh. He’s finally got it! Now he can get his rush from whatever he’s burning.

Now two men are peeing below me on the side of the bus.

Here comes an optimist selling red and white striped plastic raincoats. We could sure use a little cooling rain!

Beggars have been hitting me all morning and I have tried to “cast a little bread on the waters”, but there is little bread for this mighty sea of poverty!

Here comes a van coming from the direction we’ll be going. Damn! There must be thirty people squashed into it including five French freaks. They see me as they pass, come over and ask me if there are any cheap hotels in this town. I mention the one I left this morning but it is too expensive for them. They head off to sleep in the train station. They’d better be strong!

At eight in the evening (I’ve been waiting in the bus since eight in the morning.) we pull out of Ouagadougou with twenty-seven men women and children passengers crushed into a single lump. It is impossible to move or even change position and the heat is incredible.

That is how we travel.

...

121. Priceless Experience?

121.

The frogs here are the loudest I’ve ever heard. All night they bellow: “There’s Ed! There’s Ed!” You just can’t get away from their croaking. I am reminded of old J. Edgar Hoover with his F.B.I agents. That’s the kind of ubiquitous presence he tried to have back in the USA!

There’s Ed!!

In the central marketplace today, the constant haggling for a fair low price finally gets to me.

I watch a woman shopper buy some oranges and see the price she is asked to pay—then I try to buy the same fruit for the same price—but the old lady selling the oranges wants me to pay four times what she charged the other shopper. I argue and fume but she won’t reduce the price—then when I finally give up and pay her price, she short-changes me!

I stamp and yell and swear—it’s hot as blazes and I have just had more than I can take.

The other shoppers in the market are delighted by the show! This old lady has been sitting here for years waiting to get her hands on some of what they call the “white man’s sweet money’ and she would rather die than give me an even break! But I feel much better after blowing up, the crowd is grateful for some free entertainment and the girl in the next stall sells me some bananas super cheap.

Can this be some of the priceless earthprobing experience which will help me understand “Life”?

Is this what I came to Africa for??

...

120. Mercy

120.

There is a warehouse next to my hotel where big plastic burlap sacks of grain from America are distributed to drought victims every day. This draws big crowds of hungry but not violent people.

I see some pretty bad cases of hunger on my daily walks—old men in rags lying in the street and thin mothers with bloated babies. So far these sacks of American grain seem to be the only foodstuffs donated by the international community. I don’t see anything donated by Europeans, Chinese or Soviets. These American bags are the same as the ones used for luggage by travelers on the train from the coast.

They say the local man who owns the trucks that haul this grain from the seaport is now a millionaire. The American agency that sent this food may demonstrate some social conscience but these people sure don’t have much mercy on each other!

...

119. Ouagadougou Swings

119.

There is a young American woman working at the Ouagadougou Embassy who cannot help me plan a travel route but who does invite me to several parties where I meet the Ouagadougou swinging set.

These charming young people treat me very well. I am quite a curiosity for them, I am sure, since this is not exactly a tourist Mecca! These local youth remind me in their clothes, music preference and conversation of the Americans of the fifties-- since I am a living relic of that interesting historic period, I fit right in!

I have been on the road long enough now to start appreciating a “home” and I have a lot of ideas about what I would like to have when I finally “come to roost.” The most important items right now seem to be two stoneware coffee mugs (one for a guest!) and a sturdy drawing table!

Night after night I experience vivid and very entertaining dreams. I guess because I am so far from familiar things my dream-self seems to indulge every pleasant fantasy. My dream-self has been touring the past and when I decide to visit the future, things get geometric and crystalline rather than soft and organic. Because of this freedom in my dreams, my sleep is really a lot of fun for me.

Here come the familiar, disgusting and painful symptoms of Montezuma’s Revenge. I guess I was too eager to try the “American” foods at the Embassy parties! My body seems pretty well healed in most ways though.

...

118. Ouagadougou, Upper Volta

118.

Ouagadougou, Upper Volta:

I am actually walking down the main street in this city!

I have wanted to be in Ouagadougou ever since I heard that such a place existed -- probably because I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and always wanted to stay in a place with an even odder name!

There are lizards in this town, gray in color with bright red, yellow and blue racing stripes. There seems to be one in each of the dusty elm trees that border the broad main streets at just about eye level and there are more gray Peugeot motor scooters tearing about than I thought existed on this planet.

I have found a good cheap hotel room in town with a cool shower down the hall so I plan to stay a while to recuperate from the killer train trip up from the coast.

I cook all the food I eat and boil all the water I drink on the Optimus 8-R gasoline burning miniature stove that I carry in my backpack. I am not going to risk any of the local preparations in my present weakened condition.

I buy a blue enameled metal quart sized pot with a lid and a bail handle in the market square across from my hotel. The pot and most of the other manufactured articles for sale in the market are made in China There are no Chinese manufactured products for sale in the United States at this time to the best of my knowledge.

I take time to sketch and write and walk a bit every day and the Africans I pass on the street often greet me with a friendly “Bon Jour!”

I also stop by the American Embassy library for help in planning my route across the Sahara.

Some say it cannot be done but I have recently talked to three young VSO’s (Volunteer Service Overseas--a British organization like the American Peace Corps) who say that there are three possible routes across the desert: two toward Gibraltar and one toward Sudan.

The Sudan route sounds most promising to me because the others would make it necessary to either go on to Europe or to try to go through Libya, whose leadership at present does not like Americans.

My present goal is Cairo because another of my childhood dream places to see, are the ancient monuments and wonders of Egypt.

...

117. Upper Volta Border

"Be Prepared"

117.

Upper Volta Border:

As we cross this border in the early afternoon the crowd begins to thin. By nightfall I have a place to sit on a wooden bench—what opulence!

At the last stop before we arrive at the final destination of the train, Ouagadougou, Upper Volta, four black Boy Scout leaders and three Boy Scouts all clad in splendid uniform climb aboard. They soon burst into a song in French, which I shall try to translate:

“In vino veritas, my brothers, declares the Latin proverb. God has given us wine, brothers, so that we may find truth. Therefore it is not wine that I love, brothers, but truth! Tra-la-la-la-la!”

and so forth.

The rest of the passengers seem to resent the singing, the fine clothes and the boisterous energy of these newcomers. They are not survivors of the Long March either so the veterans are sulking.

I have noted that quite a few of the woven “plastic burlap” gunny sacks in which many of the passengers on this train carry their belongings have the American eagle and shield symbol and these words printed in English “Provided by the People of the United States of America”. The closer we come to the current draught stricken area of the Sahara, the more of these handy bags I see. My country is not only providing a lot of food but luggage for these people.

...

116. A New Alphabet and a Death

Character from the Amadia Alphabet.

116.

We ride all day leaving the forest behind--now we're passing through open plains.

I don’t know what language the old man speaks, but after sharing our meager breakfast and joking gestures of friendship, he shows me a letter he is carrying written in what is for me an unknown alphabet. Another passenger who speaks a little French translates for me the alphabet’s name. It is called the “Amadia” alphabet.

It starts to rain hard. The people sitting near the windows close them and the heat in the coach increases until it is truly unbearable. The young man who translated for the old man is coughing and I think: “By golly, a person could die in this crush and heat.” Sure enough, at the next village a fat woman is lugged out of the far end of our coach, stone dead.

The train stops at every village though there aren’t so many of them out here and each of these plains villages seems to have some specialty they offer to sell to the passengers.

One village has plastic bags of cola-nuts for sale and everybody who has any money buys one. The next village has lovely tie-dyed cloth, which is pretty and popular but too expensive for my fellow travelers. Other vendors have the oilcans full of water I mentioned before, but I can’t think of drinking such stuff though I am very thirsty.

...