The day I got lost...
Annie's Visit:
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| My outdoor bed/ entertaining area (minus the roofing and my hammock) |
Annie has never been to my site, but it is a pretty easy to find. I told her I would meet her at the "main" road before my legitimate bush road starts about an hour after she said she was going to take her departure. I was doing some last minute cleaning in preparation for her arrival, including washing my sheets with my newly splurge Dakar purchase of fabric softener. I was nervous that I was leaving later than I told her I would meet her, and what would be expected for her to reach that area of the route in her departure time. It wouldn't have been a huge deal, except I didn't even tell her the name of he village to turn off on, I just told her to bike until she saw me. Eekk. I biked my heart out to reach the road, talked to people that passed by asking them if they saw a woman toubab riding a bike, everyone said they hadn't... Yet. Then, I saw the village chief of the village over hanging out in what can only be described as a tree stand. I asked him if he saw Annie (the toubab) and he said he's been looking out for her, like a hunter waiting for the deer to approach, creepy. Then, he told me that my counterpart informed him of her upcoming arrival and that she didn't know the road, so to not let her get lost. Thank Allah Hoyo knows how I work and put backup plans into action (without even telling me). I stood under his tree stand and waited for the white girl to appear around the corner. Once I saw Annie, I was thrilled I didn't screw her over by my tardiness.
We got to my village and took our bucket baths, listened to some music and planned our afternoon. We decided to do something girly and put some lemon juice (another splurge from a previous visit to Dakar) in our hair and put the African sun to use for once and try to get some highlights out of the ordeal. After the commencement of our proclaimed slumber party, with our highlight aspirations, we had lunch, and departed to a few villages over to check in with my ICP (the doctor) at the health post to see how the PECADOM+ program was going, make sure there was medicine for the sweeps and the malaria season, and to go check out this river my sitemate, Jenny, told me about, that was supposed to have all sorts of exotic birds native to Senegal. We started out our adventure biking bush paths through fields and forests that were only a bike tire wide and overgrown with tall weeds that when pedaling past you get slapped in the face. The paths are so climate controlled that the erosion drops down the sand and clay and you shouldn't look up for more than a few seconds because if you don't watch the path change you're bound to wipe out. When telling Annie the plan to go to Santancoye, I left out the detail in order to get to the village we would have to cross a seasonal river that was mid-thigh deep.
Annie was a trouper when we crossed it and through the whole bush path ordeal. We were actually on a wild goose chase when it came to the river because everyone we asked said that there was no such river. Once we arrived to the health post, asked our questions and was told that there wasn't medicine, per usual of Senegal's unorganized government and cultural operations. Bummer. We asked again about the river, resolved to have our relaxing few hours sitting under a tree eating our Klaus cookies, we once again told this river didn’t exist.
So, we went to this area where I remember seeing a bridge during one of my exploration voyages to neighboring villages. We arrived to the river, which in everyone's defense is a seasonal river, laid our blanket down, sat under this hundred year old tree, with our cooling towels over our necks, fans in one hand, cookies in the other, we watched a lady harvesting rice, a few birds, and a suspicious branch floating and moving in the current, we were praying it wasn't a crocodile. A man in my neighboring village was killed by a crocodile and apparently the villagers killed the croc and ate its meat for protection against it.. Or, I like to think it is their way of sweet revenge. We watched the sky turn different colors as the sun was starting to set. We thought it was best to start back to my village while we still had plenty of light. It was a nice relaxing afternoon, and we were ready to get back, shower and eat dinner. Well, there are three paths that one can take to get to my village from where we were.
I haven't been down the path from my village because everyone has said it is too bad to take this time of year, each path everyone tells their stories about how deep and to what body part the water is up to. To be frank, I've only taken the path(s) back to my village before the rains started and without all the weeds. I didn't know the exact path to take, but I didn't think it would be that hard to find.. I mean, how many could there be? Well, the answer is... A lot. I couldn't recognize the path, we went up and down numerous paths, all which we swore we didn't recognize because of some distinct feature we assumed we would have noticed coming in. For instance, one path had a lot of thorns that when we past the thorns and came out with bloody bodies pick out 7+ thorns from our arms, one was because the path was wider than a tire, one was because a pretty tree canopy, another was a large termite hill. It was getting late, and the sun was almost set. I decided that I knew how to get home the long way, not through the thick bush trails by going through Sare Samba. I remember stories of the river penetrating the road, but never saw it first hand, I figure it would be similar to the path that I take from Sare Guiro. I was wrong. We reached the water and it was sooooo wide and it looked deep. I didn't know what to do, I could only laugh. How did I not know how to get us home?! I asked Annie what she wanted to do, I told her that it could be at the most as deep as out necks, thinking that we could make it, not realizing how ridiculous that sounded with our bikes over our head walking almost 100 feet. We would have drowned. Plus, we psyched ourselves out about crocodiles from the previous adventure, that we were nervous what we would find in the water. Annie said, "let's do this path by last resort" but I was already thinking it was our last resort because by the time we MAYBE find the RIGHT path, it would be dark and extremely hard to navigate the trail without killing ourselves or getting pretty banged up in the process. Reluctantly, we turned around, went down a few of the trails we previously explored and were still lost. Luckily I know a family in a village in between the path and Santancoye, one of the compounds there is my younger brother, whose hut I took over with my arrival, forcing him to move in with this extended family. Annie and I previously greeted them, so going back asking desperately and almost pathetically to help us find the path, they just laughed, and my brother biked us to the path. I told Annie, if I saw that dang termite mound again (we already tried this path twice before) I was going to die. Well, we passed that mound, at least I think we did because it was pretty dark. I just can't believe we didn't notice these prominent "landmarks" despite our eyes being locked on the ground. I have horrible night vision and surprisingly Annie and managed to maneuver through the windy, uneven, sand paths filed with tall weeds, across the river, and up the steep hills to the neighboring village leading to my village. I only fell twice (the first time I fell was last week on my way to another village for the bed net care and repair tourney on the same road, the sand is impossible to bike through without tumbling over.)
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| Annie crossing the river like a champ! |
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| Our river view |
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| Our tree =) It is probably at least one year old |
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| One of the small paths we thought could be the correct path Notice how high the weeds are and how narrow the trial is... |
We got back, my family upset because they assumed I got us lost and they went looking for us and couldn’t find us. I told them about our attempts to find our way back and contemplating crossing the huge, deep river. They laughed. We took another, much needed bucket bath and passed out for the night.
We woke up to leave for Kolda in the morning, realized that Annie’s bike had a flat tire and we had to repair the tube, being yet again, another toubab spectacle. It was an adventure that I couldn’t imagine doing with anyone else.
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It is a wonder I still have a daughter! I taught you better than to be late, be lost, or be unprepared. Praise the Lord you made it back!
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