We went to the garage in Labe early in the morning to try to get a car back to Senegal. We asked for a car to Kolda, but we were told the only car to Senegal was only going as far as Diaobe. We had no idea where Diaobe is, so we tried looking on our Lonely Planet map, but it wasn't there. Finally we decided that wherever Diaobe is, at least it's back in Senegal, and from there we could probably get another car to Kolda or Tamba. So we bought tickets. And then we waited for the car to fill up so we could go. And waited. And waited.
The car didn't fill up until about 2 p.m., and then the car driver decided to go fill it up with gas and tweak the engine a bit in preparation for the trip. Why he couldn't have taken care of that during the incredibly long morning we spent waiting, I don't know.
But in the meantime, while we sat around waiting all day, we chatted with some of the guys hanging out by the garage. At one point we asked how long it would take to get to Diaobe, and we were told we should be there by 8:00 or 9:00. Just after dark – not so bad, I thought. And then they clarified: 8:00 or 9:00 the next morning. We'd be spending all night in the car. Ouch. Plus, thinking back to how bad the road was between Kedougou and Maali, we thought it was probably not the most prudent thing to be driving over those mountains in the dark. But we had no choice, unless we wanted to bike the 200 or so kilometers back. So a rickety car on bad roads over steep mountains at night it was.
We also talked for a while with a young Sierra Leonean guy, who told us he had been on his way from Sierra Leone to Gambia to try to find work, but he had been robbed and now was stranded in Guinea, and couldn't communicate with people at all to ask for help or work (Sierra Leone is Anglophone, and this guy didn't even know basic French phrases like "I'm hungry"). Of course he was hoping that Sira and I, the rich toubab tourists, would give him $50 or so for a bus to Gambia.
Sira and I decided that there probably at least some truth to his story – it's pretty common for African migrants to head out without enough money to get all the way to their destination. They go as far as they can go until the money runs out, and then try to find work wherever they are to pay for the next leg of their trip. So we figured something like that had probably happened to this guy. He was definitely going to have a hard time without knowing even basic French, though. So Sira and I wrote down for him (he was literate) some basic French phrases, like 'I'm hungry' and 'I want a job', we gave him the name of some NGOs in the area who might be able to help him, and Sira gave him a couple dollars so he could try calling his family to get them to wire him money. After he got the money he left, and I figured we probably wouldn't see him again or ever know if he had just been scamming us, but a little while later (as we were still sitting around waiting for our car to fill up) he came back. At first we thought, oh no, he's coming to ask for more money. But instead he said that he had used the money Sira gave him to get in touch with a relative in Gambia who is now going to wire him money to he can get to Banjul. So he was really happy, and he thanked us for helping him, so we got to feel happy too.
Finally, finally, around 3 p.m. the car was full and gassed up, and we could get on our way. Of course there was the inevitable annoyance of a man trying to convince us that because we are female we should give up our good middle-row seats to the supposedly superior men, and we should sit in the back. But we refused, and finally the guy gave up and got in the car so we could go. Even though we were going to Senegal, they still had us seated Guinea-style, with nine passengers in the car instead of seven. So it was going to be a very comfy ride. (Yes, I am being facetious). Sira had the window seat, so to give herself a little extra room, she rode most of the way with her head poking out the window (like a dog, I teased her). When we stopped for the first break, I got to see the result of that great idea: she looked like she'd been down a brown-colored coal mine, her face was so heavily covered with road dust. (Us toubabs are always looking filthy and sweaty here, whereas the Africans, except for the children, always look immaculate, even when they've been working all morning. I don't know how they do it.)
The guy who had been trying to convince us that women belong in the back was sitting next to me, and not long into the trip he fell asleep, and soon his head started leaning over onto my shoulder. Normally I wouldn't mind; I'm used to carrying random kids on my lap and having strangers sleep on my shoulders on my Alham ride between my village and Tamba, but this guy had really annoyed me with all his "women belong in the back" arguments, so I was not going to let him sleep on my shoulder. So I pushed him off my shoulder towards the guy on the other side of him. This would have woken a normal person up, but he didn't stir at all. And pretty soon he was drifting into my space again. So I shoved him over again, a little harder this time. Still didn't stir. This guy is a narcoleptic! He kept leaning over onto my shoulder, and I kept shoving him off and getting more and more annoyed. Then I decided to get a little tougher: I popped him on the side of the head with my book. Still didn't wake him up, but everyone else in the car thought it was really funny. So we passed the next half hour of the ride with me periodically smacking him with my book and everyone else in the car laughing their heads off. And the guy, completely unaware, sleeping through the whole thing. Finally the car stopped for another break, and I convinced Sira to trade seats with me before I murdered the guy.
Around 8 p.m. it started getting dark. I was scared that we would drive off a cliff from not being able to see very far ahead with the car's pitiful headlights, but I consoled myself by thinking that if that happened, the driver would die too, and he surely didn't want that, so hopefully he would be careful. And of course it turned out that nothing scary happened at all.
Around 1 a.m. we got to the border crossing for Senegal: a string across the road with a sign hanging from it that said Stop. There was absolutely no one around. The driver stopped the car and told us to get out. At first I thought that he was going to go wake up whichever gendarme was on night duty so we could cross the border, but no. There is no gendarme on night duty, and the regular gendarme would probably not be happy if we woke him up in the middle of the night. So how about we sneak across the very high-security border, by untying the string across the road? No again. The driver said we would just have to wait for the gendarme to wake up in the morning and let us across the border. Right. Okay. So what are we supposed to do until then? The driver goes and gets a mat out of the car and lies down on it by the side of the road. It took my brain a minute to process it, but I finally figured it out: we were going to spend the night by the side of the road, with no shelter or stick bed or mosquito net or anything. And Sira's and my bags were strapped up on top of the car with everyone else's luggage, so we couldn't even get to them to use the clothes as a pillow. Sira dug a couple of plastic bags out of her purse, and we laid them on the ground so at least we didn't have our heads in the dirt. And then we lay down on the ground and went to sleep.
Peace Corps volunteers are always telling each other these sorts of stories, implicitly adding up points to see who is more "hard core". I decided that sleeping in the dirt at a border crossing, on our way to we didn't even know exactly where, put Sira and me way ahead of everyone else in the competition.
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