(April 2011)

Our Tour de France was simply lovely, from the southeastern corner on one edge of the hexagonally shaped country where the Pyrenees meet the Atlantic, to the northern corner of the edge that shares a border with Luxembourg and Germany. Spending about a month, we followed bike trails about half of the time and we were able to find quiet secondary roads for much of the rest. The countryside we traveled was gently rolling, with yellow flowering rape (canola) fields and green immature wheat or hay fields stretching out in front of us for kilometers and kilometers. Hints of parched plants from an unusually dry spring–attributed to climate change, worried farmers, but were generally not yet visible to our untrained eyes. I was surprised to see how extensive was the system of canals that drained the watersheds of France. It may have been my rosy imagination, but I easily saw the paintings of Monet, Manet and other impressionists in these rural scenes. Villages and towns, too, though their edges might be more modern, were quaint and lovely in their central areas in their old world fashion. Every village had their church with a shaded bench where we often had our lunches after a visit to the local boulangerie for fresh bread to eat with our wonderfully tasty cheese from small manufacturers in the region. The stereotype of the French man or woman on their bike with a fresh baguette of bread in their basket seemed very true. Only in the town of Chimoio in northern Mozambique where bakers baked three times a day to satisfy long lines of customers did people seem more passionate about their fresh bread.

Every village also had its monument to the war dead, usually with France’s iconic rooster perched on top. On one side was etched the long list of the names of villagers who died in the carnage of the trenches in WWI. On the other side was a much shorter list of WWII deaths. It helped to concretely explain to me Europe’s policy of appeasement to Hitler’s steady encroachment. How could a country’s leaders demand any more sacrifice from a populace of widowed mother’s, fatherless children, and war-scarred elders? We visited the city of Verdun where 700,000 young men lay buried after offensives on both sides in WWI were battled in the space of a year. Like the commonality in humans’ appreciation of beauty that I mentioned in my previous blog, I saw commonality in humans’ butchery of humans around the world. It’s hard to feel any one culture is more compassionate than another, especially in its history.

Cycling in France’s Loire Valley was one of the highlights of our trip. In addition to picturesque villages and farm fields in a wide flat valley, were the beautiful blue waters of the Loire and gorgeous stately chateaus set in the valley’s bluffs. A novice bicycle tourist would easily navigate such a vacation, with well mapped brochures, pretty good sign-age on well maintained trails, plentiful places to stay, few hills, stunning scenery, and chateau after chateau to visit. We discovered in our tour of Chambourd, built early in the 16^th century by the French king Francis I that Leonardo da Vinci likely designed the double spiraled staircases in the chateau. Da Vinci had been invited to France by Francis I who was his patron in the late 1400′s. Tradition, and one artist’s painting of it, says that Leonardo died as an old man in Francis’ arms. His grave is one of the tourist sites in a nearby village. I loved meeting Leonardo again in France after visiting his birthplace in Italy. Even in eras without radio, TV, Internet or other mass communication devices, celebrity existed and ideas were shared across countries and continents.

We entered Spain while we were still on the continent of Africa in the province of Ceuta, a curious geographical fact of this strategic area where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. Europe’s rocky peninsula of Gibraltar, a possession of Great Britain (and not the more obvious Spain), can be viewed from a Ceuta hilltop. The history and cultures of the two continents are entwined in this part of the world, influencing each other, taking a turn at dominating, continuing their exchanges into the present day. The Moors of Africa conquered most of Spain in the 7^th century and ruled until the 15^th. Much of what I love about Andalusia, southern Spain where we entered Europe, displays Moorish influence, the architecture, the music and beat of the Spanish guitar, the vibrant colors. We cycled into the Sierra Nevada Mountains along a bike path that took us safely from the city of Algeciras, our first taste of the fantastic infrastructure of Europe’s bike trails. Villages with whitewashed, flat roofed buildings, dating from the Moorish days nestled in and hung on to the mountainsides with medieval bridges still in use and narrow streets in a labyrinth plan much like we experienced in Morocco. Sevilla, Andalusia’s capital was one of my favorite places. Cars were banned from the the narrowest of the cobblestone streets. Cyclists and pedestrians ruled as they maneuvered around the chairs and tables of sidewalk cafes and avoided people conversing everywhere. Sunny southern Spain is all about living outside.

Taking a vacation from my cycling vacation, I left my bike and David, who continued the trip northward on his own, in Sevilla and flew to Venice where I met my friends, Kathy and Al and their boys JonErik and Adam, aged 12 and 10 who were spending their Spring Break touring Italy. How fun it was to see them and to feel in our easy conversations how little time had passed, but to also see how much time had passed when measured by the growth of the boys. We traveled for a little more than a week hitting some of Italy’s top tourist sites, walking and boating the canal ways of Venice, visiting the Uffizi Museum in Florence, standing beneath Pisa’s leaning tower, and getting a quick glimpse of St. Peter’s square and its dome in Rome. My favorite sites, however, were our visit to the small town of Vinci and its museum devoted to the inventions of its most famous son, Leonardo and the Roman ruins of the ancient town of Ostia. My interest in Leonardo goes back a long way and I was pleased to see a drawing of a pretty modern looking bicycle in his notes, though his early prototype would not actually steer in real life. It was great to watch the two boys debating and discussing his engineering ideas with each other in front of the museums’ models. When did they learn how to do that? The Roman town of Ostia Antica had been Rome’s sea port where the River Tiber had emptied into the Mediterranean. It had been abandoned as the Roman Empire declined and was left to crumble and be filled in by the silty backwaters of the changing course of the Tiber. Newly excavated, the remains of shops and homes lined cobblestone streets. I felt almost like I was visiting just another village on my global tour only this one hadn’t been lived in for about 1500 years. In the remarkably preserved tiled floors of the more well-to-do homes were intricate designs of gods and goddesses and in one kitchen, on a wall over a counter was a lovely, mostly intact, still-life painting of grapes, wheat and bread, the colors wonderfully alive after all these years. It brought to mind my often mused thought of one of the things we humans in this diverse world have in common, our love for and our re-creation of beauty, even found in humans from cultures long ago.

I left Kathy and Al, JonErik and Adam in Rome’s airport with the words “See you soon in St. Paul!” and rejoined David in the Basque country of northern Spain. Very different from relaxed southern Spain I enjoyed the great stone buildings in old cities, the green mountains along the blue, blue sea, people eating tapas in the streets of San Sabastion until the wee hours, and meeting up with Idoia, Tony and their little daughter Leonce whom we first met in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso when they were in the adoption process. Northern Spain has a more industrialized and busy feel than southern Spain and perhaps has always been the more “productive” of the two. In Azpeitia, we happened upon the birthplace of St. Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits in the 1500′s. A grand domed stone basilica now stands next to where his home had been. His teachings and the Jesuit missionary priests who came after him greatly influenced the cultures of the New World, both in North and South America. On David’s solo tour of Spain he happened upon the birthplaces in remote towns of many of the conquistadors who gained fame and fortune and often infamy in the New World. We loved to find these connections, some 16,000 kilometers and a year’s bike ride apart that linked the places we visited.

There was much to love about Morocco, the expansive and beautiful Sahara desert, the narrow, winding, architecturally stunning streets in the historic centers of cities, Dakhla and its peninsula, the green and snowy Rif Mountains, the seascapes along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, welcoming Moroccans who often spoke English or who were politely tolerant of our poor French, and tasty pastry shops. I had been to Morocco 14 years ago to attend the wedding of two friends of mine from St. Paul, Ann and Lahcen, who had a traditional ceremony in Lahcen’s home village in the Atlas Mountains. That had been a wonderful experience for me and I very much looked forward to returning on a bicycle with David.

I wasn’t looking forward to cycling, what I imagined to be, the harsh Sahara. Would we have enough water and food? Where would we sleep? How would we survive the heat, the boredom, the north winds? Was it safe? As always, my fears dissolved as we cycled and we managed the desert very well. If not for the wind I would have said the Sahara was no problem. Blowing continually from the north/northeast, most always at speeds of 25-30km/h, the wind slowed us down and depressed our moods. I don’t know if I have written this before, but I could not have done this trip without David’s patience and unfailing support. I was able to draft him most of the time when the wind came at us at an angle, and it took the edge off, for me, at least. He dealt with the brunt of it. The desert landscapes, though monotonous at times, slowly changed day by day, and were often very beautiful, especially in the early morning or late evening light, or when we drew near the coast next to the brilliant blue of the sea. One of my favorite places was riding on the thin 40k long peninsula that extended southward down the Atlantic with the city of Dakhla at its end. Not only did I enjoy the tailwind, but the views across the sand dunes of the narrow connection with the continent across were other worldly…very fun. I was surprised by the modern city of Dakhla with WiFi in our hotel and where all of the water for 85,000 people was imported. After the sun set the streets filled with families, young and old couples, groups of young men or young women, shopping, eating in restaurants, drinking tea in cafes and walking along the seafront.

Western Sahara had a much different feel than the rest of Morocco. There was a very large military presence which, I’m sure, contributed to our safety but also spoke to the contention here between the Moroccan government and the Sahrawi people who claim independence from Morocco. The particulars of the dispute are complicated. Countries around the world either recognize Morocco’s right to govern or recognize the Sahrawi’s, sometimes shifting their stance depending on the political wind. The UN sees it as a non-governed territory and is in on-going, though stagnant, negotiations with both sides to come to a resolution. Outside of large cities like Dakhla and Laayoune, for hundred’s of kilometers, we saw almost no women or children perhaps because the men who worked and lived in the small towns we passed, who identified themselves as either Sahrawi or Moroccan, were temporary workers whose families lived elsewhere. We also passed several large, newly built and freshly painted towns which looked mostly uninhabited. I was unable to learn much about either of these observations but it suggests to me the greatest obstacle to life in this part of the desert is not due to the nature of the Sahara, but to its politics.

As we rode out of the desert into the greener areas of Morocco the landscape changed rapidly and dramatically, as dramatically as anywhere we have been. Like South Africa at the other end of the continent Morocco is a land of varied climates and vistas, very beautiful. Unlike anywhere else in Africa we had been, we visited old cities whose remnants of walls and some of its architecture (very beautiful architecture) dated as far back as the Middle Ages. Cities with historic centers like Essouira, Marrakesh and Fes with Arabic style buildings dressed with intricate geometric designs and contrasting colors, with markets and shops, attractively filled with all kinds of stuff, labyrinths of narrow streets where one was easily lost (Our line for the hassling-would-be-guides was “But we are trying to get lost!”), offered an unending spectacle of sights for the eyes.

We were also very lucky to be in Morocco as North Africa and the Middle East erupted in revolutions. TV’s were turned to Al Jezeera night and day in hotel lobbies and cafes and men watched and conversed with sober faces as they drank their tea. It was only when Qadaffi began murdering his own people that TV’s were turned to other channels (though David thinks this coincided with the opening of football season). I very much appreciated a Moroccan perspective on these world changing events. In talking with people I felt in them a sense of hope and optimism for the future of their neighbors and for their burgeoning participation in their own government. I also felt what an interesting time in history we are living.

Things changed abruptly when we crossed the Senegal River into Mauritania. The Lonely Planet West Africa Travel Guide includes Mauritania in its pages, but to me, we had left West Africa behind and had entered North Africa. Along with the flat roofed homes common in Senegal, we began seeing large tents, especially north of the capital Nouakchott. Dress and culture were more religiously conservative. Most men wore long, flowing blue or white robes with gold embroidery across the front and with long slits down the sides. Most women wore six yards of printed cloth draped and tied in such a way to cover their entire body, from the top of their head, veiling their hair and sometimes their face, to the ankles of their feet. We no longer easily found beer or wine in shops or in our hotels. I needed to remind myself not to expect to shake men’s hands as many believe the Koran instructs them not to touch a woman in any way who is not their wife. (This did not seem to prevent one weirdo from peeking at me (I’m 53 years-old for God’s sake!) in the shower). I, also, more than usual, let David manage most of our traveling business transactions, unless we were talking with women. It just seemed more appropriate.

Everywhere we went we were welcomed with smiles and hospitality and I was given gifts. A little girl named Miriam visited us while we had our lunch inside a shelter while a stiff wind blew outside and gave me a pair of plastic earrings. She gave David a very colorful picture of abstract shapes she had drawn. Another day we stopped for a drink at a shop along the road where three young women inside took an interest in us. We communicated in our very bad French, took photos, and bought a drink and a snack. One of the women, Pica, ran out to her home and came back with a present for me, six yards of light cloth to wrap myself the same way they wrapped themselves. We laughed at me in my new outfit and took photos. One woman in whose auberge (hostel) we stayed gave me a bracelet. Another who ran a shop gave me an earring. I didn’t know what my response should be, but I gave some of them small trinkets in return. I felt my efforts to reciprocate never quite conveyed the pleasure I received from them.

Mauritania was also a beautiful country for cycling. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Sahara Desert, but I thought it might be empty and uninviting. I didn’t expect the gift giving I’ve just described. I didn’t expect green grasses sprouting in the sandy plain for miles and miles in the distance, with softly curving sand dunes standing here and there. I thought we might be engulfed in a sandstorm, but I didn’t expect to enjoy it. One day we battled a very strong northeasterly wind with blowing sand and low visibility. Sometimes we’d turn a bit to the west and we’d fly with more of a tailwind. Then we’d climb a small hill and less sand would blow and visibility would improve. It was a very doable sandstorm. I thought we might have humble accommodations when we were lucky enough to find them, but I didn’t expect the very comfortable, spacious and attractive tents, lined with cushions and a carpet on the floor, always within 100k of each other.

Our time was purposefully short in Mauritania. In the last few years it has become a more dangerous place for foreigners because of Al Qaeda. A US citizen had been killed in the northern town of Nouadhibou in a kidnap attempt in June 2009. Several tourists had been kidnapped and held for ransom, the last in November of 2009. The Peace Corps Mauritania program had been suspended in 2009 and the US government had issued updated travel warnings as of December 2010. There was only one paved road traveling through the desert along the coast of Mauritania connecting North Africa to West Africa. I knew David would need to cycle it. I considered other options for me traveling by bus, plane or boat. In the few weeks leading up to our arrival in Mauritania we met or read the blogs of a dozen or more cyclists who had recently ridden on this road. They had encountered no problems and, in fact, had glowing reports of their tour. On the southern section of the road from Senegal to Nouakchott, an area considered safe, we saw many Europeans in RV’s who presumably had traveled the more dangerous northern section to reach here. I felt, foolishly perhaps, there would be safety in numbers, and if the worst happened I didn’t want David to be kidnapped alone. So, I decided to cycle the road. We met police checkpoints every 50 to 100 kilometers or so. They collected all our passport information and always asked in what town we would be sleeping that night, making sure we wouldn’t be camping in the desert or riding at night. We were generally, never alone on the road with a truck or car or RV passing at least every two minutes. I felt safe and spoke positively of the route to the few cyclists we met traveling south when we were north of Mauritania who asked about the dangers. I read weeks later on the Al Jazeera website that the day after we headed north out of Nouakchott a car had refused to stop at a checkpoint outside the city. Police fired at the car and it exploded due to the explosives it was carrying, presumably for some terrorist plot in the city. Perhaps we passed this car on the one road north as it drove south.

We entered Senegal from Mali like we exited from Liberia into Cote d’ Ivoire, in a pirogue (canoe), traveling across the Faheme River. A bridge, not yet finished, being built by a Japanese company, will someday complete the newly constructed route we cycled from Bamako to Senegal’s coast, linking land-locked Mali to the sea on its eastern side. We had no hassle at the border because no border post had yet been established. David did his good deed for the day by hauling a heavy bag of potatoes up the steep embankment on his bike for a traveling Senegalese woman, another sign of a peaceful crossing as there weren’t enterprising teen-aged boys scrounging for a few coins by transporting loads up and down the bank. As in Mali cycling the new road was blissful with smooth and shiny pavement, very little traffic, quiet villages of homes with flat mud roofs and conical thatched roofs, gently rolling hills, and an energizing tailwind. Near this part of Senegal was the peaceful and meandering Gambia River which sculpted the gently rolling hills. We spent one night on its banks in a simple, but lovely tourist camp being refurbished by its French proprietor. Near here also was the Parc National de Niokolo-Koba where we were barked at by curious baboons who kept an eye on us as David patched a particularly complicated flat tire. Very fun. Senegal was more well-to-do, relatively speaking, than Mali and we met more educated people who spoke French in addition to their local language and some even a little English. More people stopped to talk to us about our trip.

It seemed a country of superlatives. We stayed in my most favorite hotel in West Africa along the coast, south of Dakar, a place where we ate our evening meals on a sweet patio being serenaded by local musicians. The very next day we stayed in the worst hotel in West Africa where we slept in our tent set up on the bed to shut out the mosquitoes and the filth of an unswept brothel. (I am sure we stayed in a few other such places in South America and Africa in our 450 some nights on the road, but nothing had “screamed” brothel like this one.) While we had the most hassle free border crossing entering Senegal than anywhere else on our trip, we had the most hassle filled border crossing exiting into Mauritania. Here, in the town of Rosso, I heard the line that goes something like “good price for you” more than anywhere else. I thought we did a pretty good job of holding on to our money, though David felt he could have bargained a bit more on the money exchange. I was glad we had crossed this border as experienced travelers rather than as beginners at the start of our trip.

Senegal was also our last country in sub-Saharan Africa as we moved closer to the desert and into the traditionally nomadic cultures of North Africa. We experienced a mix of Sub-Saharan African, North African, Arab, and European cultural influences. This mix was very apparent in one of my favorite cities in West Africa, Senegal’s northern coastal city of San Louis. Once the capital of French West African colonialism it was now a sleepy town with the old center on a slip of an island entered by crossing an arched stone bridge. The view of this center as we biked down to the bridge reminded me a little of Zanzibar with its white-washed flat-roofed architecture, narrow streets, and minarets standing tall here and there. The French influence was strong in a wide boulevard down the length of the island with old colonial buildings on either side, some renovated, some faded, some dilapidated. We saw as many men wearing French berets with checkered scarves around their necks as we saw wearing the traditional Muslim robe typical in West and East Africa with skull caps and pointed shoes. We also began seeing the blue flowing robe worn in Mauritania, slit on the sides and embroidered across the front. Over the years, I have developed a love of fabric, with all its possibilities in the materials, colors, weaves, and textures, its goal being to adorn the wearer. I think this is what I love about cultures, looking at them as the fabric of a country, in the nuances, beliefs and habits, and how they shape and adorn the life and stories of a people. I loved experiencing the mix of cultures in Senegal.

Cycling in Mali was similar to our experience in Burkina Faso, with its Muslim and largely pastoral culture, quiet, mellow countryside, dry climate, mostly flat landscape, mango trees everywhere. Two experiences stood out for me, our time in Bamako where we spent 10 days with my friend Michele, and taking the newly constructed road to Senegal. I had been to Bamako 30 years ago and I remembered it as a sleepy capital on the Niger River. It was now the least sleepy place I had been in our two years on the road. It was also the least pedestrian friendly place I had been, the traffic surpassing even that of the wild streets of Nairobi. The city had grown tremendously, with the downtown center now bursting at its seams. Cars, trucks, motorbikes, bicycles, crowded the streets. The sidewalks, sometimes impassable, were crowded with market stalls, market sellers, pedestrians, occasional bicycles and an errant motorbike or three. My senses were on overload when we walked in the downtown area. Many offices formerly located in the densely packed area, the American Embassy where I needed to purchase additional pages for my passport, and Mali’s Peace Corps Office where Michele worked as a Peace Corps Medical Officer, had re-located to Bamako’s ACI-2000 neighborhood, the site of the former airport, where swanky offices, hotels and stores were either in the process of being constructed or were newly finished. The grandest were the Mouammar Gaddafi administration buildings housing Mali’s government offices. The complex on the banks of the Niger River, resembling a massive resort hotel, with Gaddafi’s name spelled two different ways (according to one source there are 37 different ways to spell his name) very visible on two sides of the buildings, seemed very much out of place. My first guess was it was built with Libyan funds to fuel Gaddafi’s ambition to be Africa’s “King of Kings”. Further research suggested to me it was built by Gaddafi in exchange for opportunities to purchase Mali’s farmland for the growing of food for his oil rich/agriculturally poor Libya. In the light of current events it is, to me, more evidence of Mouammar’s megalomania and distance from reality. Trudeau in his “Doonesbury” couldn’t have created such a character, though he came close. http://doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2011/02/10 Nothing these days, however, is very comic about Libya.

It was wonderful to spend the time with Michele to catch up on our lives over the last few years. It was also nice to be in an American style home, where Michele graciously let us use her refrigerator, stove, washing machine, always-hot-water shower, WiFi, cable TV, DVD player. We expected to stay only a few days to get more pages for my passport, our visas for Mauritania, our haircut, and perhaps to visit a bike shop. The day we planned to leave, however, I woke up with a weird vertigo illness where I was only happy when my body was horizontal, so we stayed several more days. I didn’t like being sick, but how nice it was to recuperate on Michele’s couch with conversation and movies.

When we finally left Bamako (thank you, Michele) we decided to take a new route, not found on our two-year-old Michelin map to southeastern Senegal after reading a French couple’s blog who had recently cycled it. Newly paved with a wide shoulder and a consistent tailwind, it was a joy to cycle. We traveled through villages most tourists don’t and the landscape, as we approached Senegal, became more dramatic with rocky outcroppings. Very fun was the lack of traffic. Two bridges were unfinished and pirogues (canoes) hauled people and their goods across, hence, almost no cars or trucks passed us. It was like riding on an enormous bike path.

“Mellow” is a good word to describe my experience of cycling in Burkina Faso. Much drier than Ghana, less populated, and poorer, we spent just 13 days here. We shared the road with many other cyclists. Bicycling was a major form of transportation for men and women, young and old, often carrying small children, some on their mother’s back. The roads we traveled were well maintained, lightly trafficked, flat, relatively wind-less, and rain-free (during this season)…perfect for cycle transportation. We also saw donkeys pulling carts. This picture, to me, is the epitome of mellow. In the larger cities, Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso, more people rode moblyettes (small motorcycles). Especially fun were seeing women, dressed to the nines in spiked heels with tightly coiffed hair riding in rush hour. Mango trees were everywhere, greening the dry landscape. In villages the mango tree was sometimes the only tree, usually standing in a central place and always surrounded with locally fashioned benches where men and women lounged and chatted in the shade of the midday sun.

One of my favorite experiences was our stay in Chez Tess, a sweet B&B in Ouagadougou. We shared the home with another family, Tony and Idoia, and their soon to be adopted daughter Leonce. Tony and Idoia, from northern Spain, had been working to adopt a child for the last 5 years, and had begun the process of adopting now 3 year old Leonce, from an Ouagadougou orphanage two and a half years ago. They were waiting for paperwork to come from Cote d’Ivoire, where the disputed election was creating problems for them, and then planned to fly to Paris to make it home in time to celebrate Leonce’s first European Christmas. I felt lucky to be party to their great joy as their long awaited child was becoming a reality for them. It was also fun watching a very cute three-year-old Leonce get acquainted with her new parents. We left before knowing the outcome of the adoption and whether holiday snowfalls in Europe disrupted their Christmas. In a recent e-mail photo, Leonce was dressed in a winter hat and coat braving the northern Spain winter with her lovely smile. They had made it home Christmas Eve and she was making progress in her multi-lingualism adding Basque and Spanish to her 3 year-old fluency in French and Bambara.

We decided to spend a 4^th night in Ouagadougou to give us time to get information about our route. We planned to travel north from Ouagadougou to a lonely Mali border crossing, and then on to Mali’s famed Dogon country, much visited by tourists. The US State Department had issued travel warnings for part of this route, not including the tourist areas we wanted to visit. Al-Qaeda has its fingers in a wide, but desolate area of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Mauritania in an organization known as AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Mahgreb). Most people are not sympathetic to its message, but it has found some followers in disaffected youth, as one source I read put it. In the past several years a dozen or so people, many of them European tourists, have been kidnapped in these areas, and held for ransom. A few have been killed, including two Frenchmen in January 2011, who were kidnapped from a bar in Niamey, Niger. They were killed by their captors during a rescue attempt by French authorities. I didn’t take the warnings lightly, but I also knew, realistically, we were more likely to be killed on the road by a passing truck than by terrorists. Yet, David and I hadn’t talked with anyone who had traveled this route recently, no cyclists, no other tourists, no locals. So we waited until Monday when the Peace Corps Office would be open to talk with their security person. As he was on vacation, Shannon Meehan, the director of Burkina Faso’s Peace Corps took the time to talk to us. She gave us a very sobering picture of cycling our route, including our plan to go north along the coast in Mauritania. Mali’s Dogon area was still safe but we would need to go around the long way to get there. She was very enthusiastic about our changing our route to traveling in western Burkina Faso, southern Mali, and western Senegal (where she had been a Peace Corps Volunteer 20 years ago). She graciously gave David a detailed map of Burkina Faso, a treasure for him. We decided we would not visit Mali’s Dogon area (a disappointment for me) because of the increased distance. I didn’t know what I would do about Mauritania and its travel warnings. The road along its coast was the only practical way to cycle north north. I decided I would gain what information I could and figure out what to do when I got there. AQIM’s presence was a bother for us, but (among a host of other negatives) it is an economic disaster for people depending on tourism in countries where paying jobs are difficult to find.

David and I breathed a sigh of relief as we left Cote d’Ivoire and entered Ghana. The border was open as the election votes were still being counted with no clear winner yet and no reports of troubles. My first impression of Ghana was the public restroom next to the immigration office–clean, modern, staffed by a paid attendant, what a treat! In fact, after Liberia’s difficult roads and its lack of infrastructure and Cote d’Ivoire’s uncertain political situation and its decaying grandeur, cycling in all of Ghana was a treat–great roads, often with wide paved shoulders, not too much traffic, mellow grades on hills, mild winds, villages every 10 to 20 kilometers (in the south) with electricity and cold sodas, English speaking, guesthouses plentiful and well-run, fresh fruits and vegetables. Ghana resembled Colombia and Panama to me in its cycling ease (ignoring Colombia’s introduction to the steep grades of the Andes). Why is Ghana so different from its western neighbors? It has avoided civil wars and though it has had its share of economic crises, it has enjoyed relatively stable governments. I also think it has a better public education system than its neighbors. I am a true believer in education (whether public, private, home-schooled or self-taught) as the key to an individual’s well-being, but I am beginning to see the critical difference it makes in a population’s well-being. Like most of the African countries we visited, Ghanaians live on very little money per day, but they are more prosperous. Oil has also been recently discovered off their coastline which will greatly increase their country’s wealth. People are cautiously optimistic that the wealth will benefit them and will not be lost to unbridled corruption.

In Ghana we resumed our northerly direction. We had read about Africa’s 10º line of latitude as being a divider of climate and culture in the countries it crosses and we felt this. It was increasingly more pleasant to cycle in dew points and temperatures as we rode from the wetter coastal areas to the drier savanna areas of the sub-Sahara. We also saw cultural changes. South of l0º latitude people were more involved in crop growing types of agriculture. The architecture of their homes with their slanted tin (corrugated steal) roofs reflected their rainy climate. Churches were everywhere. North of this line we saw more cattle and goats pasturing on drier plains. Architecture was more rounded and roofs were flat. Mosques were everywhere. In villages, extended families lived together in compounds where houses were grouped together within fences of grass or mud walls. I felt it necessary to bike in a longer skirt as women (and men) more often wore flowing, loser fitting, ankle length clothes. Our time was too short to understand the particulars of the differences in culture, but in some countries, Cote d’Ivoire being one, the differences led to grievances, distrust, and sometimes violence. This was not the case in peaceful Ghana.

The largest open air market in West Africa is said to be in Kumasi, a city of 1.5 million in central Ghana. David and I, in one on my favorite experiences, spent an hour or two maneuvering through its pulsing maze with its octopus-like tentacles spilling out along the city streets. How anyone makes any profit with seemingly hundreds of competitors selling the same stuff is a question I can’t answer. Another of my favorites in Ghana was the sight along the road of the beautifully colored and beautifully named bird, the lilac breasted roller. It’s the size of a red-winged blackbird, and is just as common as the blackbird in Minnesota. We had seen this bird for the first time in the drier areas of South Africa and all through East Africa. Seeing it again in northern Ghana was like meeting an old friend and it connected the two sides of the continent for me.

We spent a short two weeks in Cote d’Ivoire on our way to and from Liberia. Abidjan with its paved roads leading to Liberia was a better city to begin our tour of West Africa than Monrovia where we would have spent weeks on muddy roads at the end of the rainy season to reach the village of Buah near the Cote d’Ivoire border. I had been to Abidjan 30 years ago traveling in West Africa on my way home from Liberia. I remembered a modern, glistening, European-like city center where delicious chocolate crescents and great coffee could be found on its busy streets. Cote d’Ivoire had been the “economic powerhouse” of West Africa at that time and Abidjan was its shiny capital. In the ’80′s and ’90′s the world market prices for cacao and coffee, the engines of that powerhouse, collapsed. In the depressed economy a civil war fomented. Fighting broke out in 2002, lasting until a cease fire was negotiated in 2005. The Abidjan we saw now had lost its glamor. Its shabby, fraying appearance and its markedly slowed business in the city center demonstrated for me the toll the war took on the country.

Yet, Cote d’Ivoire had retained its good infrastructure which made it easy for us to travel on a bike. The roads were paved, (though closer to Liberia they were pot-holed); there was electricity in most villages along the road; hotels and guesthouses existed for travelers. There was even a small tourist industry generally run by French ex-pats along the coast. We also saw much economic activity, especially in agriculture. Plantations of oil palm, coconut palm, rubber trees, and banana trees lined the road. In every village cacao seeds blanketed the road’s shoulder or were in drying racks near the road to take advantage of the heat from the sun (a subtle aroma of chocolate wafting in the air, one of my favorites). People treated us royally. They were pleased to meet Americans and suffered to make sense of our very poor French. Some bought us sodas and beer and one, even our dinner. Vivian walked with me through the marketplace to make sure I got the right price for the snacks I needed. Duo Arsene visited with us as we ate supper in a restaurant and then lead us back to his home so we could taste a real Ivorian meal (a sweet mashed banana fufu that I had never eaten before, very tasty). Jean-Marie, the hotel manager in a hotel we stayed who needed to cash a check in Abidjan rode with David on the bus to the city and helped him find the wheel he needed to replace a worn hub.

Our time was purposely short in Cote d’Ivoire, because we knew we shouldn’t be in the country after the November 28th elections. We asked many people their opinion of the two candidates, the incumbent, Mr. Gbagbo and the opposition, Mr. Ouattara. Their support for either depended on where they were from. Gbagbo must win if they were from the south; Ouattara must win if they were from the north. Some felt there must be a return to war if their candidate didn’t win. I couldn’t sort out the reasons for their passion as we didn’t speak French and to truly understand the divisions we would need years of living in Cote d’Ivoire. How tragic it would be for people like Vivian, Duo Arsene and Jean-Marie if some should choose war. David and I listen closely to the news of the election’s undecided aftermath and hope for a peaceful resolution.

On our final day in Liberia we rode on much better roads to the border. Two experiences stood out for me. As it was market day, both in Plebo, a large town we passed through early in the day, and in Prollo, the Cote d’Ivoire town just across the border, we encountered many, many people, women mostly, with their market wares, walking, riding motorbikes, or hitching rides on the few pick-ups on the road. The women were dressed in the brightly colored patterned cloth I know as lappas, walking 5, 10, perhaps 15k, carrying palm nuts, cassava, rice, tomatoes, eggplant, bitterball, bananas and other locally grown or made goods on their heads, with small children at their side or a baby on their back. I have always admired the strength in the women of Liberia and in the beautiful way they carry themselves. Market days were a once a week happening for them where they got a chance to visit, make a little money and stock up on a few supplies. Busy and festive, it was a good picture to carry in my mind as I said good-bye to Liberia.

Once at the border we encountered another very busy scene as market goers were crossing from one side of the river to another in loaded canoes. Some looked less than seaworthy, but as we had done this before we weren’t worried. The last time we had crossed it had cost us about $4.50 (US) in French West African currency. We were told by Sekou, a border official on the Liberian side, the local price was about 250 to 300 Liberian dollars (about $3 to $4). There was no set price. Everything is negotiable when shopping in this part of the world. One must have a conversation with the seller who tests your bargaining skills and your willingness to part with your cash. It makes shopping much more of an adventure. We walked up to a young man wearing sunglasses who we were told was the “head man” . He looked at us severely and quoted us a price of 1500 LD (about $21) to take us across. “Too much,” David said. “Highway robbery”, I said. He insisted that with our bikes and us in the canoe it could carry no more passengers and so it must be 1500. A minute or so passed. He did not come down and it looked like we would not cross that afternoon. Because it was our last monetary transaction in Liberia we emptied our pockets of all the Liberian dollars and coins we had. David said, “We will give you all the Liberian money we have which comes to 465 LD (about $7).” The man shook his head, but began counting the money. This took awhile because most of the bills were 5 LD notes. He totaled 475 LD and seemingly quite satisfied (David thinks it was because he had found a math mistake in his favor), he let us into the boat. He smiled as I shook his hand, thanked him and said good-bye. Several more passengers stepped in quickly with us as we were never intended to cross by ourselves and we were paddled to the other side. As I looked back I thought how fortunate I was to have called this spot on the other side of the world home for two years and how wonderful that it would still feel like home to me 30 years later.

Market day in Prollo, across the river from Liberia.