I got home on Friday, 8 April, readers. I can report that Dakar’s Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport is nowhere near as bad as I’d heard it was (if you want to see one sorry-ass ghetto-looking airport, try the one in Lomé), and that South African Airways has the most comfortable economy-class seating I’ve ever seen.

I’m really glad to be home. I had feared that I wouldn’t be ready to leave when the time finally came, but that didn’t happen at all. I was absolutely ready to come back home. I was gone for 391 days (one year and 26 days), and that was a little bit too long. It was a fantastic thirteen months (overall), but I had definitely had quite enough by the end of it.

Now it’s time to start sorting through my pictures and putting the best ones up on my Flickr page. I’ll put notices up here whenever I’ve uploaded a new batch. I’ve also got summaries to write, as well as writing a bit more about West Africa, so keep an eye on this blog if you’re interested.

UPDATE — The first two photosets are up:

“Anger Day” in Cairo (the best of the photos I got during the 25 January demonstration)

Mountain Gorillas (the only six usable gorilla photos I managed to get)

If you’re interested, you can keep an eye on my Flickr page to see more photos as they become available for public consumption.

I’m leaving Mali tomorrow, readers, to spend the last two weeks of my trip in Senegal. I wimped out here: it takes at least 30 hours to get to Dakar from Bamako by bus, and that is just too damn long for me. The roads in western Mali and eastern Senegal are legendarily bad, and it’s hotter than hell in Mali during the day. I am just not up for it. So I bought a plane ticket (as usual, Ethiopian Airlines had the cheapest flight) from Bamako to Dakar; a 90-minute plane ride sounds a lot better than a 30-hour bus ride.

I’ve enjoyed Mali a lot. I took a six-day trip to see the tourist attractions in the east: the towns of Mopti and Djenné, and the legendary Dogon country. A full description will have to wait until later, but I will say that it was both one of the most physically uncomfortable experiences of the past year, and also one of the best. Mali is definitely the best place in West Africa for tourist-type attractions. Dogon country was amazing, and Djenné was pretty cool, too. I didn’t even head up to Timbuktu; that will have to wait for another time.

Mali reminds me of Ethiopia in a lot of ways: bad buses, physical discomfort (outside the capital city; my hotel in Bamako is the nicest and most comfortable place I’ve stayed in Africa), incredible levels of harassment from touts and hustlers on the street, lots of good things to see, lots of dust and dirt (Addis Ababa and Bamako are the dustiest capitals I’ve seen)… there are a lot of parallels. I’d put Mali, as well as Ethiopia, high up on my short list of recommendations for anybody thinking about a visit to Africa.

I hope to try and get halfway caught up here while I’m in Dakar, but that may not happen. If not, I’ll finally get caught up after I get home, which will be (God willing) on Friday, 8 April, two weeks from tomorrow. I will continue to put things up here on this blog until I’m caught up and talked out, and I will also finally be able to start going through all my photographs and putting the best ones up on my Flickr page.

After Ethiopia, bus travel in the rest of Africa has seemed comparatively easy. The only real exception was Tanzania, where I had the worst bus ride of my life (the infamous slog from Mwanza to Arusha, which was only 15.5 hours but felt like several days). I’ve had my two longest bus trips ever here, in West Africa, but I can’t say in all honesty that either of them was really that bad.

Lomé (Togo) to Cotonou (Benin) was easy — three hours in a “quatre-places” taxi, one passenger in the front seat and three in the back. I learned when I crossed from Uganda into Tanzania that you can fit up to nine passengers in a Toyota Corolla if you really want to, so I was glad they didn’t try it here. Togo is really narrow — the city of Lomé is in the “far west,” right across the border from Ghana, but it only takes like an hour to get all the way across to Benin, on the other side.

Cotonou to Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) was another story, though. I took the best bus available, which is TCV. The bus left Cotonou at 20:00 and arrived in Ouaga at 17:00 the next day; that’s 21 hours. Five of those hours were spent on all the border formalities between Benin and Burkina Faso, though, including three hours where we just sat and waited for the Burkina customs officers to let the bus go.

There was an unexpected hour-long delay in the middle of the night, too, some sort of demonstration blocking the road at one-thirty in the morning. There were a lot of vehicles in front of us, and it was dark, so I couldn’t see anything, but I heard a crowd chanting and hollering ahead in the darkness. One of my fellow passengers said:

–C’est les étudiants… ils ont barré la route… c’est la grève.

A student demonstration, it seemed. I wasn’t even interested enough to ask what it was all about.

I had trouble getting out of Benin, thanks to the ineptitude of the Immigration Department. There’s a bit of back-story here:

When I entered Benin, on a Saturday, I was given a 48-hour transit visa, with instructions to go to the Department of Immigration in Cotonou on Monday to get this visa extended. I went there on Monday morning, as instructed, and was told that it would take 72 hours to get a 14-day extension, so I needed to come back on Thursday morning to pick up my passport and visa.

By Thursday morning, I’d already decided that I was going to make tracks for Burkina Faso on Friday night. I went back to the Department of Immigration on Thursday morning and was told my visa wasn’t ready yet, but that it would be ready the next morning, Friday morning. That evening, I bought my bus ticket.

Friday morning, I went back to the Department of Immigration, for the third time, only to be told that if I wanted my visa, I would have to provide them with copies of my hotel bill. What the hell? Nobody had said a word about this at any point. I knew better than to get upset, though, and I calmly explained to the passport lady that I was leaving for Ouaga that very night, and that I needed my passport now so I could go to the Burkina consulate right away, as I needed to get my Burkina visa as well. Was there anything she could do?

I figured she wanted a bribe, but apparently she really couldn’t give me my visa without those stupid hotel bills. So, she decided instead to give me a receipt with an official stamp, showing that I had paid the required visa fees and that I was officially and legally free to leave the Republic of Benin. Vous pouvez voyager avec ça, she assured me. N’y a pas de problème. I wasn’t so sure about that, but what could I do?

Of course, it did turn out to be a problem. When we reached the first border checkpoint (exiting Benin) at dawn, I handed in my passport with the rest of the passengers (the few, that is, who needed to do so — if I understand it correctly, ECOWAS nationals are free to travel within the ECOWAS region with their national ID cards, no visas necessary), but I was quickly called out of the group and brought over to the border-police office, where the police told me there was a problem: I did not have a valid Benin visa.

I explained what had happened, and asked them to examine the receipt I’d been given at the Department of Immigration. They hadn’t bothered to look at it, even though it was paperclipped into my passport on the relevant page. They weren’t interested, though, and told me I had not paid the required visa fee for my visit to Benin, that I had overstayed my 48-hour transit visa. Again I explained that I had indeed paid the fee, as the receipt proved, and told them the story again of how my visa hadn’t been ready by Friday morning even though I’d handed in my passport on Monday. Finally they told me to go sit and wait while they talked it over. I expected again that what they really wanted was a bribe, but they chose to stamp my passport without further discussion. So, I’ve still only had to pay one bribe in Africa, and that was to get myself out of trouble for lighting a cigarette on the Kenya/Uganda border back in August. If you don’t smoke, you’ve got nothing to worry about.

We actually saw a wild elephant, taking a bath in a roadside pond, not long after we crossed into Burkina Faso. West African elephants are a rare sight indeed, and my fellow passengers were every bit as surprised and pleased as I was. The bus actually stopped for a few minutes so everybody could watch the elephant do his thing.

The bus trip from Ouaga to Bamako (Mali) was even easier, except for one scary moment when I got on the wrong bus. There were two buses of the same company, identical buses, same make and model, same livery, at the border at the same time, and one of my fellow passengers and I managed to get on the wrong one. We realized our mistake immediately, but our own bus took off in a cloud of dust before we could get aboard. Both of us were really upset, but the conductor of the wrong bus told us not to worry, just climb aboard his bus again, and we’d catch up with them at the next checkpoint, and that was indeed what happened. Getting left behind by my bus has always been one of my biggest nightmares in Africa, and I am certainly happy it ended well this time.

Ouaga to Bamako is a two-stage trip: overnight from Ouaga to Bobo-Diolassou (23:00 to 05:00), then Bobo to Bamako (06:30 to 18:00). The bus was air-conditioned, so it was tolerable despite the hundred-degree heat. Other than the wrong-bus mishap, not much happened. 19 hours is a long trip, but it was really more boring than it was uncomfortable.

As of today, I’ve been in Africa for exactly one year. I’ve got 26 days left; I’ll be flying home from Dakar on Friday, 8 April (God willing). My health is still good, but I’m pretty burned out mentally, and am pretty much looking forward to going home.

I’ve been unable to do much with this blog from West Africa. Even when there’s Internet access, there isn’t always electricity, nor are there always computers with enough RAM to run a web browser at anything like usable speeds.

Thus far, I’ve visited four West African nations: Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, and now Mali. I’ve taken the two longest bus rides of my life: 19 hours from Ouagadougou to Bamako, and 21 hours from Cotonou to Ouagadougou. The level of street harassment in West Africa is even higher, overall, than it is in East Africa, and that’s very annoying; at the same time, though, I’ve made many more African friends here than I ever did in Ethiopia, Kenya, or Uganda. I’ve seen the inside of several West African homes, eaten meals and watched TV in people’s homes, and thus (I think) have gotten a little more of a feel for “real life” here than I did in the East. Being able to speak French has really helped; my French has enabled me to have a very different experience here than I would have had otherwise. I was able to make real friends in Togo and Burkina Faso, and that has been a good thing.

Next week I’ll go on a six-day trip around Mali: Mopti, Dogon country, and Djenné. After that I’ll come back to Bamako for a couple days, and then head off to Senegal for my final two weeks. I’m hoping to take a flight on Air Senegal from Bamako to Dakar; it takes at least 30 hours to get there by bus, and I am less than enthusiastic about that idea.

I’ve been in Togo for over a week now. I have visited the voodoo-fetish market here in Lomé, and I just spent the weekend in the inland town of Kpalimé, where I hiked up to Togo’s highest point, Pic d’Agou (986 m). I think I’m off to Benin on Saturday; there isn’t much to do or see here, and things here are surprisingly expensive.

It’s really hot here: 90 degrees Fahrenheit or more, with high humidity. Lomé is the most run-down capital city I’ve ever seen. This is easily the least-developed place I’ve ever been. Most of the roads are unpaved, and they’re not even dirt but soft sand, which makes it difficult for the motorbike taxis to negotiate corners, and I was in a taxicab that got bogged down until the driver managed to enlist the assistance of passers-by to help push us out. Life here seems very quiet and slow.

I have no choice but to speak French from morning to night, as very few people here speak English. That’s going surprisingly well. It’s easier to speak French with francophone Africans than it is with French people, as the Africans don’t wince when you make a mistake. Vocabulary is my biggest issue, and my little Berlitz dictionary is getting a workout. I remember my verb tenses surprisingly well, but I have some dismaying pronominal issues (I’m never quite sure whether to use le or lui, les or leur, etc.). It would be very, very tough to get around here without French, and I’m glad my French is at least good enough to survive in conditions of near-total linguistic immersion.

That’s about all the news, readers. I hope the Internet is better in Benin.

Readers, I am in the Republic of Togo, where it’s really hot and things are very quiet. The Internet connection here is bad, and I am helpless on this wretched AZERTY keyboard. I got out of Cairo with no problems, and I am safe in this obscure West African republic.

The unfamiliar French-style keyboard layout has reduced me to 10 wpm, literal two-finger hunting and pecking, so I will not write much — I just want everybody to know I am OK. I will write again when I can.

Today’s my last day in Egypt, readers. I’ve been here so long (about three and a half months now, just about as much time as I spent in Ethiopia), it doesn’t seem quite real that I’m flying out of here tomorrow.

I’m heading to the airport at noon for a 15:25 flight. I am hoping that there will be no problems getting to the airport — there’s a good chance that tomorrow might be a crazy day here; they think it’s possible that a lot of people who’ve been working all week and were thus not able to participate in any of the protests will join in on Friday after morning prayers. Whatever happens here in Egypt, I hope it happens peacefully.

Currently, downtown Cairo is experiencing normalcy with a veneer of tension: still lots of riot police at the ready, but life on the streets looks otherwise normal. There’s still a lot of tension in the city and the potential for more trouble. No one knows where this thing is going, but it sure isn’t over yet.

Tomorrow I fly first to Casablanca, where I have a two-hour layover, and then switch planes for Lomé, Togo. I’m going to get there at the ungodly hour of 02:05, but that couldn’t be avoided; my flight on Royal Air Maroc was several hundred dollars cheaper than the alternatives.

Just now, I was having tea and sheesha in my favorite cafe while I waited for a chance to get on the Internet. For the second time in Cairo, I was almost hit by a falling object from the upstairs seating section: somebody upstairs dropped a pen, which fell onto my table. Immediately, a brilliant multilingual pun occurred to me, and I announced to everyone:

–Al-aqlaam min as-samaa’ (“Pens from Heaven”).

No one was amused or edified, alas.

I have no idea what the Internet situation is going to be like in West Africa. I’ve been spoiled by reliable high-speed connections here in Egypt, and I suspect I’m going back to the world of 56 Kbps dial-up connections. We’ll see, though. I’ll keep updating this blog as much as possible, as soon as possible.

It’s night here now (21:15 local time). Things are feeling a little tense and uneasy downtown. The police are still out, making a show of very visible force, ranks of riot troops with helmets and shields lined up at all the intersections around Tahrir Square. Shops and businesses are mostly open, but there are fewer people out and about than normal, and everyone seems a little anxious. I’m going home after I finish using the Internet here.

I’ve been hearing rumors of sporadic trouble around town today, and the BBC says there have been numerous arrests and clashes, but I haven’t seen anything myself. I actually did some tourism this morning (saw the Dahshur pyramids), and spent a couple hours downtown in the afternoon.

Tomorrow’s my last day in Cairo. I’m kind of glad to be leaving, to be honest; but I’m also a little disappointed that I won’t be here to see how all this turns out.

When I walked out of the internet cafe after putting up yesterday’s post, at around 15:00, things had gotten a lot more interesting in Tahrir Square. I tried to walk home via Talaat Harb street, but there was a line of riot police blocking the sidewalk. So I turned around and headed the other way, northwest, up toward the Egyptian Museum, where there was a line of officers holding back a big crowd of marchers who were trying to enter Tahrir Square. There was a large crowd of spectators as well, lined up all around the square. While I watched, the protestors broke through the police line and entered the square, cheering and shouting. The police didn’t put up much resistance once their line had been breached; they just got out of the way. I think they were only expecting a couple hundred marchers, and instead they got several thousand.

I watched the crowds of protestors gather in the square. They were waving a few flags and banners, chanting slogans, and moving back and forth en masse. The mood was somewhat jovial, rather than angry. I didn’t see anybody physically threatening the police, nor any police violence.

After a while, I headed back for my hotel, as I had to answer a call of nature. I took a side street to get back on Talaat Harb. Just north of my hotel, I could see more police holding back another group of marchers who were coming south from Talaat Harb Square, heading for the action at Tahrir Square. There were a couple hundred spectators watching it all unfold. While I watched, the police put up a pro forma resistance for a few minutes, then stepped aside and let the crowd through; the marchers headed on towards Tahrir Square while the spectators applauded. Again, the mood was excited and happy, and the police and protestors all behaved with restraint.

I went upstairs and handled my business, then headed straight back downstairs to watch the protest. There was no choice: it was like a magnet was drawing me back there.

I headed back to Tahrir Square by the route I’d just used: one block south on Talaat Harb, then right onto Qasr el-Nil. As I approached the square, I could see water cannons being used to push some people back towards the museum. There were a lot of police around, but they didn’t make any effort to stop anybody from entering or leaving Tahrir Square — it seemed to me like they were behaving remarkably calmly. Had I seen any heads getting cracked, I would have gotten the hell out of there instantly.

When I got back to Tahrir Square, there were several thousand people in the street, and a couple thousand more, like me, who’d come to watch. I made my way through the crowd, heading southeast toward the corner of Talaat Harb street. At one point a line of policemen were blocking the way, but they just turned around and walked away after a while. Most of the businesses along the square had closed their doors and pulled down their shutters by now, but I saw people eating a late lunch inside KFC, which struck me as funny. There’s a near-riot going on outside, and these folks are calmly enjoying a Family Bucket with coleslaw.

There was no sense of physical danger; it still felt kind of like a party. There were even families with children watching the action. A couple of people, recognizing me for a tourist, asked me to help get the word out to the rest of the world that these people are seriously sick of having no say in the running of their country and they are very hungry for a change of government.

By the time I got down to the corner, where there’s an entrance to the Metro station, past KFC, the police had started firing tear gas canisters, down by the intersection between Hardee’s and the AUC bookstore, to drive the protestors back north (in my direction). The crowd did not panic. People were mostly walking, not running, to get out of the choking tear gas fumes.

I took up a position on the corner, by the Metro-station entrance, to watch and take pictures. I had to move, though, when the tear gas canisters, which were being lobbed in my general direction, started getting too close for comfort. One of them landed about twenty feet in front of me, and that was enough to get me moving away. That’s the first time I’d been tear-gassed since late 1988, when we were exposed to tear gas as part of our training in Navy boot camp.

I moved back a ways and stood with my back to an electrical junction box, trying to take more pictures, but the gas drove me, along with lots of other people, north, halfway up the block on Talaat Harb street. I had to mop my eyes with a handkerchief, as I could barely see by this point. A lot of people stopped to regroup here. Some of us took the opportunity to take five and enjoy a cigarette: this was still Egypt, after all. I’m surprised no one was drinking tea. Incredibly, a souvenir-shop tout took this opportunity, while I was coughing, blowing my nose, and wiping my streaming red eyes, to try and take me into his souvenir shop: “just to look.” I just got tear-gassed, and this dude wants to sell me some papyrus bookmarks or a T-shirt.

As soon as the tear gas cleared, the square was full again. I walked south as far as Hardee’s, where I saw their plate-glass window had fallen victim to the protest. There were a lot of rocks on the sidewalk and in the street, although I never actually saw any rocks being thrown, since I kept a good distance from the real action the entire time I was down there. I saw a couple people nursing head wounds who I think must have gotten hit by rocks, but I never got close enough to the front lines to see any rock-throwing myself.

At no point, I have to stress, did I feel myself in the slightest physical danger. Other than having tear-gas canisters shot in my general direction, I didn’t even personally see anything that could be described as violent. The crowd’s mood vacillated between a gritted-teeth determination, when they were forced to move down the block, and an exuberant ebullience, when they were standing their ground. Most of the people just wanted to be out there, physically present at the event, and to express their feelings out loud for once.

I hung around there for an hour or so, on the east side of the square, watching the protesters march around and chant slogans. I left as it was starting to get dark, around 17:30, and finally went home to wash the tear gas off my face and hands.

I went out again in the evening, at 22:00, to see if it was all over. There were still a lot of people camped out in Tahrir Square, and still a large crowd of spectators, but nothing was actually going on. All the shops and businesses were still closed, so I just went home immediately.

Shortly before 01:00, I heard noise in the street outside, chanting and shouting, and the muffled boom of tear-gas cannons being fired. I opened my window to see if I could get any sense of what was going on, but I couldn’t see squat — I’m on the seventh floor, overlooking a narrow alley, so all I can see is the building across from me. Even on the seventh floor, there was enough tear gas in the air that my eyes started burning immediately. I assume what happened was the police finally decided enough was enough, and they cleared everybody out of Tahrir Square with the help of large quantities of tear gas.

Today everything seems back to normal. There are a lot of police on the streets, but other than that, you wouldn’t guess anything out of the ordinary had happened yesterday, much less the biggest political protest Egypt has seen in a generation.

A Quiet Protest (thus far)

Today (25th January) is a national holiday in Egypt: “Police Day.” There is a series of public protests, inspired by the recent events in Tunisia, going on today, which they’re calling “Anger Day.”

I went out at about 11:45 this morning to get coffee, and was immediately surprised to see how deserted the streets were; not since Eid al-Adha have I seen so few cars and people on Talaat Harb street. However, there was a huge police presence, more and more apparent as I got closer to Tahrir Square. They had a lot of big paddy-wagon trucks on standby, and lots of officers with movable barricades they could use if they wanted to close off a street quickly. Many shops and businesses were closed, but I think that’s mostly because it’s a national holiday and they would have been closed anyway. I had the upstairs smoking section of Costa Coffee almost literally to myself — only one other customer — at noon on a weekday; on a normal day I might not even have gotten a seat at that time.

When I walked back down to Tahrir Square, the police presence had increased. Walking through squads of officers and around barricades, I drew no attention whatsoever: just another tourist in Cairo. I stopped by an Internet cafe, but all the terminals were occupied. I sat down in a neighboring cafe to have tea and smoke a sheesha. Soon there was some action outside: a group of about twenty guys ran by on the sidewalk, followed by a group of policemen hot on their heels. The cafe staff prudently closed the glass doors. A large crowd then marched past, slowly and calmly, no hollering, no chanting, no megaphones, almost serenely. The crowd was gone within five minutes, totally uneventfully.

At the moment (it’s 14:30 now), there are still a lot of police in the area, and it seems Tahrir Square is closed to motor traffic, but wherever the action is, I guess it’s not around here. That’s OK by me, to be honest; I do not particularly wish to witness any looting or street violence.

A Happier Note

On a happier note, I ran into an acquaintance yesterday afternoon, a fellow American whom I’d met in Luxor. We went in the evening to see the Al-Tannoura Sufi dancers perform — they put on a free show for the tourists three times a week. We stopped by the legendary Fishawi coffee shop in Khan el-Khalili first. It was a pleasant outing and an impressive performance by the dancers. One of those guys spun around in circles for 45 minutes without stopping; I don’t understand how they are able to do that.

I’ve got some more tourism lined up for tomorrow, a trip to see the pyramids at Dahshur, which I arranged through my hotel. I have already seen the Giza pyramids, of course, but still haven’t been inside the Great Pyramid. I may try to do this on Thursday, or I may not; we’ll see.