ed this ticket was what we wanted. I then set out for our search for water for our journey. I was so proud of myself for being able to get us to a store by asking people for bottled water and then saying “I need bottled water” in French. I got back and Janine had broken out the MRE’s for lunch. She said that in the field they didn’t have time to heat them up with the chemical heater, so they just ate them cold. And so did we…meat loaf, tortellini, and chicken. It wasn’t so great cold. The bus stop where we ate consisted of wooden benches under a tin roof. A kind man named, Joseph, tried to communicate with us. I got that he was retired military and that his son was an English teacher. Most of the time I just smiled and nodded because I had no idea what he was saying. I could understand words hear and there but that was it. I did know that when you have friends in foreign countries they usually help you with the next step of your journey and I was glad to have him as he made sure we got on the right “bus.” We also met an older man named Joseph who was from Ghana. He was going to Mali to see relatives that he had never met. His father had walked from Mali to Kumasi, Ghana to look for work and had settled. Joseph spoke no French or any of their local languages either and he joined our vulnerable team. Except Joseph was from Africa, and even though he didn’t speak French, he would constantly try to speak English to everyone. This made me laugh as he would yell at people for not understanding him. Us English speakers got on the back seat of our Tro Tro, which is a van converted into a vehicle that can transport as many human bodies as possible. Our bags were loaded up on top, along with goats tied to rails. This was an awful experience because the tro tro would stop every 100 feet in each village to transport people and good to each village along the way. There was no air circulation when we stopped so we would cook and sweat each time we would stop. Our sweaty bodies were all pressed together and the seats in front of us were so close that our knees would hit. I can understand that I am spoiled in America because transportation is somewhat easy to come by and there is usually plenty of room. Here in Burkina Faso, this tro tro death trap was luxury because it meant that you didn’t have to walk and was supposed to be faster than a donkey cart. Luckily for us, Janine had bought a fan in Ghana and we could try to get air circulating when we stopped. We would go and everyone would be relieved because there was air and then we would stop and I wanted to pull my hair out. At night fall we got to Ouhigouya, a city that was 2 hours on a bus line which took us 5 hours in our tro tro. They “told” us through a man that spoke very little English that we were going to sleep here for the nig
ht. They gave us a room for $2 a person which turned out to be a straw mat on a concrete floor with a fan. The rest of the people on our tro tro slept on straw mats through out the building and outside (however, I don’t think that they were charged.) They introduced us to the next tro tro driver who was a tall very friendly and kind man who tried to communicate with us. They finally brought a friend who spoke excellent English whose name was James Brown. He told us he was from Mali and was a tour guide to the Dogon Country which was one of the things that I wanted to see. Happy that he spoke English, from Dogon, and his name was James Brown, Julia and I contracted him to be our guide and he arranged for us to get to the Dogon Country before going to Mopti. Janine was fast asleep on the mat as not sleeping on the bus the night before had made us all pretty tired. Joseph shared our room and tried to make sure James Brown wasn’t going to rip us off.The next day we awoke to my alarm because they said that the tro tro was going to leave at 6am. We went to the bathroom at the gas station across the street because it flushed! And we got some sprite and water for our journey. Our driver told us 8 but the original driver told us 6 so we thought it was better to be safe than sorry. We didn’t end up leaving until 9. We put our bags on a truck turned tro tro and we waited as street venders, kids begging, and a few naked mentally handicapped people approached us. We were worried because we hadn’t seen James Brown especially because we had given him a deposit for our trip. Finally around 830 he shows up and tells us that we should buy some Kola nuts for our trip to the Dogon country as it is a form of currency and respect there and more expensive than in Burkina (it was still $5 a kilo). After going to the market, we sat back at the bus stop and a man tried to impress us with some magic tricks. They were pretty good. The greatest part was that Joseph knew them and then would respond back to the man with magic. The man tried to teach me something with his ring which I still have no idea what it was. I would put one hand on the wall and then put my hand behind my back and say something and switch the ring from one hand to the other. Supposedly I did something wrong every time as the ma
n would say something in French that I wouldn’t understand and try to correct me. I never understood and he finally gave up. While we were waiting, we didn’t realize the back of the truck tro tro had filled up with people. Janine and Joseph got on and sat on a bench. I let Julia sit on a stool and I sat on a propane tank. Luckily, Janine had some pillows she had stolen from the plane ride to Ghana and I sat on those. They gave some relief but not a lot duri
ng our 4 hour ride to the Mali border. My propane tank was in the middle and Julia was by the tailgate and was filthy after our ride because of the dirt flying up. We stopped at the Burkina police station where James Brown had gotten a fine and his camouflage pants that he was wearying taken because they thought that he was posing as military. He put on some shorts that I have no idea where they came from. We stopped at another post which I proceeded to tell them that we needed a visa in French. He would tell me things which I didn’t understand until I finally realized that we were in Burkina Faso still and not Mali by the flag that was above my head. The border guard was understanding and friendly and sent us on our way. We finally got to the Mali border and gave James Brown some money to get us visas because he said he could “talk” and get us across. We gave him 10000 Cifas which was $20 and what our book said it would cost to get temporary visas which he had to renew in Mopti for free. (Ironically it turned out that the temporary visas were supposed to be free and the real ones would cost. We never found out if the money went in the border patrol pockets or in those of James Brown, but we do know that we had to pay again.) We crossed and finally stopped in Koro, Mali where we had to wait for a tro tro to go to Bankass. While in Koro, we saw our first mud mosque and fell in love with these structures. We went and got a mango the size of my head and split it. The girls and some older men just laughed watching us struggle to cut this mango and eat it with a small knife. We couldn’t finish it and we finally gave it to a boy. We went back to the tro tro stop where I had a conversation in French with a man that wanted to buy Julia and Janine. That was the just of what I understood but it was a common theme of the trip. I went and found Janine and Julia trying to teach hand games to woman and her kids that had ridden on our truck tro tro from Burkina. We finally boarded our tro tro 5 hours after we had gotten to Koro and we headed towards Bankass. Julia and Jani
ne sat in the row behind me by the window and I sat in front. Our friend Joseph was on the same tro tro after finding some relatives in Koro that were going to accompany him to Mopti. While we were going, the driver received a call and we stopped. A man came from a motorbike ride from Koro to get on our tro tro. He ended up sitting on my left leg for the next two hours. We finally got to Bankass and we walked to the only guesthouse in this small village of mud homes. We ended up sleeping on the roof on mattresses. It turned out to be the best sleep of the 
trip. This guest house had outside showers with real shower heads and pit toilets. It felt so good to shower. Janine and I went and got water from a local store. The woman who owned the store gave us all of the cold water that she had and some more warm bottles. She didn’t have change so she gave us a box of cookies. She was tall, beautiful, and kind to us and she had a demeanor that demanded respect and love. I said thank you for the cookies and water and we all laughed as we gave up trying to communicate. That night we had warm and delicious MRE’s and comfortable beds. It was the first good sleep in two days
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