Niger River Project

After Tabaski, leaving Ben to return to Djenne with Cat, I decided to head off to Hombori, Mali’s very own Monument Valley, with Trevor – an Aussie travelling in Africa for a year.

The bus that we took from Sevare looked no worse than any of the other beaten up vehicles leaving that morning, but it proved less than up to the task. We wheezed to a stop on several occasions, the resident grease monkey being kept firmly on his toes.

Trev and I had been assigned two fold down seats over the back steps. We both looked down quizzically at the empty space that should have formed the bit you sit on. They were then produced, matter of factly, from the overhead shelf and we sat, semi reclined, allowing ourselves a rye smile: we had a relatively obscene amount of leg space. My luck was to drain away quickly, though. And severely.

During one of our impromptu stops, and the obligatory deconstruction of our seats to let everyone off, my money belt with my passport, and I went our separate ways.

Exactly when and where, I have no idea, but having extracted my bags from the bowels of the bus on reaching our destination, I realised what was missing, and knowing I had already checked under the seats, I turned to Trev and said: ‘Mate, I’ve got a really bad feeling about this’.

The bus was crowded with turban clad Touregs, who took the opportunity on one of our stops to conduct an ad-hoc prayer session. It’s possible that the belt fell out here and is still there – unclaimed booty – but not likely. More probable is the assumption that someones prayers were answered: they pocketed the money and destroyed the passport.

Needless to say, this event has slightly influenced the last two weeks!

I carried on with the trip to Timbuctou with Ben and friends, an opportunity not to be missed, then returned about a week ago to Bamako to sort out a new passport and decide on what to do next.

Here, Mohammed from the British Consulate in the Canadian Embassy (the is no British Embassy in Mali) took up the case with a smile and a refreshing ‘can-do’ attitude. He was due to fly to Dakar in two days, so he agreed to take my application with him and return at the end of the week. Meanwhile, our trusted Malian friends Sekou and Adama, together with a returning party of Bens’ friends provided much needed moral support.

With a rather humbling and extraordinary team effort, I find myself here in Niamey with Ben once again, new passport with new visas in hand, just a week after returning to Bamako.

Thanks to everyone already mentioned, and a very supportive family back home…

Tags: Lost Passport, Public Transport, Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 10:19 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.