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Then, we had to take our passports to the
police station for the departure stamp, as we were leaving the country
the next day. But the immigration officer was not there, so we had to
come back later. One of the policemen was exceedingly cheeky. He pointed
at Flemming with his Ali Baba beard and said with a twinkle in his eye:
‘Il est trop vieux pour vous. Vous devriez l’échanger pour un plus
jeune.’
Getting something decent to eat proved to be an even greater problem
than it had been in Timbuktu. It was Ramadan still and we were the only
non-Moslems in town! Eventually we managed to get a plate of boiled rice
with some kind of meaty sauce. By this time we were ready for a nice
cool beer, but that was interdit. The patron of the
‘restaurant’ didn’t approve of even non-Moslems drinking beer during
Ramadan.
I wondered what kind of meal we would be able to get at dinner time, and
in any case we needed a few supplies for the 5-hour flight to Lomé the
next day, so asked the airport coordinator to take us to a shop to buy
some biscuits, dates and nuts. We also stocked up on some bananas at the
market on the way to the port, where we arranged for our sunset
pirogue trip, and went back to the police station to get our
departure stamps from the chief immigration officer; a service for which
we had to pay 10’000 CFA. By this time it was time to head back to our
air-conditioned room at ‘Bel Air’ for a siesta as the temperature was
well above 40 degrees.
The highlight of our short stay in Gao was the sunset pirogue
ride on the Niger. There was a colourful, lively scene at the port,
where naked kids splash about happily in the water. And there was a
refreshing breeze as we moved along the water in the motorised pirogue,
passing picturesque boats and villages on the river banks. Flocks of
tiny birds kept flying over, wings glittering in the sunlight, to feed
on the seeds of the abundant green grass growing in the water.
We took the precaution of ordering dinner at our hotel before setting
off on the boat ride. Even so, the only dish they could offer us was ‘poulet
et frites’. The tough chicken had suspiciously long legs and I
wondered whether it was actually ‘cuisse de chat’! Flemming
managed to chew his way through his, while I stuck to the rather greasy
chips. There was no dessert to be had. We should have ordered that too.
On the positive side, they had cool Castel beers. Back at our room, I
filled up on a couple of bananas before retiring to bed.
It would have been a nightmare to get stuck in such a godforsaken place
and was anxious to get the hell out of there. I prayed that nothing
would go wrong with Honey-Mooney the next morning. |
La Dune Rose
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