Four years ago I was travelling alone in West Africa for a month before meeting up with my uncle, who worked for a development agency. A moped, I decided, would be the most convenient transport around the arid Sahel region. I bought a newish Senisot in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso's second largest town. It cost £300, a considerable sum for me and a fortune to the Burkinabe.
For the first leg, across the border into Mali, I tied the moped onto the roof of a Peugeot 504. There was a ten hour wait until all the seats in the shared taxi had been sold. Then, 12 of us crammed in and set off in the late afternoon on the 400 mile trip. There had been several border skirmishes in the preceding months and the region we were crossing had been bombed by the Mali air force a few weeks earlier. Army checkpoints, manned by nervous conscripts, were a frequent hazard on the road.
As the moped owner, I had to cope with some of the most aggressive reactions. Each time, I bluffed my way through with no paperwork other than a receipt. Fortunately, I understood little of their pigeon French, so I was able to frustrate all cross examinations with blank looks. Searches became more rigorous the closer we came to the border. In the end, all our possessions were laid out one by one in pitch darkness by the roadside. An officer with a torch scrutinized each item minutely. Some of the things that, as a European, I considered everyday necessities, such as a Walkman, seemed highly suspicious to an African soldier.
My camera caused the worst problems. Few tourists bother to buy a photography permit. An officer noticed my camera was loaded and threatened to develop the film. I knew there were no photographic facilities within 200 miles. But the officer shook me up considerably with his description of what would happen if I was lying. From then on, I always travelled with finished films hidden in my money belt. This was not the only time my camera had caused problems, several times I had tried to snap people in markets but found myself surrounded by a screaming crowd. The women were offended and the children wanted a tip.
Once I went for a walk through a forest during a stop in the taxi hike and was suddenly surrounded by troops. Unwittingly, I had entered a top secret army base; the soldiers at first thought my hip mounted camera case was a holster. That saga ended very unhappily. The bored soldiers picked on our taxi driver, who turned out to be an illegal immigrant without a licence. We watched him being punched and kicked, our last sight of him driving off, after being conscripted, as an officer's chauffeur.
I felt particularly guilty because we had already put him to enormous trouble. His tatty car had overheated and nearly broken down permanently on the journey. At times, the road was so bad we couldn't even push and had to enlist local help in rebuilding sections of the road. Without our taxi, we were imprisoned for several hours in the remote army base until eventually we were led ten miles back to town in pitch darkness. Reunited with the taxi and moped, much to my surprise, we took the road to Mali the next day.
A rainstorm struck without warning in the middle of the night. It was as ferocious as a battle. Each thunderclap shook me like an exploding shell. Great forks of lightning lit the whole scene for seconds at a time like flares. They revealed a barren countryside peppered by stubby acacia trees which were all that could survive this climatological hell. Within minutes the rain had opened craters and trenches in the sandy ground and the orange murran road became a quagmire.
Arriving at the border post we took off our trousers to wade through thigh deep currents to passport control. Inside a small hut, fifty or so African men and I huddled shivering in the oil light, silently waiting for our passports to be returned. At dawn, next morning, I awoke cramped in the dicky seat of the car. The scenery had changed completely from the lush banana groves of the previous day. I now found myself in a moonscape wilderness. The driver had stopped to allow the Muslim passengers their first of five daily prayers.
We finally arrived, later that day, at Mopti, a large commercial centre that depends on the river traffic from Niger. I spent that night in an eccentric hotel that doubled as the best bordello in town. From Mopti I rode to Djenne, a hundred miles away. The lack of speed from the two stroke motor was no real problem as I wouldn't have been able to go much faster on a bigger bike as I had to weave my way through the wreck of a road. The heat was tremendous, I suspected that even at a 100mph it would not have been cool.
Djenne is a gateway to the Sahara and deserves to be as well known as Timbuktu. It thrived during the slave trade, when camels were the only means to cross the desert. Now, it is a sleepy backwater at the end of the road for cars. However, it still maintains the atmosphere of the days when any Christian visited at his peril. The great walled city looms out of the plain like a mirage. In the centre is a twelfth century mosque whose mud baked walls rise more than a 100 feet.
From the outskirts of the city, I was thrilled by my first sight of Tuareg nomads in the distance - they have a reputation as fierce warriors so I was happy not to approach any closer. By moped I explored the surrounding area. The art of riding the moped needed time to achieve, having little by means of inherent stability, lacking anything other than rudimentary suspension and having no extra power to get out of dangerous situations. Even in the most remote areas, there were always people unaccountably wandering around. Mostly, these were from the negro tribe of Peul fisherman, a sad looking race who seem to have lost out to the commercially minded Arabs. Several times I was grateful for their help in carrying the moped across streams to keep the electrics dry.
Returning to Mopti, I gave the moped its first service. The chain and rear sprocket were severely worn from small pieces of grit. The mechanic replaced several other parts. Labour charges came to £10 which I later discovered was about £9.50 too much. Mopeds are a ubiquitous form of transport in French West Africa. The Peugeot model is most common and considered more robust than the cheaper Senisot. Civil servants and other well paid city workers drive more powerful Honda C90s.
A whole family plus a goat or chicken regularly travel on one moped. They certainly get a battering from the pot-holes in the roads and the hot, dusty air. I also had reservations about fuel quality. The petrol oil mixture was bought from urchins in grimy bottles. Mopeds are a major investment and consequently their owners care for them well. Moped washing is a common roadside sight and almost everyone has seen the inside of an engine.
Mechanics lounge on every street corner waiting for trade. Most have no more than two tools - one of which is usually a locally made spark plug spanner. They borrow from colleagues when commissioned for anything more complicated than readjusting the timing. I usually tried to keep mechanics under close scrutiny because their techniques were quite alarming. Spark plugs were cleaned by grinding in sand and then blowing out the dirt. At the slightest excuse, a mechanic would strip down the entire engine, probably for practice.
My moped had a recurring problem that no mechanic seemed able to solve for more than 50 or so miles. I could never work out whether all were incompetent or if I lacked the knack of dealing with mechanics. However, I quickly built up a comprehensive French vocabulary for engine parts.
Repairs complete, I drove to the Bandiagara plateau, home to the Dogon, a unique tribe that has somehow managed to escape all European influence despite a steady stream of adventurous tourists. It is the only part of the world I have ever been where there are no Coca Cola bottles.
They live in curious villages, built for protection out of stone, on the top of escarpments. Spying a distant village, I rode off road at dusk. In the centre of the village, I switched off the engine and waited. No-one came to greet me, though I was obviously being watched by a dozen or so women and children who were nervously hiding behind rocks. Eventually, the bravest approached me and led me into the chief's compound. To break the ice, I took a turn at pounding the grain, the only chore more boring than washing dishes. Everyone had a good laugh at me, but any white traveller in Africa has to keep a sense of humour!
The men returned at dusk. They surrounded me, at first in silence. Little by little I won their confidence. We conversed with sign language and they kept pointing at the stars. I never discovered what they meant. Several children had eye infections, I gave them some drops to relieve irritation. I slept on the floor of the hut belonging to the chief's son. In the morning I bade goodbye and signed his visitor's book.
To venture deeper into Dogon country, I hired a guide. I left my small duffle bag of possessions with his friend to make room on my luggage rack for a passenger. Initially, handling became even stranger than normal but I soon adapted to this. This was where a moped really came into its own. We travelled cross country in boiling heat that made walking long distances uncomfortable. A car would have been too intrusive. As such a strong symbol of European culture it would have made any relationship with the locals impossible. The moped predictably broke down at our destination. From this point onwards on the trip, my chief memory is pushing it up and down roads in boiling heat as fast as I could. The engine turned over but the spark persistently failed to catch. Usually I was followed by a trail of children running after me. The older ones would offer helpful mechanical advice.
I had to push the moped 20 miles back to the nearest town but not before spending a couple of days among the Dogon. Their houses are made from stone. Once again I slept in the chief's compound. My guide cooked expertly using ingredients like cow's rectum and baobab bark. We also ate sweetened sorghum gruel, very nutritious but boring. I walked around the village but took no photos out of respect. I saw the witchdoctor's house decorated by charms and the menstruation huts where women were closeted. Many of the children had grossly protruding belly buttons. I asked around without finding an explanation. There was also a high case of idiocy, perhaps inbreeding was endemic in this closed society. Malnutrition and illness were the worst I saw in my travels.
The villages were a fascinating anachronism. Much of the technology had not changed since the stone age but each village was completely self sufficient. Walking through I saw a blacksmith's forge and the cloth weavers house. Most people worked in the surrounding fields.
Once again the moped was repaired and I embarked on the journey back to Burkina Faso on a little used route. I ignored advice to sell the unreliable moped and return by a safe bus route. The first part was but barely a road, just tracks through the sand. At first I panicked, thinking I might run out of water. I saw a young boy in the distance carrying water and asked for a drink. He refused unless I paid him a penny. The water was foul, brackish and thick with sand. The sand was so deep that I had to get off and push the moped at times. Since it would not start if stalled, I had to keep the engine revving and the back wheel spinning.
For half the trip I teamed up with a soldier on a faster Peugeot moped. We raced to reach a large town before nightfall. I had to skid round corners to keep up. I was lucky to be with him when I got a puncture. Embarrassingly, I had no repair kit or pump. He managed to temporarily fix it, believe it or not, using a knife to slice the inner tube. I then had further problems starting the Senisot again.
The kind soldier peeled off before the town and I was left alone riding along off road as night fell. The direct lighting system was at best next to useless and, for some unaccountable reason, I found myself riding through floodlands. It was impossible to avoid puddles several feet deep. After reaching the town, there was a road of sorts back to the capital, Ouagadougou, but my journey was still not finished. Paying continually for roadside mechanics to make ineffectual repairs had depleted my cash. The nearest bank that changed foreign currency was in Ouaga. I made it with pennies to spare. My uncle was away but a colleague met me and took me out for a pizza...
John Lowry