WAIST (pt 1) - Bamako

The origination point for the majority of PC Mali Volunteers going to WAIST was Bamako. Since we had roughly 90 people going, we had to rent out one entire tour bus and filled half of another. This may not sound like a big deal, but when you have to cover 750 miles of poorly paved roads, cross an international border, and endure a bus without air conditioning or a lavatory, you want things to be as simple as possible. Having a chartered PC-only bus meant we could stop whenever we wanted/needed, and in theory we would get to Dakar faster because we would not be stopping along the way to try an find more passengers.

The buses were scheduled to leave at 6 am, which meant everyone needed to be at the bus station at about 5 am, which meant everyone had to come in the day before and spend the night in Bamako. Some of us decided to go to a restaurant near our new bureau called West African Fried Chicken (hole in the wall KFC of Mali) for dinner and then went around the corner for soft serve ice cream before getting a few hours of sleep. Others decided to just stay up all night, have a few drinks, and then sleep for much of the anticipated 30+ hour bus ride.

When it came time to head to the bus station, we called a taxi at 4:30 am and were on our way. Interestingly, my car got "lost" for a little bit on the way to the station. The bus company we were using was called Sonef. When our taxi came to a stop we found ourselves in front of a gas station called SNF. Needless to say our taxi driver was confused as to why we wanted to go to a gas station at 4:30 in the morning and we were confused as to why our taxi driver brought us to a "bus station" that had no buses. Nonetheless, it was a situation remedied easy enough.