The Ringtone and the Drum: Travels in the World's Poorest Countries by Mark Weston

Author:Mark Weston [Weston, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Social Science, Travel, Regional Studies, Africa, West, Essays & Travelogues
ISBN: 9781780995861
Publisher: Zero Books
Published: 2012-10-16T07:11:54+00:00

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After a few weeks in Freetown, we decide to make for the diamond mining areas in the east. In West Africa, however, decisions are for the optimist; nothing can be taken for granted, least of all the reliability of transport. A realist would adopt a less cavalier mindset. Rather than rashly “deciding” to head for the diamond fields, he would resolve instead to establish whether such a journey was a remote possibility: whether the government bus was likely to be in the vicinity of the capital that morning, whether its schedule was the same as the previous day or week, whether its driver had turned up for work, and whether the vehicle was in reasonable working order and had taken on a sufficient quantity of fuel. These conditions satisfied, the realist would then plan for spending the day sitting in the bus, with movement a bonus and arrival at the desired destination at the desired time an extreme longshot. Finally, aware that contingency plans are at least as likely to be called upon as the original, the realist would make provisions for spending that night and several nights after it in the town from which he intended to depart.

Naively, we draw up no such fall-back plans. Awaking at five, we check out of our hotel and lug our bags through the darkness to the government bus station, a bare hangar at the bottom of our street. The bus will leave at seven, but the station master has told us to arrive by six to make sure of a seat. We present ourselves obediently at the ticket window just before the deadline: we are the first to arrive, and the first to acquire tickets. The bus is nowhere to be seen. We settle down on our bags to await departure in an hour. Dawn breaks slowly and the metal roof of the hangar begins to heat up. In the street outside, market stall-holders set up shop for the day. A girl in a long wraparound skirt walks past bearing a tray of peeled oranges on her head. A group of amputees, legs or feet hacked off in the war, swings by on crutches. A bus station worker chases off a madman in rags who was about to accost us. Three street boys sleep on the ground under a lorry, huddled together like eels on a slab.

The bus trundles in half an hour after its scheduled departure time. We board, along with many others - too many others, it turns out, for the driver’s assistant, who proves unable to seat us all. Although our tickets display seat numbers, several passengers sit in the wrong place, and grow angry when the poor boy tries to persuade them to move. Unfathomably, given he must have performed this procedure many times before, he has also made the fatal mistake of allowing the front rows to fill up first. This would not present a problem if there were a clear route to the rear of the

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