Vacation Part Deux: Kedougou

Everything I need on the back of my bike

The Three Sentinels of Pela Kindessa

 After arriving back from Mali with just $4 to my name, traveling back to Kaolack was completely out of the question, so I found myself waiting in Kedougou for my next living stipend to arrive. Fortunately, if you have an alternate form of transportation, four dollars can get you pretty far in the region of Kedougou...so Eric and I hopped on our bikes and he gave me the grand tour of the region. We spent our first two days back relaxing at the regional house drinking cold Coca-Cola with cracked ice, doing laundry and planning the logistics of our next adventure. On Wednesday we caught a ride with a Peace Corps car out to the village of Kukuji, where Eric is working to set up a new site for a future health volunteer. After a rather lengthy meeting with the two separate chiefs of the village and all of the elders we biked the last 7 kilometers to his village of Palel Kindessa, which is right on the Guinean border. Since I was still recovering from a mystery fever, sore throat and ear infection that had been plaguing me since we returned to Senegal we took the rest of the day off, listening to the BBC on his shortwave radio and pretending we were watching TV.

Eric, just 5 feet in front of me on the "trail"

Eric gave me the abbreviated tour of his village in the afternoon while we greeted his work partners and some of his favorite neighbors. He took some time to meet with his counterpart to discuss his own latrine project while I pretended the Tsetse flies had given me African Sleeping Sickness and dozed on the sidelines. We pulled water from his ridiculously shallow well for our evening bucket baths and then tuned back into the BBC to catch the latest goings on in the world. I can't get any English news stations in my village so I've been pretty ignorant as to what is happening outside of Senegal for the last two years. It was nice to feel up to date on current events, even if it was just for one night.





 

One of the Sentinels

The next morning we packed up our bikes and took the trail from Palel to Dindefelo to start the next part of our adventure. We went on a scavenger hunt from boutique to boutique collecting ingredients for a picnic lunch and then hiked out to a waterfall tucked back in a deep niche in the cliffs. The day wasn't too warm and the water was positively freezing, so we had the whole place to ourselves. After the obligatory swim and shower under the falls we spent the rest of our time constructing our signature "rat trap sandwiches" (bread, mayo, mustard, cold chicken spam, and a hard boiled egg) and lounging on the rocks trying to get warm. Around three in the afternoon we hiked out and loaded up two backpacks for a 45minute stair-master-esque death climb up to Dande, a village on top of the escarpment.

Freezing at the waterfall in Dindefelo

Once on top of the plateau we veered away from the village and set out to find a campsite near the edge of the cliff close to a rock formation known as "The Teeth." The trail wound through endless meadows of golden grass before depositing us at the world's most perfect camping spot close to the forest. We made a bed of straw to pitch the tent on and set up a fire ring on a bald patch of rock before Eric wandered off to collect firewood and I went in search of two perfect seats. The wind was so strong and the meadow was so dry that we opted to keep the fire small, just enough to scare away the boogie man and cook our "Rat Trap Pasta" (vermicelli, powdered milk, vache qui rit, onion, tomato bullion and chicken spam). We had a peaceful nights sleep despite the strong winds, but woke up shortly after dawn to some unexpected visitors. A troop of about 30 very rowdy baboons crested the ridge just as we were getting ready to make breakfast, so we decided to postpone the morning meal in favor of breaking camp and moving on. Eric took down the tent while I banged sticks together and threw large rocks at the largest males when they got too close.

Campsite on the plateau near Dande

 

A short 10 minute hike brought us to The Teeth in time to catch the tail end of the sunrise while we ate our breakfast of bread and hard boiled eggs. On a clear day you can see straight across the valley to the mountains on either side, but that morning it looked as though the valley was filled with fog thanks to the Harmattan winds that have been plaguing Senegal for weeks now. The winds blow south from the Sahara desert, bringing along a haze of dust that has been all but blocking out the sun and dropping the humidity so low that it dries out the inside of your nose and makes it bleed.
Once we finished breakfast we hiked back through the meadows to the village of Dande to refill our water bottles at their new hand-pump and check out the waterfall from another vantage point. In the rainy season the waterfall is fed by a stream of rainwater that forms on the plateau, but at this time of year the water mostly seeps out from the layers of rock below the ground so we were able to walk on almost dry land all the way to the very top of the waterfall.

Les Dents de Dande

 

We hiked back down to Dindefelo before the sun climbed too high and spent the day at Eric's friend Lily's house showering, washing clothes and reading in the shade. We met up for drinks in the evening with two other volunteers who ended up in the region after trying to get into Gunea for three days and getting rejected at every single border crossing because of tightened election security. Since their vacation plans had been put on hold we invited them to go camping with us the next day at a different waterfall and they gladly accepted. We met the next morning to buy provisions for more rat trap sandwiches and pasta and then biked the 5 kilometers to the town of Segou and another 2k to the campsite next to the river in the midst of a bamboo forest.

Amber waves of grain

After setting up camp and situating our drinks in the river to cool we hiked along the trail to a swimming hole and then continued another 30 minutes to the waterfall. First order of business for us dirty Peace Corps volunteers was to get cleaned up, so we broke out our bars of soap and bottles of shampoo and took advantage of natures shower. If you've ever watched a Garnier Fructis commercial and wondered who the heck would ever be conditioning their hair at a tropical waterfall....now you know. When we got back to camp we started a bonfire to get warmed up and spent the evening cooking, chatting and killing small scorpions that came out of the undergrowth to share the warmth of our fire. In the morning we biked all the way back to Dindefelo before using the very last of our money to buy a seat in a car back to Kedougou. Not a bad vacation for only four dollars!

View of Dindefelo from the teeth....you can just barely make out the town
with all the dust in the air.