In my group was Ian, John, Kate and Katie. The ride to Kate’s site was not bad at all (paved road and all) and there we parted ways with Kate and Katie who went on to their sites and John, Ian and I continued on with John’s counterpart (my and Ian’s counterparts went by moto).
We got to John’s site yesterday at about 4 after being in a taxi since 8am and eventually were taken to John’s house. It’s a new house with a vrai toilet, sink and shower head, but no running water which renders them moot. We had dinner at a little café by the marche (omelettes with fries!) and have already become regulars as we had breakfast there (omelettes again) and dinner (spaghetti with a tomato-ey sauce, fries and onion) today.
So this morning Ian and I get all ready to go on to our sites further north and after breakfast bring our stuff to the taxi going our way, buy our tickets and throw our stuff on top. It was probably 9am, maybe earlier.
So then they tell us they are waiting to fill two more spots in the taxi before we can take off and Ian and I make the mistake of thinking this should not take long at all. WRONG.
After waiting all day and wandering around John’s site, eating at a rice bar, buying multiple sachets of Coyah (water), hanging out in the office of the NGO John is assigned to, at about 6pm Ousmane makes the call that we are not to take the taxi today and instead wait for tomorrow. He made this decision based on many factors: volunteers generally are not to travel at night, this is our first bush taxi experience (including yesterday), and our counterparts will not be riding with us (Ian’s counterpart had already gone ahead to his site and my counterpart was having his moto fixed and stayed around for this whole fiasco but was riding his moto to site).
Starting at about 3pm, Guineans were shocked that we were still there. Apparently it isn’t that common to wait ALL DAY for your taxi to leave. We think the other people waiting for our taxi might have been a little peeved at us for backing out so they would have to wait for tomorrow, but that’s just how it is. I am very doubtful they would have filled those other seats tonight anyway and hopefully in the morning some others will arrive and we can take off. Ousmane said that if we haven’t left by noon tomorrow, we should call him and he will adjust our schedule, though we don’t know what that means.
I think we win the prize for longest time taken to get to site, beating even those out in the middle of nowhere in Haute.
It’s just so frustrating because it should only take an hour to get to my site once we finally leave. It’s the actual leaving that is taking the longest.
Boredom at John's NGO office:
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