International travel during the heady flush of youth can be a frenetic business. The obligatory daily hangovers. The month’s itinerary crammed into a contractually permitted two-week break. The bewildering decisions made by the callow lad with a prefrontal cortex not yet cauterised by experience. This is how it should be. But in my 30s, with a little more money and time on my hands (I am a freelance writer, not a digital nomad) and independence, I want different outcomes from my alphabet of vaccinations.
I am not ready to stew on a beach, but nor am I here to queue at the Taj Mahal for a pre-packaged cultural revelation.
At the age of 34 I may have lost the hedonism, but I have gained something potentially more problematic: the oxymoronic desire to discover something ‘real’. Which is why I am in Sierra Leone, three months into a four-month overland trip on the coast of West Africa. Using bush taxis, I have covered Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea. I intend to reach Nigeria. Who knows if I can get a visa for a volatile country still simmering after a controversial election? I met a Nigerian man who swears he can get me one if I pretend to be his sister’s husband. When does a funny anecdote become a solemn vow?
Don’t get me wrong. You will experience many cultural revelations mixing with the countless ethnic groups (source: Wikipedia) or tribes (source: people) on the coast of West Africa — even if it is just words in Fula or Krio from sniggering teens in fake Gucci sliders. Here come the travel anecdotes. At a joyful political demonstration in Makeni, a welcoming city in north Sierra Leone, I was confronted by a group of men led by a bloke with blood pouring from his mouth and chest and a waistband full of knives, who was banging a tortoiseshell (the Poro, my mate Abib whispered conspiratorially, an influential ancient ‘secret society’). Off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, among shivering forests and craggy beaches of the Bijagós Islands, animist and matriarchal communities prick any grasp of how life can be liveD.
But these are not the grandstand experiences prescribed to us by 10-Things Google tick-lists. The real stuff of travel is the discomfort, rubbing up against people and the unfamiliar smells, and experiences of substance always seem to happen in the cracks between the things you plan to be memorable. Take a simple stroll through a city or village on the West African coast, day or night. Something will happen. You will be invited into someone’s house, or to a ceremony by a village chief, or receive directions to a sound system, or meet some local celebrity who will offer to show you around. The trick is to say yes. Age gives us confidence.
Booze can give you Dutch courage when you travel. It worked in my 20s, but I have sobered up in my 30s. I am in good company. Islam is the dominant religion in most countries on this strip of coast. Christians are happily knocking about, too (you know this because they talk so fondly of one another) so you will be invited for palm wine along the way. If you’re a young traveller predisposed to partying, try avoiding a bender in Berlin or Medellin. Here? Backpacker drink deals are not a thing. But nor are hostels. Or backpackers. Music and dancing? Compulsory. Go to a club in Dakar and listen to some mbalax, or an outdoor pub in Accra and join the Nigerian sex workers, area boys and famous artists moving to Afrobeats.
If I want a bit more excitement, I can find it on public transport. I recall Interrail holidays and trips where rental cars featured heavily, but it was always a means to an end. In West Africa, transport is its own exhilarating activity. Like the eight-hour motorbike border crossing from Guinea-Bissau to Guinea through stubborn jungle and over rivers in canoes powered by small boys, with breakdowns (vehicles, not me), marriage proposals and a sequence of bribes for bored men in official-looking uniforms manning poles of wood at random junctures. In Gambia, you might travel in a gelegele. In Ghana, a tro tro. Bush taxis always carry twice the people the vehicle was designed for, with another storey of cargo (nuts, ginger, humans) on the roof. You can sample a peculiar, nautical-flavoured sense of camaraderie in a rusty box crammed with people with a shared, faraway destination — even if you don’t all speak the same language and sometimes need to bicker. What is going on outside the window should be more interesting to you, of course.
In West Africa, it doesn’t take long to make friends — kindness and generosity are a constant theme
Africa is known for its safaris, but on the west coast, there is more subtle fulfilment to be found in poorly managed national parks, mountains and wild, sometimes unlovely stretches of sand. There’s the highland region of Fouta Djallon in northern Guinea, which looks like an unrealistic Jurassic Park set, or Mount Bintumani in northeast Sierra Leone (again, getting there is the real show). Or head over to Cape Three Points in Ghana for beaches as good as in a Thailand brochure, with none of the drug dealers.
Despite this, I can count on two hands the number of fellow travellers I have met on my trip. We appreciate our own company more as we age. You might stick out like a gangrenous thumb, but you can experience a strangely pleasant sense of anonymity. But one does not endure two long flights to be alone. In West Africa, it does not take long to make friends — kindness and generosity are a constant theme. Everyone shares their food. Some won’t eat again for a day or two. While walking through a village in Casamance, Senegal, a group of men called me over to eat with them. After plunging my hand into the shared metal bowl (use your right, stick to your own section) of fish and rice, I divvied up the only thing I had: a bottle of water. ‘Ha!’ A Gambian man said. ‘Toubabs [white people] never share!’ Selflessness. A travel souvenir that really shows your age.
