Financing West Africa

Our journeys in Africa until now have been pleasantly affordable, if not always pleasantly comfortable. We wanted to do the entire region at once, so here is what we can tell you about finances in West Africa. As a reminder, these prices generally include our visas (and visa prices may vary depending on where they are issued) and all expenses for the two of us. They are obviously a rough guide, but should be helpful to other traveling in the area.

Morocco- $47 per day over 15 days. Thanks to Morocco not requiring visas, cheap lodging and transport, and easy do-it-yourself tour options, this is one of the cheapest countries we have visited. We stayed in a few terrible hotels, but also a few rather nice ones, but you could easily stay in nice ones the whole time and not add more than $10/night.

Mauritania- $68 per day over 8 days. This reflects the $45 visa, but is lessened by us staying with a family for a few days. Hotels are a bit pricey in Mauritania for the quality, and most of the food is imported, so it can also be pricey if you want Western-standards. However, transport is cheap, with the iron ore train being almost free.

Senegal- $61 per day over 7 days. Senegal is the other country in this part of the world that does not require visas for Americans (or most Europeans), which reduces the cost. Hotels are reasonable except in Dakar, where you should definitely stay in the very nice Catholic Guesthouse or couchsurf if you are on a budget.

The Gambia- $106 per day over 4 days. This is skewed by the $50 visas and only being there for four days, but in The Gambia, you have to take tours (often costly boat tours) to see much. Guides can be hired very cheaply if you can find them, but boats cannot. We do have some good suggestions for bird and wildlife guides if you decide to go.

Mali- $76 per day over 8.5 days. Visas are $25 each. Mali has more tourists, so everything is a bit more expensive, especially tours of Dogon Country, which are costly, but interesting. If you are really on a budget, you can often get a mattress on someone's roof for very little money, which is actually your only chance to be cool enough to sleep if you are there in hot season unless you pay the outrageous additional amounts (normally $20/night) for air conditioning.

Burkina Faso- $66 per day over 7.5 days. Visas were $20 each at the border, but only good for 7 days. Transport is fairly cheap and often nicer than surrounding countries (even sometimes air conditioned on the main east-west road). Without your own car, you do have to hire a guide and car to see some of the interesting spots in the west of the country, which was not crazy expensive, but raised the average.

Ghana- $46 per day over 14 days. Visas were $30 each. Ghana feels more expensive than it is because at a few touristy places, you feel like you are being overcharged. Food on the street is good (if you can find it without fish sauce) and really cheap. Hotel rooms are very reasonable, though you may want to look at a few in Accra to find the right cleanliness/cost balance.

Togo- $49 per day over 4.5 days. Visas were $30 each. This is completely skewed by us staying entirely with Peace Corps volunteers while in the country. The average would have been about $30 per day more without that. Take the Post Bus, which is nice and reliable (and air conditioned) when traveling.

Benin- $65 per day over 5.5 days. Visas were $20 each. Good value since we had to pay $50 each for the car/tour to Pendjari tour and paid for hotels throughout the country. Take InterCity bus when possible--it was cheaper than most and air conditioned.

Nigeria- $80 per day over 11 days. Visas were $130 each. The visas make it expensive, but our couchsurfing in Lagos offsets that since hotel prices there are very high. Transport costs vary a lot from place to place in the country, sometimes with little reason. Street food availability also varies a lot, and restaurants are expensive. Make sure your hotel has a generator (almost all do) since the country is without power most of the time.

Cameroon- $59 per day over 15 days. Visas were $100 each. Hotels aren't that expensive, though the water and electricity in Cameroon is spotty, so you could find yourself without one or both even at decent hotels (good hotels have generators for power, but the backup for water is to give you a couple of buckets). Travel prices also vary a lot here in different parts, so just bargain hard and hope for the best.

Gabon- $78 per day over 7.5 days. Visas were $100 each. Gabon is expensive. Transport is two or three times more expensive than any other country in the region. Hotels are not cheap, though of a high standard (couchsurfing in Libreville greatly helps our expenses). If you venture to the national parks rather than Lope, they start at $300 per night per person. Yet, we have had a decent time here.

That wraps up expenses. As always, ask if you have any questions.

Obsessions of West and Central Africa!

This post is a long time coming, but we figured we'd wait til the end of this segment of the trip and do one big post covering all 15 countries we've visited so far! Either that, or we've just been lazy. You decide...


I guess we'll start with the three European nations we hit en route to West Africa.


Belgium - Chocolate. That one's easy. Brussels's streets are line with chocolate shops, each one fancier than the next. Luckily, if you hang around long enough and look serious enough about possibly buying something, most of them will give you a free sample!


Gibraltar - "Apes." They're actually baboons, which are monkeys, but all the tour guides call them apes. They were brought over from Africa by army soldiers in the 1800s (I think) for...um, company? Now they run "wild" over the Rock of Gibraltar, except they seem to know exactly where the tourists with the food congregate. Saying Gibraltar's obsessed with them may be a stretch, but hey, we only spent a few hours there and don't really have any other candidates.


Spain - Ham. Or jamon, in the local parlance. Brussels's chocolate shops are replaced in Spanish cities with shops with huge haunches of pig hanging in the window, selling all manner of pork products! In Madrid there is even one emporium called the Museo del Jamon. (It made for a strange gateway to the Muslim world, where pork products are impossible to find...)


On to West Africa!


Morocco - "Berber artisan cooperatives." A.k.a....carpet shops. A guy starts guiding you through the medina (old town) and you think you're just gonna see the sights. Then he steers you to the amazing "artisan cooperative" where you are in luck the Berbers are in town, selling their amazing crafts, just for one day only! (Except that miraculously, they're still there when you walk by the next day, and the next.) Suddenly you find yourself trapped in a carpet showroom, with carpet after carpet being unfolded for your "viewing pleasure" and a slick salesman countering your every objection to purchasing ("Can't carry a carpet around the world? We ship to America!"). And then you start thinking, to your horror, "Hm, that carpet does look nice, and shipping it wouldn't cost so much..." You barely escape. Luckily, this only has to happen to you in one city (OK, maybe two...) before you catch wise and just refuse to even enter such places!


Mauritania - Tea. We thought Morocco was obsessed with tea until we got to Mauritania! A super-strong blend of green tea, fresh mint, and loads of sugar, decanted over and over until your tiny glass is just basically filled with tea foam, and drunk in three rounds over the course of an hour with your new friends, tea is an unavoidable but excellent Mauritanian experience.


Senegal - Pretending to have Internet access. In no other country have we entered so many buildings that had the word "cyber" or "internet" over the door, only to find that the place didn't even have electricity, much less computers or a connection! Senegal's sign-painters are apparently afflicted with an optimism that they will one day have Internet access, and are painting for the future, not the present...


The Gambia - "Happy couples!" For some reason, Gambians like to shout the phrase "Happy couples!" at pairs like me and Andy (i.e. whities)as we walk down the street. This is then often followed by some sort of fairly innocuous attempt to sell you something. We surmise that there was some sort of tourism-promoting PR campaign at some point that proclaimed The Gambia the place for happy couples.


Most of the time it didn't bother us, but one time we had just lost a bunch of money to a malfunctioning ATM (since recovered) and Andy was really mad. Upon emerging into the street, we heard someone call to us "Happy couples!" and begin their approach. Andy barked, "We're not happy right now, leave us alone!" And you'd better bet he did.


Mali - Mud. A lot of West African countries have houses made out of mud, but Mali takes mud art and architecture to a whole 'nother level. It has the largest mud-brick mosque in the world at Djenne, a town filled with other intricate mud-brick buildings. It also sells beautiful bogolan, or mud-cloth, dyed with different pigments derived from, you guessed it, mud. If you don't like mud, you might not enjoy Mali.


Burkina Faso - Mobylettes. The Burkinabe are crazy about their motorbikes, or mobylettes. The nicest store in Ouagadougou is a fancy mobylette emporium. Mobylettes swarm through the cities, and you see pairs that have crashed sprawled across intersections. But if, like me, you are reluctant to take one (without a helmet, down a bumpy dirt road!), people just don't understand.


Ghana - Fish. All of West Africa likes fish, but Ghana is especially obsessed and puts fish in everything. This was a real bugbear to us as we tried to eat street food, because almost every sauce had at least a hint o'fish in it. Every market has a huge, stinky fish section...and it doesn't matter if a town is many miles from the ocean or river--that's what dried fish is for! There is one toll booth in the middle of nowhere outside of Tamale in the north where women with huge baskets on their heads swarm passing tro-tros to sell people dried fish. How this situation evolved, I will never know, but everyone knows the fish-lady toll booth.


Togo - Pate. This is more learned from our Peace Corps friends than directly experienced, but Togolese people are really obsessed with the starchy staple they call pate. It's made of pounded corn and is fairly tasteless (unless you get the fermented version...bleh) but if they have to have a meal without it, they'll go a little crazy. We had to try it, of course...not bad, but we (like most other yovos we met in-country) don't really get what the fuss is about.


Benin - Celine Dion. You know those immortal lyrics, "Near...far...wherever you are..."? Wherever you are apparently includes Benin! We heard Celine playing at the bus office, at the Internet cafe...well, maybe that's it, but it made an impression. Celine seems to be fairly popular in much of West Africa, singing in French, English, and even Spanish.


Nigeria - Locks. OK, we know that Nigeria has a poor reputation for security, but it seems to have an excessive number of indoor locks. In the apartment we stayed in in Lagos, every room had its own lock and key, and in two different hotel rooms we were given a refrigerator with a lock on it. You know, in case those dastardly thieves tried to steal your yogurt...


Central African obsessions:


Cameroon - Beans and beignets. Or maybe that's just what we were obsessed with when we were there. But in every town you can find at least one lady frying up beignets (balls of fried dough) and selling them for 5 cents US apiece. The same lady also always has a big pot of beans (a bowl costs 20 cents) and another big pot of a warm sweet porridge (a cup costs 10 cents). This magical trifecta was our dinner many, many times.


Gabon - Speeding. Good lord, those Gabonese drivers drive fast. Our guidebook features warnings about reckless drivers for several African countries, but only in Gabon do we feel like we're taking our lives in our hands every time we get in a vehicle. And it doesn't matter if it's a taxi or a bus. In most other countries, if a car is driving fast, it will at least slow down as it goes through a village, but not in Gabon--the driver just leans on his horn to warn all the children/goats/other cars to get out of his way. (Honorable mention Gabon obsession: mayonnaise.)

There you have'em, the obsessions from this first leg of our Africa travels! Take them with a grain of salt, of course, and feel free to let us know if you agree or disagree!

Nigeria's food: It's all about the suya

The food of Nigeria is good, but expensive. Street food is severly lacking, maybe because people demand higher standards of hygiene, because police shake-down roadside food salespeople, or for other reasons that we do not understand. In any case, we now present some food of Nigeria.

If we had to choose one contribution of Nigeria to the global food scene, it would be suya. Suya is thinly sliced beef, marinated, grilled, and cut into small, bite-size pieces. Most often it is served with onion and toothpicks for eating. This picture is not great, but is typical suya. This one is from a fancy bar, but our favorite suya vendor was an old Muslim man cooking it over a fire made of two-by-fours from a scrap heap. His was excellent.
Like most of the surrounding coutries, typical Nigerian food consists of a ball of starch and then a sauce. This one is called ebe, and we can't really tell you how it differs from most of the other similar things we have eaten. This sauce had some secret fish that they didn't tell us about, but was otherwise not bad.
While staying with Ashraf in Lagos (who was awesome), we explored his neighborhood and discovered a guy selling food down the road to construction workers and guards in the posh neighborhood. He was very happy to have us and we liked the beans and rice so much that we came back later for more. Unfortunately, we think that it made us sick, as our digestive systems were unhappy for a couple of days.
A popular maker of dairy products in Nigeria is Dudu. The name alone amuses me, but they also make some crazy products. Here is an aloe milk that Tara had. Pretty good, but a bit weird.
I also got a fruit cocktail milk, which was super sweet and, therefore, gets high marks from me. Tara made me hold her Hollandia blueberry yogurt, which I would never drink. She thought it was decent and it is shelf-stable, so no refridgeration needed.
Lagos had ice cream vendors on the street who make these tiny one-bite ice cream cones for about 7 cents. But the funny part is that the guy uses one of those tiny sample spoons to dip it out of a big box, so this cone is really like 50 scoops with his tiny spoon.
We have found some good meat pies in various former British places, but the "meat" pies of Nigeria did not stack up. The primary problem is that they never seemed to have meat. Sometimes flavored potatoes, sometimes macaroni (weird), but we must have bought five meat pies and not one had meat. I finally started asking people if their meat pies had meat, and most would just laugh.
While in Lagos, we went to a real, American-style barbecue complete with hamburgers, hotdogs, and chicken. Thanks to all of Ashraf's friends for making it a great experience! The hotdogs were especially good.
A pastor and his wife were very kind to us and shared a taxi. While waiting on a taxi, the woman bought these leaf steamed things and was kind enough to give us one. They are corn and taste like a decent corn mush.
Tara wasn't feeling great, so I bought her a Lucozade Boost, which I thought was like Gatorade, but is apparently more like Red Bull. It didn't help her.
Tara had one taste of a malt beverage and decided that she liked it. In this picture, she has bought one of her own along with a donut. She realized about 30 seconds after this that malted beverages (which taste mostly of molasses) are gross. But donuts are still good.
In Nigeria, FanIce is expensive and harder to find, but we found this knock-off ice cream for less. It probably didn't actually have any dairy in it, but it was not the worst frozen liquid that I have ever tasted.
Sometimes while in a taxi or bus, the taxi/bus slows down at a police roadblock, and you reach out the window and buy something that you don't know what it is from a woman who throws it at you while you throw money back at her. These turned out to be bean beignets with a slice of hot pepper on top. Not bad.
I was happy to find a liter of FanIce in the fancy supermarket when I was hungry one night. Unfortunately, it had separated and refrozen, which meant a crazy unsweetened Coolwhip-like stuff on the top layer and a sweet, icy layer on bottom. The last time that we buy a big thing of FanIce.
We then found a good softserve place in Calabar. The ice cream you see, it was about $1.50, which is expensive, but it was good. The funny thing is that we came back the next day and they guy said the price was now $2. We questioned it and he said that his boss decided that too many people were getting that size, so he raised the price. We then left without our day's ice cream.
While at Afi Mountain, we cooked for the first (and second) times in all of Africa. Not very exciting--pasta with chickpeas and onions--but we ate a pound of pasta between the two of us, so at least we had a lot of it.
Foods of Nigeria are now complete. We did not bring you any pictures from expensive restaurants because we did not eat in any expensive restaurants. Most food in Nigerian restaurants costs about the same as American restaurants for those who are curious. That was too much for our wallets.

Nigerian food definitely continues on the West African continuum, but by the time we got to southern Nigeria, there was starting to be less manioc/yam. That carries on through Cameroon. The meat on a stick changes a bit, but the grilled meat also starts becoming more popular.

Where the Wild Things Are: Nigeria

Depending on how hardcore of an animal watcher you are, you may love or hate this post. If you refuse to go to zoos, skip this post. If you enjoy seeing well-taken-care-of wildlife, even if in a somewhat zoo-like setting, read on.

In Nigeria, a couple of organizations run programs to rehabilitate different types of primates that have been orphaned or were formerly pets. The biggest of these organizations is Pandrillus, an organization started by two somewhat crazy Americans who fell in love with a monkey called a drill, the most endangered primate in the world (and aclose relative of the more colorful mandrill). The program has spent the last 25 years preparing to release groups of drills back into the wild. We visited their headquarters in Calabar, as well as their "bush" location in the rainforest about five hours away. Here are some wildlife pictures from that outing.

People often bring injured animals to the center, even if it is supposed to be for primates. In this case, they were given a bushbuck, which is a type of antelope. This one was almost ready to be released again, but he discovered that I was a natural salt lick with all my sweat.
At Afi Mountain, Pandrillus's land in the "bush," butterflies abound, and I love taking butterfly pictures. Here is a nice blue one that we'll call Butterfly Cordon Bleu.
Afi Mountain has six different groups of drills, each with 15 to 125 individuals. Each of these groups has a dominant male and many less-than-dominant males. The dominant male can often be found sitting around like this one. The less dominant ones are constantly watching their backs.
Also, becoming the dominant male apparently causes hormonal changes that make your face get wider, your shoulders broaden, and your butt turn amazing shades of blue and pink. This all happens within a couple months of becoming alpha male.
Can't forget the mom and baby drills. This baby is a few weeks old and spends most of its time attached to mama.
The face of a drill looks almost like a mask, and you can certainly see how it would inspire native masks. This is also the dominant male, around ten or twelve years old. Drills live to be about 25 or 30 if lucky, but the older males live on the fringes of the main groups, with the dominant males not really fond of them.
Pandrillus also cares for chimps, most of whom started out as pets in terrible conditions. Unfortunately, chimps can't be released into the wild once accustomed to humans or they will simply run to the first house that they find to look for food. This guy is named Pablo, and he was confiscated being shipped to Asia 20 years ago. He was in a tiny box with no air that caused him to have a stroke, but he has largely recovered. He is a subspecies of the Eastern Lowland Chimp, and is a fun gray color, making him seem very old and wise.
While hiking in the woods one morning and looking for birds (I didn't see a single one), I was forced to amuse myself with these interesting fruits that grew directly on the tree. They would fall off and start to rot, where they would be eaten by animals.
It will shock our regular readers that I next turned to fungi for consolation. Here are some tiny tree-like 'shrooms. Probably not edible.
The camp had two African Grey Parrots that had been either confiscated or given to them. Both were unable to fly, so they would hop all over. These parrots have the best vocal cords of any animal except man. These spent most of their time imitating the noises of the jungle.
They had some big millipedes in he rainforest. If Tara wasn't careful, I might be digging one like this out of her scalp soon. Just kidding--these are harmless.
Look! More fungus! Such a nice orange color.
We have seen tons of termite mounds, most impressively tall. Termites in Nigeria prefer the understated, though, so they build mounds that are only about a foot tall but are an excellent shape. Almost like a mosque, so we'll say that in Nigeria, the termites have been converted to Islam.
Another nice butterfly. And it really didn't want to open its wings for a picture. Drills will sometimes eat butterflies and other insects.
What kind of crazy fungus is that?
Red butterflies are always eyecatching. Once they catch my eye, I try to catch them with the camera, but that is a harder task. After a bunch of tries, I finally got a picture.
Here is Tara in the hut that we stayed in at Afi Mountain. Fairly large. Apparently, the Nigerian government helped to build them a few years ago. The government is also supposed to help fund the organization, but somehow the money keeps disappearing. In Nigeria, this type of corruption is called "chopping" which is slang for eating. The money is eaten before it gets to where it is going...
That concludes the nature part of Nigeria. Maybe not the best actual nature, but we got to be up-close-and-personal with some really interesting primates and see some nice rainforest. We'll bring you some more nature from Cameroon, though don't get excited--wildlife spotting in the rainforest is really tough.

Nigeria is Nice

We can admit now that we had a few trepidations about going to Nigeria. Getting a visa to visit is difficult and expensive...the country has a reputation for crime and corruption...plus, Nigeria rhymes with malaria! These things seemed to bode poorly, and we initially planned to rush through the country as quickly as possible.

But I am happy to report that we had very little trouble at all in Nigeria, and ended up staying for 11 days. We were never asked for a single bribe (we did see plenty of drivers bribing police at highway checkpoints, but we've seen that in other countries, too). And everywhere we turned, there were people bending over backwards to help us out--giving us a ride, negotiating a taxi fare for us so we wouldn't get (too) ripped off, and just generally competing their hardest for the "friendliest people in West Africa" crown.

Things didn't start out so auspiciously. The Nigerian official on the border with Benin who, as he was stamping us in, said "Make sure to be back in your hotel by 7PM at night."

"What, just in Lagos?" Andy asked. (Lagos has a bad reputation for safety at night.)

"No, everywhere," the guard answered. "For your own protection."

Welcome to Nigeria!

(Then the guard tried to convince us to pay almost $100 for a private taxi driven by his "friend" to our destination in Lagos so that we would not have to deal with shared taxis. We assured him that we were quite capable of handling public transport in Africa and as politely as we could, refused this offer.)

Once we were away from the border, things started looking up. We passed some beautiful coastline and finally entered Lagos, Africa's biggest city. It has 14 million people, and makes enough electricity to power about three houses, so every person and business who can afford it has a diesel generator. As you may imagine, this makes the city pretty smoggy and gives it pretty much a permanent low hum.

At first approach, though, Lagos reminded me more of New York City than any city I've been to in Africa. It' s spread out over several islands (well, peninsulas, but they're called islands for some reason), and as your taxi zooms along the divided, elevated highways connecting skylined Lagos Island (Manhattan?) to fancy residential Victoria Island (Lagos's Brooklyn Heights?), well, you might just mistake it...

OK, not really, and the closer you look, the less like NYC it seems. But we were glad we braved the warnings and spent a few days checking this city out.

Hotels in Lagos are really expensive (also like NY!), so we were very lucky to be invited to couchsurf with Ashraf, a Canadian teacher currently working at a private school and living in Lekki, an even posher neighborhood just beyond Victoria Island. (P.S., if you are a teacher and like to travel, you may want to check out job openings in Lagos--our host' school gives him a guardhouse-protected three-bedroom apartment with satellite, Internet, and a washing machine (we took full advantage of all three), and a car, plus salary...not bad!)

After a day of lounging around in the AC and catching up on laundry and blog entries, we ventured with Ashraf to Lagos Island to check out the sites. At the national museum, in addition to some impressive Benin brass statues, there were some good traditional outfits on display. (Julie, we learned that each Yoruba ruler would have his own personal beaded-ornament maker...want to apply?)
We then ventured further downtown to check out the markets. They were slightly more anarchic than some of the others we have been to, I guess, but not too insane. There were very few tourists about and we got many enthusiastic shouts of "white man!" or sometimes just "whites!" All friendly, though, people seemed happy to see us mingling. Anyway, here was my favorite sign in the market...no carrying stuff on your head allowed here!

Lagos Island also had some nice churches...

...and mosques. Nigeria is largely CHristian in the south, Moslem in the north.

Due to time constraints (OK, and a bit of recent unrest), we stuck to the southern part of the country. Our second destination was Oshogbo, to see the Sacred Forest. It is a centuries-old forest filled with 20th century, modern-artsy shrines designed along traditional themes. Most were designed by Suzanne Wegner, a European artist who is hugely revered in the area for her work in the forest.

Multiple people we spoke to in Lagos thought the shrines were disappointing, and Andy shared this assessment after our visit, but I thought that they were awesome.

Here is a couple in a nook near the entry to the forest.

Ommm...

The gates to the main part of the forest. Due to an outrageous camera fee (around $35), we were not able to take pictures in the main area, but my favorite statue was one depicting the evil god of chicken pox standing over a mass of writhing bodies begging him for release from their afflictions.

But not all the creativity in Oshogbo is in the sacred forest. We found this roadside casket workshop quite enthralling.

After Oshogbo, we went to Benin City (not to be confused with the country Benin). I will pause to note here that when you travel by shared taxi on a long journey in Nigeria, you should get ready for some prayers. Sometimes it was just a pastor saying a few words asking Jesus to bless our journey, sometimes it was half a gospel choir harmonizing in the backseat, but there was always a prayer. My favorite one asked god to protect us from "calamity and catastrophe" on the road. Eep. I think it was that journey where the driver ran over one goat ("that was the only goat I ever hit in my life!" the driver said), and then an hour later almost hit another.

Anyway, Benin City is home of the famous Benin brass statues. Apparently we took no pictures of these at the museum there, or at the one in Lagos, which has almost as good of a collection. Since that is pretty much all there is to see in Benin City, I suggest that maybe you skip it if pressed for time on your next visit to Nigeria.

Near the museum, we did find this statue that Andy thought looked strangely like pilgrims and Indians.

All of the hotels we stayed in in Nigeria came with ACs and TVs (which we found interesting given the power problems!), but we especially liked that our hotel in Benin City put our TV in a cage.
Our final stop was Calabar, eight hours east of Benin City and near the Cameroon border. It was definitely the nicest, greenest, and safest-feeling city we visited, and has a couple of terrific primate-saving NGOs you can visit (Pandrillus and Cercopan). Andy will write more about it in his post about wildlife. I guess we didn't take too many pictures otherwise, but I did feel that we couldn't leave Nigeria without a snap of my favorite-named bank in the country...
Well, if you're not a "Lost" fan, you may not get it, but if you are...do you think it's related to Oceanic Airways? Mr. Eko is from Nigeria, do you think he is involved somehow? Plus, it just sounds like a fake, sketchy bank name, doesn't it? We did not try their ATM.

So, Nigeria...not so bad! Maybe not the number one country you should rush to for your next vacation, but if you need to pass through, you needn't be scared, and you should be able to find more than enough things to see and plenty of nice people to help you out along the way.