While we had been watching the elephants at the director’s house on Sunday, he asked us about what our plans were for getting back to Béré. After explaining that we were planning to retrace our steps in the same way that we came, he offered to have someone drive us to Am Timan on Monday morning for free. Monday morning came, and just before leaving the park, our driver told us that he had received a call saying that there would be a car going directly from Zakouma to NDJ. He said he would drop us off at his friends’ store in town and the car would come get us. That was at 8am on Monday morning. By 4pm that afternoon the car had still not shown up. It was a pretty boring 8 hours, but I was able to do a lot of people-watching, which was fascinating!
By 4pm it was pretty clear that we needed to find a different option. We decided to head back to the place at the edge of town where all the buses gathered. It was pretty late, but we hoped to find something to NDJ. One driver assured us that he would take the three of us in a pickup as soon as he was ready. An hour came and went and he wasn’t ready. After asking him when we would be leaving, he told us to wait until tomorrow morning. No thanks! Frustrated and desperate, we asked for our money to be returned and started looking for something else. By this point I would’ve taken a camel if one was available. There was a bus ready to depart for Mongo, so we settled for that. It was similar in size/shape to a little VW bus. The roof was piled high with like 5 feet of stuff and there were about 20 people inside. The body odor and lack of leg room was astounding. We finally rolled out of Am Timan around 5pm. We stopped a few villages down the road beside a crowd of people and a huge pile of stuff. My best guess is that someone had just gotten married and was moving out. They proceeded to unpack and repack everything on the roof; mats, clothes, rice, chickens, satellite dishes, cookware, literally everything except the kitchen sink since nobody has one of those here. After they decided that the center of gravity had been sufficiently raised, we all piled back in, along with like 5 more people! The lyrics to Another One Rides the Bus by Weird Al Yankovich started running through my head. The next 9 hours were the most uncomfortable of my whole life. Dust, bumps, smells, cramps, lack of sleep — it was nuts.
It felt so good to get off the bus and feel the cool night air in Mongo. It was about 3am, and our chances of finding a bus to NDJ were basically zero. There was one Arabic guy with a bus full of goats who was just about to leave for NDJ, but he didn’t have any places for us to sit. He only spoke Arabic, but he understood that we were pretty helpless and showed us to a little gated area where there was a mat for us to sleep on. The next morning we were able to find a bus that was going to leave for NDJ around 7:30am. Based on our past experiences, we knew that this really meant a 10-11am departure, but we were used to that by now. To our complete surprise, the bus actually left on time! It wasn’t even full; just the three of us, the driver, and another Arabic man.
We arrived in NDJ around 5pm, after yet another 10 hour bus ride. It was relieving to be back in a familiar place after so much uncertainty. We had made a reservation to stay in NDJ the night before, but by this point we had completely missed it and just got directly on the the bus for Kélo. Another 8 hour bus ride did not sound appealing, but we were so anxious to get home.
Our bus rolled in to Kélo around 2am on Wednesday morning. Adrian stayed on the bus and continued on to Moundou, but Zach and I had arranged for our friend Allah to come with another moto taxi and take us back to Béré. The moto taxi driver demanded that we pay double since it was so late, even though he had told Allah that the price would be the same as a typical trip from Béré to Kélo. By this point in the trip I was so wiped out, and I was sick of people demanding extra money for everything. So I told him we would discuss the price when we arrived. He was a dangerous driver, his headlight was broken, and he ran out of gas halfway through the trip. By the time we got to Béré, I was not a happy camper. I handed him the usual rate (half of what he was asking) and walked off without a word. It was rude, but I’d had enough. Apparently he created quite a scene and Zach ended up giving some extra just to be quiet and leave.
So. That was my vacation! It was absolutely wild. It may not sound like it was much of a vacation at all, but it was so wonderful to get away from Béré and experience more of the country. The whole adventure strengthened my faith immensely, and it will be an awesome story to tell over and over again.
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