The story of the journey from Kong to Bondoukou begins as usual in Ivory Coast.
While waiting for bus to Kong in Ferkéssedougou, aka Ferké, I asked one of the ticketmasters about getting to Bondoukou. I was considering perhaps it would be easier to get back to Ferké the same day from Kong and continue on the next day to Bondoukou. He told me I’d have to do it step by step, meaning I’d have to change the busses, which some people seem to think I’d be unable to do. I assured him I was fine with it. I wouldn’t have to return to Ferké but I’d have to go North to Nasien then East to Bouna then South to Bondoukou. And then he said I wouldn’t be able to do it in one day.
The route looks like this and it’s the fastest Google Maps pick:
So all in all, it seemed fine.
I get up at 6:30am, not wanting to get up, AC makes me sleep longer although it also makes my nose stuffed and throat sore. I’m at the bus stop at 7:40am, there is no bus.
While I wait and decide to walk and take some morning pictures of the mosque, I see my bus neighbour from the day before, still waiting for his transport. And with him someone that looks like a ticketmaster. I ask for transport to Nasien. The man that looks like a ticketmaster asks back if I want Grand Nasien or Petit Nasien. Big N or Small N? I have no idea but I explain I wanna go North. It’s Grand Nasien. The Petit Nasien is marked as Nassian on G Maps and it’s in the East. Then I say I wanna go to Bondoukou, he says there is no transport to Bondoukou. That I know but perhaps I could go stage by stage? Ah yes, I could, the best would be to go to Nassian/Petit Nasien but the busses go there only on Mondays. So I should rather go to Bouaké.
Bouaké seems like good transport hub and it’s South West of Kong. In fact it is Ivory Coast’s second city. The man says thee is only a bus per day going there and it hasn’t arrived yet. Good. I’m waiting. The bus arrives after 8am.
But it doesn’t go West to the main highway, it goes East and South and stops at every possible village in the world. I enter the van from the back. The floor is moving. There are goats covering every inch of the floor. Some have tied legs, some have tied legs and are inside flour bags, some walk freely under the seats. I sit alone on a double seat which is moving freely as we jump on the dirt road – the sweet beautiful asphalt of Kong ends as soon as Kong ends. I put my legs on a piece of metal stool lying among the goats, somehow I don’t feel like sticking my feet among the furry bodies. We drive like crazy. The price of the ride is a whopping 6000cfa. I give the man 10000cfa bill. Maybe 10 minutes later he asks me if I have 1000cfa so he can give me back 5000. Il n y a pas de monnaie. I reach for my wallet. And I can’t find it.
I start searching. We continue driving of course and the whole seat is moving and we are jumping on the bumps and my wallet is nowhere to be found. I just had it in my hand! It must have fallen down among the goats. A man sitting on the other seat next to me starts taking interest in what I’m doing – using my phone torch to search for the wallet between the whiteness of the goats. I start thinking that maybe it fell down through one of the holes in the car, its chassis and floor aren’t exactly brand new. The man starts talking to the driver’s helper – they call them apprentice here – and then in the middle of empty bush there is a police stop. Everyone show papers.
The conductor comes out of the car, enters from the back and starts looking for my wallet. The policeman takes my passport and asks me where I reside. I’m busy looking for wallet too, I say I don’t live here. The policeman asks for a tourist card. Tourist what? And the discussion starts. Me trying to move the goats (using legs not hands, I’m not touching them they smell enough) and the policeman insisting that everyone entering the country gets a card stating the purpose of what they (we, visitors) are here for from the police. Good I was actually sent to a police station on one checkpoint after the border so I tell him I was there, I got registered and I got no card. He doesn’t know what to say so he gives me back the passport. But there are 5 other people without any identity documents so we spend there some time. The apprentice find my wallet. It’s covered with goat hair. And it’s not the last time I almost lost money today.
It takes 6 hours to get to Bouaké. After the wallet misadventure the apprentice takes pity of me and moves me to a seat next to the van’s sliding door. The car is never too full with passengers, that’s good. The apprentice falls asleep anytime he can and I think he must be very tired because he doesn’t wake up when the van stops and we have to wake him up. The goats keep roaming around, my small bag lies on the ground and it’s never been filthier. At one point a goat pisses on my neighbour’s hair. They take them out at Bouaké’s goat market.
In Bouaké I have to go to gare de Bondoukou. I take Moto and it takes me to a place where they sell tickets to Bondoukou but not the one I’m going to, or a town that sounds like Bondoukou. Good that the ticketmaster got surprised that a white man wants to go to Bondoukou and he asked me if I’m sure. I told him I want to go to the town near Ghana and then he understood.
Moto takes me to another gare, all in all I pay 500cfa. There the principal town I hear being shouted is not Bondoukou but Abengourou but what do I know. They heard me I want to go close to Ghana border, they sell me the ticket, a whopping 8000cfa. I sit in front!
There is nothing to eat so I buy a pack of biscuits and I stuff myself with juices: ginger of course, bissap of course and I buy tomy (tomi) juice. It tastes like plums.
Sure enough the bag boys – who load the baggage on top of the car roof – find me for baggage fee but they know how to approach me, “Monsieur blanc, the bag is heavy.” I say 500cfa and they take it.
At one point something comes to my mind and I open my small rucksack to check of my money pouch is there. Not sure what triggered me. Sure enough it’s not there! All my cash!! Oh man, I start thinking. I used it when I took euros to change in the post bank in Korhogo. And I did walk that day with my small backpack on, which is unusual. Was the pouch there or did I leave it in the big bag and I never took it out? I did put the cable pouch (a significant part of my baggage) in the big bag that day. And I was changing the rooms in the hotel… What shall I do? Should I call the hotel? Who in their mind would keep a pouch with 2000euros in it? Or maybe it’s in the big bag? Or did I leave it in Kong? I did change rooms in Kong, too (broke the bed). And what now? I’d have to rely on cash withdrawals.
I ask one of the bag boys to bring the bag down, he refuses. “They are all well arranged.”
We move and I even keep calm. And quite soon it turns out we shall be changing cars on my way to Bondoukou. And that the route is gonna be crazy.
The route from Bouaké to Bondoukou on the map goes straight East.
Our route in the end looked like that:
Not far from the most Southern point on the route there is Abidjan, which is coast. We were altogether in 4 cars. Two of these trips – the first stages – were very comfortable, the second one and the longest, to Abengourou, the car was practically empty. But how anyone picks that route? Is that for the efficiency? To maximise the number of passengers? I did complain to one driver at a stop that if anyone had told me it would look like that I’d either give up – after all I’m going to see another mud mosque – or I’d stay in Bouaké and sleep over. The driver said the direct West-East route is very bad but surely it cannot be that bad that this route around half of the country is actually faster. It was 11 hours after all!
On the first car change I open my big backpack when they move it and ouffff, the money pouch is there. Now I can go anywhere for no matter how long.
When I did complain not so much about the route taken but that noone told it would be so, so I could decide if I wanna go like that thought the night the driver also told me I can break my journey and sleep over and they will give me money for transport the next day. And I must admit – all the car changes lasted very short time and there was no issue, the bags moved swiftly, noone ever questioned where I go. How they manage to keep it running, to split the transport fare between the cars, to make sure we don’t end up in a dead end, it’s beyond me and the system is actually admirable.
But we did arrive after 1am in Bondoukou, the town dead asleep. Someone even asked me if I’m going further North to Bouna. Hell no. And there were no motos arriving to take us to wherever each of the passengers were going.
A young man approached me and told me I can sleep under and arcade till dusk, it’s after all less than 5 hours left. The arcades were full of people doing so, full of bags. But I don’t have any mat to sleep on so I asked the man about a hotel. Bradt mentions only one hotel – apparently there was a shortage after the war – iOverlander mentions one other hotel but the person marking it didn’t mention the price.
The man tells me how to reach a hotel on foot but then someone on a bike arrives and even though this is not a moto taxi the man can take me to a hotel and I only have to pay for petrol. So off we go. We visit Hotel Amitié and of course it’s full. The man tells me to wait while he goes to check another hotel. And it’s full, too. And we go further as arrive on a small street, with a bar/club blasting music around, women hanging around, one of them shouted OYINBO! Aha, Nigeria is near. And the sign-less building next to which they hang around is the hotel.
And somehow I feel it’s a love hotel. They have rooms but only the ones without shower are available and they are 4000cfa and the room isn’t ready, I am asked to wait. It’s before 2am. The toilet is a squat toilet. The shower room is locked with a padlock. I see a pretty woman disappearing in one of the rooms with a older drunk-looking man. I am not too keen to stay there. The man on the bike says he could go and check another hotel and I ask him to do so. I give him 400cfa, all my monnaie, and he seems OK. But he never comes back. And the room is ready, the linen look fresh, the ventilator works, the shower room gets opened. A woman comes up to me and starts chatting, she’s from Warri, Delta State in Nigeria but the way she speaks I’d say she’s American. No accent at all. She says she lived in Dubai for 4 years and it’s the most beautiful city in the world but it was too expensive and now she lives in Bondoukou, which she likes because it’s easy to make money here and it’s lively. Bondoukou is lively. Some more women come up to me and ask if I need company.
I decide a beer is in order and the caretaker of my room has a sandwich which he shares with me and I am hungry.
I go to the club.
It’s a small place, DJ playing music, people sitting around and chatting, drinking, sleeping. Two men kissing in the middle of the dancefloor. Oh dear, Bondoukou is lively indeed.
I buy a Guinness and sit outside. It’s 600cfa, I give the man 1000cfa and I get a ticket, valid for 30 days that the club owes me 400cfa. Pas de monnaie. I kinda enjoy this slightly seedy vibe of the place. And it’s after 2am, everyone is a bit dim at such hour. I buy another Guinness and the man from the hotel tells me where to find food – behind the corner – and that the hotel closes the gate at 3am. Fine. I go find food but it seems only a bakery is open. At least the bread is straight from the oven. But the woman is asleep and when I wake her up and show her a 500cfa, her eyes say two things: il n y a pas de monnaie and fuck you.
I go back to the club, get yet another Guinness but the hotel man tells me he will be closing the gate, it’s 2:40am. I take the bottle with me, the club ticket reduced to 200cfa of credit.
The hotel doesn’t close till after 3am, I meet the owner, an elderly lady, the man who closed the gate, seems to live in one of the rooms, next door I have the couple – the pretty girl and older drunk man – could they be a couple? A I get a few offers of a company from the women hanging around. I wash my dusted body with some of the shower gel I have left. I leave the gel in the shower room, in the morning it’s gone. People are still walking about the corridors when I go to bed after 3am.
Coming back to Maman 