Taking It To A Whole New Level: Adventures in Fording Rivers

Here's how you get to my village: 2 hour car ride, bike 20K on a paved road, then bike 5K on a really quality bush path. The entire bike ride is gloriously flat, the road never floods, and there are approximately 2 patches of sand/mud on the entire journey that could be considered less than pristine.

Here's how my friend Daniel get's to his village:

Yes, that's me in the picture. Yes, I'm fording a river. No joke. That's how you get to his village: fording a river and biking 30K up a mountain. Geez.

When Daniel and I were getting ready to leave Kedougou for his village, he said, "make sure you wear clothes you don't care about, because you'll be filthy by the time you get to my village." I said, "Ok" out loud, but what I really wanted to say was, No fing shit, Daniel. I didn't forget that this is Senegal, you know. Normally, filthy just means "covered in sweat and dirt/mud." For Daniel, however, "filthy" means "chin deep in ambiguous river water."

Anyway, after biking a few kilometers, we reach the river. I looked for a bridge of some sort, but was suprised when I didn't see any. "What do we do?" I ask. Daniel, the most positive person I've ever met, just smiles at me and says, "we cross it." Oh, right, right, we cross it. Sounds like a good idea. I stare blankly as Daniel sets down his bike, holds his backpack over his head, and begins to walk to the other side. I'm alarmed when I see that the water is all the way up to his chest. He's several inches taller than me, and it seemed very likely that the water would be over my head.

Figuring that there was only one way to find out, I put my ipod/phone/camera in the top of my backpack, put my backpack on my head, and carefully made my way to the other side. I was so very happy to find out that the water didn't go over my head, which insured that my iPod- and the rest of my lesser important things- made it safely to the other side. Thank God.

Daniel was already back on the other side at that point, and I watched dumbfounded as he lifted his bike over his head and began to make the trek back. Shit. We have heavy mountain bikes, by the way. I realized that there was no other way to cross and that I had to be strong enough to do this myself. So, I get to the other side, attempt to lift my bike over my head, but can't do it myself. This is going to suck, I correctly predict. Luckily, there was a kid on the bank that helped me get the bike over my head.

I then began to ford the river, wholly aware of the absurdity of the entire situation. My arms shook a lot but managed to hold out, much to my surprise. I had been certain that I didn't have the strength or endurance to carry my bike like that all the way to the other side. Certain. I usually have a fairly realistic gague as far as realizing what I am and am not capable of, so it was a pleasant surprise to be wrong. I simply had to make it, and I did.

I joined the Peace Corps largely because I wanted to become more capable and self-reliant in life, in general. It's really important to me to be able to know that I can take care of myself. I was in no way prepared for the obstacles it would take here for me to learn these lessons, but I've been here for almost a year and a half, and I've survived. Thrived, even. It took fording a river for me to realize how far I've come, but it was a happy realization.

Anyway, the fording of the river is really all I wanted to write about. The pictures from the rest of the trip- which include an amazing waterfall and views from the top of a mountain- are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/AmberGPatterson/Dindafello