West Africa was our most challenging travel experience to date and also the most rewarding. Some of the challenges we expected - heat, tough roads, difficult police stops, crowded, chaotic cities.
Some of the challenges were a surprise - the complexities around securing visas and the ever present curious people. The official, United Nations definition of West Africa starts at Mauritania and ends at Nigeria when you are travelling south. For most travel sites, West Africa is generally considered to be from Mauritania through Angola.
Namibia starts the transition to Southern Africa. We drove south from Morocco on a mostly coastal route, avoiding more inland countries and areas with higher level travel advisories. Visiting the artist village in Dakar, Senegal, artist Mienandi in his studio. A friend briefed us upfront saying that West Africa is about people and culture, not about wildlife or scenery, especially when compared to Southern and Eastern Africa.
This felt true, although we were treated to some spectacular scenery when we worked to find it. The rewards were the warm greetings, the hospitality, the humanity of West African culture which encircles people and solves problems, and the introduction to ways of living so very different from what we are used to.
We enjoyed our conversations and learning along the way about various aspects of village life and culture, music, religion and even the food. Young woman preparing casava dough, a staple in the regional diet. We learned to love, and eventually missed, the hubbub of the community market with vendors crammed along small streets selling everything imaginable from toothbrushes to live chickens.
