After Timbuktu


It’s been roughly four months since my ”Escape from Mali”—the ending of an emotionally draining, albeit memorable journey through the western African nation of Mali to the legendary-turned-anti-climactic city of Timbuktu (all of which have been immortalized in The Global Trip blog “Trippin’ to Timbuktu”).  Since then, life has returned to a state of normalcy—if you considering working in a youthful NYC interactive advertising agency being “normal,” sending funny YouTube and ytmnd.com links to friends and coworkers all day.

Well, that’s not all that has transpired since; there were some definite stateside aftermath events left over from the Mali trip.  For one, Joanna, the British blonde I met in Mopti, rang my doorbell unexpectedly one Saturday morning when she was in town and decided to look me up.  She admitted she thought it was weird that I, a virtual stranger, had willingly given her my home address, but she figured it’d be my own damn fault if she turned out to be a psycho.  She wasn’t after all—at least the weekend she was in town—and in fact, if anything she was well-connected; within two hours of her ringing my doorbell, I had been invited to brunch with her friend, coincidentally the Deputy Consulate General of the U.K.  That night I was invited to a house party at his fancy luxury Upper East Side apartment to hobnob with British, Mexican, and Singaporean aristocrats over fine wines.

As for my relations with Van, my excellent-turned-somewhat-shady guide in Mali, we’ve kept in touch—sort of.  I had given him my work number and one day he called me out of the blue to catch up—but I was in a meeting at the time, and had to call him back.  After a four-day game of phone tag, we finally spoke, and it was just a friendly courtesy call to see how I was doing since I left Mali so abruptly.  On top of Van wondering how I was, he was wondering when I would get around to making a website for him and his business.  Giving him the benefit of the doubt one last time, I made him a simple two-page site in English and French, which he was happy to have:

http://www.geocities.com/van_modibo_ballo

After sending him that, I thought the hassles would be over, but he has since bugged me for a Jay-Z DVD, despite me trying to explain to him that DVD region codes are different depending on country and anything I send him from here wouldn’t work over there.  Also, in one “urgent message,” Van asked me if I could please send him some money so that he could buy a new computer for his new business.  I politely declined.

WITH ALL THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS of Mali, it’s no wonder I compared traveling through it (during the low season) to one of the harder levels of a video game.  For my next trip, this time around I’m resetting the console and doing something a bit easier: Europe again (my fifth time now).  For six days, I’ll be visiting my friend Jack (from the Spain episodes of TGT2) who currently lives in Spain the Sylvina, one of the Uruguayan girls he met on my trip.  We’ll all go to Buñol, Valencia for La Tomatina, the world-renowned tomato throwing festival.  From there, my travels will take me to Greece for two weeks, where I’ve never been, to see the sights, check out the island life—both day and night—and hopefully do some fishing and octopus diving.  I’ll end my trip off in Munich, Germany for the first weekend of the ultimate celebration of inebriation, Oktoberfest.

In true Global Trip style, I haven’t packed or prepared anything yet, although I did invest in a guidebook (picture above) and some Greek language CDs so that I might be able to strike a conversation with a local out in the isles.  So far I am retaining none of the information; the only Greek I know right now is “Gyro with white sauce, please.”

Anyway, sit back, and get ready for another three-week-long The Global Trip travel blog fix.  The Trip begins August 26th.

Special shout-out to my “Livin’ On A Prayer” karaoke partner Lia Vakoutis for her photo of Santorini, Greece used in the background!  (The tomatoes and beer stein photos are courtesy of a Google image search.)


Next entry: Liquids On A Plane

Previous entry: Epilogue



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This blog entry was originally posted on August 08, 2006 on the blog, "The Global Trip: Trippin' To Timbuktu," hosted by Blogger.com. It is one of eighteen entries that chronicled a trip through the West African nation of Mali in March/April 2006.
on the blog, "The Global Trip: Tomatoes, Grease & Beer," hosted by Blogger.com. It is one of twenty-five entries that chronicled a trip to Spain's wild Tomatina festival, Greece's awe-inspiring islands, and Munich's world-renowned Oktoberfest in August/September 2006.




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