Casamance On The Lifan LF125GY

The Lifan LF125GY is an Enduro or Dual Purpose motorbike, which means it is designed for on and off-road riding. Lifan is the largest motorbike manufacturer in Communist China selling all over the world. It’s 125 designation means it has pretty much the smallest engine a bike can have. In the world of smallness it goes; 125cc, 100cc, moped, ten-speed, jogging. A 125 is big enough to do anything one needs to do around here and is, by far, the number one sized bike in use in the third world. Large street bikes 650 and bigger, like I had in CO, are virtually non-existent in these parts, but I do see them from time to time.

I had just finished breaking mine in when we left for the southern Senegalese region of Casamance. We packed it to the max and hopped on for a 550 kilometer round trip ride to Ziguinchor and Cap Skirring where we stayed a few nights. You may know Casamance for the rebel fighting up until about 8 years ago. The rebels fight with the government not wanting to be apart of the French speaking northern area run out of Dakar. It seems everyone in Africa doesn’t want to speak a colonial language or become Muslim; one can hardly blame them. Senegal does seem to have their country in a bit of better order than The Gambia though; the roads are paved for one, and named too. The ride was beautiful; it spanned from large flat open savannah to river plain swamps with dried rice patties waiting for rainy season.

The food in Casamance is really not note worthy at all except to note how much it sucks. So I shall do so here; it sucks, which is odd for a former French colony. The food in Morocco is magnificent. Anyway, the ride was as wonderful and, as I could have expected, bumpy and tough. In Africa you need some kind of off-roading potential in a vehicle if you ever want to travel outside the cities. The road from Brikama to the border is basically a bumpy dirt track with a thoroughly depleted and potholed road next to it. What happens in Africa is a road will be built and then over the course a few years it will become undrivable due to the huge potholes. Thereafter a dirt or sand track will be carved out traveling parallel to the road occasionally crossing it or riding on a clean stretch of it. On our 8 hour bus trip to and from Dakar much of it was spent in these sand tracks twisting back and forth crossing the road and down into trails.

This road was thoroughly gutted out; foot high bumps that to the best of my experience reminded me of a torn up mogul run on a ski slope that hadn’t seen new snow in weeks. We zig-zagged at about 10 miles an hour while I tried to find the shallowest ravine to ride into. Every now and then I would yell out, “big one!” so Carolyn could get ready for a big drop, which at times were unavoidable. It was grand! To have to be riding like this in order to get to our destination was part of the exhilaration of making this trip. It is daily life for many and completely foreign to me, the reason for the journey. For about 30 kilometers we were weaving around potholes and gutted out dirt bumps. I have some video of us doing this that Carolyn took by wrapping her arms around my chest and holding the camera. If I can get to a high-speed internet service I will put it on line, although the video doesn’t do it justice all, one can’t see how big the holes are in the road or how much we go up and down on the bike.

The only other traffic going in or out of Casamance this way were a few buses (like the ones going to Dakar), other bikes, and very few cars. While riding on this road a police convey transporting somebody important came at us very fast and Carolyn yelled, “Get over quickly, these things run people right off the road!” She had seen it before. Very quickly a police truck and some other expensive and clean SUVs came racing by and on down the road.

After the road from Brikama we came to the border and in the Immigration office everyone was very pleasant. We paid 50 Dalasi to get the bike into Senegal and then I drank a Coke at the border and rested in the shade by a table where people buy tickets for the next bus leaving for Casamance or north to Banjul. Upon entering I instantly became relieved we weren’t traveling in such a capacity once more. Those buses make my body ache just looking at them, plus, being on the bike was so much apart of the joy of taking this trip. We could pull over in an instant to have a break in the shade and take some pictures. Or we could turn down a road to a village that Carolyn read had local pottery for sale. Which we didn’t find, but we did see a church with goats lying in the shade on the steps. On the way back one was still there so I took a picture of a resting Catholic goat. We passed, villages, graveyards, farms, and shacks that are used for bars, and many small children going to and from school and others everywhere else as well.

We made it to Ziguinchor with no problems other than two very sore butts. The seat on this bike is not very soft. It feels fine for a ride to the store but after getting to Ziguinchor we felt like we just brought the herd through the valley in a cattle drive right out of Lonesome Dove. My ass hurt like I just went to prison and refused to sit with the skinheads. It felt as if the seat was made of chrome steel, and we with asses of glass. I kept telling myself that it was just the breaking in period, butts harden under such stress and soon, I assumed, the pain would stop and we wouldn’t feel so bad. It’s getting broke into the saddle that we needed to do and I was sure it would be just a day or two more until we felt fine. Besides, we had a nice pool at this hotel and they even had a platform dive over ten feet tall. Which was kind of scary for this 34 year old. When I was little I would have flipped backwards off the thing just to see at which angle I could land on my head. I was saying each time, that the next time, I would do a Can Opener or a Sleeper to see how big I could get the splash and then I would climb the slippery, thin, metal stairs back to the top, by the time I got there I was already scared so I would just end up jumping off normally. Each time I jumped I expected the water to hit my feet long before it did and when it finally did it hit much harder than I wanted it to. It was a bit of terrifying fun, and quite a rest after the 150 kilometers to Ziguinchor. After hot showers we went out to eat and I had a horrible pizza that was almost inedible and Carolyn had the Chicken Yassa, which was hard as a rock. We drank some beer there and set off to a bar called Clara’s, which we chose because it has the same name as my Mom. We had a few drinks there and then went back to the hotel to sleep. No one was at the desk, like they said they would be, so I jumped over the counter and took our keys off the holder as another couple was coming to the desk, so I grabbed theirs too. We joked that they weren’t staying at the hotel.

The next day we rose and took hot showers. Had our complementary French breakfast, loaded up the bike and set of for Cap Skirring, on the coast, for some beach relaxation. Cap Skirring is small and the places we wanted to stay were a bit out of our price range so we stayed at the home of an old Frenchmen who rented out rooms. After finding this we rode around the whole area looking for a cheap place to stay closer to the beach and then had bone filled whole fish at a joint on the strip, Tired, we went back to the house we liked from earlier. Our room was very clean, so all was well. Once we took hot showers we had enough time to take a swim and stroll on the beach so we walked until we found a secluded spot and swam naked in the ocean while the sun set over the warm tropical water. Then we walked back, took hot showers and went to dinner. Dinner was pretty bad, I had a forgettable dish of some kind and Carolyn had something she didn’t like very much. We were beginning to see a trend in Casamance.

During our walk on the beach Carolyn asked a man to give us a lesson, and the next morning we met him at 10am for our two-hour lesson. He only spoke French so Carolyn translated on the beach while he was going over how to stand and stuff. Once in the water it was only the two of us, so my first surf lesson was in a language I don’t understand. It didn’t matter too much, he would point at a wave and turn me around and I would catch the wave start to stand up and fall over to the left. I did this for about 30 minutes and was about to collapse when Carolyn came out and took the board for a while. She stood up real quick and was thrown over almost as quickly. But she did have one wave where she surfed it for a few good seconds before falling. I kind of stood up once but was leaning to far back and fell over instantly. Not the beginning to my surfing life I had hoped for. Carolyn, however, is now my certified surfer girl and I could not, in my wildest dreams, be any happier. I ended up with a pretty decent sunburn that day, the first since coming to Africa, all down my back and neck.

We did the trip home in one long sore day back the way we came. We stopped and took many pictures and once, in the shade by the side of the road, we ate some apples. After a five-hour ride we reached the border and we stopped and ate again. I played checkers on a huge board that sits in between the laps of the opponents. There were a bunch of guys all sitting around playing so I asked about the game and before you know it I was in there. They play for money, but the game I played was just for fun. Before me sat a young man wearing a Yankees cap in a Vinny Testaverde New York Jets jersey. His wardrobe gave me an even greater sense of satisfaction when I beat him; I won that game for the American League East. And as fast as my victory came, we were gone. Back across the bumpy road and on home, 550 kilometers later.

BBB

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Appendix

This week I read a bit of news that should be reported here:

“Some 40 vehicles ambushed by unidentified armed individuals in Casamance

According to the Army's Direction of public information (Dirpa), some 30 unidentified armed individuals dressed in military fatigues ambushed on 27 February some 40 vehicles between Badiouré and Diabir, six kilometres from the town of Bignona, in the west of Casamance. The assailants stole passengers' valuables and money.”

We passed through Bignona twice and had lunch there on the way to Ziguinchor, we came back on the 23rd, two days before this orchestrated attack. Two days later and my motorbike would now be in use by the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance. They luckily didn’t attack on the road we rode back on, but damn close.