That night Detlef had a dream that someone needed help driving a blue Land Rover all the way to the Mali border and that we agreed to help- which solved our transport issue!
We weren't sure if we needed to take it serious or not, but in any case would have to start moving. So we decided to take a local bus to the first big town on the road to Mali, which was Kaolack, 200km's from where there.
Our Senegalese bus was soon packed to the rafters and became quite unbearable. To make things worse it broke down about halfway to Kaolack. Of course the driver didn't want to lose all his money so he wanted to organise other transport rather than the passengers waving down buses. But where would he find another empty bus in the middle of nowhere? But in Senegal this isn't a problem. The first bus he waved down was already full by moderate standards, yet after a quick talk with the driver that's were we had to get in to. Now we were two buses crammed into one! Detlef and I were kind of standing, kind of bending over, crushed into the back against the side. Outside guys were hanging onto the back.
Kaolack was crazy. I don't know if it was market day or what but the place was packed with people hustling everywhere. We were tired, hungry, thirsty and hot so we shot into the nearest shop to try and get away from everything for a while. After resting a bit the question was: now what? We weren't sure where the main road was so we could start hitch hiking. We decided to walk into the direction we thought it was. Scarcely had we started walking when I looked down a small street on my right and saw: a blue Land Rover! Jokingly I pointed to it, “Hey Detlef, there's your blue Land Rover.” We had nothing to lose so we walked over. As we came closer we saw that it was broken down and standing at a mechanic's shop.
We greeted the mechanic and started asking about the Land Rover when a white Toyota double cab with a World Vision logo on the side and two passengers pulled up. They came to tell the mechanic something. We caught their attention and soon started chatting, explaining to them our mission. “Well,” the one guy said. “We're on our way to Kaffrine, the next town. You guys are welcome to come with us.” We were ecstatic and didn't think twice. The spacious seats and aircon ensured that we probably had our most comfortable 60km ride in the whole of West Africa.
And so the blue Land Rover kicked off our 4 day, 1200km hitch hiking adventure.