Arrived at the Burkina Faso border very early, only to receive an unwelcome Christmas present. All borders are closed and we can only go through the border town of Koro with special permission from the Mopti gendarmerie. So, we turned around and retraced our bone shuddering journey along the dusty road - my head far away in The Mists of Avalon - and along the Mopti Causeway for the fifth time!
Kel emerged from the gendarmerie giving the thumbs up sign, the chief of police having agreed to issue us with a pass, and flourishing a fistful of forms to fill in. We were scrambling around the truck, digging out photos and pens, when Kel returned, saying the boss had gone home, and the 2IC was playing the power game and refusing to issue a pass and we had to come back tomorrow - Christmas Day - to see the chief. Although unwilling to issue us with a pass, the bureaucratic pipsqueak did have the time and responsibility to give us each another passport stamp. Our spirits low, we abused him roundly in the back of the truck.
We stopped to shop further up the road, everyone going in different direction, and all on the hunt for eggs. Adri and I headed to the mask shop and found seven eggs at one of the many scattered food stalls. Back aboard the truck, we gorged on sesame balls before visiting the "Exodus shower block" (the tap in the post office yard). I washed my hair but resisted the temptation to just strip off for a proper wash.
Fifty-two eggs on board, and the meat of another goat butchered in readiness for Christmas lunch, we left town! We sang carols in the back of the truck as we drove out of town in search of a camp site, nearly getting bogged in sand before we pulled up beside a tall thorn tree.
Kelvin was out of the truck and up a ladder and hanging tinsel in the branches before much else was done, the rest of us draping tinsel and coloured balls and empty beer cans on the lower branches. We blew up 33 small balloons and tied them together, and Adri then spent ten minutes untangling them before we hung them from the tree. We topped the tree with a gold star, and all was soon twinkling in the light from the truck. It was finally getting to feel like Christmas, with people disappearing into tents to wrap presents and put them under the tree. (We had drawn names from a hat a few weeks previously.)
One of a pair of official gift guards, I took a comfy mat with me to sleep out.
As I was lying under the stars, I worked out that Mum and Dad would still be asleep on Christmas morning, unless grandson Tony had woken them.
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