18 January – Kayes

KAYES - OUR ONLY STOP IN MALI

On the flight into Mali, as we got closer to the ground, below the hazy cloud, I saw things I haven’t seen for a long while. A river. I had to ask someone if it was indeed water, not something else. Trees. Proper tall trees, not the scrub bushes we’ve been seeing. Livestock. Fields. Not green fields, but fields anyway, ploughed and planted. Houses with pitched roofs. Not all of them, but a few.

Here at Kayes, there are also termite mounds. Which means 2 things… 1, there is wood…. 2, be careful where you pitch your tent!

There is also a toilet in the “terminal” building (€3 – and a bargain after not going for 2 days.) I shall investigate later, when – or if – the coffee has its effect.

Alessandro from Eurosport has just appeared. In clean clothes… Alessandro, are you clean?? Yes! Apparently, as well as the €3 toilets, which he investigated almost as we were still taxiing in, there are €3 showers! Double bubble… I shall have myself €6 of luxury in just a moment… Breakfast can wait!!!!!!!

AND MY MOBILE PHONE WORKS, TOO!

Now happy again, having almost forgotten the lovely 2CV which I missed out on yesterday.

Almost.

AAAAHHHHHHHHHH Bliss…. A large room, not exactly clean, with basin, toilet and shower. Water from a proper shower head, tepid, but enough to wash more than just face, pits and bits. Clean body, clean clothes. Out into the hgot dusty wind, with ash from what is obviously either e campaign to burn scrub close to the runway or just a bush-fire. Either way, my clean, white t-shirt wasn’t clean or white by the time I put it on. And my tan has completely gone, dowh the drain. I am now pasty and white once more…

But we’re all cleaner and smiling like loons.

Breakfast is over, it’s 11.45am and I am about to start work.

WHERE WE SIT ALL DAY LONG

Just to answer a question or two - the programme I do here is the 26-minute World Feed... basically, the pictures which come out of Dakar for the day, with commentary by yours truly...

Of the many broadcasters who take the feed, some use it as it is, with my voice (Versus in the USA, for example - they used to be OLN) and some use it, cut up, in news/sports programmes etc.

This year, Eurosport is using the pictures as part of a longer programme, with live interviews from the bivouac, every night. Carlton Kirby is voicing the taped parts and linking the live elements for the English audience (and I imagine that it's his voice that people are finding streamed on the web) and all over Europe, 19 others are doing exactly the same in their own languages...

WHERE I VOICE THE PROGRAMME - I SIT ON THE LEFT

So, there you go... Now you know as much about TV as me - but not quite as much as the average 12-year-old!

The runway and hard standing here are surrounded by small bushes and grass and someone has taken it uopn themselves to burn a lot of this quite recently. The trees are still standing, as is the grass, since surviving fire is obviously a way of life for them, but the end result is that instead of fesh fesh settling on anything, every time a plane or helicopter moves (and that seems to be VERY frequently today) a thin layer of ash covers everything. Which is nice…

Today’s stage is quite a short one and the bikes arrive around 1.45, with the first of the car drivers coming in at 3. Yet, there seems to be very little in the way of footage. Manu, the car editor is complaining that he has nothing to get started with and Jean-Philippe (Jonphi for short) also bemoans a sparsity of pictures. All fo which means that the programme will be very late coming together.

HOW WE SEND THE PICTURES TO YOU
The one thing which is shaping up, is a feature on family links. There’s a Danish businessman and his 20-year-old son, who are both racing in Bowler Wildcats – and still going well – and then there’s a French guy, with wild white hair, who looks like Pinocchio’s father, Guipetto! He must be 65 and his daughter, who is 19, is also on the Dakar.

Turns out she wanted to do something exciting on bikes, so he suggested that since the Dakar is the toughest event, she should start with that! He got a matching bike and came with her! He must have done some of this before, because she was saying in the piece about how she normally rides in front, except in the dunes, where he has more experience. He really looks like some mad professor / nutty grandfather…

With the mobile working, had a chat with Leah and Sam, who got so wet walking to playgroup, with his friend Molly and her mum, that Leah had to take him a change of clothes! Very bizarre to be in a t-shirt, in what feels like a hot summer’s day, yet back home it’s properly wet, cold and windy…

By the time the programme came to be voiced, very little was what you’d call ready. But we managed to get it up on the satellite on time, courtesy of some severe effort at the coal-face by the guys in the Hercules. It was certainly a rush for them though.

Afterwards, to mark the fact that tonight is our last in a tent (or the fact that it was Wednesday – or whatever day it actually was) there were drinks at the catering plane. Beer and nibbles and a call home to chat to Morgan, in the balmy warmth of an African winter’s night. Bliss.

Then off to the bivouac for dinner – chicken and chips, a French staple – and a quick barter with the stall-holders, who were selling beads, carvings etc. In fact, it was Adrian, the editor for Versus, who was bartering but he ended up buying nothing. I’ll wait until daylight in Dakar, I think…

Back to the tent for a relatively early night, as we’re on early-to-rise-late-to-bed regime again today…