The Facts and Figures of West Africa

Number of countries visited: 6
Number of countries visited for under 24 hours but which have still been included in the above: 1
Number of meals eaten without looking at the food and swallowed without chewing: 240
Number of times “Only fucking rice again” muttered at meal times: 317
Number of snakes seen: 0
Number of hippos seen: 0
Number of any type of wildlife seen that might set the pulse racing: 0
Number of goats seen: 345,789,897,009,456,907,345
Irritating Rastas fended off: 29
Irritating Rastas fended off without recourse to ‘Would you just fuck off?’: 0
Official ticking offs from authorities: 2
Number of bribes asked for by border officials: 0
Number of mangoes eaten: Refer to ‘number of goats seen’
Words added to personal French vocabulary: 0
Most people squeezed into a sept-place: 14
Hours waited for a supposed trip on the Niger: 8
Number of trips taken on the Niger: 0
Number of saints in Timbuktu: 333
Number of meals eaten in Timbuktu that didn’t contain sand: 0
Reasons for a return visit to Timbuktu: 0
Number of guides encountered who wanted me to teach them gangster lingo: 1
And the ‘Our Father‘: 1
Oh, and ‘Hey Jude’ too: 1
Number of times hearing the ‘Our Father’ thereafter: 105
Number of farmyard animals that shat on me on public transport: 1
For everything else there’s Mastercard. Except there’s not, because Mastercard is fucking useless in West Africa.