Brannavan Gnanalingam is a writer and lawyer. On a journey through West Africa, he was dropped off in the Sahara desert in the middle of the night with a friend - it looked like there was nowhere to sleep but in the dirt on the ground.
Brannavan Gnanalingam and his friend Gareth Prosser in the Western Sahara. Photo: Gareth Prosser
‘What it’s like’ is a weekly Wireless series. For more, click here.
As told to Marcus Stickley.
I was travelling with two friends and we were doing a trip from Morocco to Ghana. We hadn’t planned the route, we were pretty much just winging it.
One friend had to leave halfway through to get back to uni, so my friend Duncan and I were the ones left behind. We were going to do some Dogon trekking in Mali, and on the way [there] there’s this amazing mud mosque in Djenné.
The bus was supposed to take six hours to go from Bamako to Djenné but it took 14. It was meant to drop us off at 6pm, but instead it dropped us off at 2am. Luckily, I’d been talking to some guy on the bus about Mali and stuff in general and he was getting off at Djenné.
So, he went and knocked on this random guy’s hut.
When you stop in Mali, there’s usually a guy selling trinkets or cigarettes or drinks or whatever. So, those were the huts that were there, but apart from that there was nothing. It was pretty desolate.
Sometimes you get this weird Zen feeling when you travel, especially on long distance bus trips and we just decided to trust him.
We got off and were thinking: “Where on Earth are we?”
He wasn’t really going to take us too far. You could see the hut, you could see all the walls.
Duncan and I were thinking, we’ll just have to sleep on the ground where we can and this guy just said: “Come with me.”
I find most people are good people, and when they offer to help they’re genuine about it. He walked to the hut, had a yarn to the guy - because we didn’t know what was going on - and then he said: “We’re all sleeping in the hut.”
Posing in Bamako, Mali, just before taking the bus to Djenné. Photo: Gareth Prosser
There wasn’t much in there - just bare ground, and lots of cigarettes because that was his merchandise. We saw the inhabitant wake up, drag his bed out and unroll his prayer mat for us to sleep on. He slept outside on a foldout bed; it would have been cold for him.
It was incredible just how hospitable he was. He had no reason to do it, he didn’t expect any money for it. And then the next morning, at 6am, he stopped a truck and let us hitchhike on the back of the truck to the town that we were going to, Djenné. We gave him a little bit of money for having us and he was super stoked with that.
***
I’ve been robbed at gunpoint in Lebanon and by a gang of old ladies in Kazakhstan, so you can never really tell who might do something.
When the old ladies robbed us, we were at the border going to Uzbekistan and the Uzbekistani currency is super devalued. We rocked up to the currency exchange with a $20 note and we got a pile of money, literally a pile. It was heaps. And we kind of stood there going: “How do we know we’ve got the right amount?”
So we were a little stunned, and this group of old ladies came along and started grabbing the money just after we’d received it. I lost a little bit, but my friend Gareth was holding on to his pile, so this old lady started biting him and she chomped down on his hand. And when he started seeing the blood come, he let go.
My friend Duncan, who’s now a policeman, just stood there going: “Oh God, what do I do?”
Then the old ladies ran off.
***
Sometimes you feel a situation is threatening, but you don’t know if that’s you being paranoid or if there’s a legitimate reason for it. Hindsight is what vindicates whether you feel bad or not. For the most part I’m pretty trusting, and people live up to that.
I’d like to think that I would let three total strangers stay at my house if they turned up at 2am. Karma has to play a role in it, I guess, and that guy was pretty amazing. Maybe I’ll have to.
As told to Marcus Stickley.
Gnanalingam's latest book, A Brief Case, Two Pies and a Penthouse is out now. You can find more of his writing on the Lumiere Reader.
This story has been edited for clarity.
