the journey has begun

my journey begun on tuesd day the 5th of september, i flew from london heathrow to cassablacca and then on to bamako
the journey took quite long than i anticipated
at cassablanca i was hit by what was to come or what awaits me in the next few months,no one spoke english so my very little french came to play,eventually i managed to get a can of coke,whilst i was waiting i notice a lady who looked english so i approached her and behold she was from Plymouth was also on transit to Niger to get married we chatted for ages and compared notes till it was my time to go
i queued for a bit and we were finally on some old 747 aircraft.the flight took off well and we were airbone, all the food served had meat and as i was a vegitarien ,i was told to have ask at the desk on departure,so i had to just settle for som dinks and bread.
at about 3 am we touched down at Bamako airport it was a bit of a rocky landing i was looking at the man in front of me praying,that got me panicking a bit but the all was well and we stopped,the aircraft pulled very close to the building so we started to dis embark.
the airport was quite modest compares to what i have witnessed in recent years,on enteringthe building we queued for a bit and i had to face african protocol
my firstencounter with officialdome
papie no stamp goes the official
i told him i was a west African national and did not need a visa,he goes dont talk about visa so he put my bit on the sid and started serving others ,i was told by some one he needed some bribe but i was adamant was not prepare to pay any bribe,i waited for some time and i think he got the message that i was not going to move i was prepared to even wait in a cells till the morning so he buckled in the end and gave me my passport stamped
my worst nightmare came when i got all my luggagebut one piece which was part of a bigger rugsack no sign of that i had to fill in forms in french people were not that helpful in the early part of the morning so i decided to go and come back the next day
i told my self welcome to Bamako