burkina faso

Burkina Faso was completely unlike Ghana.

Where Ghana is tropical and lush, Burkina is dominated by the bleakness of the Sahel semi-desert. Where Accra is crowded and hurried, Ouagadougou is lackadaisical and leisure-loving. Where Ghanaian music and popular culture seem to exhaust itself in attempt to be American, Burkina Faso proudly sells baguettes on the street while traditional music blasts on a radio. Where generations of people live on the same plot of Ghanaian land, nomadic northern Burkinabe travel the desert in clans, seldom settling down for more than a season or two.

Burkina Faso is something like the 155th out of 157 countries on the UN’s standard of living list and the majority of people survive on an astounding $1 a day. But if I hadn’t read the statistic Ceri’s guide book, I would have no idea. True to its francophone heritage, Ouagadougou has a joie de vivre that is all at once surprising, disarming and infectious. Our first hours were spent wandering around the streets near our hotel gawking at the beautiful albeit dusty public sculptures, wide tree-lined streets lined with bars and tea stands, masses of Burkinabes on bikes grinning and inquiring “Ca va?”, and the general contentedness of a country so near the bottom of the world pecking order.

I spent the 28 hour bus ride from Accra to Ouaga more or less passed out thanks to a nasty Friday night at Champ’s Sports Bar and the Cinderella V.I.P. room (once a strip club…). Highlights from the first day include drinking bissap, a dark red ice tea-like drink made out of hibiscus syrup and cane sugar juice, and taking a real shower for the first time in a good week. The second day turned to chaotic francophone hell as we showed up to our bus station 5 minutes late to find the only bus of the day to Dori had left. This was astounding to Ceri and I, who are used to GMT (Ghana Maybe Time) and had to wait a wholly expected 3 hours after departure time in Accra for the bus to even arrive to pick us up.

My first reaction was to scream “Fuck!” really loud, so that’s what I did. No one speaks English, so really, no harm done. I automatically switched to get-shit-done mode (a scary one if you’re within 50 feet of me) and ran to a telecentre station, Ceri lagging behind me with half her weight in luggage, to frantically search for another bus company in the city that was leaving for Dori that day. Why so panicked, you ask? Our schedule for the week was so tight that if we didn’t get to Dori that night (another 5 hours outside of Ouaga) we wouldn’t be able to see the desert at all. Why does seeing the desert matter that much? Because, honestly, the tropical forest in Ghana ain’t shit compared to my backyard in Nu’uanu and I wanted to be impressed with some sort of natural wonder before leaving Africa.

I must have looked really upset, because the woman running the telecentre asked me what was wrong and I explained, in broken French, our predicament. Thank Jesus for that woman. She spent a good half an hour calling up friends and relatives until she found a nephew who, with a friend, whisked Ceri and me away on their mopeds to search for a bus to Dori. How francophone.

The bus was, admittedly, sketchy as all fuck. It was filthy, full of old men that smelled like horses (though we ourselves weren’t exactly roses at that point), crowded, hot, and all around greasy. Someone hacked spit out the window at least once every minute. No lights after dark. No stopping at bathrooms. The five hours seemed longer than the 28 from Accra to Ouaga.
Tuesday we went to Bani to look at the seven mud mosques. Supposedly, there is a 150 year old man who lives in the village to this day. When he was around 20 years old, he walked, yes walked, from Burkina Faso to Mecca to fulfill the Muslim obligation of hadj, or pilgrimage. When he returned, he built an assortment of beautiful mud mosques in his small village, of which seven are still standing.

That night we took a minibus to Gorom-Gorom, where we rode camels into the desert on Wednesday… refer to previous post for all the juicy details.

I’m back in Accra again. The city is a bit too much L.A. for me with all the traffic, pollution, hustling, getting scammed on by gross men, and the almost celebrity obsession with obruni (“white” people) and I was quick to dismiss the city as unworthy of visit to fellow travelers we met in Burkina Faso. I stand by my grievances, but admit that my heart jumped a bit as we crossed the border back into Ghana. I missed screaming “puuuorrrwaaattaaa” out the window of my dingy tro-tro and having 4 young girls with coolers balanced on their heads come sprinting towards me holding up sachets of purified water. I missed my wachi, my stew, my pepe, and my 20 pesua boiled egg snacks. I think I even missed telling creepy guys to fuck off. Okay, maybe I didn’t miss the creepy guys that much, but as we walked back into our front yard and Mama Ya started bouncing up and down, enormous breasts crashing together towards heaven with the force of the sea, and screaming “You are welcome! You are welcome home!” I couldn’t feel too bad to be back in this dirty, disgusting city. In fact, I felt kind of happy to be home (at least for the next week).