Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Ouagadougou-Burkina Faso (August 17, 2005)
Inevitable stomach ailments caught up with Sean and I, consumed our energy and my patience and offered us nausea, foul stench and radically diminished appetites in return. I have no fondness for street food in Burkina Faso, which is ruled by beans (mealy, brown and oily beans), so the diminished appetite was bearable and we were fortunate enough to be lodged in an agreeable and cheap hotel where we could reasonably convalescence. The leaden battery of anti-parasitic drugs left us doubly ill for the final two of our six days in the capital and slowed our progress through numerous chores. We needed to supplement our cooking equipment, improvise a new tarp for one of our tents, address the newest mechanical failing of the automobile, purchase and prepare a new spare tire, acquire visas to Ghana, add new pages to my passport, stock up on food for a few consecutive nights in the bush and spend hours and hours at the internet café trying to update our site. We also had a number of meetings at the headquarters of various NGOs.
Ouagadougou is a decent place to cross bridges such as these since it does not distract with its charms anyone who is trudging around with the determination to find things; it is also entirely manageable on foot, even for the sickly. The city is littered with quirky monuments (typically placed in the middle of congested roundabouts) to the socialist history and leadership of Burkina Faso, several of them simple and representative (a ragged black man plodding down rail road tracks with mallet and spikes) and many of them directionlessly abstract (parallel poles supporting orange and green geometrical shapes). Aside from these there are few distinguishing features with the exception of a central drag of shocking modernity: Avenue N'Krumah is four shrubbery split lanes, with functioning street lights, checkered with stylish bars, clubs and restaurants, several of which fill the spacious twenty meter wide sidewalks in the shadow of the avenue's four to seven story buildings. All of us felt completely out of place here. Not even in Dakar is there a concentrated stretch of such completely westernized aspect.
In any case this city will look entirely different in a handful of years, as ambitious and widespread construction in the Ouaga Deux Mille region can attest. Both Bamako and Ouaga are in the middle of serious building frenzies and in both cases the construction is centered in sizeable and depopulated areas on the fringes of town. Both nations are creating new, high income, high class, broad and predictable suburbs to attract corporate headquarters, embassies and associated workers. Ouagadougou is centering its new public image around something that looks very much like a stone Eiffel tower in the near vicinity of an imposing stone dome. These are at most half built; but their prominence has already been indicated by the massive avenues that converge geometrically upon them
Eventually the three of us completed the bulk of our tasks. Ouaga had begun to feel like a rut and it took us all day to get out. We found the road to Ghana at something like 4:30pm, despite having woken early to accomplish our last errands while packing the car. That gave me about an hour and a half behind the wheel, scanning in the sunset for a decent place to camp. In the lush and densely populated region separating Ouagadougou from Ghana, this was not easy to do
The next morning we had a silent crowd of half a dozen young men observing each minute detail of us breaking camp and fixing our mysterious brand new flat tire
Inevitable stomach ailments caught up with Sean and I, consumed our energy and my patience and offered us nausea, foul stench and radically diminished appetites in return. I have no fondness for street food in Burkina Faso, which is ruled by beans (mealy, brown and oily beans), so the diminished appetite was bearable and we were fortunate enough to be lodged in an agreeable and cheap hotel where we could reasonably convalescence. The leaden battery of anti-parasitic drugs left us doubly ill for the final two of our six days in the capital and slowed our progress through numerous chores. We needed to supplement our cooking equipment, improvise a new tarp for one of our tents, address the newest mechanical failing of the automobile, purchase and prepare a new spare tire, acquire visas to Ghana, add new pages to my passport, stock up on food for a few consecutive nights in the bush and spend hours and hours at the internet café trying to update our site. We also had a number of meetings at the headquarters of various NGOs.
Ouagadougou is a decent place to cross bridges such as these since it does not distract with its charms anyone who is trudging around with the determination to find things; it is also entirely manageable on foot, even for the sickly. The city is littered with quirky monuments (typically placed in the middle of congested roundabouts) to the socialist history and leadership of Burkina Faso, several of them simple and representative (a ragged black man plodding down rail road tracks with mallet and spikes) and many of them directionlessly abstract (parallel poles supporting orange and green geometrical shapes). Aside from these there are few distinguishing features with the exception of a central drag of shocking modernity: Avenue N'Krumah is four shrubbery split lanes, with functioning street lights, checkered with stylish bars, clubs and restaurants, several of which fill the spacious twenty meter wide sidewalks in the shadow of the avenue's four to seven story buildings. All of us felt completely out of place here. Not even in Dakar is there a concentrated stretch of such completely westernized aspect.
In any case this city will look entirely different in a handful of years, as ambitious and widespread construction in the Ouaga Deux Mille region can attest. Both Bamako and Ouaga are in the middle of serious building frenzies and in both cases the construction is centered in sizeable and depopulated areas on the fringes of town. Both nations are creating new, high income, high class, broad and predictable suburbs to attract corporate headquarters, embassies and associated workers. Ouagadougou is centering its new public image around something that looks very much like a stone Eiffel tower in the near vicinity of an imposing stone dome. These are at most half built; but their prominence has already been indicated by the massive avenues that converge geometrically upon them
—whether or not they will have stylish names in keeping with downtown classics like Ho Chi Minh Avenue and Castro St. remains to be seen.Eventually the three of us completed the bulk of our tasks. Ouaga had begun to feel like a rut and it took us all day to get out. We found the road to Ghana at something like 4:30pm, despite having woken early to accomplish our last errands while packing the car. That gave me about an hour and a half behind the wheel, scanning in the sunset for a decent place to camp. In the lush and densely populated region separating Ouagadougou from Ghana, this was not easy to do
—all the land was arable, almost all of it was being used. We abandoned the notion of a truly isolated spot and settled for a dirt crossroads tucked out of site near some small boys herding cows. They were not city boys so they stayed almost out of earshot and watched us intently until older people came. The older people came bearing green dimpled bitter tomatoes, perhaps a dozen of them, as a sort of pay for it later kind of gift. The man who decided not to leave our company did not speak a lick of English or a lick of French or a lick of Puular. Tuuli did her best to engage him. We cooked and the full moon rose. This was our first time camping in powerful moonlight and it was a great deal more enjoyable than fumbling about in the dark while attempting to share our headlamp and trying not to end up in possession of the shake to charge flashlight (ten minutes of frenzied tiresome shaking for a minute of brilliant light)—not that I am knocking this invention, it continues to be exceedingly useful.The next morning we had a silent crowd of half a dozen young men observing each minute detail of us breaking camp and fixing our mysterious brand new flat tire
—once again shredded to uselessness; not one of our flats has been reparable. We decided not to eat breakfast and hit the road early. Though the border crossing was a bit fussy and time consuming we still made it into Ghana before noon and began to feel the refreshing influence of an Anglophone population living securely in the comfort of reliable infrastructure while entertaining genuine political debates.<< Home