Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso

Tonight we slept in the parking lot of a hotel. Bobo, contrary to the belief widely held in the West, is a very large town. So large in fact that the Lonely Planet researcher paid to report on Bobo must have been blinded by the enormity of this town and in his incredulity was not able to remember a single landmark in a three square mile radius upon which to make basic map reading possible. While this helped us enjoy Bobo by offering scenic route after scenic route, by the time we found our intended destination, we were mighty hungry. Fortunately, we found pigeon. While we were looking for something more substantial, it satisfied a very basic need. That need was hunger. Since the recommended hotel was booked to the teeth, along with seemingly every other possible place we could possibly lay our head, we did not waste any time unloading the car. We walked straight back into town in search of eating, Burkina Faso style. This basic task proved indispensable in our evening plans. Map in hand, we were soon to wander the town in a manner so senseless that one would have thought the haze of a ten year ether habit had just lifted when we realized that that the crumpled map Nate had been so judiciously guarding in his pocket was in fact as worthless as a bag of three day old sour milk. To accomplish this now increasingly difficult task, we procured the help of one beggar child and a crazy man. At first, I thought that the crazy man was mute, but I was wrong. Later, I wished he was; not because he caused any problems, but just cause he talked a lot of nonsense. Not the nonsense that one can understand, just the mumbly jumbly stuff that can really put one off. Once we realized Bobo really did not have a lot to offer on a Sunday night, we headed back to the hotel. Being the rainy season, it started raining before we arrived. With nothing left to do but pitch our tents, we slept in the parking lot of the hotel.
* posted by Sean at 12:16 PM