BURKINA FASO

(Wandering West Africa Part 5)

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January 12, 2009 we took a taxi brousse and had a slow but easy border crossing into Burkina Faso, formerly Upper Volta. Our first few days of traveling brought us to Dori. Along the way we found some nice, comfortable hotels that were considered “mid-range” by our guidebook but cost half the price of the “budget” hotels in Mali. We ate in pleasant restaurants catering to Burkinabes, with meals in the $5 - $6 range. The buses left on time, with only as many people as seats and all the roads were paved. So far, so good!

Dori was a convenient base for visiting a number of nearby towns. We went to Bani to see its mosque. The layout was not unusual, but the interior building was more than just a mud mosque; it had a very intricate and beautifully designed façade, along with a central tower (which was undergoing rennovation). This was the first and last time on our trip we saw such features in a mosque. Bani itself was extremely welcoming with many children requesting we take their photo and pleasantly, no requests for gifts or candy. For the most part, none of the children followed us around. However, one kid on a bicycle carrying a number of water jugs managed to get in just about every photo we took!

Our primary reason for going to Northeast Burkina was the Gorem-Gorem Friday market. It is a major event in this somewhat remote area. The night before, someone offered us a ride leaving at 6:00am with guaranteed seats and the implication that it wouldn't be overcrowded. We agreed and at the break of day, there we were looking at a very small Nissan pickup with, no big surprise, an impossible number of people looking to ride in it. There were two other travelers we had met previously that were going as well. We did manage to get the driver to give us the back seat. Of course, we had to fit the four of us in there, but we felt lucky we wouldn't be riding on the wooden benches in the pick-up bed on the dusty, unpaved road. At the market, we saw villagers arrive by foot, donkey cart, camel, moto and truck from all over.

Gorem-Gorem clearly had a lot of commerce going on. The trucks seemed impossibly overloaded with goods for sale. Having been to markets in Djenne and Mopti, this was not so unusual. However, besides the color of the market, the other attraction was the women. They practice tattooing, scarification and wear jewelry in their hair. While tattooing and scarification is less unusual, we hadn’t seen earrings hanging from braided hair or braided hair wrapped in what looked like silver foil before. In the end, we think this turned out to be the highlight of Burkina Faso for us.

Ouagadougou (wah-gah-doo-goo), the capital of Burkina, was our next destination. As elsewhere in West Africa, every time the bus stopped, it was surrounded by food vendors. At various stops we bought baguettes, doughnuts, muffins, bananas, water, frozen yogurt and even grilled meat. It was funny to see the guys who sold grilled meat run up to the bus carrying a table, put it down and start slicing meat off a large rack of ribs. Wherever we went, we were assured of not going hungry! Unfortunately, that is not the case for all Burkinabes. Many children were carrying small buckets, standing outside restaurants and begging for food. We were continually approached by men on the street trying to sell things. They were persistent, but not aggressive. We got the impression there are some desperately poor people in Ouagadougou. However, wherever we went, we found Burkinabes to be very friendly, warm and welcoming. This was a recurring comment we heard from foreigners we met who traveled to Burkina on a yearly basis.

We went to the National Museum which was recently renovated with a $300,000 grant. There was one office building and two seemingly abandoned buildings in a large weed filled lot. It was lunch time (from 12:00 - 3:00!) and the museum didn’t open for another hour. We were introduced to Adouabou, a very friendly, French/English interpreter for the museum. We talked for a few hours and he shared some of his opinions on Burkina Faso. He thought it was more important to feed people than build grand government buildings (something we had seen more of in Burkina than most other third world countries), mentioned that the museum director had skimmed a large part of the rennovation grant and that corruption was rife in Burkina. He worked in information technology, but was transferred and retrained as an interpreter when he discussed government corruption in a television interview. He was paid $1800 annually in a country with a per capita income of $440. While he was criticizing government waste and had ideas about programs to feed the population, he seemed to spend a large part of his day not doing much and earning a pretty good salary. However, we did get an excellent tour of the museum with Adouabou doing a great job of translating everything to English. Weeks later, in Ghana, we talked with a Dutch women who worked for an NGO and she cited, unprompted, the National Museum director who hadn't done anything in the seven years she had the job. Seems like Adouabou had it right.

We were in Bobo-Dioulasso on January 20, 2009, for Barack Obama’s inauguration as 44th president of the United States. The majority of people in Burkina were well aware of the change taking place in the US. The entire inauguration ceremony was broadcast live, with French translation and enjoyed by us and a good part of the Burkina population! We saw people wearing Barack Obama t-shirts and cars, taxis and buses with Obama stickers or with both the Burkinabe and the American flag displayed. Having seen a growing negative opinion of the United States in our travels over the last six years (since late 2002), it was extremely heartening to see such an outpouring of positive feelings toward the US. Expectations are unrealistically high and there is a lack of understanding about how our government works and what Obama can actually achieve. However, for the time being, we are being given the benefit of the doubt.

We went to Banfora, supposedly a lush, green town, walked in to a hotel to check it out and saw Georgos, a Greek we met on the way to Timbuktu, seventeen days and over one thousand kilometers earlier in our trip! You never know when you will run across someone you have met before. Georgos put us in touch with a driver who took us and another couple to the three main sights in Banfora - Tengrela's Hippo lake, Karfiguela Waterfalls and Les Domes de Fabedougou. At Hippo lake, we got into a medium sized pinasse (canoe) and the boatman gave us a tour of the lake. Yes, there were hippos in the lake and it was actually lush and green. You might wonder, isn't it a little dangerous to get within twenty feet of a big large hippo while in a very unstable canoe? Hmm, maybe we should have wondered that as well...but we didn't end up swimming, so it was no problem.

We spent most of the day at Karfiguela Waterfalls. Paul swam in the cold water, we relaxed, ate a leisurely lunch, someone played a flute and we enjoyed the fact that we had nothing better to do. The area around the falls was "lushish" - or at least not totally brown. Certainly it was different than most of the places we had been to date. There were mango trees, palm fronds and in general more flora than we had seen elsewhere. Les Domes de Fabedougou are an unusual geological formation that date back 1.8 billion years to when the whole area was under water and the ocean contained free flowing sediment which built up over time. Some layers of sediment were thicker and/or harder than others. As the water receeded, it and wind and rain eroded the rocks and formed what we saw. We enjoyed an hour of climbing over the rocks before returning to Banfora.

On January 24th we looked at the calendar, looked at where we were (Banfora), looked at our return date (Feb 6), looked at how much further we had to go and made the tough but inevitable decision to skip Gaoua in Burkina and Tamale and Larabanga in Ghana. After all, we needed at least five days on a Ghanan beach before going back to Virginia.

Our last stop in Burkina was Po, a town on the border with Ghana. We spent a day there so that we could visit Tieble. Tieble is populated by the Kassena who decorate the walls of their mud huts with impressive and time consuming geometric frescoes. The houses have a very unusual design in that the entryway is only a few feet high and since the house's floors are about 3 feet below ground level, after you sort of squat through the door, you then have to take a long step down to get into the hut. This was done for defensive purposes to protect against invading tribes (and the French). The huts also proved to be nice and cool, even in the hot sun. The next day, we headed to Ghana, but that is another story...

Final Notes on Burkina Faso

$238

accommodation

$159

local transportation

$429

meals, museums, incidentals

$  74

souvenirs

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$900

Total for 14 days in Burkina Faso = $64/day

 

 

$17.00

average cost for a room in Burkina Faso

1270

miles traveled in Burkina Faso

 

 

We covered a lot more ground in a lot less time in Burkina, as compared to Mali. Traveling was definitely easier, and the country pleasant, but we probably won't be returning since there wasn't much exceptional. This brings our travelogue up to January 26th when we crossed into Ghana. That travelogue should be out within a week, since we're heading out on another trip on December 27...

Paul & Lois
McLean, VA
December 13, 2009

 

Wandering West Africa Part 4                 Wandering West Africa Part 6

 

All content is copyright © Paul Schneider, 2009.