Ouagadougou Berkina Faso: a lovely Mosque in the center of the capital city. All of the Muslims I saw seemed to be gentle, peaceful folk. Daily prayer is practiced on the streets using cardboard "rugs" after the ritual washing of hands, feet and faces.

Hello from Integrity Village or Honest People Place:

That's what the country's name means. As far as I can tell, it is an accurate reflection of the national character. Maybe that's why I see so many young beggars on the streets. At least begging is honest. Beggars all carry an empty coffee can "begging bowl" and are rather matter of fact about their appeals: no pathetic pleading expressions persistently shoved in the faces of mainly white foreigners. I think some of the people who have approached me really are hungry, especially in the small villages along the road we traveled from Dapaong Togo. Some of the kids had distended abdomens.

Coffee and bread consumed at my Dapong hotel near the border in Togo, I grabbed a bush-taxi to the Berkina Faso border and crossed with no hassle. Both countries use the same currency so there were no moneychangers insisting they offered the best rates. With little cross border traffic, I found only two options for onward transportation to Ouagadougou, the capital city of Berkina Faso.

The "deluxe" bus had that 2+3 skinny seat arrangement and an uncertain departure time. The waiting bush-taxi seemed to be ready to leave... but of course they are always just about ready to leave! I negotiated for the front two seats and settled down to wait. The driver and conductor were busy making deals for cargo right and left, while reassuring me we would soon, very soon leave for the capital.

By the time we did get started the cargo on top of the van had doubled the height of the vehicle. I worried we might be top heavy, but I seemed to be the only one worried and they stacked ever more bags of stuff higher on the pile.

While I waited I once again had the opportunity to watch the casual public peeing. Guys hardly made any effort to keep their protruding anatomy out of sight. Women squatted wherever they felt the urge.

At last at 10:30 the top of the van unable to hold anything more and the back of the van full of military age young men we were off. The driver seemed to know every important person along our 6-hour route, dispensing gifts of goods and money at every stop and police checkpoint. In retrospect, he might well have been a smuggler or involved in some other nefarious activity. He certainly was an operator, glad handing at every turn. At one point we stopped in a parking lot and much of the cargo was off loaded and opened. The boxes contained bread. A half dozen ladies haggled over selection and pricing for a half hour with the driver/operator.

As we approached the capital city we suddenly stopped while the driver ran back to confer with a large modern bus following us. When they returned I was shuffled back to the front seats in the bus for the last hour of the trip, arriving in the Ouagadougou about 17:00. As luck would have it, a great hotel sat not more than two blocks from the bus station. The Hotel Soritel offered me a great room with all of the essentials for about $46 per night and treated me like an honored guest. Checking a number of other up-scale hotels in the city, mine turned out to be the best value by far.

This part of the world is hot and dry; clothes dry in a few hours. Air conditioning is a must and I often ran back to the hotel to cool down between my forays into the shopping areas or to the modern $2/hr cyber cafe.

Peace,

Fred Bellomy 17 October 2001

Ouahigouya Berkina Faso: Bus ticket sellers window. The guy sat a meter behind the window in the dark and spoke no English. Finally, in desperation I walked around to the side door and confronted him with my gestures and limited French until I made him understand I wanted two seats on his bus to the Mali border. He couldn't understand why anyone would pay for two tickets.

Leaving the very basic hotel at the crack of dawn, I hoped to catch an early bus to Koro, a village just across the border in Mali. The "bus station" here is like many in small African towns: a dirt parking lot crowded with various configurations of vehicles and a cramped office for the dispatcher. This particular tiny office also had a tiny service window and the dispatcher, who spoke no English, sat some distance back in the dim interior. After several minutes trying to make him understand I wanted two seats on the next bus to the border, him failing to understand my request in poor French and my straining to hear his whispered answers, I marched around to the side of the room and stood in the doorway. There, with gestures and the assistance of several other helpful people, we got the transaction completed. Part of his problem turned out to be my request for two tickets and the absence of a second person, a misunderstanding I've run into before. With tickets for two seats ($7 both) I boarded the old, but well maintained bus. In three hours we reached the border stopping for customs inspections some distance beyond the Mali border itself. The village of Koro where I hoped to find transportation onward lies another block further along the sandy track.

Peace,

Fred Bellomy 25 October 2001