Joly Hotel Ouagadougou

... cases full of long and thin French bread and what have you. There were donkey carts, motorcycles and bicycles, green rickety &#8222;Peugeot" taxis and, of course, an odd &#8222;Mercedes&#8220; every now and then. One lady swept the Avenue Kwame N&#8217;Krumah in a such tardy way, that I was tempted to see it as if the purpose of it was to do as little work in as much time as possible. <br><br>Naprisca didn&#8217;t seem to be a candidate to succumb to stress, either. I spent quite some ...

... In my view, virtually every single character was so colourful that you could literally close your eyes, pick any person at random, transplant them onto any street in Europe, and they would be an instant sensation there. Without exception. What I was witnessing on what was probably merely an average African street in Ouaga, Burkina Faso, was a show like I&#8217;d never seen before.<br><br>Before my eyes paraded one motley collection of impossibly photogenic characters, each one ...

... I realised I would eith** have to go for a consid**ably more expensive ticket and then fly to Dakar or Bamako, or by cutting expenses somewhat down, leave Senegal and Mauritania for some oth** occasion and go to Burkina Faso instead. Only Mali would always stay in the cards.<br><br>I decided on Burkina Faso.<br><br>And so that was how the first African country I would ev** set foot on turned out to be this landlocked form** French colony, according to some statistics ...

... is no easy task. Once you&#8217;re on the road, you must pay attention to people getting off the road. Th**e are no rules. The sand and dust whips up your nose, into your eyes and ears. Keep your mouth closed, because sand inevitably gets in th**e, too. By the time you get to your destination, it&#8217;s time for a show** and a massage. Normally, howev**, you get neith**. <br><br>To avoid taking this route ev**y day (although I do enjoy the adrenaline rush), I opted to buy my own mat ...

... just a look-see. After some more research around town, we will return to bargain shop. Back at the house, people had started to move around. Mamie was awake (I can't tell whether to call her Fanta, her real name, or Mamie, her nick name - people call her both) from her nap, Erwin (the younger brother of about 10) was still watching cartoons, but at least the cat (Bixou) and dog (Snoopy) were out on the porch. I went in to take a shower. As soon as I got out, Mamie said she was going to ...

... CBDF (la Coalition Burkinabe pour la Droit de la Femme). The conv**sation was reassuring and reaffirmed what Catalina and I worked on with CBDF last year when I worked for h**. I am glad to be affiliated with such a strong organization, both Women Thrive and CBDF. I am excited for the advocacy work, the support I am able to give CBDF, and eag** to learn from them as well. I choked a little bit when I gave B**tha an iron I purchased to help h** start h** batik business. She was v**y ...

... country puts on an event of pomp and flair that far more prosp**ous nations would not even dare compete with. But this is marred by the behind-the-scenes chaos that has been known to drive many a filmmak** to tears. When I was first invited in 2003, the organiz**, for reasons still beyond me, had asked me to pay for my flight to Accra, wh**e I would find a ticket to Ouaga waiting for me. I did so, only to find no such readymade passage on my arrival ...

... and would have gone well with a beer or over ice cream.<br><br>We came back to the city and tried to upload the blog. A storm came up; it cooled off unusually cool and started to rain. We were able to upload the blog without pictures and then went back to the hotel. We are meeting Halido for supper tonight but will be unable to leave for Ghana tomorrow as we have not changed the oil and checked the car yet. We will do that tomorrow.

We went to the Sanga Bakery for breakfast before heading back to Ouagadougou. Sanga needed to talk to lots of people before he left. It turned out we were also taking two new pups to Sanga's in house in Ouaga. We also stopped at one aunt&#8217;s, who had been in hospital in Germany. Sanga&#8217;s mom was also there so we were able to say goodbye to her as well.<br><br>We ...

... as what DOES work, right?!<br><br>When I finally made up my mind and escaped Ouagadougou, I headed for a little town called Koupéla. Not much going on there, I spent the evening playing table football with some local men and chatting to a member of the hotel staff (who then decided it was appropriate to bang on my window and shout for me in the middle of the night, but whatever...), but it broke up the journey to Togo nicely!<br>