Le Pavillon Vert Ouagadougou

... my inner voice and my hunches, and they clearly told me I was perfectly safe in this country. So, undaunted, I grabbed my camera and took a walk round the block. Not knowing when she would arrive, I didn’t dare stray too far. I simply hated to leave her waiting. But I considered it a safe bet to take half an hour.

And safe bet it was. I went to the supermarket and realised that it was located next to the Ouagadougou Grand Mosque. The mosque looked quite ...

... I was leaving Ouaga and Naprisca was coming with me. When I had asked her some time before if she’d be interested in joining me on my trip across Burkina Faso and Mali, she had answered she would have to ask her father. And then some time later she had informed me that her father had said she could go. Now she explained to me that he had asked „them“ for an advice and „they“ him told that she could go.

Interesting.

And now we first wanted to buy ...

... br>
Anyway, hotel „Belle Vue“ was in Rue de la Palestine, on the corner of Avenue Kwamé N’Krumah intersection, one of the busiest, if not the busiest drag in the city. And quite conveniently, almost every self-respecting bank in Burkina Faso had an office just a stone throw away from the hotel. So we just crossed the avenue and got into the nearest one. Some fifteen minutes later, now stuffed with enough CFA francs for a while, we could go to the embassy.
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso the_wayfarer

... smiling and shaking hands. But they explained to me that even if my booking was OK and still standing, this evening I would have to stay elsewh**e. Was it OK with me?

I nodded. All the more so as they had already found the substitute accommodation, claimed that the place I’d be in for the night was not any worse than the „Belle Vue“, and they would also get me th**e by car themselves. Free of charge. And from tomorrow on I’d be able to stay ...

... h** exam, while I am traveling north by myself for the weekend. Honestly, I’m n**vous for going north alone. I think, though, this is all in my head and I really will not have any problems. I am only going as far north as Dori, not furth** north wh**e more secluded, more Muslim, towns are. Not that being in a Muslim town is bad, but simply that the Tuaregs have had conflict in the past in Mali and ***** and, the furth** north you go in Burkina Faso, the clos** to those conflict regions ...

... bananas looked at us and said something in Jula, to which Emmanuel had to ask Mamie what she said: apparently Emmanuel is losing his mother tongue (well, one of them - he has several). They switched between French and Jula and I watched flailing hand gestures and listened to rises and falls in intonation. Finally, the woman grabbed some bananas and placed them in a plastic bag. This would be our breakfast in the morning, along with the baguettes and nutella I have had the last couple of ...

... again, the taxi driv** beeped the horn - how inconsid**ate!! Then again, he reminded me of why I wanted to get out of th**e so quickly, so I hopped in the taxi, and waved good bye from the window. Ev**yone looked sad. I was sad to leave them, but not sad enough to form tears. It is hard to explain my feelings as I left Klefe. The best word to describe it would be: weird. I felt weird. I did not feel myself, my confident and bubbly self. I instead felt v**y unsure, but calm. I was also ...

... able to watch films till midnight und** the dust-obscured stars… Ev**ywh**e you go, you meet ordinary Burkinabes who love cinema, and should you be able to grapple with the complication of trying to break Anglophone-Francophone communication barri**s, you soon discov** a broth**hood that you are part of, a love of African film unrivalled in the world.





Photo courtes of Reut**s



Some oth** African countries are v ...

... with many spots for shops. Most of it is empty as it is new and the retail space is quite expensive. The stores were stocked with the most peculiar array of fairly high-end items. We went for ice-cream and were probably the only customers of the morning!

We are now at Halidous’s Internet Centre and have been in this nice air-conditioned place for the last three hours. We have been doing the blog, checking things out on the ...

... rest of the afternoon at Halidou’s working on the Blog and exchanging money across the street. Ann haggled with a street vendor but did not buy anything.

We went to an Italian restaurant for supper, Ann had Chicken Marsala and spaghetti with tomato sauce and I had four cheese penne. Ann then ordered a pineapple boat for desert. The fruit here is very tasty.

We plan to leave for Bobo tomorrow early so it was off to bed