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So how many chickens can you carry on a moped
Entry 18 of 25 | show all | print this entry |
Today I finally managed to make it to Bobo (as you very quickly start calling it, since the full name is a bit of a mouthful). I had the choice of taking a nice tarred road, although via a longer route which would have taken me 2 days or so to do, or going for one long day on a dirt road.
Basically, I opted for the dirt road in the end, since if I'd gone on the tarred road I'd have ended up doing part of it again in the other direction on my way back to Ouagadougou. Its kind of a principle of mine to try and avoid doing a section of road twice by bike - its silly enough to do it once on a bike, but twice is just plain stupid. Anyway, the fact that the route was marked in green (indicating a scenically interesting route) on my Michelin map kind of tipped the balance.
As it was about 135 km to Bobo I set off at the crack of dawn, with a bit of trepidation as to whether I was going to make it or not. In addition to the distance, my maps didn't show many villages of any size along the way.
Suffice to say, I made it - the road was actually not too bad - helped, I guess, by the fact that most cars now take the new, longer but faster, tarred road instead, meaning ... not many corrugations !!!! Yay! Still, it was a long hot day, not helped by the final bit of road leading into Bobo consisting of a couple of very long hills (long hills? - yes, I know technically they're tall(ish) hills, but on a bike they seem to go on for a long time)
Anyway - I managed to get a bit more of an impression of what Burkina Faso was like, with a couple of things particularly making an impression. The first was the noticeable difference, immediately after crossing the border, in the relative numbers of motorbikes, scooters, mopeds and donkey carts. Ghana has far more motorbikes, whereas in Burkina the emphasis seems to be on mopeds and donkey carts.
The second thing, even more noticeable, was the sheer number of chickens, and / or goats, that can be carried on a moped. As they day went on I was occasionally passed by mopeds with ever increasing numbers of chickens and goats tied to them. My estimate for the maximum number of chickens I saw on one moped was about 100 to 120 - at least 15 dangling upside down from each handlebar, and the rest on the back in baskets or dangling upside down from another pole strapped across the back.
I guess it was market day, because as I got closer and closer to one of the villages, I passed more and more people loaded up in this manner. I couldn't help feeling sorry for the poor old chickens, but the goats made me feel even worse. The chickens seemed to bear their lot in a stoic dazed silence, but the goats, often tied up in extremely uncomfortable positions, bleated and cried with a sound similar (I imagine) to a small child being murdered. On more than one occasion I had to put on a burst of speed so as to get out of hearing range of a goat-laden bicycle heading in the same direction as me.
Anyway - the day finally finished with me in Bobo, which was a lot busier than I was used to, having been in 'small town' Africa for the past few weeks. Lots of buses, trucks, cars, mopeds and donkeys, together with a lot of smoke, dust and fumes. Still, I managed to find the hotel I was looking for, with the firm intention of resting up for the next couple of days.
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