ouagadougou.
We the walked through the border, got our visas, I spoke French for the first time in years with the border patrolman. We walked and had our first Burkenebe beers- which were light and delicious. In West Africa, even at the borders, even though countries are so close to each other, you can still not find the same beers, the same foods, same language, same brands of anything even just across the border of a country. Before our bus to Ouagadougou, the capital, we walked around the neighborhood. We noticed there was something missing, but could not put our fingers on it. There was nobody yelling “Oboruni’ at us, nobody staring at us too much, nobody saying anything. When we got on the bus, everyone stood in a line and quietly moved on the bus, on which there was no loud hiplife playing the entire ride. Burkina was already turning out to be completely different from Ghana.
We arrived in Ouagadougou after three hours of untouched land interrupted by a few thatched huts on the way. Instead of tro tros, there were motorbikes and cars everywhere. My favourite part was the women in fine African prints and heels riding motorbikes. Pretty badass. The next day, we walked around Ouagadougou with our new friend and guide, Ousseni, a small rasta Burkinebe man. He showed us around the market, and into a bronze shop, where we saw how they make bronze statues and jewelry. We then went to take some foutou the Burkinebe version of foufou, which was a different texture and more peppery than fufu. My new plan is to eat every type of foufou in West Africa and pick my favourite one. Even though Burkina Faso is the 3rd poorest country in the world, they sure have their cities together. And I instantly gained an interest in this country. The city was much more European and Muslim than Accra, there were baguettes and mosques everywhere. The streets were more organized, there were sidewalks and streetlamps, we could even walk around at night. I also really liked people from Burkina; they were very willing to help us get around, but not too overzealous like many Ghanaians. I also loved speaking French to everyone and understood what was going on most of the time, which was good because only two out of the seven of us could speak it.
I don’t know what I would think of Ouagadougou if I had not been living in Accra for the past four months. I think that if I hadn’t seen other places in West Africa, I would not see too much difference between the two cities. There were still bags of water, but the plastic was different, there were still huge beers, but they were different brands, different flavors of fanyogo, and different types of fabrics in the market.
We went to nap, then Ousseni picked us up later to take us out for a night on the town. As we walked to where we would go dancing later on, we stopped inside of one place where I heard drumming and decided to check it out. There, we had a private show from six beautiful men drumming on Jembe drums. We listened and danced and some of us even got a chance to play a little bit. We then headed to the dancing spot, which was surprisingly crowded for a Sunday night, to dance to lively American and Burkinebe music.
