Blogs from Ouagadougou, Centre, Burkina Faso, Africa - page 5

Ouagadougou is crazy. we spent 3 nights here enjoying ourselves in the campsite behind a truck park. There were beers and a swimming pool,greatly appreciated after the desert. But the best part was going for a beer after dinner, in one of the local bars......most amazing places, not a formal bar,more just oddly built tables and chairs,on the side of roads. With the best african music being played.While you are there sipping your beer, you can buy anything....and I mean anything, from underwear,dinner,veggies, fruit (sliced and cut-up)toilet-paper to shoes.Everything and in all sizes....loads of children involed not only selling but playing while Mum and Dad have their social time. I could not help myself,stopping some of the vendors,just to see what they were selling.Woolies would be out of business if we could go to lunch or ... read more

So the past 2 weeks I spent backpacking through Burkina Faso and Mali with 3 American friends that I have met here, Jessica, Berkley, and Max. We left the Monday morning after Easter Sunday and decided to take the most direct route to Burkina Faso as possible, which we discovered on the way home that was the best decision we made the whole trip. So Monday morning we departed the STC bus station at 9 am for Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou (pronounced Waga-doo-goo). The bus ride is supposed to take about 24 hours to get completely through Ghana and half way through Burkina, so we knew it was going to be an adventure. Between breakdowns and rainstorms, it took us a little closer to 27 hours. Luckily I brought along some benadril so I took one ... read more

Update on the last few weeks.. It's been a while... and I've finally found the apostrophe on the French keyboard ;-) (Colin) In the last few weeks I've done quite a lot- though perhaps not with the work here! I've been cycling around Kpalime, seeing more waterfalls and trekking-a-plenty; spotting fab things, creatures and colours in the jungle, tasting some good and some really not-so-good palm wine... Last Friday (27th Feb) I left in the morning for Lome- the best time to get a bus anywhere is 6am here. I was squashed in between a large Togolese woman and her son for the duration; after many stops and waiting around for the bus to be full again we arrived in Lome 3 hours later; I wandered around for a bit, ate some fufu from one ... read more

Burkina Faso, the former Upper Volta, which was linked to Ivory Coast at one point, and still feels inextricably linked to. We arrived though Bobo-Dioulasso from Mali, on a long road journey, which felt like we sere covering the whole country, but was probably the fresh wind rather than the speed, as we only covered little more than 200km in some 8 hours or so, Trvelling took the whole day, and we arrived late at night. Bobo Dioulasso turned out to be a very relaxed town, and a good base to explore the surrounding region. we rented mopeds for a day to see "sacred fish", a big thing here (catfish), and nothing special to my eyes. We went to lovely rock formations the next day, a waterfall, which was one of those sublime relaxing places, where ... read more

It's been pretty weird in my life lately, sort of balancing between different kinds of feelings and not really knowing what to do with all of it. I guess you reach a point in this experience where you don't know what you want anymore. I think I'm there now. I don't want to leave, but I can't wait to get to Toronto at the same time. Pretty weird. I don't feel like I'm actually realizing that I'm leaving. It will probably hit me in the last couple days and when I'll have a little good-bye party and take the plane. The African notion of time is still in me and I still feel like I have lots of time left, since here we take one day at a time. I pretty much finished work. I went ... read more