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Published: March 14th 2006
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Women washing by the water
Vieux quartier, Bobo-Dioulasso There's one playing right now in this Internet cafe where I'm writing in Burkina Faso. It's the one where he has to transport an elephant somewhere. What's going on? Where am I?
Right, so I'm in Burkina Faso, a small Francophone country to the north of Ghana. This journal is going to be short, I think, but I was really eager to post something from a country other than Ghana. It will be short in part because this keyboard is a pain in the arse to use, being French and jumbled, and I have yet to adequately adjust my typing. Thus: so i znst to the zopfdjk the otjkr norning qnd sqz so,e deer.
I traveled up here with that couple I mentioned in my last posting. This was good. I spent a week at their place in Ouagadougou, the capital, where there was always music being made around the house, he and all of his friends being "griots", musicians and storytellers by heredity. This too was good. What wasn't so good was that I met this couple at the end of their relationship, or what I think was the end of their relationship, but in any case got
caught in the middle of a tremendously violent and disturbing break-up from which I still don't know if I've completely extricated myself, considering that I have to go back to Ouagadougou to make sure she's safe. He's volatile, usually both high and drunk from daybreak. It's complicated. I don't really know how to talk about it or if I should.
Anyway: they have cafe au lait here, and good bread. At night there are tasty brochettes cooked by the roadside. I'm eating well. Right now I'm in Bobo-Dioulasso, the next-largest city here, where I'm experiencing a total lack of interest in all things touristy. You can't walk down the street here by yourself as a young, white tourist without being offered sixteen tours of the surrounding area, five tours to Dogon country in Mali, a few packs of tissue and a handmade shirt. Non merci, non merci, non merci, with emphasis. And all I want to do is sit somewhere and watch people move and do what people do, and be anonymous. Maybe I can read a book, have a soda. C'est tout. Tonight I'm going to go to the cinema here and watch a Burkinabè film - Burkina's
got one of the most developed film industries in the region, hosts Africa's biggest film festival biannually - which I'm quite excited about in spite of the fact that I probably won't understand it, my French still not being all that consistent, and the fact that I'll probably get lost on the way back to my hotel. I get lost here daily. Why can't I get my bearings in African cities, even small ones? Perhaps it's the absence of McDonald's, those distinctive golden arches, in which case I should be thankful.
It may be a while before I post here again, because I'm heading towards Timbuktu. I probably won't actually go to Timbuktu, because I don't really need to say I've been to Timbuktu and apparently it takes about six years and a savings bond to get there unless you fly, but the point is I'll be moving away from civilization for a while. I don't know where I'm going to go from there (there being Mali), whether I'll continue west to fulfill my plan of crossing to Europe overland or return to Ghana to use my return ticket to London, and from there somewhere else. I'm very tempted
right now by the idea of returning to the coast, the coast where there is the ocean, and just staying there at a cheap place on the beach and writing for a couple weeks. Who in their right mind wants to be a "tourist" for months on end, anyway? I used to think there was a distinction between tourist and traveler, between someone who comes to snooze and shop and someone who comes to engage and learn, but now I think that difference is a bit of a wank: it doesn't exist for the hoards of enterprising young hustlers who see a backpacker as meat, a chance to make a buck (or to make something else if the traveller is young and female; many of these guys, usually around my age, have shown me photographs of their "conquests", who send them toys from Holland or France); nor does it exist for the hundreds of millions of people who can't afford to travel by any name, tourist or traveller or Tom Jones.
I also find that an unnerving proportion of people in this country are strikingly beautiful.
A la prochain.
Daniel
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Adam
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Elephant
Thanks for the elephant...its not giraffe though. hehe