Blogs from Burkina Faso, Africa - page 10

Hey everyone! I now moved into my house with a lot of excitement and frustrations. I like the place, it's big. I dont really live the African way lets say. But thee owner is not really nice to me. She told me the first day she doesnt like white people. Dont ask me why. So for sure, she sees "nassara" and she charges the price. People in the neighboorhod told me and my friend that the house wasnt worth 200 bucks a month. Not in that neighboorhood. I tried to ask her to reduce the price but she didnt want to. I also asked for 3 rooms to be painted again and that was hard to deal with too. She didnt want at first but she ended up doing it. I'm happy she didnt ask me ... read more

The plan was to fly through (well go as fast as possible on crowded, uncomfortable long-distance public transit vans, called tro-tros) Burkina Faso, and grab my Ghana visa in the capital (best name EVER), Ouagadougou (pronounced wa-ga-doo-goo). I unfortunately spent an additional 4 days there, in a clinic, with an IV, and tons of little malaria parasites attempting to replicate in my RBCs. It was plus grave, said Dr. Kofi. That was Burkina Faso. Fun fact...A famous and loved nationalist leader renamed Upper Volta (the colonial name) Burkina Faso, which means “the land of the honest men”. The cool part is that the name is created from two of the many languages the many ethnic groups speak. BF is almost half and half Muslim and Christian. The joke is that they are 50% Muslim, 50% Christian, ... read more

One day a few other volunteers and I decided to take a quick trip to the north of Burkina Faso to see the Sahel, the dry, sandy region that’s not quite the Sahara. We had hoped to visit Oursi, a village about 40 km from the last major city in the north, Gorom-Gorom. Our travel guide described white sand dunes, ancient ruins, and camel treks. We figured we’d head up for a day or two and come right back. From Ouaga, we took a five-hour bus ride to Dori, a northern town that marks the official start of the Sahel. On the way the bus crossed two “inverted bridges” - narrow cement platforms designed to let excess rainwater flow over them, not under them. The road/bridge is submerged under several inches to several feet of ... read more

Burkina Faso letterlijk vertaalt uit het Moré, een van de twee belangrijkste talen gesproken in Burkina Faso , betekend Burkina, eerlijk of oprecht, Faso betekend, huis van de vader, vertaalt uit Dioula de tweede taal. Vrijvertaald betekend Burkina Faso iets als, Land van de eerlijke mensen. Vanaf Mopti vertrekken we in een keer naar Ouagadougou, de hoofdstad. In Mopti had ik al een wat roodachtig bultje op mijn been, als ik na een dag reizen in Ouagadougou aankom is ie uit gegrooeid tot een halve walnoot. De volgende dag maar even naar het dokter, gelukkig heeeft de Franse ambasadde een medische kliniek, met een Franse arts. De bult wordt opengeneden en ik krijg antibiotica, lekker is dat lijken we Islamitische landen een beetje achter ons te laten, Ouaga ziet er gezellig uit met een hoop barretjes ... read more

'Le blanc, le blanc!' You hear it everywhere you walk in Banfora, a small town in southern Burkina Faso. Kids smile and scream it at you as you wander past. At first, I thought they had mistaken me for Hollywood spunk and shining star of the comedic acting profession, Matt le Blanc, but no, it simply means 'the white' in French. It jars a bit, being referred to in such terms, but eventually you don't notice it. You get used to standing out a little in West Africa. So we made it to Burkina Faso, a country that has obsessed me since I was a nerdy little kid ingesting the Reader's Digest Atlas of the World when I got home from school. It must be the name. Even its old label of Upper Volta, and the ... read more