We are in England now, staying in Winchester while we wait for Indian visas to arrive. Have had a very English Christmas, freezing cold and even some snow. Getting here was a long drawn out travel saga, but we made it. Kate throwing up on the tube, baggage lost for 4 days and things. The blog has sort of been forgotten about but I will get it up to date in the next week or so.
First cab off the West African rank was Burkina Faso. A country we weren’t overly familiar with to be perfectly honest, but it was one of the few places that 1) we could fly to (overland was out as the looming mass of Sudan surrounds Egypt, not somewhere we wanted to go) and 2) would let us in without major hassles. As reported elsewhere, Australians seem to be lepers as far as African embassies are concerned. But never mind. So, off we flew with Royal Air Maroc to Casablanca (where we had a 10 hour wait) and then to Ouagadougou (pronounced Waga-doo-goo. Or just Waga for short. Awesome). We were dreading the flight as it arrived at 3am in a foreign country with us visaless. In Cairo, the first obstacle was checking in. After consulting his little computer (with all the visa requirements) the clerk told us we needed us to sign a waiver for “irregular travel” as they didn’t want to have to cover the return trip back to Casablanca. A bit unnerving, but fine, we’ll sign it. Arriving in Casablanca we learnt that we were eligible for a hotel (free of charge – we were moving up in the world, quite a change for us) while we waited instead of slumming it in the airport. Great, had a free lunch and an afternoon nap and then back on the road for the flight.
Arriving at Ouagadougou airport was fine (though we were delayed an hour, so it was 4am) and in the end the visa policewoman just looked at us (after asking in French if we had visas, “no, sorry”) and gave us forms to fill out. Stress over. We had also booked a hotel as we had read that we might need to show proof of such a thing. Luckily our trusty website hostel bookers had one listing for all of BF, in Ouaga. To make things easier I had sent them an email asking to be picked up (I wrote it in perfect English and quite imperfect French), and it worked! Free airport pickup was yet another luxury for us.
After a good nights sleep we had our first proper look of West Africa. First impressions were not impressive at all. Admittedly it was a capital city, even if it is a West African capital (with a great name), so it was a little lacking in things to do. So we waited around for our visas and organised visas for Mali and got out of there. But, it was a good taste of things to come though – young men (and kids) everywhere trailing along and babbling (fast!!) away in French that we couldn’t understand, obviously trying to sell us things or be our guide for the day. It was a little strange, and not quite the warm welcome we had hoped for (and Kate had promised after her Southern African wanderings).
Still, visas in hand we headed off to another fantastically named place, Bobo-Dilassou, or just Bobo. This was much more to our liking. It had a fairly interesting market, much less hassle, a good mosque, an old, interesting section of town and a very relaxed feel. Most of the roads were surrounded by huge trees, which was nice. On our visit to the old section of town we saw some guys dressed up like scarecrows with funny masks walking around. We had read about this, they have a “Fetes des Masques” about 6 months after somebody (important) dies that involves lots of dancing and the like. But not this time, they were just wandering around as there was one coming up. A shame.
We then took a side trip to Banfora for a few days. Banfora is the “green” part of BF, so we hired a guide for the day who took us around to see the waterfalls, some funny rock formations and a lake with Hippos in it, that can be elusive. We went around on scooters, which was fun, haven’t done that for a while. All very pleasant, especially the hippos. A local man paddled us in a little boat out to where the hippos sometimes hangout in the afternoon, and sure enough there were about 10 of the things there. Amazing. Puffing away and opening their gigantic mouths and things. We didn’t get too close though (Hippos are the number one killer in Africa…) A fun day and our guide was a real character, always singing and dancing and shouting “Africa!” randomly. He also spoke quite good English.
Back to Bobo for our onwards trip to Mali (a short stay in BF). We got back in the afternoon and were just going to relax and then head off early in the morning. But of course a guide at the hotel had other ideas. But what great ideas. The Fetes des Masques was actually happening that afternoon and we could watch. So of course we did and after a lot of waiting and uncertainty as to whether we were lied to, suddenly the scarecrow-men ran past and then it was on. A truly unforgettable experience. The whole village gathered, forming a huge circle, with drummers mixed in the crowd and maybe 10 guys (and some kids) dressed up in these outfits lounging around. The drumming would start, one of them would dance for a while before (for no apparent, to us, reason) people in the crowd would grab them and pull them into the crowd when someone else would take over the dancing. In some of these lulls locals would jump in there and run through doing somersaults and flips and all sorts of things, bizarre. It all seemed quite informal despite all of that, people would run through when they felt like it and others would just walk through on their way to the other side. Because of this informality and complete lack of structure (again, to us) we had no idea when it would finish and it was getting dark. But, I saw someone in the crowd making “it’s over” gestures and then suddenly, it stopped and everyone walked away. 2 minutes later there was no-one there any more. It had gone for about an hour and we have many, many photos and videos of it.
We then took a long, long bus to Segou in Mali. It was unfortunate as we had hoped to leave at 6.30, but had to take the 12.30 bus which meant arriving in the dark, never a good idea. Add to that the completely random stops in completely random locations for completely random amounts of time and it made for an awkward journey. Overall though, a thoroughly African experience.
After Egypt it was very strange to suddenly see so few tourists. On any given day we were lucky to see 5 other white people. And they were almost exclusively French and middle aged. It made our lack of French skills rather noticeable, and was an object of amusement and/or condescension for the locals. Probably learnt from the French when they were in charge.
Some photos and, hopefully they work, videos below. (Nope, no videos – which is a shame.)
