Long December (in a good way)

Yes I know, it’s been a solid half month since I wrote last, everyone just calm down it just means I’ve got loads to tell you. Let’s start with happy New Year, hope Christmas and/or other coinciding December holidays went well.

On December 20th, for some reason, Sean Paul (a famous singer for those who need a reference) came to Ouagadougou to put on a concert. His style can be described as a popish reggae. The concert was at the national football stadium “Stade du 4 Août”. This is a very large venue and I expected the place to be packed. Then we got to the concert and remembered that we’re in Burkina and no one has any money. The lowest priced tickets were 5000cfa ($10), great deal for a Sean Paul concert but still way too expensive for the population here.



One advantage to there being no people was that we could walk right up to the stage, and back stage and no one really said anything. Sean Paul was however 3 ½ hours late so the 6 o’clock concert didn’t start until 9:30pm. Here’s the fun part, there was loads of space on the field in front of the stage, yet most of the people had the 5000cfa seats in the bowl of the stadium. The people got restless and began jumping down on to the field. One, then two, then forty it was loads of fun to watch. In the madness someone found a later to help their friends down, it was as though they just pulled it out of their pants or a scene out of a Mel Brooks movie where things escalate faster than reason would assume.

The police, God love them, armed mostly with night sticks and a few AKs stopped most of this mad rush. It was amazing to watch because they basically told the people to sit down and they did. My friend, with whom I was sitting, and I observed that were it a group of Americans there’s no way we would have sat down without being beaten, we would have headed for the crowd and blended in as fast as possible. Now this was all with the stadium lights still on, so just imagine what happened when the lights went out. We watched as flood of human silhouettes leaped down onto the field as soon as the lights were off. Nothing the police could do about that one, it was beautiful.

The concert itself was ok, not spectacular, there were no warm-up bands it was pretty much just the main event. Sean Paul does not speak French, and Burkina Faso does not speak English. This little situation made it quite comical when Sean Paul would yell for the crowd to “put your hands up” and “jump” and asked questions like “do you love Sean Paul?” All questions and commands were promptly responded to with a resounding “quoi?” (What?). Stop talking in English and sing, you’re three hours late.

On to brighter subject, like scaring my students to within an inch of their lives. It was not on purpose I was checking individually how their listening comprehension and oral skills were progressing. So I called each student up and asked them simple questions; “write your name, name a factor of education, what is a job for a woman (this month’s topic is gender issues, I only got one response that said “there isn’t one, she can do anything”), and what do you want to do after school?”

Anyway my students were so petrified that I could see them visibly shaking while I was asking them questions. They were not even being graded on this exercise I think maybe they thought I would yell at them or something for not being perfect. One girl was so worried she crossed herself when we finished.

For Christmas I took a trip down to Ghana with some friends. Allow me to run you through the whole adventure. The day I bought our tickets I travelled across town on my bike at 6:30am and arrived at the bus station (gare) at about 7. There were very few people there and I went into the office. The man told me I would have to wait until 10 to buy the tickets because he was very busy. Did I mention that at the time I was the only person there? Any way I waited and met two university students from California who were doing an exchange at the University of Ghana in Accra. They were a well spring of information briefing me on everything from what they white people are called in Ghana to double counting you money as people like to count out the correct amount then slip some out and hand you the wrong amount, to where to get the best beans and rice in Busua (our final destination).

Our bus left a few days later on the 23rd at 9am (pay attention). We arrived in Accra at about 10am the 24th. Then we switched busses to get us to Takoradi we arrived in Takoradi at about 1pm or so in the afternoon. Then we got a taxi to take us to Busua so we pretty much got to our room at about 2pm on the 24th. That’s about 28 hours of transit from Ouagadougou to Busua, roughly a 500 mile journey. Compare that to doing a nearly 900 mile route on a gray hound bus from Greensboro to Quebec City, Canada in about 21 hours (by car only 17). Point is unpaved roads SUCK.
The difference between Ghana and Burkina Faso, where development is concerned is staggering.

I feel the stark contrast between the two nations is captured perfectly at the border crossing. There is similar land on either side of the border, similar size villages on either side of the border, and one major difference, different countries. In the Burkina immigration office there is one officer seated at a desk armed with a BiC pen and a large notebook so they can handwrite all the names and passport numbers of people leaving and entering the country. On the Ghana side (even at 4 in the morning) there are at least 6 immigration officers armed with (I saw) 4 computers with a passport scanner for processing people entering and leaving Ghana.



I know that may not sound like much but believe me it makes all the difference in the world after being in BF for 6 months. Ghana is at least 30 years ahead of Burkina and that could be due to many things, one of the largest factors in my opinion is access to an ocean. A small bag (half a liter) of water in Burkina cost 50CFA roughly 10 cents, and in Ghana a small bag of water cost 10 Ghana pesos which is about 30CFA and about 6 cents. Burkina, while one of the poorest nations in the world, is pretty much the most expensive nation in West Africa.

Well now, it was completely confusing to have to speak English with local people. At this point every African I see I just go ahead and speak in French, because that’s how we roll in BF. Adjusting that habit took a couple of slip ups in Ghana. Things like bags of water, which I was really first exposed to here in BF are hard to order when you don’t know what to call it in English. Sachet de l’eau in BF becomes sachet (with the T pronounced) of water in Ghana, but we didn’t know that so we just went around saying “what do you call a bag of water in English?” Life is hard sometimes.
We stayed 4 nights in Busua Beach, don’t bother trying to find it on a map it’s not there, the closest large town is Cape Coast and Takoradi.

It was beautiful, coconut palms all over the place, hills sloping gently into sandy beaches with clear sea green water. A small island with a couple of palm trees and tiki torches at night just off the coast provides a break from the larger ocean swells and makes the bay and beach picturesque and great for swimming. On the far side of that island waves looked like they were breaking with an extra 6 feet, just beyond the west end point of the bay the waves were breaking with what looked like about an extra 4 feet. The waves grew all three days that I went out surfing so that on our last day the waves were about 6 foot with anywhere from 9-10 foot waves in the big sets. It was wonderful; I got up every morning at 7am to rent my board and normally had the first three hours of the day to myself with 4-5 foot waves, glassy, no wind and no swimmers.



The surf shop is a chain called “Black Star Surf Shop” they’re located up and down the Ghana coast. The one in Busua has a restaurant with it and they serve frick’n good burritos. They also have something called “Rastafari beans and rice” which is black beans in a cream sauce with mango, avocado, and white rice, amazing. There a place called “Dan the Pancake man”, we had breakfast there once and Daniel informed us that if we wanted a lobster dinner to let him know in the morning and he’d have it for us that night, also amazing.Our room was right on the beach front, two double beds and a mat on the floor slept the 5 of us very comfortably for 15 Ghana Cidi a night (about 10 dollars for a beach front room).

We met a few people while we were down in Ghana. Among them was Brett Davies (worked for Rip Curl UK) and has set himself up a sweet little beach front restaurant bar. He also helped organize the first surfing competitions in Ghana at Busua. We got to watch what I believe was the second annual competition while we were there. Also met a guy named Riley from San Francisco/American University in DC, he’s working down there in the restaurant with Brett and teaching surf lessons (life can be hard sometimes). The whole atmosphere of the beach was beautiful, there nations from all over the world represented there people relaxing most of the NGO workers on holiday like us. If you get the chance to go to Busua I highly recommend it.

I managed to get hit in the chest with my board coming off of one wave so I “bruised” my rib. Happily we’re in Africa and nothing requires a doctor’s visit unless you’re really about to die. So for less than a dollar I was able to purchase some very strong Ibuprofen. I would need it for our insane trip back to Ouaga and BF.
This journey started at 3:30am the morning of the 28th. The plan was to take a bus back to Accra (4 hours) then take a “tro-tro” (bush taxi) to Akosombo at the south end of Volta Lake (largest manmade lake in the world). From there we were going to take a ferry up the lake to break up the ridiculously long trip home. The ferry would be 24hrs and cut out almost all of return back minus about 9 hours, we would have a cabin with AC and a bed split between four people costing about 5 Ghana Cidi ($3) each. It was going to be frick’n amazing.

Sadly the boats took a Christmas season break so they were not running. So we stayed one night in Akosombo, beautiful middle class Africa town looks like what you can find anywhere in the United States. Ranch style houses with big lawns and cars in the driveways situated in a valley with large rising green hills all around and more coconut and banana tress than you’d ever need (in Burkina it’s tiny mud-brick houses with broken bicycles in an all sand yard the same size as the house with sand on top of more sand with sand on the side, sand is too kind let’s just say rocky dirt).



After our one night in Akosombo, we once again rose at 3:30am to catch a tro-tro to Kumasi. This tro-tro ride was long. Tro-tro’s are the size of a 16 passenger van that forgot to eat its vegetables. My chin and knees have never been closer than they were after this ride. Luckily the scenery was beautiful as we passed the mountains and valleys all covered with lush green vegetation. One town called Nkawkaw had a mountain in its background called Apaku, I think, with very large open rock faces, looked a lot like Stone Mountain in Georgia but without the carvings and much larger. When we got to Kumasi we went straight away to our bus station.

Wouldn’t you know it, no busses to Ouaga until the following day. We searched out a new bus station that did have a bus but it didn’t leave until 7pm, when we bought the tickets it was about 11am. Mostly we just sat around and slept in front of the bus station. There was chicken shit, chickens, the Pepsi depot, and some lady who threw dirty water on us from one floor above.

We got on the bus 7pm and left Kumasi. We arrived at the BF Ghana border at 4am. Turns out the border closes at night so we sat at the border until 8am. Then the bus driver managed to make what is normally a two hour trip from Pô to Ouaga into a four hour trip. I was ready to burn the bus down. When I was exiting the bus I was greeted by a chorus of Burkinabe yelling “nassalla” (mooreé for white) so I just threw my hands up and using the same hand gesture you use when shewing goats and sheep and half yelled “Get Away From ME, AAHHA!!” That didn’t work they still attacked trying to charge us nearly three times the correct price for a taxi to take us back to our house. It’s good to be home.



New Year’s was uneventful spent it at a house party then out to a Burkinabe club for some dancing. I recommend to anyone to travel to Ghana and plan to stay about two years if you’re being a tourist. I didn’t take my camera to Ghana (that was stupid, I left it in my friend’s car in Ouaga) I’ll steel some pictures from my friends and put them soon so check back.
Peace