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I woke up early at the Zanga Hotel in Sikasso. The bus I bought a ticket for when I arrived in town late last night was due to leave for Bobo-Dioulasso at 07.00 this morning. I walked down to the reception and the tout who arranged my ticket was waiting. He said he was just coming up to my room to make sure I was awake and ready to leave; I thought that that was good of him to look out for me, I must have given him the right tip last night for making my travel arrangements. As I walked up the road to the bus station in the bright morning sun, there was a pleasant chill to the air. After the heat of the savannah and the grasslands further north this mornings chill was very refreshing. It must have been freezing to the locals who I found huddled around a fire at the bus station wrapped in warm coats. They offered me a seat on an old wooden bench and I sat down to wait for the bus to depart.
The bus was a minibus and there were about a dozen passengers. Only one other person could speak English, a well-dressed man from Ghana. He couldn't speak a word of French and I felt reassured that it was not only me who could not understand what was really going on. He walked around inspecting the minibus, prodding the tyres, which were bald and tutting at the poor state of repair of our vehicle. Without too much fuss and hanging around we soon departed and drove off down a dirt road out of Sikasso and towards the frontier with Burkina Faso.
Arriving in the dark last night I hadn't had the chance to see my current surroundings. I was pleasantly surprised to see some lush green vegetation, rather than dried grass scorched by the sun. We made steady progress along the dirt road, passing through small villages, fertile fields and patches of what you could almost describe as forest. We even passed a small tea plantation just off the road. The southern part of Mali is said to be more lush and green than the rest of the country; things actually grow here rather than just survive. The journey took a turn for the worst when we caught up with a large truck in front of us throwing up a huge cloud of choking dust. The road was fairly rough and it took what seemed like an age for our driver to pass the truck as it wound its way along the road trying to avoid the worst potholes. By the time we had passed it we were all covered in dust and coughing.
The first checkpoint we reached along the road was the Malian customs post. We stopped long enough for me to buy a small loaf of bread, the first thing I had eaten since my last night in Bamako 36 hours ago. I was still not feeling too well since that meal and didn't want to do anything that would make me feel worse, especially to the extent that I would have to stop at a hotel while I recovered. It didn't take long to get past the customs checkpoint; there wasn't exactly a queue of traffic this morning taking this road to the frontier and the customs officials didn't seem that interested in any of our luggage.
A little further along the road, about twenty minutes drive but only a few kilometres, we finally came to the border post. We parked beneath one of the many trees lining the road and all climbed out of the minibus and strolled across to the hut where the border guards were waiting for us. We stood in a semicircle in front of the hut where a large stocky man, who seemed to ooze authority, sat in his uniform with important papers and stamps on his desk in front of him, just inside the open fronted hut. He pointed to me first and asked for my passport. I sat in front of his desk and he started asking me questions. Where was I coming from and going to? Where did I live? What did I enjoy most in Mali? Would I be coming back again? I told him that I had enjoyed my visit to his country and wish I could of stayed longer but I had to be in Accra in three weeks time to catch a flight home. I promised though that I would return some day in the future. He stamped an exit stamp in my passport, shook my hand and I had officially left Mali.
It took a lot longer for my fellow passengers to complete the immigration formalities. For some reason there was something wrong with the Ghanaians paperwork. There was a lot of heated arguments and waiting. Once his passport was finally stamped he came over to talk to me, the only other English speaker in our group. Apparently he had either been fined or had to pay a bribe to get his passport stamped, he wasn't sure which and asked me if I had to pay anything. I hadn't, he looked disappointed and cursed the officials as we paced about waiting for permission to continue our journey over the border and into Burkina Faso.
At last everyone's papers had been stamped and we were free to continue our journey. We crossed the border and into Burkina Faso and soon stopped again at the Burkina border post. In that short journey between the two border posts I could see that I had entered a more prosperous country. The road on the Burkina side was tarred, there were crash barriers by the side of the road on bridge crossings and even some road signs, which were definitely absent on the road from Sikasso. We once again went through our now well-rehearsed routine at the Burkina border post. Apart from our vehicle there was no one else making the crossing; only a few local villagers wandered about the large parking lot selling bananas and oranges under the intensely hot sun.
It took about another two hours driving along the surprisingly good road from the border to reach Bobo-Dioulasso, my destination for today. Bobo-Dioulasso gained its name from the local tribe in the area and means home of the Bobo Dioulas. It is the countries second city with a population of 350,000. During the colonial times when this country was known as Upper Volta Bobo was the principle town. It remained so until the 1950's when the railway from Abidjan was pushed through a further 360km to Ouagadougou, today's capital. It was the middle of the afternoon when the bus finally pulled into the city. The streets were lined with trees and the whole town had a relaxed peaceful atmosphere to it. I took a taxi to the Casa Africa hotel on the edge of town. It had been recommended to me as a nice place to stay. Being on the edge of town it was quiet and away from the touts who tend to hang around the tourist class hotels in the city centre. My first day I just stayed at the hotel and didn't venture out anywhere; I needed a day off to fully recover from my trip from Bamako, as well as my last meal in Mali. The Casa Africa proved to live up to its good reputation. It was set around a courtyard and shaded by a lush green garden of trees, shrubs and tropical plants; the restaurant was excellent too, serving a selection of tasty meals; a welcome change from the eating houses of Mali. The steak in pepper sauce definitely would get my recommendation.
On my first night I bumped into a guide at the bar who gave me his card; Seydou Drabo was his name and his card told me to 'go wild, explore southern region.' I didn't take much notice of what he was saying, after a couple of weeks in Mali I had become immune to the sales talk of guides and touts. It was at breakfast the next day that a Dutch family recommended him to me; they had just been on a tour with him to some of the surrounding villages and said that he was excellent and very informative. Later that morning Seydou popped into the hotel and I discussed with him some possible tours around the area. He was busy that day but he would show me around the old district of the city, Kibidwe and the Grand Mosque that afternoon. Tomorrow he would rent a moped and take me out for the day around some of the surrounding villages.
I sat in the courtyard, under a shady tree, for the rest of the morning watching life go by. The gardener had arrived and was busy pruning, weeding and planting. Deliveries were being made to the restaurant; the chicken seller arrived on a moped with half a dozen live chickens hanging patiently from the handlebars. The Dutch family departed, heading south to Banfora leaving just a woman from Slovenia and her two children as the only other guests. They were camped in a corner of the courtyard; the two children, a boy and a girl aged about eight and ten respectively, played around the hotel and along the street with some of the other local children.
After lunch Seydou returned and we walked to Kibidwe, on the other side of the city centre. It was a pleasant walk along wide tree-lined roads that were laid out in a grid pattern with a couple of diagonal avenues thrown in which defined the commercial centre of the city. The Grand Market is the focus of the commercial activity in the city and is in the heart of the city centre.
Unfortunately during my visit the market was closed and was either undergoing renovations or a complete rebuild. This had the effect of forcing all the traders from the market out onto the surrounding streets. The streets were choked with people and traffic, an intoxicating mixture of sound and colour as we moved along the streets around the market building.
The main entrance into the Kibidwe district is opposite the Grand Mosque where the cities touts were waiting for the unprepared tourists. Seydou knew most of them and the atmosphere was far calmer than it would have been if I had turned up here by myself. Seydou stopped for a chat with his fellow 'colleagues' before leading me into the Kibidwe district. Suddenly, by just walking off the main street past the Grand Mosque, I had stepped back into an African village in the heart of the city. The buildings were all traditional mud brick houses. Alleyways wound their way around the buildings creating a maze that you could easily loose yourself in. The first stop we made was at a house of one of Seydou's friends. We climbed on to the roof to get a panoramic view over the old heart of the city. This district was organised along the same social structures as other traditional towns and villages; the various tradesmen and artisans were all grouped together into their own parts of town. We stopped to watch blacksmiths at work while we walked down to the small river, which flows through the centre of the city. There was a lot of work going on building retaining walls along the banks of the river. There was only a small trickle of water flowing past, winding its way along the bed of the river past the piles of rubbish and grazing goats. The river is seasonal and during the wet season it can turn into a torrent.
Standing along the riverbed next to pools formed by the brackish stream were groups of mostly old men staring intently into the water. The children were more interested in playing along the river using the piles of rubbish as a toy chest; finding old tyres to roll along the road or tin cans to drag through the dust on a piece of string. The old men ignored the noise the kids made as they played and continued to stare into the water. Seydou lead me up to the group and we said hello and acknowledged each other's presence. The men were watching catfish swimming around in the pools; the water was thick with catfish. Every now and then one would chase after another, suddenly disturbing the calm surface of the pool in an eruption of water. This always brought a smile to the old men's faces.
The catfish is a sacred fish to the Bobo tribe (as well as the crocodile) and people come down to the river just to watch these fish and to make sacrifices to them. This explained the silent group of old men standing beside the river. The legend of the catfish goes back hundreds of years. One of the great chiefs of the Bobo people became lost in the bush. He was close to death as he had run out of water when he suddenly saw a catfish sliver past him in the grass. He followed the catfish, which lead him to a stream and the water that saved his life. Ever since and to this day the catfish is sacred and worshipped by the Bobo people.
I decided not to share with Seydou, or the old men, my recent trip to Alabama were I went fishing for a day and caught catfish. Being a bottom feeder they tasted a bit muddy but fried with a lot of ginger seemed to disguise the flavour somewhat.
We finished our tour back at the Grand Mosque. You can no longer go inside ever since a group of Westerners decided that they would not remove their shoes when entering. I find it hard to imagine how a small minority of people can be so disrespectful to other people's culture and religion. The mosque is now closed to all non-Muslims. I could only admire the traditional mud-brick architecture from outside. A large wooden frame supports the mud-bricks, the spars of this frame jut out of the walls giving the walls a bristled appearance. The spars also serve another role, providing support for planks and ladders while renewing the mud rendering after the rainy season. Their role though, had become redundant since it was decided to render the whole mosque with sand and cement. This had saved money, as they no longer needed to carry out the annual mud re-rendering. The only drawback I saw was the overall appearance of the mosque; the cement had become stained and weathered and the building looked tatty and uncared for. It no longer had a uniformed earthy brown colour to it that the traditional building techniques provided.
Meanwhile back at the CasaAfrica hotel an overland truck had arrived in the courtyard. It was a private vehicle, rather than a tour truck, with German registration plates and driven by a retired couple. They were spending their retirement driving around Africa. They would travel for a few months each year and then park up the truck and fly home, returning a few months later to continue their journey. Today they had travelled along the same road from Sikasso in Mali that I had travelled a couple of days earlier. It was an old Mercedes truck dating back to the late 1960's; after a days travelling the owner said he always found himself spending two days tinkering with the truck to keep it running; African roads were expensive on spare parts.
The next day after breakfast Seydou arrived at the hotel on an 80cc moped; a fairly fast machine when most people were riding around on 50cc machines. This was his budget tour to the Bobo villages in the surrounding hills, a far cheaper option that hiring a vehicle with four wheels. I hopped on to the back and we drove off through Bobo-Dioulasso, weaving through the traffic and headed east out of the city along the Ouagadougou road. Our first stop was Koro about 14km east of the city. We turned off the road and continued our journey along footpaths, the moped bogging down in the sandy soil at the sharp corners. We soon came back onto a track created by vehicles rather than people and continued to Koro, which was perched on the top of a rocky ridge overlooking the surrounding plains.
Seydou seemed to know quite a few people who were gathered below the village at the few buildings near the track. It was not a surprise as he probably takes tourists up to this village nearly every day. A local lad from the village accompanied us on our walk, a guide leading my guide. Most of the buildings of the village could not be seen from the track; they were only single storey mud dwellings hidden amongst the large boulders and rocky outcrops along the ridge. Dotted around the village were many fetishes. These are places where in traditional beliefs; sacrifices are made, usually of the humble chicken. The scattering of white feathers, gently blowing around the buildings, soon became a telltale sign that we were near a fetish. The actual fetish was nothing that elaborate, just a small mound of earth like an upturned bucket, where the unfortunate chicken was sacrificed. Seydou pointed out a hunter's fetish by a tree; again there was this small mound of blood stained earth, but the trunk and the branches of the tree were carefully decorated with the skulls of animals.
The village was almost deserted, it was harvest time and everyone who was able was out in the fields working to bring the harvest in. A few people were left in the village, some women and a few old men. The women were mostly busy making pots, while the old men sat in the shade watching life go by. I was surprised by the lack of children around the village; I was expecting to be mobbed by kids and to be followed endlessly wherever I went. Instead I only saw a handful of kids and they quickly disappeared down an alley when we approached. We climbed to the top of a rocky outcrop in the centre of the village where we had panoramic views of the settlement and the plains below us stretching out into the distance.
We walked back down to the track where we had left the moped. On the way we passed exhausted people returning from the fields. A few of them stopped us asking for medicine and explaining to us their ailments; I didn't have anything to give them. During my travels it had become fairly common for people to stop me and ask for medicine, mostly they were after paracetamol and were complaining of headaches and dizziness. The majority of the people who stopped me were, like today, farmers who had been working out in the fields under the baking sun. It seemed to me, and others, that these ailments were caused by dehydration rather than any physical illness and that the cure was water rather than drugs.
On the way back to the Ouagadougou road we turned off the track and Seydou took me to a local Fula village. The village, situated out on the plains, consisted of traditional round mud huts with conical straw roofs, a common sight across West Africa. Again most villagers were out working in the fields, herding cattle or bringing the freshly harvested crops back to the village. A huge bundle of maize, stripped to reveal the yellow kernels, hung from a tree near the centre of the village out of reach of the goats that stood in the shade staring at the maize hungrily.
Seydou introduced me to one of the local women and stopped for a chat; again all the men were out at work in the fields and the village was only inhabited during the day by the women, working pounding the millet and looking after the children who played around the huts. I was invited to look around inside a hut. It was all very neat and tidy; the only piece of furniture was a large double bed to one side of the hut, the children slept on rugs on the bare earth floor. Large storage jars and pots lined the opposite side of the hut which served as the kitchen; a blackened hearth as the cooker. We stepped back outside from the relative cool and dark of the hut into the bright sunshine and the heat of the day where the children waited patiently. As soon as we were out they ran to a paw paw tree beside the hut and lined up wanting me to take a photo. This looked like a well rehearsed routine, the ten children had lined themselves up in a perfect composition, tallest at the back, smallest at the front. I obliged and took a photo, probably just one of many that has been taken of the kids posing by the paw paw tree.
We hopped back on the moped and rode back to the main highway to Ouagadougou, negotiating a herd of cattle coming the opposite way along the track. Seydou had to stop to see a friend in the city to negotiate hiring a 4WD for an upcoming tour he was arranging. Once Seydou had completed his business we popped into a local bar just down the road. Millet beer was the only drink on offer, which was brewed on the premises. The bar was also a local hangout for musicians, as were most of the bars around the city; every evening the city came alive and where ever you were you could hear the distant sound of drum beats. There were about eight musicians jamming, playing drums and the xylophone. We sat down with a bottle of millet beer and relaxed to the rhythms these musicians were making, which were all improvised, drinking our warm millet beer from cups made from gourds. The beer was not alcoholically strong and had the taste of a home brew. If you hadn't drunk premium lagers to compare it to, you probably would have said it tasted quite good.
Later that afternoon Seydou picked me up again at the hotel; this time we were off to La Guinguette via the village of Koumi. Koumi is another Bobo village, this time 15km south east of the city beside the main road to Banfora. The village is very distinctive with the buildings made from the ochre coloured mud, many of them two stories high. The village seemed busier than Koro, which we had visited that morning; there were a lot more artisans at work, blacksmiths, potters and weavers. The village is also unusual because of the underground shelters dug between the village and the nearby riverbanks. The women dug these shelters as places to escape from the heat of the day during the hot days in the dry season. This afternoon though, most of the women were down by the river doing the laundry creating a multicoloured patchwork on the banks of the river as they laid the clothes out to dry.
We continued on our way to La Guinguette. This place is a natural swimming hole fed by crystal clear water from a spring in a small patch of lush forest called the Foret de Kou. The forest has been fenced off and is a small park out in the wilderness. During the French colonial times La Guinguette was off limits to the local people this is where the white men and women would come to relax and cool down away from the bustle of the city and the heat of the plains. Today though it is open to everyone and is popular with both locals and tourists.
From Koumi we took the 'back roads' to La Guinguette, in fact they were only footpaths and became tricky to negotiate on a moped as we kept getting bogged down in the soft sand, it was like driving into a gravel trap. If we weren't getting stuck in the sand we were getting whipped by the vegetation beside the path as we dodged the worst of the ruts and potholes. After, what I can only describe as an interesting drive through the countryside we arrived at the main gates to the forest. As soon as we rode into the forest I could feel the drop in temperature as we rode down the path in the shade of the trees that formed a seamless green canopy above us. We parked down by the river in the heart of the forest and were deafened by the silence around us once we switched off the engine on the moped.
We walked the rest of the way to the swimming hole following the river upstream; all we could hear was the birds singing amongst the trees. We reached the swimming hole and found the place deserted. I thought there would of been a few other people here relaxing in the peaceful surroundings, but was happy to see we had the place to ourselves. The water lived up to the guidebook description and was crystal clear and pleasantly cool. While floating around on my back staring up at the trees above me my mind drifted back to the office back home and work; I realised then why I travel and why I don't think I could ever stop. I laughed to myself as I imagined my colleagues back home having another boring day at work while I was here now, thousands of miles from home in the middle of nowhere relaxing in a swimming hole in the African bush.
As with any stretch of water around this area it was inhabited by catfish, which stayed near the bottom. Seydou reassured me that there were no crocodiles here; he kept asking me why I was worried about crocodiles. Well, I replied, aren't we swimming in a river in Africa? I didn't think my worries were unfounded; after all there were crocodile lakes in the area where people went to sacrifice chickens. Crocodiles as well as the catfish are sacred to the Bobo. Personally I couldn't help but to feel sorry for the poor old chickens. If they weren't sacrificed at daybreak to appease the Gods they were either thrown into a pond full of catfish, or worse still a lake full of crocodiles. If they survived that the chances were that they would end up on someone's dinner plate by dusk.
I really didn't want to leave the swimming hole. I could of stayed there for days; suddenly time didn't seem that important any more. However, the reality was that I was on a tour and Seydou had other business to attend to and to him, as with any other business, time is money. We rode back out of the forest and along a track back to the main dirt road to the city. Back on the dirt road we seemed to be going very fast. I looked behind us and saw a bus catching up with us, billowing out a huge cloud of dust behind it, and realised why we were going at such a pace. We didn't manage to outrun the bus and were soon swamped by the dust cloud as it overtook us. We came to a stop, we couldn't see where we were going and within seconds were caked in dust, so much for feeling clean and refreshed after our swim.
On our way back through the city we stopped at the new football stadium, which was built in the last few years to host the African Nations Cup. The stadium was empty except for a few grounds men tending to the pitch. We climbed to the top of the stadium and looked out on a panoramic view over the city looking down along Boulevard de la Revolution. As well as being a venue for both international and local football, the stadium also staged concerts for some of the top West African musicians. Seydou seemed very proud of the stadium and I could understand why; it was a nice stadium, probably with a seating capacity of about 20-25,000. The African Nations Cup is held every other year and the organisation builds new or overhauls old stadiums providing the local people with a much valued sporting amenity in their country. The next hosts will be Mali and on my travels through that country the previous week I saw a new stadium being built in the outskirts of the capital city, Bamako.
I ended up staying in Bobo-Dioulasso far longer than planned. I found it a relaxing place to stay, especially at the Casa Africa hotel, a real oasis of calm on the edge of the city. Eventually I had to leave and travel east along the main road to the capital city Ouagadougou in order to get to Ghana where I would spend my last two weeks of this trip before flying home from Accra. Leaving the hotel with my luggage it was just my luck that there wasn't a taxi in sight; there is never a taxi when you really need one. A few lads on mopeds stopped to offer me a ride but with my luggage I had to decline their offers; falling off the back of a moped was the last thing I wanted to do. Almost half way to the bus station a taxi pulled over and picked me up and took me via the scenic route around Kibidwe to drop off another passenger. From there we took a shortcut across a football pitch and on eventually to the bus station.
It was late in the afternoon on Saturday when the bus arrived in Ouagadougou. I wasn't sure exactly which bus station we arrived in but guessed it was somewhere north of the city centre. I planned to stay at the hotel Le Pavillon Vert but wasn't too sure which direction to walk in. I gave in quickly, the bus station and the surrounding streets were a chaotic mass of people and vehicles. I took a taxi and knew that I would be ripped off but just wanted to get to the hotel. Sure enough I was right; after five minutes driving, half of which was stuck in traffic jams, we covered the approximate kilometre and a half to the hotel for a fare I negotiated before hand of CFA2000. I suppose the moral of the story is to work out where you are starting your journey from before agreeing to a fare.
Once I had made myself at home in my hotel room I went to sit in the courtyard to have a cold drink and to see whom else was staying there. A couple of people walked past me, their faces looked very familiar but I couldn't place them. A while later someone else walked by who again looked familiar. That's when it clicked; they were the group of overlanders I had met some weeks ago in Sevare, Mali who were driving from the UK to Kenya. I joined them for dinner and a drink to catch up on the gossip on how their trip was going. They were currently stuck in Ouagadougou with a broken suspension spring on one of their vehicles. They could not buy a spare so a local mechanic was making and fitting a new leaf spring. As soon as that was fixed they would be heading on to Ghana, which was also my next destination.
They offered me a lift, if I didn't have too much luggage. That at least gave me another option for getting to Ghana. I was having problems trying to find transport to take me across the frontier; there didn't appear to be any Burkina Faso buses that went over the border. All the buses heading south from the city only went as far as Po, a few kilometres from the frontier. From there I would have to take a bush taxi across the border to Bolgatanga, the first major town along the road in Ghana. From there I would have to find another bus to continue my journey south. It was all beginning to get complicated. I had had enough of complicated journeys and really could do without the hassle, but this was Africa. So the offer of the lift from the overlanders was very welcome and appealing and could be the answer I was looking for.
Ouagadougou seemed a very quiet place over the weekend I was staying there, especially on Sunday when the city appeared to be almost deserted. I would of expected more hustle and bustle for a capital city, but I wasn't complaining; the city had a very relaxed, friendly feel to it. In 1441 Ouagadougou became the capital of the Mossi Empire and the city grew up around the imperial palace of the Mossi king that was built some 250 years later. During the colonial period the city expanded and more recently the migration of people from the rural areas to the city has lead to the sprawling suburbs springing up around the city.
There is not much to see and do as a tourist in the city. A lot of the architecture is modern and the city looks and feels like any other African city. Despite its ordinary looks the city did function as a city; there was power and water, the sewers were covered, the roads paved and there were traffic signals at most intersections that everyone obeyed. On the Sunday afternoon I was walking north along Avenue Dimdolobsom. There was no traffic around except for an old man on a bicycle. The traffic lights in front of him changed to red and he dutifully stopped and waited patiently. There wasn't another vehicle in sight on any of the roads leading into the intersection but still he waited for the green light to proceed. In any other town or city I had visited on this trip no one would of paid much attention to the traffic lights in those conditions, especially someone on a bicycle.
I wanted to leave for Ghana on Monday morning so that I could spend the last two weeks of this trip travelling south through the country and along the coast to Accra. On Sunday afternoon it still wasn't clear when the overlanders would be able to leave for Ghana, there were even discussions about going to Cote d'Ivoire instead. They wouldn't be going anywhere though, until their mechanic had managed to make a new leaf spring. I continued on my mission to find a bus company that could take me all the way across the frontier into Ghana. I walked for miles around the city to the various bus stations but still had no luck until someone mentioned to me that the Ghanaian STC bus departed daily from the Gare Routiere at around 08.30 in the morning.
I arrived back at the hotel late in the afternoon to find no news from the overlanders as to their departure date, so I jumped into a taxi and went downtown to find the Ghanaian bus company office, which was closed. My taxi driver was very helpful and knew most of the details about when and where the bus would depart and offered to pick me up outside the hotel at 06.30 the next morning. With my plans set we drove back in the battered old Renault 4 to the hotel. I told the overlanders of my plans; they still didn't have visas for Ghana and the earliest they could leave would be Monday afternoon, as long as there was not a delay in processing their visas and the suspension was fixed in time.
Sure enough, at first light on Monday morning I walked out into the street and found my taxi driver waiting patiently across the road outside the Esso gas station. It was good to see him again and we drove south through the city to the Gare Routiere, which was right at the edge of the city, past the airport. He dropped me off in a dusty corner of the bus station beside a rather weary looking sign marking the stopping place of the Ghanaian STC bus. I was the first person to arrive and wait for the bus. There was no-where to buy tickets or make enquiries so I just sat on a rock beside a wall and waited. Other passengers began to arrive, all heavily laden down with luggage. Eventually a cloud of dust announced the arrival of the bus; still I did not have a ticket, even though all the other passengers were clutching theirs eagerly trying to be the first to load their luggage on to the bus. I really didn't think I was going to get on the bus, as I had not booked a ticket in advance. After a long struggle I managed to find the driver who sold me someone else's ticket; I presumed that they hadn't managed to make the journey today. I didn't really care that much, I was just pleased to have a seat onboard the bus and the driver just crossed out the ticket's previous owners name and scrawled mine in its place.
Against the odds I found myself at last travelling south to the Ghanaian frontier on a bus, which was travelling all the way to the coast. There was a slight hold up leaving Ouagadougou as a new statue in the centre reservation of the main road was being officially unveiled. A military band had set themselves up in the eastbound lane and a small grandstand for the dignitaries and onlookers had been constructed in the westbound lane. The traffic meanwhile, had to find a way around the obstacles by winding around the dirt back roads. I sat back and watched the countryside and villages roll by as we speeded on our way to Po and the border. I was heartily reassured by the STC corporate logo displayed at the front of the bus, 'We will get you there alive.' At least I no longer had to worry about death on this journey; I was in safe corporate hands.
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