Ougadougou

The music starts at 08:00 sharp and the city begins to hum. People selling, people buying, color color everywhere. Even the noise has a beat to it, motorbikes seem to harmonise as they transport brightly clad woman and children, humming along with men in suits and the drum beat of touregs passing. This place is funky, at night we sit and drink cold beers and watch live music. Local bands on a variety of strings and drums, locals, expats, dancing… people dancing.

 This place just has a vibe; In the mornings I wake to the sun and make myself a cup of hot imported coffee, walk thirty metres for fresh baguette, and haggle with a local lady with a bowl of strawberries the size of a car wheel on her head. I then sit to my breakfast of fresh baguette with pate, I drink my imported coffee and gorge myself on huge ripe strawberries, dipped in sugar. I watch the local parade on the street below and think, man it’s the small things in life.

Granted the rest of our day is spent full of grease and oil as we change and repair diesel tanks, trying to negotiate the price of windscreens and finding out if anyone knows anything about power steering units. We’re in embassies getting visas and changing money with the local Syrian guy, but the joy of those strawberries, borne on the head of a local maiden is something I will cherish.

It’s a different world here, Greg and I drove in from our days of bush camping in Arli and Parc-W, we were out of money (no one exchanges dollars in Benin or at border towns), we were hungry (we’d messed up ration provisions) and we were tired from sleeping on the side of the highway. I hadn’t washed properly for about ten days, we were looking rough and our vehicle was limping with fuel flow problems. And there she was Ougadougou, capital city, arms wide open…”welcome” Ougadougou said… lets dance! And dance we did, that first night in we hit the town. Dressed in C-baz’s clothes I danced to South African Kwaito tunes in a club in the centre of Ouga, local tunes, Mali, Senegalese, Ivorian music, man what a trip. The local brewery is very generous, they give you a free headache in every beer, so the next morning after dragging myself home at who knows what time, and C-baz a few hours later, we were not enjoying lying under the car refitting the diesel tank. But the strawberries, borne upon the head of those angels pulled us through, my fingers have been permanently stained red, grease or no grease.

We’ve been working hard sorting out cars etc, dawn to dusk so to speak, but that’s not what I want to write about. I want to write about sitting in a club watching local jazz bands massage the night air with their sounds. I want to write about the Maquis dancing where hundreds of people gather, people in their twenties, people in their thirties, sixtees even. Men in collared shirts, woman in pretty dresses…everybody there for the same thing…..to dance. Local bands with men singing songs of love and his girlfriends breasts, give rise to a funky jive and a local two step type dance, everybody just dancing, just dancing. At some point people pull out a hankerchief and wave it around, I have no idea why, but its hankerchiefs out. Burkina and Ougais a place to visit, the few days flew by but I want to show people the cloth shops we haggled in, and the loudest pair of pants ever that now adorn us. I want walk my sis through the smells of roasted guineafowls and chickens on the street, flavored with a lip searing pepper, or stuffed into a baguette. Burkina is great, the people are friendly, welcome…lets dance.

We met expats, a lovely couple Bruno and Anouk who treated us to wonderful lunch at their home and some great conversation. I met taxi driver who mourned the loss of lucky Dube to me the whole drive back. I walked the streets alone at all hours of the night and day, saw markets, saw colour, saw culture. We met locals who showed us their town, people smiling, people friendly, strawberries and music everywhere… with arms wide open, “welcome” Ougadougou said...lets dance.