A night in Ouaga

Our arrival in Ougadougou made me thoroughly glad to have funded Sofiatu's partnership. The central station was an all-out assault from a massive language barrier, and I'm not sure Sofiatu translated everything perfectly, but she got us into a taxi headed to the city-centre and that was perfect for me. Ouagadougou is a very unique place in that nothing signifies why this amazingly sprawling city is where it is. No infrastructure, no rivers, no defensively strategizing landscape. The approach into Ouaga is quite literally an instant transition from empty sand lands to sand lands with houses everywhere.

I had, in spite of this, planned it as one of my layovers for travel, and had found a rather nice hostel called La Pavillion Vert. I heard tales of a restaurant, and a nice courtyard and decent beds with fans for around 15 dollars a night. When I arrived, I was not disappointed. It was everything they had said it would be. A haven among the moto-filled craziness of central Ouaga. I was disappointed, however, when I went to the registry to see it all filled up. Not a bed in the house! After today, I was just ready to crash into a bed in a semi-hot room for a while, so when the taxi driver told Sofiatu he knew a place downtown I just agreed and we rolled away from the bless-ed La Pavillion Vert. We pulled up to this place:

This place might look bad from the street, but the street was really an alley behind some street vendors so not that many people really saw it. Besides, no matter what the facade was like it couldn't relate to the experience inside. We walked in to the register and the clerk, I think his name was Baba, stood looking like a slender Mr T. Gold chains and teeth abounded to show his obvious success as a hotel clerk. I must admit he scared me a bit at first, but tomorrow Baba becomes a friend and ally so I won't instill any wrong ideas in your imagination by further describing his appearance. He agreed to a lower price than I could have gotten at La Pavillion Vert, and that was perfect for a man of my traveling stature. I will say the concern on Sofiatu's face and her persistence in making sure my door locked properly troubled me a bit at first, but I'll just credit it to her motherly instinct to over-react. Now that I think about it, the door concerns may have been legit as they were made of steel and 3 or 4 of the vents had once been bent assumingly to the size of someone's arm and they did give me the only room with a large steel-barred bathroom window opening into the outside alley (only 1 of the vents had been bent open here). Nevermind, I just taped my passport and debit card to the back of the window box and went to sleep. A rough first day of travel, but tomorrow is a new day!

Ok, I wrote this extensive semi-daily journal of traveling from Ghana to Amsterdam. I'm no professional travel writer, but if I must say so myself, it wasn't bad. That journal with all its African and European content was left in a car in Madrid, Spain with two men not able to speak or read English. So, I suppose to record my travel before my mind resets the hard drive, I'll write down what I remember. Here goes, the 4 month post-travel reminiscence of the trip of my life.

I was supposed to visit Mama Laadi (Prince is one of Mama Laadi's kids pictured above) for 2 days just long enough to do a tour of the schools that received desks from The Desk Project and make sure our work was still holding together. I ended up staying for a week, just hanging out with kids I didn't really want to leave and helping Mama Laadi with some organization and form-filling. The last 2 days at Mama Laadi's I met and spoke with Sofiatu. Sofiatu is a friend of Mama Laadi's originally from Bolgatanga, but now living in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. She travelled to Bolga for a relative's funeral and ran out of money for the return trip to Ougadougou. She travelled with her daughter and grand-daughter and they needed fare and I needed someone who knew Ouagadougou and who could speak French. I agreed to pay the fare for Sofiatu and her crew in exchange for some guiding around Ouaga and some help getting situated. So we left Mama Laadi's around 7 in the morning and boarded a bush taxi (which once across the

Francophone border becomes a sept-place meaning seven places even when there are 9 adults and 2 kids) with way too many people and babies sitting in my lap for the 7 hour ride to Ouga. More later.

Sofiatu and grandchild pictured above in Ouagadougou

Personal blog=fail

Life has been a little packed to say the least, and finally something uber-productive has come of it- www.thedeskproject.org. I might not be blogging on here, but you can go to www.thedeskproject.org/the-blog-project.html for some updates on our obibini project.