Burkina Faso is difficult. Difficult to wrap my head around, difficult to contextualize, difficult to write about. Most places I’m visiting or planning to visit — Croatia, or Poland, or Denmark, or Switzerland, for example — are all places I feel reasonably comfortable. Burkina Faso isn’t.

There are three reasons for that, all fairly obvious. First, Burkina Faso is incredibly poor, prone to food shortages and natural disasters. In 1996 it was estimated that 43.7% of the population lives below the poverty line.¹ Most shops are constructed of a collection of poles and a corrugated metal roof. Electrical power is uncommon. 80% of the population relies on subsistence agriculture. The comparison between the money I have and the money most of the Burkinabé have is staggering.²

Second, there’s the language barrier. There’s over 66 indigenous languages spoken here³ but the official language — the language of government, the press, and the schools — is French.⁴ I spent three years of high school learning French and two decades forgetting everything I learned. I’d peg my facility with it currently at “I watched a couple subtitled seasons of Les Revenants.” My communication is fundamentally restricted to smiling, nodding, and gesticulating. I’m basically silent.

Finally, and perhaps most corrosively, there’s the intertwined issues of race and colonialism. The area that would become Burkina Faso was seized up by the French in the “Scramble for Africa” as part of the full flourishing of colonial imperialism in the early 1900s. It achieved independence in 1960 and has suffered through an impressive⁵ succession of coups and dictators since.⁶ The country is slowly trying to get out from that shadow, but I’m staying less than 500 meters from Charles de Gaulle Boulevard. The weight of history is hard to escape.

I’m here visiting a friend, who’s currently employed as a teacher at the International School of Ouagadougou. The curriculum is in English. It’s very expensive for Burkina Faso,⁷ so most of its students are the children of ambassadors or foreign executives or the children of politicians. These schools are common in any large city across the world — I had friends in New York sending their children to the Lycée Français — so I don’t know why I was particularly surprised to find one here.

Being affiliated with ISO provides a number of significant advantages. Chief among them is teacher housing on a secure compound. It means you don’t have to locate or negotiate housing. It means you’ve got things like plumbing and electricity and air conditioning and a pool and WiFi already sorted and working. Granted, it’s not uncommon for the electricity to go out, sometimes for a couple hours, but it’s better than relying solely on the city’s electrical grid.

They also provide security. The city feels pretty safe to walk around in during the day, but crime is a problem at night. You’re repeatedly warned not to go outside after sundown, so staying someplace with high walls, barbed wire, and guards makes a lot of sense. There’s also the threat of terrorism. I’ve written before about the relative risks of terrorism⁸ but there are active Islamic groups specifically targeting Western education and culture, and a teacher from ISO was killed last year in an attack.⁹ So safety’s important.

As it happens, I do have to stick near to my computer most days, and my trip was scheduled in such a way that the 10 days I’m here is only over a single weekend. From that point of view, only getting out to really wander around the area a couple days isn’t much different from how I spent my time last week in Germany. On the other, spending eight hours during the day online (with maybe a hour’s break for the pool) only leaves a couple hours between finishing up and when it gets dark. There’s time to run an errand, maybe get some fresh apples or a case of water, then you’d best be inside.

The economic disparity between the general population and foreign visitors makes for some strange incentives. An example: my friend has hired someone who comes in to take care of his house. Every weekday, he shows up, drives my friend to work, cleans, shops, cooks a dinner to be ready when my friend gets home, does laundry, and has a hand at fixing anything that needs fixing.¹⁰

I find this all a little uncomfortable, but it’s common; if you need something done, find someone to do it for you. Burkina Faso may be cash poor, but it doesn’t lack for labor. This manifests in a lot of ways. Stores in many places are just a bunch of poles supporting a corrugated metal roof jammed up against a compound wall, with a odd assortment of goods scattered on battered shelving. If you need a car you just find someone who has a car and negotiate a trip. You’ll be regularly stopped by people who want to sell you trinkets or postcards and while they’re unfailingly polite and generally will back off somewhat quickly, it can get a little wearisome.

One of them is kind of a fixture in the neighborhood. I needed some props for an upcoming larp and so got a printout of the kinds of things I was looking for and handed it off to him. That evening he was back with a motley collection of possibilities, none quite right and all rather more expensive than I wanted. He was sent out again to scavenge some more. Everybody’s hustling.

My friend and I took advantage of the weekend to see a bit more of the city, so on Saturday we hired someone with a car to drive us to Bazoulé, about 30 km outside of Ouagadougou. Bazoulé is known for their sacred crocodiles. The West African crocodile turns out to be a separate species¹¹ from the Nile crocodile, and significantly better tempered than their cousins. Sufficiently so that the locals swim and bathe in the lake among roughly 100 of them. There’s even a yearly festival where the creatures are offered sacrifices in exchange for good fortune and prosperity.

Those sacrifices are mostly chickens. And tourism being what it is, if you’re so inclined you can head out there and pay someone the equivalent of about $2 to throw a live chicken to the crocodiles. We ended up sacrificing three of them¹² and I now have pictures of me straddling and petting a crocodile. I don’t recommend trying the same thing in the Everglades.

The drive there and back was fascinating as well. Ouagadougou is huge, over 2.2 million people, and expected to grow to 5.8 million by 2030. Much of the city could almost pass for any number of places in South America or Europe that developed in the ’60s or ’70s, with the large concrete thoroughfares and postwar Modernism architecture, generally no more than 3–4 stories high. But as you get farther from the city center, that gives way to large compounds or, even further out, large lots with scattered brick huts. The sides of the largest thoroughfares have shops kind of haphazardly constructed against the walls of whatever’s behind them. Lots are open-air, with display counters across the front. Many don’t bother with doors. Some have signs across the front, but lots don’t, depending on reputation or just the goods on display for advertising.

There isn’t any real public transportation network to speak of, currently; if you can afford to fly in Burkina Faso, you can afford someone to drive you to the airport. So traffic is mainly cars and motorcycles. Oh, the motorcycles. At a busy intersection you might see dozens if not hundreds. I got a pretty good view of them when our driver’s car ran out of gas, and he simply threw it into park in the right lane, got out, and ambled over to the gas station while angry drivers piled up behind us.

The side-streets and alleyways are different. They’re paved in asphalt¹³ and unmarked, although they’ve got a similar jumble of slightly more humble structures lining them. Sunday morning was spent wandering around the area, running a few errands; first my friend and I headed over to his school to print out absentee voting forms for the United States,¹⁴ stopped by the tailor’s to discuss a costume piece I was hoping to have made, walked over to a security store to see about some other costume pieces, headed to the boulangerie that has good bread¹⁵ but somehow thought you could make black forest cake without cherries, then headed over to the supermarket to pick up supplies.

You’ll pass all sorts of people selling fruits and vegetables¹⁵ on the sides of the road. And they all look and taste great. There are women roasting cobs of corn in fire pits. Right down the street I’m on there’s a guy with a filleting knife and about fifty pineapples who’ll cut one up into pieces and slip it into a plastic bag for you given fifteen seconds and about $0.80. But you generally won’t find cheese or olive oil or potato chips or spices. Our local supermarket — really a bodega — does have all that.

We ordered in food on Saturday, a ridiculously indulgent Indian meal (total cost for two: $50), but Sunday we had gathered enough supplies to cook for ourselves, only to get an invitation to another teacher’s place for dinner. I made avocado toast for a late brunch,¹⁷ and that evening we roasted our garlic, mixed it with butter, toasted the baguettes, and spent the evening sharing pasta and garlic bread and a couple games of Mysterium.

I mentioned the next larp I’m planning on attending a couple times; I signed up for Avalon shortly before leaving for Ouagadougou, which meant I wasn’t going to have much time to sort out a costume after I got back. Since Avalon is one of the many wizard larps around¹⁸ that means I needed to acquire a wand and a wizard’s cloak.

I’ve managed to get both here. After several failed attempts — the oversized ebony scepter with the ivory carved eagle on top being notable — we were finally able to successfully communicate the size of the sort of thing we were looking for, and the local who was scouting for us brought a couple blocks of wood and carved a chunky but not inelegant wand for me.

The cloak was more involved. My friend had a local tailor recommended to him, so we walked over there on Sunday. The shop is more of a brick shack, lacking lighting or plumbing, and there’s a sole sewing machine sitting out front that’s operated nearly nonstop as far as I can tell by the tailor or one of his two assistants. We explained roughly what we wanted, and arranged for them to come by our place later to discuss further.

I had picked up fabric on Saturday, and had spent the week poking over costume ideas on the internet. So when the tailor and his assistant arrived, I had a bunch of examples already printed out: I want the hood like this, and the sleeves like this, and this for the back. There was some back and forth to make sure they understood exactly what was being requested¹⁹ and they took the fabric and left.

This is one of the more baffling parts of these kinds of deals, for me. You’ll ask someone to do something and they’ll go off and try without ever negotiating for money. The guy that carved my wand went and made three of them, then came back and tried to sell me one without ever having an assurance that I’d buy any of them. Ditto the tailor; I had handed over all my fabric on this vague assumption that the work would be fine and the price would be reasonable. I don’t know what would have happened if I had hated it, or if the quoted cost were outrageous. I guess it’s one of the hallmarks of this kind of economy. Deals go through, because you personally know everyone involved. There’s a strong incentive to make things work.

In the end, I was worried for nothing. The wand was about $30, more than I would have spent in the United States, but after all the effort the guy went to I was willing to accept it. And the cloak was magificent.²⁰ I went over mid-week to check on it and suggest some alterations (they added a wand pocket and some drawstrings to cinch the hood tight) and it was delivered completed on Thursday, along with promises to correct anything that was off about it. It’s beautifully sewn. Total cost for labor: $25.

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Vienna, having landed earlier today. Yesterday I packed everything up, my computer, my clothes, my newly acquired wand and cloak, and headed to the airport for a midnight flight.²¹ I had to pay a bribe to get through border control,²² but I made it.

I had gotten used to swimming, most days in Ouagadougou. The pool was right outside the house. It was unaccountably luxurious to take a break midday and swim for a half-hour. I’ll miss that. I’m not a great swimmer by any means, I mostly float from one side of the pool to the other, or try to swim across the bottom while holding my breath. But for some ungodly reason, a couple days ago, I decided to try doing a somersault underwater.

It’s trivial to do a somersault in a pool. What’s difficult is regaining your bearings afterwards. I was thoroughly disoriented — nauseous, confused, immediately floundering and drowning with no idea which way was the surface. That atavistic panic only lasted for a split second, as my feet found the ground and I shoved my head above water, but it was a solid five minutes before I calmed down and stopped feeling dizzy.

I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about Burkina Faso, and I guess that’s as close as I’ve gotten to explaining it. It’s been very disorienting, confounding, and confusing. Sometimes it feels overwhelming, like you can’t breathe, like you just need to find someplace safe and cool and take deep breaths. But I went back to the pool yesterday, and after swimming for a half-hour, I once again tried to do an underwater somersault. And I felt that same panic, the same burning of the chlorine in the back of my throat, the same loss of direction. But it lasted less. I recovered faster. I even tried it again.

I like to think I’ll come back to Ouagadougou. And I hope, if I do, it will feel just a little less strange, and just a little more like home.

Next: Vienna to Prague
Prev: Vienna (VIE) to Ouagadougou (OUA)

Footnotes

¹ If this sort of thing floats your boat, there’s a fascinating paper on poverty and Burkinabé thoughts on it.

² My half of the rent for my Brooklyn apartment, for one month, was easily 2–3 times what people here tend to make in a year.

³ Móorè being the most widespread, with roughly half the population speaking it.

⁴ Interestingly, there’s very little support for education in local languages. French is only used by a small subsection of the population on a daily basis, but fluency is seen as a path to success, so of course if you can afford to send your children to school you want them to learn it.

That’s a pretty common pattern globally with English, so it’s fascinating to see it play out with French locally. It reminds me that this is a pattern engendered by colonialism: learn the colonizer’s language to succeed on the colonizer’s terms. And if this is a common pattern globally now with English, well, that doesn’t speak favorably about our global economic system.

⁵ Ten violent coups in 44 years, and that’s not counting the ones that failed.

⁶ Although it has, in theory, transitioned to democracy following uprisings after an attempt by the previous president to extend his rule indefinitely.

⁷ Roughly 17,000€ per year.

⁸ Long story short, it’s clearly riskier here, but I don’t think it’s “taking your life into your hands” levels of unsafe.

⁹ Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb appears to have been behind the August 13^th, 2017 attack in Ouagadougou which killed 19. That targeted a hotel and restaurant popular with Westerners, and that branch of al-Qaeda is known to have connections with Boko Haram. Or maybe that’s all just a coincidence. It’s remarkably hard to tell.

Incidentally, Boko Haram is generally translated as “Western education is forbidden.” “Boko” is a Hausa word meaning “fake” but it’s used as slang to refer to Western sources of education or information. Fake news, in other words. The fascist/authoritarian/fundamentalist/nationalist/terrorist playbooks are all pretty much the same.

¹⁰ My friend pays him about $150/month. This is apparently about three times the going rate. I should also point out these sorts of arrangements are almost mandatory; if you can afford to hire a local to take care of your place, you should. If you can afford it, then refusing to pay someone to wash your clothing is selfish, in a sense refusing to help the community.

¹¹ Crocodylus suchus

¹² I am really not comfortable with tossing chickens to crocodiles as a form of entertainment, and I would have been perfectly happy tossing one, or maybe none. The chickens certainly had a pretty bad time of it. But I was cut off from the negotiations owing to the language barrier and I can’t claim I spoke up once I did have a firm grasp of what was happening.

If you have any interest in the noise a chicken makes as a crocodile snaps its jaws around it, I can probably depict it pretty accurately.

¹³ I mean, I think it’s asphalt. It hasn’t been maintained especially well, so the road kind of crumbles off to the edges where it degrades into dirt, and the whole thing is kind of blanketed in the red dust that’s everywhere. Potholes are rampant, and even when those aren’t a problem the road’s frequently warped from heat and soil erosion. And sidewalks are completely nonexistent, so you’re either walking on the side of the road in the dirt and mud or walking on the edge. Most people walk on the edge.

¹⁴ Which, by the way, https://www.votefromabroad.org/ is amazing. Guides you through the process, prepares all the forms to fill out, and provides detailed instructions for submitting them over email/fax/post. The United States has steadily been making it harder to vote. It’s nice to see something trying to make it easier. It’s especially nice to see something succeeding at that.

¹⁵ You can always tell the former French colonies by their baguettes. What would the Báhn Mì be without it?

¹⁶ And meat, too. Nothing like passing a butcher’s shop with what probably amounts to a couple dismembered cows scattered on plastic shelving, unrefrigerated and unpackaged.

¹⁷ Ever the Brooklynite

¹⁸ Although that’s doesn’t really do Avalon justice. Yes, you’re all students at a magical college, like College of Wizardry, or Bothwell, or New World Magischola, or Myrddin Emrys, or a half-dozen others I’m no doubt forgetting. It’s a durable concept.

From what I can tell, Avalon is mixing that up with some other elements. It’s built on more old-school British mythology (Morgan le Fay, Taliesin). It’s outdoors, camping in tents, and the whole back-to-nature, living off the land, getting-in-touch-with-our-primal-roots is a big part of the game. And there’s a whole competitive side with roaming warbands of students which has more in common with something like Ender’s Game than something like Hogwarts.

¹⁹ There was a lot of “Pour un sorcier!” and rapid wand-like hand-waving going on, as I recall. Harry Potter appears to be entirely unknown here.

²⁰ As I explained to them several times, being one of the few things I remember from my high school French.

²¹ Something to do with the heat of the sun-baked runaways during the day making night flights a far better choice.

²² While getting my passport and exit visa checked, the officer asked if I had anything for him. I had a single, solitary 1,000 CFA bill on me. It was fine. At the current exchange rate, 1,000 CFA ≈ $1.75.