This is the big one. The biggest one to date, for me, anyway. I’m having kittens, so to speak.

Up until now I’ve been treading pretty well-worn ground. All the countries I’ve visited are places I’ve been before, and all of them have cell service that works with my phone, plentiful Wi-Fi, and a large English-speaking population.

Burkina Faso has none of those things. It’s also incredibly poor¹ and there are terrorism risks.² It’s way out of my comfort zone. The closest I think I’ve been to something similar was Ecuador³ and that was on a large group tour.

So why am I going? A friend who’s just moved there invited me, so it’s not completely ridiculous — I’ve got a place to stay on a protected compound, and someone who can meet me at the airport. And I’m only staying 10 days, kind of as a trial run. But really, it’s because I’ve never been. I don’t know what to expect.

I’ve traveled a lot, for weekends or weeks, for games or vacations or just to see people. It’s a little old hat; the excitement of navigating a new airport or new transit system fades remarkably fast. And I’ve talked about the risks of only engaging at that surface level, of never really experiencing a country beyond the surface.⁴ You can travel across the world and never eat any place more exotic than a TGI Friday’s.

Whatever else it might provide, you can’t do that in Ouagadougou. I deeply distrust the information we’re getting through the media about what the world is like. I want to see beyond that. And I don’t know how to do that without seeing for myself.

It’s a huge world. I really need to experience more of it. If everyone did that — moved outside the places they were comfortable, saw new things, made new friends — it’s hard to believe the world wouldn’t be a better place.

Next: Ouagadougou (OUA) to Vienna (VIE)
Prev: Berlin (TXL) to Vienna (VIE)

Footnotes

¹ Ranked 185^th on the United Nations Development Program’s “Human Development Index”

² The US State Department has a level 3 Travel Advisory out (“Reconsider Travel”) for the country. There are insurgent groups active in the north, and occasional terrorist attacks in Ouagadougou. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, terrifying.

But it’s a little hard to tell exactly how to put this in perspective. The last fatal attack in Ouagadougou was in March, 2018. It killed 19 people. The last fatal terrorist attack in New York City was in October, 2017. It killed 8 people. Ouagadougou’s had 3 attacks since January, 2016. New York’s had 4.

The risk is clearly higher in Ouagadougou, but the risk of being killed from a terrorist attack is still vanishingly small, virtually everywhere. Ouagadougou’s got a population of 1.7 million people. Three attacks since 2016 isn’t that high. I’m more worried about getting mugged.

³ 89^th on the Human Development Index

⁴ As I write this, I’m sitting in the Moxy Hotel in Vienna. It’s a short stroll from the airport, closer than the parking lot. There are, among others, outposts in London, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, Chicago, Aberdeen, Okaka, Tokyo, Seattle, Minneapolis, Memphis, Seattle, Denver. And three in New York City.

I can see the city from here. It looks nice.