Bonjour de l'Afrique Ouest!

Note: This letter was originally sent 16th October 2007

Hey All,
I hope this note finds you well. I'm sorry in advance that it lacks a bit in the insight department and is more a report of facts of life for the last few weeks. I find that I'm very short on time at the moment. :-) Further insights will be dispensed at a future date when I get around to posting this on my Journal site with its photos!

At the moment I'm in an Internet cafe in the second largest city in Burkina Faso, called Bobo-Diasoluo (I have no idea how to properly spell it but everyone just calls it "Bobo" anyway) My French skills are getting a workout and I'm getting by but I'm definitely rusty. My accent stinks. :-) The border crossing from Ghana yesterday was smooth and hassle free. I wish I could say the same about the transportation (more on this to come) We hired a local to carry our bags and point us in the right direction. He helped us out and found us a seat in the "bus" (using the term extremely loosely) to the city. I only hope things go as well for the next few crossings in the coming weeks.

Thankfully the people are quite nice and forgive me for my cultural faux-pas and are appropriately grateful for my attempts at language. This morning we toured the old city here and checked out a mosque made in the Sahel style architecture. Think a giant mud castle with 2 conical towers and logs sticking out of it like porcupine quills every few feet. I'll get out a picture whenever I can. We've also done some shopping and in the process learned a lot about a bunch of different tribal artifacts from all of the tribes that have converged (and continue to converge) here over the last few millennia. It’s interesting and from time to time it can be a bit humbling. I find all of their various religious beliefs to be quite fascinating. I'm strange like that I guess. Needless to say, we made a few purchases and had to spend an hour at the post office trying to figure out if it was worthwhile sending them and not having to carry them on the next few legs of the trip. Someday I hope to be rich and not have to worry about things like the cost of mail. I don't need to be fabulously wealthy or anything... just have enough to do the things I want to do and make everyone else happy at the same time. :-) Doesn't seem like too much to ask does it.
Typical Traditional Mosque arcitecture in the Sahel. Western Burkina Faso, Mali etc.

Before we were here we did the whirlwind tour of northern Ghana. It’s been flooded out there for a while but now the dry season has settled in with a vengeance and the waters are starting to recede at more than a meter a day. Our first major stop was at Mole (pronounced Mole-ay) Ghana's premiere national park. We did a walking safari with the required but unfortunately intrusive armed ranger and saw many interesting animals including warthogs, baboons, green monkeys (and perhaps a few other species), three kinds of antelope/gazelles numerous birds, and (drum roll please) elephants! The birds are always my favorite since they are so various and colorful, we've seen 80 species in Ghana so far, though I have to add that anyone who doesn't find elephants to be impressive might have something wrong with them. If we had had a car and were willing to take a guide out at night then we might have seen some lions, leopards and some other big mammals. I can't forget the monitor lizard... probably the most humorous of our sightings running away from us at top speed on his dumpy little legs.

One of the many baboons we saw at Mole. They were definately not afraid of people!.
In fact one of the best places to find them was the park workers trash heap!.
Pumba! The warthogs were in the hotel compound when I woke up in the morning
It was truely awesome to see elephants in the wild. They are definately impressive beings.
Mole NP waterhole at Sunset
Mole NP waterhole at Sunset, another view
An African version of patio lighting


From there we headed to Weichu, a hippo sanctuary in a little tiny town in the middle of nowhere. In hindsight, this might have been a mistake. The sanctuary itself was extremely interesting, comprised of a stretch of the Black Volta River that forms the border between Ghana and Burkina and the surrounding countryside. It’s completely a community effort and in that respect it’s truly an amazing example of a community conservation initiative that works. The problem is getting in and out. The only public transportation to and from is in the form of a small, dilapidated covered pickup truck with wooden benches for passengers in the bed. Into this conveyance cram 18 or so poor souls (including yours truly) for a bumpy 50 kilometer ride over a jolting dirt track. At one point everyone had to climb out and wade across a river before re-boarding on the other side. We passed a few similar vehicles that had broken down on the way and at each one more people climbed into or onto the roof of our truck. We almost made it all the way ourselves but about 5 kilometers shy of the goal then the rear axle fell off the car and we slid to a sudden and rather jarring stop. Carly got a few bruises, I escaped injury altogether but the school boys who had been riding on top got thrown 50 or so feet down the road and got the worst of it. Anyway... we made it eventually and not too much the worse for wear. Didn't see any hippos but got to do a neat river safari in a local canoe and take some tours or Lobi (the local tribe) living compounds. I loved these because of their "living history" feel but was, at the same time, disappointed that there are people in the world who are still living in such conditions.
The name of this truck (and its condition) probably should have given us a clue. Still, we wrode in it anyway, at least untill the rear axel fell off.
View of a Lobi family compound from the observation deck at the Hippo Sancuary lodge.
View of the Hippo sanctuary observation deck from one of the Lobi compounds I visited
A blind Lobi Grandmother with traditional lip piercing consented to have her picture taken
Under African Skies


So far, the only bumps (literally) in the trip have been the transportation. The last few days have given us severe headaches in that department. We got stranded in the hippo town for a few extra days thanks to the fact that the cars to and from the place kept breaking down. Also, it was a Muslim holiday and a predominantly Muslim village so it was a bit hard to find people to help us work things out. The locals kept directing us to this Canadian aid worker who was there and she condescended to us about a number of things that we already knew, having been aid workers ourselves in Morocco for a few years, and not actually solving any of our problems. We got out in the end only to have the bus to Burkina that we were going to take turn out not to exist. We got to the border anyway and then the car from the border to this city broke down and I had my first real conversation in French arguing with the driver to get enough of my money back to pay for the new bus we had to flag down from the side of the road (a failure I might add). I think from here on out though we are sticking to more major routes and so things SHOULD be better... it remains to be seen if they are.

Other than that things are fantastic... I really love the feel of the place and the people (when they're not trying to get me to buy postcards anyway) and I hope that things continue to be as good. In the next few days I'm planning on moving to another town near here and then taking some bike excursions to another hippo lake (where hopefully they are a more captive audience than on the river) and some waterfalls. Then to the capital of Burkina before the long bus ride down through Togo. Hopefully I'll be able to keep you posted on the way.

Until then,
Stay well,
Much love and luck to everyone!
-Andy