The rest of the trip to Bobo-Dioulasso passed more or less on the same note as the part one. For the first-time European visitor there was more of the same country outside, and for the rest of passengers there was the DVD sequel from Nollywood soap workshop. By the time we finally reached the Bobo gare routière, everyone was happy. Soap fans had with relief seen the ending of the tense soap plot, and my camera memory card was richer by more than hundred pictures.
Once out, and with our luggage in our hands, we looked around for a taxi. I took two or three pictures until Annette negotiated the price and then we got started to the hotel. When we were inside the cab, Annette said:
„Did you hear the man on the station?“
„Which man?“ I asked. I’d heard nobody.
„One man was very angry that you took photos,“ she said. „He said he would call the police.“
„Did he?“
Now I got angry. OK, I did my best not to show it. I pretended to be indifferent. But I did get upset. I knew that Burkina had used to be a country where the list of things you couldn’t take pictures of had been longer than the list of those you could. But most of those restrictions were lifted now. Every travel guide said so. Now probably only military installations and similar stuff was off bounds. But I didn’t care about military installations much anyway. I was not a war photographer. And taking a harmless picture of a bus terminal, not aiming your camera at anyone in particular, no police in the world would detain me for that. They hadn’t done it in North Korea and Uzbekistan, so why would they do it here?
I couldn’t know if that buster, whom I had never noticed, was aware of all this. Maybe he was and just loved to exercise authority over a foreigner. And maybe he really thought that all those restrictions were still in place. Either way, though, it didn’t sit well with me. But what could I do now? If I had seen him, I would have probably given him a piece of my mind. But now it was already just water under the bridge.
Eventually, all I could do now was to merely shrug it off. Both literally and metaphorically.
The hotel we intended to stay in was „Le Cocotier“. Annette had given them a call and they had told her they had some free rooms. But not for two nights on the trot that we planned to stay in Bobo. The next night was already fully booked. However, we figured that one night would be fine for starters, and as for the day after, we could later look for some dig on the spot. So „Le Cocotier“ it was.
Annette decided to take a shower, but I knew it wouldn’t help me. Whichever way you turn, I was going to sweat buckets, shower or no shower, until the end of the day. I considered it wiser to simply wait until the bed-time and then have it. So while Annette was in the bathroom, I climbed up onto the rooftop bar terrace where they had shaded tables and chairs, and tried to take a few pictures from there.
„Le Cocotier“ was located on Place de la Révolution, an unusually neat square – at least by African standards - with three traffic islands, each quite tidy with its own lawn, clipped bushes and trees. Even if Burkina Faso is at least fifty percent Muslim, the square was nevertheless decorated in anticipation of the upcoming Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Religious tolerance was obviously alive and well around here.
On this lazy afternoon I heard the voice of muezzin calling from somewhere nearby. But occasional passers-by didn’t exactly fall down on their knees for prayer. So I assumed those particular ones were no Muslims. However, whoever they were, they were every bit as much fun to watch as their counterparts in Ouaga, whether they were curious pedestrians, characters on motor-cycles or a bunch of women slowly walking by, each one with a preposterously loaded head.
Off from Place de la Révolution led a street named Avenue Ouezzin Coulibaly and it looked to me as if it should be the direction to go, once Annette was ready.
It took her some time, though, and then, even when she was ready, we enjoyed sitting around on the rooftop for a while longer.
Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina’s second largest city, basically originated in the 15th century as a forest clearing by a river. At the very end of the nineteenth century it fell to the French who renamed it after the Bobo, one of the earliest ethnic groups to settle in south-west Burkina Faso, and the Dyula, whose name means „itinerant trader“ in Mande, another one of local languages. A hundred years on, those two words were giving the town its name. Even if locals, notably the Bobo, still rather call it Sya.
After World War II, while the country was still known to those in the outside world as the colony of Upper Volta, Bobo-Dioulasso started growing considerably. In addition to lying amidst a rich agricultural zone, it also became known as the country’s early industrial centre. So right after Upper Volta had gained independence in 1960, they actually called it the economic capital of the country. But that was back then. In the meantime, the Upper Volta cleared the way for Burkina Faso on the world map and consigned itself to history books. And decades of government policy were clearly in favour of Ouaga. All that reflected itself on the local economic situation.
Few years back, they tried to give the town new shot of life and it now remains to be seen how well it will be working. Annette and I, right after we had left „Le Cocotier“ and started exploring the town, saw a few Chinese-owned shops, rubbing shoulders with each other. And if the Chinese were around, then it was a clear sign that the town was far from dead. Those guys would revive a dead fish in the middle of Sahara, if only given a chance.
The Coulibaly was a street named after certain Daniel Ouezzin Coulibaly, the guy who presided over the governing council of the Upper Volta while it was still French colony. The guy was now long gone, for half a century already, but the street was still there, and leading us to the Bobo’s Grand Marché, or central market. As usual, Annette was wary of everything and everyone that you could slap a „stranger“ sticker on, so she really pleaded with me to take pictures only in secret. If I had to, that is. Which I had, naturally. Long were gone the times when I had thought only geeks and jerks were carrying cameras around. The cool guys like me had been above photographing business back then. Now with my sense of cool having undergone a radical transformation, I didn’t want to go home without trying to capture the essence of life here. As they say, one picture is worth thousand words. I knew that you never lose your memories. They may only seem to retreat into the back corners of your mind after some time. However, I wanted to ease their return into the limelight when I needed them. Pictures would be there to help me.
Avenue Ouezzin Coulibaly was thoroughly African, every bit the same as all I’d seen in Ouaga. Street vendors, lazy passers-by, a lot of onlookers who were apparently just loitering in the nearest available shadow, sitting around in expectation of whatever interesting may come along as a diversion. Annette and I had to be a welcome sight.
But there was more than just us. Right at the top of the Coulibaly, on the spot where it ended in the Grand Marché, there was a TV crew, four people, probably from Europe, who were filming something. I would’ve placed my bet on a documentary. After all, places like Burkina Faso were crying for filming crews making documentaries. Hadn’t the one like that basically set me off on this trip? So naturally, they were the real attraction. But by the time we got to where they were, the crew was just packing up their equipment and leaving the premises. To the disappointment of all those locals gathered around.
Annette and I dived into the Grand Marché.
Bobo’s central market is a maze of densely packed stalls, selling everything you can imagine, but mostly food, clothing and footwear. The sun was slowly going down so I assumed that the peak of the day in trading terms was now well behind us. I could only imagine what it would have looked like if we had arrived few hours earlier when the market activities had been in full swing. Now it was pretty easy to go around. As usual, I received a number of invitations to check some stall or other, but the only thing I really checked was one old lady who was selling peanuts. As I am basically nuts about nuts, I had to buy some. Here or there, just the same.
When we had emerged on the other side of the market, my „Lonely Planet“ guide was telling me that merely one hundred metres from there we would see the Bobo cathedral. And right there it was. Sitting along the other half of the Avenue Ouezzin Coulibaly, another dirty, littered, barely paved African road, with cars and donkey carts, a lot of unrelated shops and small business next to each other, freely roaming domestic animals like pigs and goats, it was a nod to local Catholic community. A new building, which would easily be mistaken for a hangar were it not for the adjacent tower with a cross on top of it, constructed in 1957 and inaugurated in 1961, it was predictably already showing signs of disrepair and decay.
Same as in many other countries of the world which didn’t make it to the top bracket in terms of wealth, there were beggars about this cathedral, as well. Even if Burkina Faso was sort of specific in that respect as there were beggars everywhere. You didn’t have to necessarily go to church to really see them.
Annette was nominally a Catholic, as she had told me, but it was obvious she was much more of an animist in reality. Clearly, had she been alone, she would have hardly noticed the Cathedral. As for myself, it was hard to pin me down as an orthodox Catholic, but my country is heavily steeped in Catholic tradition. So I guess, no matter what my real religious inclinations are, it came natural to me to want to visit the Cathedral nevertheless. So we did. We lingered around a bit and then started to double back.
It was gradually getting darker. We were in no hurry, but we didn’t have any big plans any more. Annette only wanted to buy herself something to eat, I wanted to buy myself some milk so I could prepare myself some milk tea later in the room, and that was it. Not too busy an agenda, you might say.
On one street intersection I saw a walking shop in the shape of a guy who was overloaded with shoes. As opposed to all those who were sitting at the roadside, he seemed to prefer hawking his merchandise on the move.
„The shoes,“ I said to Annette. From a glance at his disorderly footwear load, it appeared he had something I considered appropriate for walking. We stopped and the two of them, Annette and him, started talking, switching back and forth between French and some local language, Bissa or More. Those were the ones Annette spoke. I stood by, not understanding what exactly was going on, even if – of course – they must have been haggling. With a lot of frowns and characteristic African dramatic gestures, the thing seemed to go nowhere. At one point, Annette told me:
„Go away!“
I gawked at her in wonder.
„Why?!“
„I’ll tell you later. Just go away.“
And so I did. She remained there with that guy, and I busied myself with my camera. In a way, now that Annette wasn’t constantly watching over me, in spite of the obvious animosity of most of locals towards white people’s cameras, I felt more free to take pictures. And that’s what I did until a few minutes later Annette caught up with me.
„What happened?“ I asked.
„Nothing,“ she explained. „The guy first asked me eight thousand CFA for the shoes. He thought you were with me. But I told him we were not together. That’s why I told you to go. After that he sold me shoes for two thousand CFA.“
She held the shoes in her hand triumphantly.
That was one of the rules of market economy here in Africa. Or lessons. Called white-man factor.
The sun set down completely. The twilight time was very short. So we decided to turn back to the hotel altogether. Along the way we spotted a Marina Market, which was good to know for the next day. And right by the market I saw a guy who beat everything I’d seen so far. Unkempt, dusty, dirty and clearly homeless, of an age impossible to determine, he had only one unbuttoned, orange shirt on. No footwear, no underwear, nothing. But maybe to compensate for the lack of attire, he had one of the longest bats I’d ever seen in my life, including those on Internet. A monster bat, indeed. It was dangling freely between his legs as he was walking around and he didn’t seem to care a single bit. Other passers-by seemed unfazed, as well. Or perhaps more likely, they just pretended they didn’t see. That was Africa, too.
I took two stealthy pictures of the guy. But I was some way off. And it was dark. So one picture was outright unusable. The other one proved to be too blurry later in the hotel. Which was pity. On one hand.
On the other, maybe it was better so. Even if he didn’t care to keep it private, it was his privacy nevertheless.
