Even if Koumi and Le Guinguette are not far away from Bobo, it was nevertheless well into the afternoon when we returned to town. The first thing we wanted to do upon our return was to find a restaurant and have a late lunch. „Lonely Planet“ guide book recommended several, but of all of them, the only one open at this hour was „L’Entante“. I mean, some others were open, too, but they were just not serving food at the moment. We were too late for usual lunch time, at least according to them, and too early for supper. So of all restaurants we considered, „L’Entante“ was the only available option. However, as neither of us was emotionally tied to any of the places, „L’Entante“ was just fine.
Good thing about coming to eat at this unusual hour was that „L’Entante“ was almost empty. Just one French family was dining there when we arrived. Therefore we could choose any table we wanted. Our pick was one on the veranda overlooking the Rue Delafosse street life.
One of the waiters came reasonably soon and took our orders. While we waited, every once in a while someone would come and try to peddle something on us – a phone card, a souvenir, a piece of local wood carving, a pair of sun glasses, anything. Annette had still enough credits in her mobile phone and as for me, at the moment I was not interested in buying anything. So we certainly didn’t qualify for the title of best customers around. But I guess they all thought there was no harm in trying.
And so we waited. And then waited some more. It got dark. The French family had long left. But our lunch – or supper by now – was not there yet. By the looks of it, they had either completely forgotten they had guests or someone in there was really taking their sweet time. Whatever the case, almost one hour and a half after we had placed our order, the food was nowhere in sight. When we had arrived, I was not particularly hungry. I’d thought we should eat something just because it seemed to be the proper time, nothing more. And also, I wanted to avoid eating after dark, as I always do. But now, I was hungry indeed.
I could only imagine how Annette felt. As usual by now, she never had breakfast, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember if she had had a bite entire day. She was taking it well. She didn’t complain, but you could tell she was getting increasingly quiet. And yet, there was nothing any of us could do about it now. We’d been simply too long at this place to get up, leave and look for food elsewhere.
And when fear started seriously creeping in that our supper would never come, our waiter finally had a mercy on us and brought us the plates. He was smiling in such a charming and friendly way, and it never occurred to him that both of us were starving by now. And what could we do? Nothing. I thanked him, and he disappeared.
But I had to be honest and own up to it that not everything here should be chalked up to supposed laziness of Africans. This thing included. OK, they may be a bit slower, or a bit more liberal in their interpretation of time count and definition of deadlines. But in this concrete case, when it comes to restaurants, this is just Burkina Faso. And that should always be kept in mind. They don’t have gas cookers back in their kitchens, or microwaves. What they have are stoves they feed wood and it simply takes time. No matter how hungry you are. Obviously, when you are in Africa, you must count with that.
So by the time we finished our supper and left, it was too late to go anywhere else. Streets of Bobo-Dioulasso are almost completely dark after sundown and there was not much to do anyway. Therefore we just returned to our hotel and decided to spend the rest of the evening there.
And the evening was very pleasant, also still pretty young, so we descended to the inner yard and relaxed by the poolside for a while. Apart from us, there was only a white American couple there, having just occupied a table in the restaurant at the opposite side of the pool for dinner. They had three black kids with them and behaved like a family. It was easy to see the kids were adopted. They all made a very nice scene. Everyone knows that real parents are something nothing in the world can substitute. But if a child is unfortunate enough to have lost them, and particularly if the child is from a poor country like Burkina Faso, then a decision to adopt it is as humane as it can get. That American couple was making sure at least three black orphans – I assumed they were orphans – would have a better future. In terms of material existence, at least. And as for the rest of what makes one happy, each one of us has to find their own way, regardless of how well off we are financially. Those two things have nothing to do with each other anyway.
