Bus to Banfora was full and it was by now obvious to me that here in Burkina Faso it made perfect sense to buy your bus ticket at least one day in advance. If you wanted to keep to your tour schedule, I mean. Provided you have one. As a white man, I stood pretty much out in the bus, but I was not all alone. There were three more western ladies who’d been staying at „L’Auberge“ the night before, same as Annette and me. Which was pretty much understandable since Banfora and surrounding area is considered a prime tourist destination within Burkina Faso. So tourists do go there.
It took us around an hour and a half to reach it, which was basically a pleasant ride through some rolling flatlands, occasional sugar cane plantations and on the whole a landscape that was all new to me. A nice ride without getting you tired by the time you get there. When the bus pulled in at the Rakieta bus station compound, I still had a feeling as if most of the day was ahead of us yet.
And Banfora’s Rakieta bus station was probably the most colourful one I’d seen in Africa yet. Hustle and bustle in the best sense of the word, with incredibly many people moving about in every conceivable direction, without any visible pattern at first. Some had just got off the bus, some planned to get on soon. Quite a few were on about scraping together some cash, whichever way possible, and many – at least it was my impression – just loitered around. I would assume it was because the bus station had to be among most interesting spots in town.
Yes, Banfora had to qualify as a town eventually, I guess. Politically and administratively, it most certainly bears out such definition. It is the administrative centre of one of Burkina’s provinces, Comoé in this case, and I presume some local authority must reside somewhere in town. Also, those sugar cane fields I’d seen on our way there were an indication of local sugar industry. So to a town we’d arrived. But by the looks of it, particularly to someone like me whose eyes were still unused to African scenes and yardsticks not yet adjusted to African standards, this was just an oversize village. An African oversize village.
Red-and-blue clad bus attendants set about giving away the luggage to their owners. Some clambered on top of the bus, others crawled into the storage space inside. A dazzling mix of bright colours which made up local clothing was all around us. A lot of noise, shouts and chatter in languages that were often not even French. A proud number of motorcycles, but also seemingly abandoned boxes and bags strewn around as if washed up by water. It took some time until we could reclaim our stuff. In Africa things obviously always go at their own, slower pace.
At the exit from the Rakieta bus station compound there was this whitewashed building to the left, with three or four windows and all the blinds pulled down. Hand-painted advert on front and side façades of the building said „Centre informatique communautaire“ with an additional information in the form of „internet“ and „télécentre“. And whoever was by now still missing the clue as to what it was all about, there was a big, painted Mickey Mouse holding a telephone, smiling broadly and just about to make a phone call.
Before going anywhere, Annette wanted to ring up her father to let him know that we had just safely arrived in Banfora. So she entered the building to make that phone call and I waited outside. And while I was waiting and having a fabulous time watching this entertaining crowd, a guy came up to me and offered:
„Do you need a guide?“
Not really, was my first thought. It was pretty much a common wisdom to expect all sorts of so-called faux-types, as they are known in these parts, to flock around you, and more here in Banfora than, say, in Bobo. As a white tourist, I would always pose an obvious target to them. Of course, and in true honesty, you can never know who is genuine and who just has an angle and wants to have a share of your hard-earned money. So those genuine ones are often victims of undeserved distrust because of all those phony ones. Sadly so, but that’s the fact. You just need to rely on your intuition and common sense to the extent they can protect you. And on your faith that only good things will happen to you. But just as I say, my first impulse was to shake this guy off in short order. However, before I had a chance to say anything, he pointed at the „Lonely Planet“ travel guide under my arm and said:
„My name is in this book.“
Now that turned things completely around. And needless to say, got me interested.
„Really?“
„Yes.“
And on top of it all, he seemed to speak quite a decent English.
„Look it up,“ he continued. „ I am Oumar Ouédraogo. You’ll see.“
I didn’t need to be told twice. I checked it and sure enough, there he was. His name, I mean. With all recommendations. As I said, only good things happen to me.
So he asked me what my plans were, of course. After all, he too was after money. But this „Lonely Planet“ recommendation at least guaranteed he preferred to do it in an honest way. I told him that my immediate plans were partly dependent on Annette who was right now inside making her phone call, but they could be summed up as finding a hotel and then having a lunch.
„And then?“
„Then I would like to see some of the things Banfora is famous for, like Karfiguela water falls and Tengréla lake, for example.“
He said that if I was interested, we could make a deal and he could take us there. I said that in principle I agreed if the price would be OK. Maybe not all of it today, though. Some of it today, some tomorrow.
And then Annette came back out. As usual, she greeted Oumar with initial suspicion, but the guy was amiable enough and able to chase most of it away pretty soon. So we took his offer and agreed on a deal.
First he was going to take us to the hotel. And hotel „Le Comoé“ it would be.
Except it wasn’t off to the hotel right away.
He said he would get us there all right, and soon enough at that, but first he had to attend to something at some place, so if we didn’t mind, he’d like to do it along the way. I didn’t. But you could tell it didn’t go down all that well with Annette, and her face expression changed again towards cloudy. I didn’t know what exactly she was concerned about. I could only hope it was no fear of ending up in someone’s pot for lunch today again. Because whatever it was, it only made life more difficult for her. And the bigger the fear, the harder on her it had to be.
As opposed to her, I had no such qualms whatsoever. As a rule, I trusted people everywhere, be it in Burkina Faso, Belgium or Bolivia. And the fact that after all my travels I was still alive only attested to the fact that my attitude may not be altogether wrong. The only fear I had - and I guess you can’t even label it as fear, but rather just a thing I wanted to avoid to the extent possible – was of being overcharged to the point of rip off. I was fully aware that it was virtually impossible to never pay more in most of foreign countries than a local would for the same thing. But for as long as it was held within some acceptable limits, I was fine.
So when Oumar took us to what looked like Banfora suburbs, a real village indeed, I was actually intrigued. I assumed that not every white foreigner had an opportunity to have a look-see here. This was quintessential Africa, or at least Africa as we westerners have a picture of, with dirt roads more beaten by people’s footsteps than really constructed, in places overgrown with parched weeds, and more often than not covered with garbage liberally discarded at a whim. There were roaming goats and wandering chicken. There was an occasional dog, too. Probably a stray. And people whiling away their time in shadows.
I assume Oumar was living somewhere nearby. Why else would he go there, pulled over, ask us to wait for him, promising he’d be back soon? Well, whatever the reason behind it, I got out of the car and turned into an instant sensation. Annette chose to rather stay inside.
Kids started spilling out from behind every corner, at first shy, but later finding their courage, just as kids always do. Grown-ups kept at a safe distance, eyeing me with interest, but children were just fine. They lost their reservations before you could count to twenty. Oumar himself didn’t take long. Ten minutes. Fifteen at most. But until he returned, I had a great time taking pictures, shaking a lot of kids’ hands and occasionally waving to their mothers, just so I could show them their kids were safe around me. They had no reason to be afraid of me any more than Annette was afraid of them.
And then Oumar took us to the „Le Comoé“ hotel. In Ouaga and in Bobo it would surely fall into the budget category. But here in Banfora they had a pretty limited choice of accommodation, and hardly any of it was much above „Le Comoé“. The rooms were basic, with a private bathroom, but no hot water. And no mosquito nets, which all hotels so far had had. But, well, I was in Africa, wasn’t I?
What they did have, though, on every other place in Burkina Faso I’d stay in so far was a wonderful and large leafy inner courtyard with several wooden tables and benches. All in all, that wasn’t a bad place to be at all.
We left things in our room and then headed on downtown again. Which is the area around the Rakieta gare de routière. Oumar was waiting for us in the taxi outside in the street, so he also now took us to a place where we could eat. Both he and „Lonely Planet“ recommended McDonald. Of course, nothing in the mould of the junk-food chain, apart from the name. I didn’t object, and to Annette it was all the same either way. So McDonald it was. When we got there, Oumar assured us that there was no need to be in any particular hurry. We could take all the reasonable time to have our lunch and still have enough hours left for sightseeing.
„Where would you like to go today?“ he asked.
„How about Karfiguela waterfalls?“ I proposed.
He then made a suggestion to take us both to Karfiguela waterfalls and Domes de Fabedougou in one go. I didn’t know what the other thing was right away.
„Rocks,“ he said. „You will like them.“
He said they were very near the waterfalls, so we wouldn’t waste much time getting there. The price he offered was fifteen thousand CFA for both. It smelled of a fair deal so I accepted it. And now we could turn to our lunch.
I offered Oumar to have a drink with us. He accepted, but politely left us after a while to let us have the lunch alone and said he’d be in his car. I promised him we’d try to be over with it as soon as we reasonably could. And that was it. It was now only the matter of how soon we’d get the food.
