As that guy yesterday had told us that the bus to Sikasso would leave at ten, with a significant qualification that it would only be „maybe“, Annette and I showed up at O.Tra.F. bus terminal at nine. Even a bit earlier. I had gotten up early enough to have breakfast and make it to „Marina Market“ for some food, and we were on gare de routière straight afterwards.
And there, on the spot where we had bought our tickets the day before, there were two battered „Diarra Trans“ buses, one of them hopefully waiting to soon start to Sikasso. As usual elsewhere, O.Tra.F. bus terminal was already rather busy. There were people who were already selling things, then others who were travelling places and those who were apparently doing nothing. At what looked to be the Diarra Trans waiting spot, there didn’t seem to be too many people yet. However, most significantly, there was one guy sitting at a wooden outdoors table, a toothpick in his mouth rolling from corner to corner, and he seemed to be a Diarra Trans employee. Annette went up straight to him and asked him when the bus was due to leave. He checked our tickets against some hand-written list and then – he didn’t know yet.
Well, we were there. We were lucky to the extent that the bus had not left without us. And as to when it would really go, we could right now only hope it would be relatively on time.
Now we had some time to kill on our hands. How long, no one knew exactly. Therefore, whatever we would do, it had to be nearby, so that we wouldn’t be in for any unpleasant surprises. Like missing our bus, for example. Annette chose to sit in the shadow of the waiting area. I roamed around a bit, taking pictures when it wasn’t too conspicuous. I would shoot close-ups in secret, and wider angles, when no one would feel like a target of my lens, openly. It worked perfectly. No one complained and everything went smoothly.
Until I returned to Annette. I took a seat next to her, checking what I had shot, when one guy, not really at the waiting space around us, but ten or so metres away, sitting on a low wall, apparently one of those deadbeats with no clear purpose in life, at least right now, started demanding „authorisation“. Again.
Now, I was familiar with the fact that not so long ago many things in Burkina Faso had been off limits to cameras. Some of them had been relatively easy to understand. Burkina was not an exception in not allowing people to photograph military installations, police buildings and so on. But bridges? Roads? Well, most of those silly restrictions were now lifted. Military installations and similar stuff were still off bounds, but that was OK. Most of tourists could live with that. Including myself.
However, the notion of those restrictions must have still remained in heads of many local people who were unaware that Burkina had come a ways from those heavily restricted days. While not the paradigm of freedom yet, Burkinabe authorities were now much more relaxed in their attitude towards camera-toting tourists. Annoyingly enough, though, many of those self-styled street guardians, often only wasters and slobs, were completely oblivious to that. After one of those had accosted me the day before, I had to deal with another one now.
When I heard him and got up, Annette urged me to stay where I was. But I assured her that everything would be fine. After all, not even once in my life had I engaged in a physical show-down. So there was absolutely no reason to finally start one now. However, I wouldn’t be bullied around. Particularly as no one knew how long we would be sitting around on O.Tra.F. If it was going to drag, I wanted to be able to do what I pleased in the meantime.
But I was in a much better mood than yesterday afternoon. Besides, mosquitoes hadn’t bitten me much last night and that was another reason to start the day on a cheerful note. I wasn’t going to abuse anyone verbally today. I was just going to put up some bluff.
I went over to the guy, and eyes of quite a few people around followed me. I think he didn’t really expect me to do that. A bit less cocksure now that I was there, he looked at me unsure as to what I was going to do next.
„Hello,“ I gave him a polite opening.
He didn’t answer.
„Do you speak English?“ I asked, absolutely certain that he would answer exactly as he did:
„Non.“
„Anyway,“ I marched on, undaunted. „What do you want?“
He mentioned authorisation, again.
I took out a pen and my little notebook from the backpack and asked:
„What’s your name?“
He looked at me, completely at a loss. So I dusted off one of those useful phrases from grammar school French classes which you don’t forget no matter how lazy you might have been back then:
„Comment tu t’appelles?“
„Pourqoi?“
He was now on alert, sensing that the initiative of the moment, if he’d ever had one, was rapidly slipping out of his hands. My French was pretty much limited to such short one-liners and an odd word I had picked up here and there in Burkina so far. So I couldn’t put what I wanted to say in a fluent sentence. But I managed to convey my „intention“. Basically, I said that I needed his name, so I could forward it to my country’s embassy. Then the embassy would check his name against police files. And if he had no authority – or authorisation – to ask me for authorisation, the police would deal with him for pestering me in appropriate manner.
Well, the fact that Croatia – according to my knowledge – had a proud tally of only one diplomatic mission on entire African continent, outside the Arab world, that is, was something he didn’t have to know. And even that shiny exception was a long way off, down in South Africa. It nevertheless served my purpose nicely and sounded serious enough. Just as I needed it.
Certainly, the situation now turned completely around, guy refused to divulge his name. For the sake of good form and adequate impression, I put up a bit of a frown and pressed him some more. But he was stubborn. When I decided that my point was clear, I wagged my finger and said:
„Then I suggest you’d better leave me alone.“
The expression on his face was difficult to describe. People looked at us and I had a feeling the guy felt pretty awkward, wishing he had never attempted to assert any personal authority over me in the first place. But now it was too late. However, I offered an olive branch. Albeit in a most unusual manner:
„Want me to take a picture of you?“ I asked with a broad smile. I don’t think he understood, but I pointed at my camera, too, so it was easy to catch my drift. I think my sudden request only confused him more. He refused.
However, one of the guys among the bystanders who had been following the whole show, seemed to speak some English and said:
„Take a photo of me!“
I turned to him. He was sitting with some friends on a stack of white sacks which were about to be loaded into one of the buses. Ever ready to meet such a request, I aimed my camera at him and his buddies, and the moment later we were exchanging e-mail addresses. He told me he was Kafsy, a student, and his uncle was the owner of the „Diarra Trans“. I asked him whether the bus, which was being loaded right now was the one to Sikasso. He confirmed.
„You go to Sikasso?“ he asked.
„Yes, I do. I am going to Mali today.“
He assured me that the bus was „very good“. Which I must admit I accepted only out of sheer politeness. Because the bus looked so rusty and run-down that „very good“ was one of the last attributes a western tourist would apply in a description of such a vehicle. Anyway, we had a nice chat and I promised him I would send him the picture as soon as I returned home. It would take a while, but I had every intention to keep my word on that one.
Then his uncle, the owner personally, appeared from somewhere and we all shook hands like best of friends. I asked him when the bus would leave. He didn’t offer any specific answers. It was all along the lines of „as soon as the stuff gets loaded“. And that was going to be „soon“. Well, I nodded and thanked him. After all, did it really matter so much?
At one point during our wait I got on the bus to see what kind of the vehicle we would be having our today’s ride in. It was still empty, of course. Anyway, if it looked rickety from the outside, it looked slightly worse from the inside. Torn seat covers, dirty floor, a number of empty and soiled plastic vessels in which people usually sell gasoline or similar stuff placed in the aisle, and a pervasive odour of... well, pervasive stench, more to the point – that would be our „very good“ bus to Sikasso.
But that too would be an experience of Africa. I was going to take it as such and one day I’d have a better feel, at least to a tiny extent, of what the life close to the ground on this continent really is. After all, we independent travellers are independent precisely because we won’t get sheltered from real life, aren’t we? How else can you claim you have seen and experienced a local life if you have hidden inside an air-conditioned, sleek and glossy 4x4 and never seen, say, a bus station like O.Tra.F? So, come to think of it, in a quirky way, I was looking forward to this bus ride.
We departed at 12:30.
