Easter Week-end (1)

Getting there – quite an adventure!  Good Friday buses were so full coming from Gaoua that the first two did not stop in Diébougou at all – an extra bus came not at 7.30am but at 10am – and getting a seat on that bus took all the sharp-elbowed middle-class talents I have.  Wow, what a scrum!  This made considerably more challenging because the pile of carefully-consigned and marked luggage has somehow to make it onto the bus – but only if its owners managed to …. I bunged a passing stranger 1,000 CFA to bring my backpack to me and shove it on the overhead rack.

Then I sat on the bus for the usual 5 hours, making myself anxious with the thought that my 2½ hour wait at the bus station had advertised to the entire town that I was off for the week-end, and that I had left my prized laptop, my highly-desirable scooter, my bank cards and my emergency-running-away dollars in the house.  I really know how to have a good time!  Would I manage to have a week-end of fun at all?

Arriving at immense and baking Ouaga I started to exchange texts with Thenain, my hostess, and we met outside a petrol station just around the corner from her house.  By then I had had what must surely be in competition for the slowest ever taxi ride – about 5kph in a cab really held together by wire and Isopon – while being chatted up in a wholly polite way by a very determined chap who thought I should bring him to London because he wants to meet the Queen. Baking heat.

Thenain was born in France but her parents come from Cȏte d’Ivoire and she now lives in Birmingham – therefore she is French-speaking African and speaks English, Spanish and Djoula as well - we met on a VSO training week-end.   She is a huge source of knowledge on all things West African – including lovely little salty beignets with piment powder, and soft drinks, and – oh, just generally on how to manage a little more fun!  Guaranteed to cure lingering anxieties!