Road trip

Last week-end was Thelma and Louise meet Bonnie and Clyde without all that untidy human emotion and the violence – Simon and I joined up with Thenain from Ouaga and Isabelle from Fada for a whistle-stop tour of southern Burkina on mopeds.  Starting off in Bobo Dioulasso, we stayed with nuns in their glorious tranquil guest quarters, and ate braised chicken: we managed to fit in visits to the Museum of Traditional Music, the spectacular Old Mosque and a thorough tour of the Old Quarter – split into Djoula, Animist, metalsmith and griot sectors - in our brief time there.  In the Old Quarter we taken into an animist courtroom – a space for sacrificing chickens in one corner, canes for punishing offenders in another, and large fetishes outside for routine worship.  

Bobo Dioulasso Old Mosque

The Sacred Fish of Bobo

Then off to Banfora, a truly beautiful city in the heart of a vast plain fed by rivers which keep it permanently green green green, surrounded by sugar cane and millet plantations.  I hijacked Simon’s camera and we rode around through the plantations on red dust roads - sugar cane grows to about 20f high, people, and has tall feathery seed heads which from a distance make the plantations look like large lakes.

 

Our hotel in Banfora

Lakes – we went to Lake Tengrela and took a canoe trip through the lilies:

 

We saw two adult hippotami – well, at least their noses and ears:

The next day after a very early trip to a market famous for its handcrafts – Isabelle and Thenain went mad on baskets - we rode off to the Cascades de Karfiguela where we massaged ourselves under the pounding chutes of water (in my case very briefly due to a weedy shoulder), and Isabelle and I braved the strong currents of the swimming pool at the top end of the falls.

 

And for our final leg in our expedition, we visited the Dômes de Fabedougou which are wind-eroded stacks – huge and impressive, and offering a spectacular view over the Banfora region.

 

Outside Banfora on the road to Sindou there is an immense road project underway – quite the largest infrastructure project I have seen in Burkina Faso, funded by the people of the United States of America.  It will make the main highway between Ouagadougou, the capital, and Bobo Dioulasso, the economic capital, look like a farm track…..  The construction is being done by massive new diggers, earthmovers and lorries which were thundering around kicking up a dense fog of red dust – altogether a slightly surreal almost sci-fi experience given the tranquillity of the surrounding forests and plantations.