Waagaadoogoo ; )

You know those places that you here about and are like "I have no desire to go there"? Places like russia and Uzbekistan?... Well Burkina Faso was kinda like that for me. But I really like passport stamps... A lot! So when someone mentioned that it was an okay place to go i jumped at the opportunity. So this past week i spent my time in Ouagadougo (pronounced waagadoogoo. maybe the most amazing name ever). It might be one of my most favorite cities now.

Anyway, after a few false starts (we were origionally going to leave from togo. btw, i went to togo. it was alright, not all that exciting). We finally purchased tickets and we left on a bus at 5 pm on monday. the bus ride is 24 hours. It wasn't that bad except for the horrifically grotesque cankles that i've developed. Kinda looks like elphantitus. I took a picture don't worry. Anyway, hot doesn't begin to explain the temperature when we got off the bus tuesday evening. It's dry heat too so it was kinda like sticking your head in an oven... it actually made Ghana seem cool. But luckily i think that was the most stuffy it was the three days we were there.

Anyway, we got a taxi to drive us to this little backpackers hotel that we rread about. At first glance it looked awful but after a couple of days we realized that it is a well run place. Clean, no rodents, electricity all the time. Really not much to complain about. it was a bit warm though. Anyway, we just kinda wandered around that tuesday night. it was a french colony so they have french influences everywhere, especially the food. A major thing for us is that they gave us french bread as an appetizer before our food came. That NEVER happens in Ghana. Needless to say we were more than a little excited.

The next morning we went to a bakery and had some fabulous pastries and then spent the rest of the day wandering. I can't say that we visited important Burkinabe places or national monuments but we just wandered. I don't know how to explain it but it was just a nice friendly city. We weren't hassled, we weren't harrassed people were just friendly. We were basically able to eat and shop our way with out any problems. They ahve amazing metal work there. We were ableto talk them down quite a bit.

The next day was pretty much the same we just wandered and met people. It's a french speaking country so my friend Georgie and i kinda stumbled through french the entire time. It's amazing how far really bad french can take you. We made a lebanese friend named Omar. He owned a restaurant that we'd been getting dessert at. Not only did he give us discounts, but he offered to drive us to the opening of the Ouagadougou Jazz festival! It's actually a big deal and we had seen posters for it but they said that it started on friday. But omar told us that the actual start was on thursday. So he drove us to the hotel. The tickets were the equivilant of $10 (which in africa is quite a bit of money) so he said that if we just sat in the bar we could hear the music without actually paying and having airconditioning. So here we are in are chocos and tivos with dirty tank tops and dirt on our legs sitting in a fancy hotel bar, sipping juice (cause it was the cheapest thing on the menu). Boy did we feel classy. But we got to hear amazing jazz by Rido Bayonne and his orchestra (if you get a chance look him up, really great music).

After awhile we decided to leave and we went outside. Of course there are NO taxis at this hotel in the middle of no where. I saw a guy standing next to a ministry of education bus and so i went and asked him where we could get a taxi. We got to talking (in my broken french and his broken english) and it turns out he had seen our group before earlier. He talked to the driver of the bus and the driver agreed to drop us off at our hotel. When we got on we realized that it was the band's bus!!! So there we were four random americans sitting in the bus with this Parisian band who were utterly confused as to why we were there. They were really nice though and invited us to dinner but we declined. Anyway, this e-mail has gotten way to long so i will stop here. Needless to say we had an amazing trip! We jsut got back this morning and my cankles ahave yet to disappear....