30 January 2012
FN: 6
Life in Ouaga
For those who don’t know, the capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou[1]. It’s a largish city[2] of about 1.5 million[3] people located almost exactly in the dead center of the country, and it has almost all of the perqs of any capital, and almost all of the drawbacks that you would think of when imagining a rapidly growing city in a developing country.
There’s no way around it: by western standards, Ouaga is ugly. It’s dirty, dusty, drowning in trash, mostly unplanned, mostly unpaved[4], and teeming with poorly regulated air pollution motos. When we first landed here, it was more than a little intimidating, because the whole place looked like what my US-adjusted eyes would identify as “dangerous slum”. Until you get used to it, there’s literally almost no way to tell the difference between that delightful little maquis that serves amazing brochettes, and that slum dive of a dolo cabaret that is probably best not entered at night (or at all).
But that’s by western standards. By local standards, Ouaga is more like Carl Sandberg’s Chicago: a big, bustling, growing city that’s full of opportunity (and heartbreak), industry, and a burgeoning capitalist spirit. It’s a city where a boy can become a man, and that man can (if he hustles and gets lucky) make it big. Sure, the statistics say that 90% of them will live and die and penury and misery, but how is that any different from New York or Chicago in the 1890’s? In its current form Ouaga will never be classically pretty[5], but if you leave that aside there’s a lot to like about it.
I don’t like the cost of life in Ouaga (I can sometimes spend as much as twenty dollars (10,000 CFA) in a day, and who can afford that kind of luxury??), and I definitely don’t like the trash and the traffic, but you learn to live with that. Otherwise, I really like it here. I like the way that the people really are friendly, and there’s more or less no place I can go that I don’t feel safe. I love bickering with the taxi drivers for the cost of a fare, and I love how hilariously beat up the taxis are, once you finally get in. I love that feeling you get when you find some great restaurant that serves some food you’ve been craving for months, and the even better feeling you get after you’ve finally eaten said food[6]. I love walking though the markets and sharing good-natured insults with the guys trying to hawk me useless crap, and I like the way all the Muslim places stop and pray five times a day. It’s not a big or as old or as exotic as Cairo or Kandahar or Bangkok, but it has something of the same feel sometimes, it’s a lot safer, and I really enjoy it.
Oh, and I’m not going to lie: I also love the fact that I can get all of those little luxuries here that you just can’t get at site: frosted flakes, fan choco, air conditioning, and hot showers. I may bitch and complain about how much of a pain in the ass it is to get here (it’s annoying, but the volunteers en brousse have it far worse), and I may whine about how much I hate sleeping at the transit house (it’s loud, cold/hot, and swarming with mosquitoes), but to be honest, it’s not that bad. Or to put it another way, this is the only place in the country where I can be woken up by airplanes taking off, then be kept awake by the sound of traffic, then give up and go take a hot shower to wake up. It could be a lot worse.
Welcome to my life for the next week.
[1] Burkina Faso was once the French colony of Haut Volta (OH Volta), so local words are spelled using French orthography. If Burkina Faso had instead been the English colony of Upper Volta, the name of the capital would have been spelled Wagadugu (WAGA doo-goo). Either way, it would be pronounced the same, as it’s a Mooré word.
[2] By local standards, where 20 people is a village and 10,000 people is a city. Obviously, 1.5 million would be a bedroom community near New York City, and it would barely qualify as a neighborhood for some of the massively sprawling cities in India and China. But around here, it’s big.
[3] This is purely a guess, as there are no set addresses and no easy way to count heads. But the rough guesstimates say that Ouaga has doubled in population every decade since the 1950’s.
[4] Ie the immediate downtown and the main feeder routes are (sometimes poorly) paved, and all of the other streets are dirt. There are no elevated highways, bypasses, etc to speak of.
[5] If you want pretty, go to Bobo-Dioulasso (Bobo). It’s the second-largest city in the country, and the ancient capital of the southwest. They get things like rain there, so it’s cleaner, greener, more lush, and more classically “pretty” (although you still have to take local conditions into account).
[6] For example, did you know there’s this amazing coffee shop called Cappucino that’s the equal of any coffee shop I’ve ever been to? Sure, it costs a fortune by local standards, but in absolute terms it’s both cheaper and better than that Starbucks you go to every morning. And just down the street from it, there’s this great little Vietnamese place that serves – you get the idea.
