Bonne arrivée... à Ouaga

Bon, on y est... Un peu plus tard que ce qu'on pensait, mais on l'a fait. Après deux longues journées de voyage, une pour joindre Tamale et une pour arriver à Ouagadougou. Bon, il est vrai qu'on s'y est prit comme des manches ou plutôt la fatigue a troublé notre vision...

Ouais, à Kumasi, vérifiant les horaires de départ des bus pour Ouagadougou, on a mélangé les AM et PM. Du coup, levés de bonne heure le lendemain pensant prendre le bus nous conduisant au Burkina, nous nous sommes rendus compte qu'il ne partait que le soir, sur le coup des 8 heures.

Du coup, bref consultation de « nous même » et nous décidâmes en toute hâte de prendre un bus pour Tamale, au lieu de passer toute la journée à glander sur Kumasi. Bon, le bus partant quelque chose comme cinq minutes après le paiement du billet, nous nous avons sauté à l’intérieur, mais au fond ce ne fut pas plus mal.
Nous avons donc débarqué à Tamale, petite ville du nord du Ghana, plus ou moins située sur une route principale, mais nous remettant en mémoire de précieux souvenirs de Voinjama, avec ses brochettes en bord de route et les gens beaucoup plus amicaux et souriant qu'au sud (du Ghana).

Un petit pincement au coeur, nous nous sommes dirigés vers une sorte d'auberge où l'on a put prendre une chambre. Cette auberge fait partie d'un centre (Tamale Institute for Cross Cultural Studies), qui est tenu par un prêtre américain qui a passé près de 34 années au Ghana. Le but de ce centre est d'enseigner un peu de la culture du Ghana à toutes personnes intéressées. Le type est incroyable et nous avons apprit beaucoup sur le Ghana et la culture d'Afrique de l'ouest.

Ce matin, départ en Tro tro à partir de Tamale en direction de Bolgatanga, puis taxi jusqu'à la frontière, où l'on a enfin pris notre premier transport burkinabe (arès une marche symbolique de la traversée au Burkina), pour mettre le cap sur Ouaga. Cette dernière partie du voyage fut un peu plus longue, après un arrêt à chaque gendarmerie, police et autre douane, un arrêt pour prier, et un autre pour... pipi... nous sommes, à la tombée de la nuit, arrivés dans la capitale du "Pays des Hommes intègres". Voyage peu confortable mais il va falloir s'y habituer, ça ne fait que commencer, de plus c'est un peu ce qu'on voulait, non... Demain, visite de la ville avec recherche des horaires de départ des bus pour le Niger.




Arrived in Ouaga....stylishly....looking like Elvis. After a day (or make that 2) sitting near the open window of a tro tro I developed an extraordinary Quiff, or at least it felt like it. Mixed in with a fine adobe mixture of dust and dirt and general flying debris it had to be chiseled off in the shower! But we got here, a day late, but we made it. On the other hand if we will get Am and PM mixed up what to expect ?!? Our nice, comfy, surely air con-bus was replaced by 2 decrepit Tro tros, a taxi and a walk across the border. Much more fun, especially as it was during the day instead of overnight and we could actually see where we were going. That kind of makes a difference. And things are certainly different. Gone is the lush, Liberia-like vegetation of the coast.

Already as we got to Tamale that landscape flattened out, the trees thinned and increasingly the "Jesus willing Pharmacy" (would YOU trust their medicine with a name like that? Thought not!), "Psalm 23 Kindergarten", "Mother Mary Tailoring" and my personal favorite: "Sunday night Disco - Salvation Rally, special guest speak: HELL IS REAL AND ITS HERE!!!!" also (mercifully) thinned and things normalized slightly...or if not normalized at least rebalanced..."Allah is merciful Pharmacy" anyone????

Tamale was great. Small, dusty, comfy. Smiley helpful people and OK brochettes. Not quite up to Voinjama standards, but there you go - you cant expect "how mamma made them" everywhere, eh. We spent the night in a centre (TICCS) run by an American priest - it seems I can run but cant hide - who set up a centre for cross cultural studies. A DPhil in W.African studies and anthropology, we spent a fascinating evening discussing with him about his 34 years in Ghana and the region.

However we are now comfortably back in Mayonnaise country....or should I say Pastis bottle country; as the French are infinitely more stylish than us poor Anglophones.

You see the thing (one of the many) that made my eyes pop when we reached Ghana was that - shock HORROR - its a country of service stations. Imagine that.

I hear those of you in Europe and the US saying: Yeah well, and so what.....

SO WHAT! Its been almost 2 years since Ive seen a service station (we're excepting compensations here). And im not talking any old run down affair. Nope. As we left the glitzy, state of the art airport in Accra the taxi pulled in (I guess its not only ARC who doesnt fuel the night before) to a shiny, chrome, lit up, CLEAN (and not cracked) plastic signed service station with real pumps that worked. And a mini mart. Selling Pringles. Thats when I realized that I was either hallucinating or they had given us something very strong to eat in the plane and it was disagreeing with me.

You see in Liberia you buy gas by the mayonnaise jar. Huge things, round about a gallon. You buy them off some dodgy guy with shades squatting at the site of the street who has bought them from his cousin's brother' wife's son's in-law, who in HIS turn has had them quietly siphoned off the UN, added some extra dirt for the Bush effect and mixed in some water to make it go that little way further and mess up your precious land cruiser’s temperamental engine. Yup. So, after a year of mayonnaise jars stations make an impact. Especially as they have them in what would almost qualify as the bush in Ghana as well.

So, feeling a bit uncomfortable with all this modernity I was pleased to ascertain when we crossed the border that stations reduced to small metal racks holding bottle on bottle of gas...not in mayonnaise' jars alas, but rather, in Pastis bottles. The French must have drunk a hell of a lot of Pastis down here.

I admit that I also spotted a station in Ouaga, but for the amusement afforded by the Pastis bottles we can forgive the odd glitzy Total station or three.

Other than that, the landscape looks like Holland with an African twist. Flat as a pancake, less water and no tulips. Its a lot drier, with scatterings of mango trees and the odd Neolithic Baobab. The drier it gets the more important livestock becomes and the fly quota is increasing exponentially. No problem, I was an expert fly swatter in Ethiopia and I already feel the killer vibe coming back.

The houses have changed too. No longer individual and square, roofed mainly in zinc, households in this end of Burkina and N.Ghana are three or four single room-sized round huts with, if you really want to keep up with the joneses, the odd rectangular building thrown in too. All this is held together in by connecting walls making a cosy little compound. Almost all are roofed in thatch and the walls and buildings smoothly plastered with Adobe-type mud. Outside there are generally two or three granaries. Smaller round affairs held off the ground by bricks and stout sticks. The bottom of which are not square but also round. The closest thing which sprang to mind was inverted ice-cream cones. When the round little caps of thatch are not quite straight, which seems to be mostly the case, the impression they give is of tens of munchkin villages lost among the mango groves. In the evening light, speeding along, it was a beautiful countryside.

Niamey next and lets see if this time we can actually read the timetable....