From Burkina to Benin

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Jan is tired...

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On Saturday night, we spent many hours packing and getting ready for our trip. As it always is, we underestimated the time needed to get everything ready, and by the time we were done it was past midnight. We brought all the things we didn’t need to François’ house (where we will pick them up when we go back to Ouaga), and were back home around 2am. It was 3:30 by the time we fell asleep, and were brutally awoken by the sound of the alarm at 5:30. We were tired, but also excited, and we were sure to catch up on some sleep on the bus. The bus was to leave at 7am, and we were at the station by 6:30. It wasn’t too long before word came to us that the bus was only leaving at 9:00. Benin was having elections, and due to an uncertain outcome, the border was closed. WTF!? We seriously could have used those two extra hours of sleep, but there was no reason to get upset. The only frustration came with the fact that no one ever made an announcement that plans changed. That is how it’s done here, you don’t have a billboard or some person telling you the bus is delayed, you actually have to ask around, talk to clients, and no one is ever really sure… Nevertheless, by 9:00 we were embarking on our super duper air conditioned bus that we paid an extra 4000 FCFA (9 dollars) for. Hurray!!! Or more like crap. 5 minutes after departure, guess what we find out? Come on, this is an easy one….. Yup! The air conditioning was broken!! Damn it! This wasn’t the first time… what was annoying, is that we asked a minute before embarking on the bus if it worked, and everyone said “Y’a pas de problèmes, y’a pas de problèmes”. Not getting something you expect and actually paid for is the real difficulty (keep in mind 9 dollars is a lot here). If there were no air conditioned buses in all of Burkina (which I’m starting to believe is the case), then we’d just accept it and move on! But every time we actually believe… In any case, this was going to make our 17 hour bus ride more difficult but at least we were on our way!

Jan is not happy...

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We drove about 6 hours to the Benin border, stopping about 15 times for anything ranging from food to pee breaks to the numerous police checks (and money donations to corrupt cops). We didn’t get any sleep because the heat, lack of air and lack of space made it really difficult to get comfortable. At 3pm, when we got to the Burkina-Benin border, we were all told to get out of the bus with our identity cards (passports in our case). It didn’t take long for rumours to start about the border being closed. Some were saying we had to wait an hour, others said we’d wait till midnight, while others even said we’d wait till the morning. None of this was good news… we were already terribly sweaty, dirty, hot, hungry and tired, and were stranded by a tiny border police station with nothing around it. The rumours were confirmed by our driver, who said we’d wait till 11pm (which was midnight in Benin time). It was difficult to swallow because 8 hours is a long time, and we really just wanted to be on our way. But what can you do… we walked to the nearby village, and found a little restaurant where we could get a half-decent meal. We chilled a little, watched the end of a football game (Chelsea vs. I can’t remember, Chelsea lost 1-0), and headed back towards the bus. Two people from Cameroon were sitting at a small maquis (bar) and invited us to join them. We spent about 2 hours discussing the difficulties of travelling in Mali, Burkina and Benin, and the over all differences between Central African (where Cameroon is situated) and West African nations. There was a lot of resentment from these Cameroonians towards the people from West Africa, whom they considered dirty, uneducated, and much less civilized. It really gave us an idea of the tensions that exist between African countries. With our limited knowledge of all things African, we still had to recognize that we were talking to people who had extremely snobbish attitudes towards the land we called home for the last 4 months. Cameroon’s geographical situation and weather conditions, to list only a small amount of factors, allowed it to become a much more prosperous and functional country than Burkina Faso. But we did have to agree with the Cameroonians that 8 hours at the border sucked!

Our bus, dissapointing.

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By 21:00, we were extremely tired. We bought 2 mangos for 25 cents from a young girl who sold them by the road, and sat down by our bus for supper. Luckily enough, before leaving Ouaga, I bought a bunch of nuts and things so we had food to munch on for the ride. As we ate on the ground by our bus, we realized just how many buses were stopped (about 10) and how all the people had just lay down on the ground to sleep. The whole thing seemed unreal and resembled a refugee camp. We thought of lying down outside, at which point Jan remembered the bus driver saying something about being bitten 4 times by scorpions last time he slept outside in that area… Needless to say, we went to sleep in the bus. There wasn’t much air to breathe, but there were no scorpions. :) At midnight, we were awoken by the sound of the motor. We were advancing towards to the Benin border, a few kilometres away. Hurray!! We were sure that Benin had decided to open up the border at midnight… Or more like crap, again. The border was closed till 5:00… what a joke. Who has ever heard of closing a border just because there are elections?? And for so much time!! Our best bet was going back to sleep…

Typical African sight: woman with large trays on their head ans babies on their backs.

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After an uncomfortable, shoulder-damaging sleep, our bus was finally moving past the border at around 8:00. What a relief it was to finally be advancing towards our goal, and not just waiting around pointlessly. Surprisingly enough, the rest of the bus ride was almost uneventful. What a blessing, because we were really not feeling too good. Our clothes were dirty and drenched in sweat; we’d been on the road for 24 hours, and we were pretty tired of eating our nuts, pretzels and sesame seeds. At least we felt like we were tough. :)

We got to Cotonou, Benin at 17:00, 34 hours after the planned departure from Ouaga. Julie and Hugo had been expecting us since morning, and we hadn’t had a chance to phone them and warn them of our delay. Everything was great, we got to take a fantastically refreshing shower and eat a good meal. We slept for many hours, and awoke this morning refreshed. We visited a bit of the city, and go to compare two West African metropolises. Cotonou is quite larger and more developed than Ouagadougou. Circulation, which I thought to be the worst on earth in Ouaga, had now reached a new low. It’s hard to explain, but chaos really reigns, organized chaos to be more precise. The major mode of transport is the “Zems”, which are motorcycles taxis that pick up a passenger or two for about 200 FCFA. All Oxfam interns travelled in Zems all throughout their stay, unlike those in Ouaga where mostly everyone had a motorcycle. The weather here is also very different. In Ouaga, in the last month, we had temperatures that went up to almost 50 degrees but the air was totally dry (if you want a do-it-a-home version of Ouaga, turn on the oven 15 minutes, open the door, and feel the hot air, it comes really close to the real thing). Here, the temperature doesn’t get much higher that 35 degrees, but the humidity is 100%. We haven’t been dry ever since we got here, and it is somewhat hard to get used to. If all goes as planed, tomorrow we’re going to Porto Novo (the nation’s official capital), to find out about many of the voodoo traditions still very practiced here in Benin.