The city of Ouagadougou

messy bed with bed net
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We've been in Ouagadougou for a whole week now, and every day has come with its different challenges. There is so much to say about what we are going through, and we'll try to share it with you in the best possible manner. Here we go:

Chapter 1: The city of Ouagadougou

First week in Africa

It's extremely bizarre to arrive in a unknown city at night. There are no people in the streets and everything is sleeping. That's exactly what we did last Friday. Wow. What a feeling it was to stand on the soil of the birth of mankind. At night, Ouagadougou looked like most cities we know, and it's only the next day that we saw its real face. The main streets are called "goudrons", since there is asphalt on them, and the smaller ones, without asphalt, are called "six- mtres" since I guess the original ones were of that dimension. It's really hard to get around, since there are almost no indications of street names. When you give directions, you say "prends la gauche au premier goudron, tourne a droite au troisime six-mtres, et continue jusqu'au grand arbre a ta droite et c'est la deuxime maison aprs ca". It's pretty complicated for us, but we're getting used to it.

the exterior of our old house (we now moved to a much bigger one which is also a lot further from the center)
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Most people here are extremely friendly to each other, and especially to us. At first it felt nice that people went out of their way to greet us and made us feel welcome, but right now we are starting to recognize that we are put on a pedestal just because of our skin color. We hate this fact and really don't know how to deal with it. Everybody looks at us when we pass on the street. It's cute when little kids look at us with big eyes and smiles and say "nasara" (white man), but when adults do it it's annoying. Oxfam hires us a night time security guard and household help, and again we're not comfortable with this fact. These employees of ours (I hate the sound of that) want to cater to our every need and threat us like kings. Bleurk. We knew this might be an issue, but there just isn't a way of accepting it so far. It's hard not to feel like a white imperialist b**** when people all around make you feel like you're better and deserve more than them. There are many rational explanations for us to soothe these bad feelings (i.e. we're creating jobs, occupation, etc.) but the emotional response to this always remains... Ok, more on this later cause we could go on for hours but it's also hard to express ourselves.

typical 6-mtres intersection
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The major modes of transportation here are motorcycles or bicycles. The city is often jokingly referred to as Ouaga-deux-roues. The pollution this causes is at times unbearable, in addition to the fact that the dry air helps the sand that is all over the city go up in the air. Standing on a red light behind 20 to 30 pollution-unregulated mopeds can get really disgusting, especially when the temperature hits 40 degrees. Unfortunately, it's something we have to do every day, since we have a motorcycle too (a Yamaha 100) and we now live about 25 minutes (by motor) from downtown, where we both work. The streets are extremely chaotic, with no apparent order nor laws governing traffic. Of course there are street lights, and people respect them (more than in Latin America or Italy for sure), but there is no such thing as lanes. Cars, mopeds, and bikes pass 20 centimeters from each other and no one seems to care. On both sides of most streets there is a continuous row of little ghetto shops selling and repairing cell phones, tires, food, clothes, motorcycle parts, etc, which of course means that pedestrians join the party and cross the streets whenever they want. So basically, driving in Ouaga is crazy and dangerous. So far so good though.

somewhat busy intersection with plenty of deux-roues and cars, and it gets much worse
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So all in all, were in a period of discovery. Our living conditions are very good, the house we just moved into even has hot water, very little bugs, and is spacious. The weather is always extremely hot, which is tiring. Were lucky because it is actually pretty cold right now compared to June and July and itll get cooler as time goes by. We have to sleep with a fan on all night as well as a bed net. There really arent so many bugs but any of those little suckers can give us fever, shakes and extreme headaches (ie. the lovely malaria). The Oxfam people that are here (about 8 other participants like us and 5 permanent residents) are all nice and we have a good time with them when we meet. We started work on Wednesday, and so far find it to be extremely tiring as well. We start work at 7am, go on till 12:30, at which point we have a break till 15:00 and then work till 17:30. Most people go back home during the break to sleep, but it wouldnt be worth it for us to do it (and we dont exactly want to do 4 rush hours a day on the motorbike!!). Between 12:30 and 15:00 the heat is difficult to bear if you stay outside under the sun so you have to try to avoid it. We have yet to figure out how well use that time to actually relax and not get even more tired. We cant wait to get more familiar with the city and where to buy food. We spent the first few days eating out and got sick of it pretty fast! What you find in typical restaurants (which are often called maquis, place to meet to eat and drink) is riz sauce. Basically, this is a huge mountain of rice with a bowl of some sort of oily sauce and a few pieces of meet. The available drinks are usually beer (which is 650ml, 4 5 %, costs about a dollar, and will get you pretty tipsy because of the heat), coca cola, fanta, sprite, and water. We get pretty sick of drinking water all day, and cant always take beer, so we end up having all the above mentioned drinks even though we dont like doing so (doesnt exactly boost local economy).

une poutine dans le restau La Qubecoise, pour dire que nous sommes partout au monde. :)
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More news from Margie and Jan soon. :)

ps. sorry about the lack of interesting pictures. unfortunately, walking around with a camera in hand isn't exactly a good way of trying to integrate oneself when you already stick out like a bleached thumb. soon enough we will feel more comfortable with it. :)