White girl, white boy

jan on his bike. apperently he's allowed to go on the big lane cause his bike is "oversided". bs.
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Chapter 2: White girl, white boy, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you...

Damn, what a day... Let's recap.

Crazy day

Marge:

marge on her bike. :D
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Today we pretty much officially started work. Jan has to walk into work at 7am, as for me it's pretty flexible but I plan on coming for 8. In fact, no one seems to care much if I'm there at all but I'll get to that later. At first we planned on only having the motorcycle Jan was given by his organization, but on saturday I decided to get myself a bike too. I haven't regretted it one bit (maybe for a split second, when I fell off of it an hour after I got it and nicely scratched my elbow, but that is very secondary)!! Driving a motorbike is such a trip, I love it! Oh and mom, don't panic, we're being very carefull. :))

two lanes/two lights (actually 3 lights) system. i still don't know how it makes any sense.
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So Jan left to go to work around quarter to 7, while I was still in bed. When I finally got ready to go, I realized I had left my keys in Jan's bag, so not only was I unable to lock the door and fence, I was actually locked inside (all locks are key operated on both sides). So I called Jan and he had no choice but to come back home.

Jan:

So I leave work in a hurry, and drive on the bigger lane. You see, some streets here have two lanes, one for cars and big motorcycles, and one for the rest (small motorcycles, mopeds, bikes, donkeys). There are two sets of lights, one for each lane. My light was red, theirs was green. But since everybody is driving in the same direction anyways, I decided to burn the light. I mean, everybody does it. Oops, twenty meters from there, a cop was standing and is waving for me to stop. Kind of strange my heart wasn't even beating fast nor was I nervous at all. This was going to be interesting. Of course I played dumb, of course I didn't understand the two-sets-of-lights system, and of course I am working towards Burkina Faso's development. So finally they let me go. Nice, I got away.

undercover spy photo of jan talking to a cop, and bystanders staring. i could have gotten into a lot of trouble for shooting that. :)
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Marge:

So Jan saves me from imprisonment, and we set off to work. I always drive ahead cause Jan's bike fumes like crazy and mine barely does at all. So we drive into this big roundabout that has 3 lights, and try not to burn any of them (it's pretty easy to burn them with all the messiness there). So I cross the light when it is fully green, Jan following me about 4 meters behind. Next thing I know, Jan's being pulled over for crossing a red light. It was impossible, especially since the cop was behind the light and could not see it's color.

Jan:

Oh my god! I simply could not believe it. The light was definitely not red. Not when I was passing. I knew it was yellow, but I'm not going to stop in the middle of the intersection, are you crazy? Ok, here we go again i thought. Unfortunately, this cop didn't want to hear anything at all. Basically it was his word against mine. He took my permit and told me to come back to the police station in the afternoon to get it (I will have to pay 4000 FCFA, less that 10$). Margie was waiting on her motorcycle on the other side of the street while I was discussing, and I didn't want her to be even more late for work, so i waved to her that she could leave. I tried really hard to convince the officer (they are all in their twenties), always being very polite ("oui, monsieur l'agent, je comprends, mais..."), but nothing. Screw it, I said, and left, without my permit. Half a kilometer down the street, I see Margie waiting for me on the side of the road. How nice I thought.

Marge:

So I drive off, pissed off at the cop who stopped Jan, but hopefull that Jan will cut a deal. I'm driving on the "cars and big bikes" road, seeing as I rented a Omaha (hahaha) 110cc just to be able to ride with the big guys (I was told the minimum to do so was 100). Boom, I get stopped by a cop. "Impossible" I tell myself. At this point, all that's going through my mind is that it's "stop the white guy" day in Ouagadougou. He tells me I'm not allowed to ride on the big road, cause my bike isn't good enough. He tells me you need a 125, but that mine isn't even a 100, but that 100 is ok but you need 125 and a whole lot of contradictions after that. I tried to do the suck up thing ("oui, monsieur l'agent,...") but the more he went on the more I lost my temper. And, seeing as my bike doesn't have a license plate (which seems to be legal here), he says he needs to confiscate my bike until I pay a fine of 4800 FCFA. That was it, I was mad. From far I saw Jan approaching, so I flagged him down. He stopped, and to his surprise, it was my turn to be getting a ticket. And by none other than the dude who let him go an hour earlier. Fantastic coincidence! Both of us with ticket in hand get on Jan's bike and drive to the police station near by.

Jan:

When I saw that it was the same cop that had let me go before, I knew it meant trouble. By now I had my speech pretty well memorized, and I gave it to him. But no, he wouldn't have it. This time around he wouldn't let the white people go. So off we went to the station. It was getting ridiculous, and I really wanted to talk to someone that could do something about this whole mess. Of course, the clerk at the administration couldn't do a thing about our situation, and I didn't blame her, because she's just the clerk right? Nonetheless I stayed really calm, polite, and smiling, just to keep her on our side... So finally we were supposed to come back in the afternoon to talk with a high-rank officer to try to settle the problem. But just before we were about to leave, the woman calls me through the little window: the top officer had arrived and wanted to speak with me. This was my chance. I enter the little room, and the young officer that was in possession of my license was also there. Interesting. The discussion that followed was more of a monologue, a lecture by a top police officer to a stupid white boy that didn't know the rules of the road in Ouagadougou. Of course, the whole thing was done with a big smile on his face, and the little I replied was also done with a big smile. Anyways, the whole thing worked, I got my permit back, and Margie received a written permission to receive her bike back. Phew. It was already 10h30 and we could finally start working. When I got to work, I spoke with a friend I work with about the whole thing, and he informed me that his uncle was chief of police, and if anything were to happen again, he'd get us out no problem. Good to know.

Marge:

I was very proud of Jan. He handled it all like a pro, which I couldn't have done. I got to work, explained the whole thing, but it was all good. By 1pm I was in a restaurant with Jan eating lunch. "What a crazy day!!" we thought, and had a very good laugh. I had to leave the restaurant quickly cause I needed to go home and then come back to town for 3pm to work (I had to get the laptop). I go and get my motor, and some guy dressed in a police t-shirt and hat starts talking to me. He asks about my friend still being in the restaurant, and I kind of brush him off and start turning on the motor. By now I'm used to random guys coming up to me asking about my life and wanting to talk to me or sell me stuff so I thought this was just another one of these. He then tells me that he's here to fine both Jan and I on the charges of "running away from a cop" (delit de fuite). You've got to be freakin' kidding me. No. No. No. I get back to the restaurant, get Jan, and here we go again...

Jan and Marge:

What did we do? Again? Well... on our way to the restaurant, we unintentionally ended up on a one way (actually, the two way became a one way at the last second and for 5 meters). No signs, counterintuitive, but apparently we were supposed to know. We heard a whistle and saw cars coming towards us, and turned left onto the road we wanted to go to. Hearing a whistle is nothing special here, and after 10 days in the city we actually got used to cutting out the noise: people yelling for our attention, honks, motor noises, whistles, "pssssst"... it was all background. So that was our infraction. We really couldn't have known. We were angry. Even Jan stopped with the "monsieur l'agent". We made it very clear to the police man that this was ridiculous. But by now we had learned. Jan called his work friend, who showed up after 10 minutes. He presented himself, said who his uncle was, and all of a sudden we were off the hook. Go corruption!! We were happy, but mostly exhausted. We couldn't even be sure this was the last time we were going to get stopped today! We went back to work, and surprisingly the rest of the day went on without any police encounters.

What a crazy day. Damn. Nota good day to be white and driving on the roads. :)