Freezing in the desert...

Editor's Pick Award

Our Editors awarded this travel blog entry for providing relevant information that may be useful and inspiring for other travelers.

During the Christmas break (28^th - 30^th December) we decided to go to the desert in northern Burkina, just as we had planned, not knowing what to expect and ready for all sorts of adventures. We were traveling as a group of five: Veronique and Lionel (our partners in crime from the Bobo trip), Simon, and the both of us. Buses to and from Gorom-Gorom are very infrequent, and we decided to rent a 4X4 for our 3 day excursion for flexibility measures. We shopped around for a vehicle for a few days prior to departure, and I am proud to say that we even got a better deal than the Routard mentions 40,000 FCFA ($85) per day, driver included. As usual, a trip through Burkina Faso has to come with its set of annoyances and problems, but this time these would be caused by a friend of ours, a Burkinabe, who decided to make money on our backs. But also as usual, we had tons of fun, laughter, and again a memorable experience altogether. Ladies and gentlemen, put your seatbelts on and embark on another journey in the B.Faso with Margie and Jan.

Firs let’s introduce a major protagonist of this adventure, Issa Amadou, the first Burkinabe we met in Ouagadougou. During our first days here, he had run up to us in the middle of the street and invited us for a beer, which we gladly accepted. He was very charming, well-traveled, interesting, Rasta in his own way, and an excellent talker. As time went by, we met with him a few times and he even brought us to a “squat” where him and a bunch of friends, all talented artists, hung out and did art (paintings, music, masks, etc.). We basically thought Issa could show us the real Ouagadougou. Things started getting uncomfortable when he started speaking of money, wanting to give us “gifts” in exchange of money loans, and always wanting to take me (Jan) aside to talk business. I made it clear to him I was not going to be his business partner, and that he just wanted to be his friend. One day I even gave him 10,000 FCFA ($20) to encourage him in one of his little business plans, but told him that was it.

Back tour story… Issa is also a tourist guide and comes from Gorom-Gorom (the city closest to the desert), so when I told him that we were leaving to see the desert, he right away volunteered to help us out. Well, we needed advice on where to go, so thought, “Ok, let’s give it a shot”. We all met with him a day before departure and discussed what there was to see in that region. The trip looked pretty good, but the way he was assuming we obviously wanted his services as a guide was annoying. He had never asked if he could come with us in the 4x4, yet he was always saying “we” when talking about the trip. He thought he was such a smooth talker, but we started seeing through him, and were on our guards… At the end of the meeting he said he wanted 30,000 FCFA ($70$) from each person, paid upfront, for his guide services. Ummm… Huh!?! WTF?!?! According to our travel guide, it was twice the price of the journey and he was dared telling us that he was giving us “un prix d’ami”? I was actually shocked he wasn’t doing this for free, but couldn’t make myself tell it to his face. We told him it was too expensive, and since he had said he was going to be in Gorom anyways, we told him that we’d maybe go for a beer there. And that was it. We NEVER told him he would be our guide. We left, a bit frustrated but still excited about the trip. Everyone here is out to make a buck, and it’s hard to blame them, but we need to protect ourselves, and it was getting clear Issa was not a friend. He was a guide trying to make as much money he could on a few white people. He left, seemingly insulted. Unfortunately, his part in the story wasn’t over yet.

That night, we sms’ed the driver asking him to meet us at 8AM instead of 7AM to give us a little more time to sleep and pack. He still wasn’t at the meeting spot by 8:15AM, so we called him, and it turns out he’s illiterate and therefore never understood our message! Reality check: over three quarters of the population here cannot read. Ok, got it. Sorry.

Our first stop was Bani “the town of the Seven Mosques”, 3 hours north of Ouaga. The mosques are constructed on hills surrounding the town and laid out in the shape of a person praying. A girl accompanied us to do the tour, and the landscape was simply marvelous. Unfortunately, she was not able to provide us with much information due to her lack of French skills. I asked her many questions, even conflicting ones, and she simply answered “Oui” to all of them. “So are the mosques really old?” “Oui.” “So what are they, like 500 years old?” “Oui.” ”Or 1000 years old?” “Oui.” Ok lady, no more question for you. :) We found out later that the mosques date all the way back to… 1982-1992. Wow, they really did seem a lot more ancient! All but the big mosque were actually falling apart and weren’t of much use anymore. It was a bit saddening, because we were at first all impressed to see such a nice tourist spot in Burkina, but the inhabitants had put no effort into keeping the place in good shape. Give it another couple of years and there will be nothing to show. :(

From there, long sections of the road were under construction, so we had to drive on a sandy and extremely bumpy side road, but our driver wasn’t bothered by that at all and was going faster than any of us would ever have dared. At one point we jumped up so high that Veronique hit her head pretty hard against the ceiling light. Before getting to Gorom-Gorom, we stopped in the biggest city of the region, Dori, to have a bite to eat. And this is where Issa comes back into the story. He had taken the bus all the way to Dori and we actually saw him getting out of the bus, and he saw us in the car… Funny thing, five minutes later, he shows up at the same restaurant where we are eating! It was very awkward because he was visibly frustrated at us and hung around just enough time to tell us he’s be in Gorom in a few hours. Damn it was unpleasant! We lied to him that we didn’t have room for him in the car and left. We tried not to make a big deal of any of this, and got to Gorom-Gorom less than an hour later.

The town resembles what we were used to, i.e. little concrete houses surrounded by concrete fences, but instead of the reddish earth we see in Ouaga it was mostly sand. We found a charming but extremely run down hotel with little individual shacks made of earth and cow manure, a very common building material here. No, it doesn’t stink like cow poo :). There was no running water, but the rustic feel of the place made us appreciate our first typically African room setting. We felt like the Flintstones a bit. By the time we settled in there were already about five guides waiting to meet with us right outside our sleeping area ready to make some money. It’s crazy how quickly the word goes around that Nasaras are in town. Of course, amongst our potential guides sat Issa, still mad and awkward. We figured we’d talk to him first, give him a shot, and hopefully work something out. It’s not like we thought the other potential guides weren’t gonna try to overcharge us anyways!

The plan for the next two days was to visit the town market, take a camel ride to the desert and sleep there, and visit three different tribes in their villages on the way back. Issa wanted us to pay a package fee, so that he organizes everything now (the camels, the food, the presents for the village people, etc.) but we just did not trust him at all. At all! So we said no to the package deal. We wanted him to tell us how much cost every single part of the desert expedition. It was pissing him off, because he couldn’t screw us that way. First, we negotiated the price for the camels. It didn’t take 5 minutes for his “absolutely lowest price” of 22000 FCFA per camel to go down to 11000 FCFA. Kinda makes you doubt 22000 was even remotely a good price, especially since 3 of the 5 camels we were renting for the night belonged to Issa’s family. He then tried to rob us by telling us to give 3000 FCFA each for the food we would eat at night in the desert. Wtf !? He was taking us for tourists and idiots… we know the prices! Off course we didn’t tell him that, but just told him we would buy it ourselves tomorrow at the market. As it would turn out, the food would only cost us 1500 FCFA in total. At that point we mistrusted him and questioned his every move. After all that, it was time to sleep and that’s exactly what we did.

In the morning, Margie and I woke up extra early, around 6h30. It was a beautiful sunny day (every day is like that), though still a little cold, and we set off to tour the surroundings, and climbed the little quartz hill near the hotel. Wow! What a vista, with the cow herders walking slowly by their cows, the early morning sun giving the misty landscape a magical glow. I couldn’t get enough of it. The others got up soon enough, and we were ready to spend the day visiting Gorom-Gorom with a guide we hated. Since we had told him we didn’t the package deal, he made it clear to us that he wouldn’t help us in anything today.

First stop: breakfast. After trying many places, we finally found one that served omelets. Yey! We were happy, and all ordered a coffee, Nescafe instant coffee that is. Issa was already drinking his and told us it was 100F, which we thought to be a reasonable price (you can usually get it for 50F-150F in little coffee stands). We were very happy to have fresh bread, eggs and coffee that was getting us ready for the day. Until they gave us the bill: 500F for the eggs, 500F for the coffee. We all got so mad, arguing with the owner and waiter and even Issa who seemed to be on the owner’s side. They told us we have a different price because locals pay taxes (bullshit) and we don’t and some other bogus screw-the-white-guy excuses. After a few long minutes, we let it go but made sure they all knew we were extremely dissatisfied with the treatment we had received.

Every city in Burkina has a market day, where the permanent outdoor market gets extremely crowded and everyone is out, buying and selling their best crops of the week (or the same thing they were selling the week before). Gorom’s market day was, as we knew it, on Thursday, and we were looking forward to seeing this happening. We went inside and started buying food. Simon and I had the task of getting all that we needed, and Issa offered no help. He refused to say what quantities we needed, he made us buy tea which cost 500F for 100g, while the day before he said we’d buy 500g for 500F, and he made us have a really shitty time. Veronique, Lionel and Margie shopped for souvenirs, and managed to negotiate some pretty sweet deals on their purchases!

Once we got everything we needed, Issa insisted we go to the livestock market. We weren’t very excited about it, but figured it was worth a visit. It was an overcrowded place, with lots of Peuls and Touaregs men (two ethnic groups living in northern Burkina and in many other African countries) buying and selling cows and sheep. But as far as livestock goes, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen it all! We were just about ready to leave after 5 minutes, but Issa had decided to go to the bathroom right then and didn’t come back for almost an hour. We were pretty annoyed at him and all that he did, but couldn’t afford to straight out confront him. First of all we needed a guide, and second of all he knew everyone in the city so we were afraid to be completely screwed if he turned the city against us. :) We tried to get ourselves ready as fast as possible and met with our driver, which spent the morning in a garage, getting the 4X4 fixed due to extensive damage done by the crazy driving the day before. We were already behind schedule; it was past 4pm, which meant that we were going to be arriving in the desert past nightfall. We met the camels, and just when we thought we were going to depart, Issa disappeared again, with one of the camel owners who was obviously furious and took one of his camels away.

We had no idea what it was all about, but knew we were going to waste more time and maybe not get to ride the camels at all. Shit. We sat around, observed the camels, and got to see many of the locals take the long journey back home from the market. Women from the region were all dressed and accessorized beautifully, with many different materials and decorations in their hair and on their faces. It was very different from what we had seen so far and enjoyably exotic. Issa finally came back, pissed as always, and announced we’d only have 5 camels, so he and the cameleer would sit on the back of ours. Climbing on a camel is quite interesting, as the camel sit down on all fours and then gets up once its passenger has sat down. It can be quite the balancing act! It didn’t take long for us to realize this was not going to be a comfortable ride. The seats were made in wood, in the least ergonomic way possible, and were barely covered with a blanket. We didn’t expect great comfort, but all our back were suffering. Poor Lionel, who’s had a major back operation, did not smile once he was in so much pain. Some camels were quicker than others, reacted better, and very overall more obedient. We got to watch the sunset while riding through the bush. It was very relaxing, minus the back and thigh pain.

 The only hic was that the surroundings looked nothing like the desert. We hadn’t seen one sand dune, and were beginning to wonder if we’d see one at all. The night was dark and cloudless, and Issa finally signaled for us to stop. We had reached a dune, but all around it there were bushes. It seemed like the only dune around, and it was confirmed to us the next morning when the sun came up. We quickly got a mat from the nearby village, and one blanket per person (or to be more precise, one blanket per couple and one for Simon). Issa set up a fire and began preparing us food. We all chipped in to help but he wasn’t very kind nor thankful. Our cameleer started preparing traditional tea, and villagers came to sit around the fire. We had tons of food, and after we had eaten what we wanted, the rest was given to the villagers. It is customary to make lots of food and share it, as well as bring tea and sugar as a gift to the villagers, thanking them for lending us mats and letting us stay on the dune. The entire evening was extremely pleasant. I had never ever seen so many stars in the sky as I did that night, due to the unpolluted air and absence of moon. The air was good, the environment peaceful, and we were all very happy to have made it so far. We drank lots of tea, which kept us up for a while, but eventually everyone lay down on our mats surrounding the fire.

The night was very cold. Margie and I only felt it in the early morning, but poor Veronique didn’t sleep at all because she was so cold, and Simon was an icicle because he had gotten a very shitty cover. We had tea and bread for breakfast and set off back to the city. On our way, we were to stop at 3 different villages: one Peul, one Bella, and one Touareg. We were hoping to really get a sense of the differences between the different ethnic group and a deeper understanding of their way of life, but again Issa did not deliver. We rushed through the villages, he refused to play translator for us, and we set back on our route. It was a huge disappointment.

Back at Gorom, we were all ready to head back home, and hopefully stop in a few villages to see their markets. But before we left, we really felt the need to talk to Issa. We sat him down and for over and hour told him how bad of a job he had done, that he obviously was not a friend, and that we were willing to give him a little money for his troubles (1000 FCFA each) but not more. He tried defending himself, finding excuses for everything, and said a guide usually gets paid 5,000 FCFA per person, per day, so that we owed him 50,000 FCFA. He was out of his mind, and it just proved to us he really did want to screw us all along. We finally settle on giving him 10,000 FCFA in total (which is very decent, we found out most guides get 15,000 per person for everything including camel ride, food, and guide fee), which was to cover his round trip bus fair and food expenses for his trip back to Ouaga, and more. He left, obviously very mad, but we knew we had done the right thing.

Our trip back to Ouaga was pretty uneventful; we all slept through most of the trip. And just to add to our list of annoyances, we realized that the driver had without a doubt siphoned at least 15,000 FCFA worth of gas… man, it sucks getting screwed, but as we said before, it’s just part of the adventure. :D