Leaving Cotonou… trying to…

Attempting the Cotonou-Ouaga journey in one stretch… 1120km or so… The little bus station in Akpakpa in Cotonou is tucked away next to the Grand Mosque. I left the guest house in what I thought was plenty of time to get to the bus station by 7pm, but… As I stepped out, I met one of the staff, who asked me, what time my plane was at…it should have been a warning sign! The zem driver I hailed had a gentle smile and gave me a really good price, so I did not pay much attention to his bike, mistake! It’s only 500m down the road that it started huffing and puffing, and came to a stop. I wondered if maybe my backpack straps got caught in the wheels, but it was nothing to do with me. He triumphantly held in his hand a broken bit of electric wire, he then proceeded to tie back where it belonged under some rotten metal plate with some double knots, at the same time reassuring me that the brakes were still functioning! I made a mental note to tip him well, so he could get his bike fixed and we set off again, a slight smell of burning coming from the engine, but no flames!
We needn’t have worried about the brakes, because we hit the worst traffic jam, I ever came across from China to Mexico and it took over 1 hour to make a 15 minute journey. Cars and motorbikes were bumper to bumper and the air was thick with exhaust fumes, so that like often in Cotonou, I felt like I’d been chain smoking again. There was no lack of explanations for the blocked streets, as we made slow progress towards the bridge though: two broken down cars on the pavement with angry drivers shouting at each other, further down a broken traffic light with a disabused policeman trying to clear the crossing, and to top it all off, on the bridge a truck had lost its load of pineapples and they were rolling down the gutter… But at last, the way was clear!
At the bus station, boxes, bags and cases were already piling high, but it was going to be another 3 hours until we left Cotonou. Our bus was adorned with a running jaguar and the promise of a fast smooth trip… When I booked my ticket two days earlier, I’d been given the choice between a 505 for 18000 FCFA, but the guy thought worth mentioning the chances of road accident and mugging were higher traveling at night, or a bus for 16000 FCFA, a safer option according to him… what he did not put in the equation was the chance of the child sitting next to me puking, and people traveling to Ouaga without any ID papers that would mean, we’d be delayed for long hours either side of the border! Now it only took 21 hours door to door, compared to 20.5 hours to do the Ouaga-Accra stretch that is a little under 1000km, so not bad going at all! Writing this from the comfort of my little home, listening to the pounding rain on the metal roof…

Heure de pointe

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Je me souviens parfois de ma vie à Londres avec nostalgie, prendre la Victoria Line jusqu’à Euston Station, essayer de trouver une place assise, feuilleter le dernier numéro de Metro, lire mon horoscope… juste au cas où... je pourrai presque rêver d’un cappuccino fumant, s’il ne faisait pas 40 degrés à l’ombre...

Aller au travail à Ouaga est une expérience bien différente et loin d’être routinière. Pour commencer, les trois premiers mois, je n’avais pas de bureau en tant que tel, je faisais beaucoup de visites terrain, voyageais en dehors de Ouaga, jusqu’à Banfora près de la frontière avec la Côte d’Ivoire, ou Fada N Gourma sur la route du Niger. Je consultais internet des cybercafés ou des hôtels 5 étoiles pour le coût d’un jus d’orange hors de prix. En mai, ma prospection tirait à sa fin, finies les promenades sur les marchés ou les discussions avec les femmes sur leurs conditions de vie et leurs petits métiers, il était temps de s’asseoir à un bureau et de rédiger des demandes de financements, J’ai alors décidé de sous louer un bureau dans une des institutions de microfinance que j’avais rencontrée. Ca allait être quelque chose de découvrir la vie de bureau au Burkina!

Parce que je n’ai pas encore eu le courage d’apprendre à conduire une moto dans les rues encombrées de Ouaga… j’ai été un peu refroidi par le nombre d’accidents souvent violents et bien trop fréquents ici… j’utilise donc plutôt des taxis. Une fois que l’on a compris sur quelles lignes ils circulent, un peu comme des bus, c’est un moyen de transport bien pratique.
Les taxis sont vert citron, avec des pare brises rafistolés au scotch fort, pas toujours de poignées et encore plus rarement des freins. Si c’est une bonne course, le chauffeur de taxi peut espérer empiler trois passagers sur le siège avant et quatre sur la banquette arrière, sans compter une chèvre et deux vélos dans le coffre. C’est extrêmement bon marché à 200 FCFA (0.30 euros ou 20 pence) la course, à moins que vous ne vouliez sortir du centre ville, auquel cas vous devrez négocier le prix. C’est une façon plutôt amusante de se déplacer, jusqu’à ce que vous commenciez à faire le calcul pour le chauffeur qui doit payer la location de la voiture au patron (même si ce sont des Peugeot ou des Mercedes complètement délabrées) et l’essence… il lui faudra faire beaucoup de courses à 200 FCFA pour arriver à gagner sa vie et nourrir sa famille… quelque chose à méditer pendant que vous faites un long détour pour arriver à votre destination.
Il peut s’écouler 15 à 50 minutes entre le moment, où je quitte la maison, salue les voisins, discute avec les enfants dans la rue et arrête un taxi, et celui où j’arrive au travail, cela dépend bien sûr aussi de la route panoramique que nous empruntons… ce peut être long, mais jamais ennuyeux.
Et si vous trouviez que cela était un peu dangereux… attendez d’être à Cotonou au Bénin, où ce sont des zemi-johns, facilement repérables aux chemises jaunes des conducteurs, qui vous emmèneront d’un bout à l’autre de la ville, des trajets en moto dangereux en temps normal et limite suicidaires à l’heure de pointe. Malgré tout ça, je préfère encore jouer les kamikazes à Cotonou, que de rester coincée sur la Northern Line pendant deux heures…

Rush hour

I sometimes have flashbacks of my life in London, getting on the Victoria Line down to Euston station, trying to get a seat, flicking through the latest issue of Metro, reading my horoscope… just in case... I can get a little craving for a steaming cup of cappuccino...

Going to work in Ouaga is quite a different experience, and not much of a routine. Well, to start with, for the first 3 months, I did not have an office, as such, I was making a lot of field visits, traveled to different cities, as far out as Banfora near the border with Ivory Coast, or Fada N Gourma on the road to Niger. I was keeping in touch with the office using cybercafés or posh 5-star hotels with free wifi connection for the cost of an overpriced orange juice. In May, my prospection came to an end, no more time for wandering around crowded markets and chatting to women about their everyday life and work, it was time to sit down and write some grant applications, so I decided to sublet a desk in one of the microfinance institutions, I had visited. It promised to be fun to find out more about office life burkinabé style!

Because I have not been brave enough yet to ride a motorbike in the chaos of Ouaga’s busy streets… I came across too many bloody road accidents, and this was a bit of a put off… I rely mostly on taxis to get around. Once you figure out, that they have their own routes, pretty much like a bus, it’s a great way to get around. Taxis here are lime green, with windscreens held together with bits of brown tape and missing door handles and more often than not faulty brakes. If it’s a good ride, a cab driver can get up to three people in the front seat, four at the back and a goat and a couple of bikes in the boot. It’s quite cheap, about 200 FCFA (0.30 euros or 20 pence) per journey, unless you want to get out of town, when you have to negotiate the price. It’s an entertaining way to get around town for sure, until you start to calculate how much it costs the driver to rent the car, no matter how run down the Peugeot or Mercedes is, and pay for petrol… it takes a lot of passengers to earn a living and feed his family… something to meditate upon, while you might not take the shortest route to your destination.
It can take me anything from 15 to 50 minutes from the time I step out of the house until I reach the office, depending on how many neighbours there are to greet, how many kids to chat to, and what scenic tour the cab driver takes us on… Going to work here is anything but boring.

And if you thought, it might be a bit unsafe…. Wait until you are in Cotonou, Benin, where it’s zemi-johns that whiz you around town, hair rising at the best of time and plain suicidal during rush hour, you can easily spot them at the yellow shirts their drivers wear. Saying all that, I’d rather play kamikaze anytime in Cotonou, than being stucked for two hours on the Northern Line…