My Saturday in Bobo turned out to be a lot of fun. I packed a picnic, rented a bike from the market in the morning and, with the help of some directions from the tourist office, set out along the Ouaga road towards the village of Koro, 13 km out from the city. The village is built among huge granite boulders on the tallest hill in the region, to protect its residents from attack during a period of wartime several centuries ago. Most of it is still inhabited, which I found a little awkward--even accompanied by a trained guide from the village, I'm not all that comfortable as a tourist in someone's backyard. I've been told by many people, as well, that a lot of villages resent the Burkinabe tourist ministry's presence, particularly the fact that when a village becomes an official tourist site, the ministry sets up an official péage and takes 60 per cent of ticket fees back to Ouaga. There may be more visitors once a village is advertised through the national ministry, but not 60 per cent more, so many villages have opted to take down the official ministry signs and continue running their own tourism, keeping all the profits. Either way, I didn't wind up staying all that long in Koro, eager to feel as little like a voyeur as possible. Had there been an uninhabited and restored area to look through, or had I had the impression that even my guide enjoyed receiving visitors, I might have stayed a little longer.
I was surprisingly tired when I got back to Bobo, owing partly to my slightly ghetto rental bike and partly to the fact that my fitness has suffered a little bit from my sedentary lifestyle over the past three months. After a shower and a nap, I went out with the intention of swimming in a nearby hotel pool and wound up taking tea with a musician Nitha, Megan and I had hung out with the last time we were in Bobo. I went out with him and his friends that night to a cassette-release concert for the local hip-hop group les D-tenus, which turned out to be surprisingly tame, heavily--and annoyingly--sponsored by Nescafé, but a lot of fun. (Note to Nitha and Megan: it was poolside at Hotel Oabys, of all places.)
Sunday was devoted to the 12-hour bus ride between Bobo and Bamako, which was made much less pleasant by the fact that I must have eaten something weird again, and was forced to drug myself with that most dangerous of medications, Imodium, to have any hope of enduring the toilet-free bus ride without embarrassment. I had a pretty nasty reaction to its effects towards the end of the ride, though, and was a nauseated basket case by the time I got to Bamako. My very helpful seatmate put me into a cab and sent me on my way to the Catholic mission hostel where I'm staying until tomorrow. I'm the only woman and the only person under the age of about 35 there, which is a nice and slightly paternal change from the young and obnoxious artisans in Bobo. I had a long conversation over my breakfast of rehydration salts this morning with two NGO workers, one French and one Malian-born Swiss, about their perspectives on working in the region--one of those impromptu things that makes travel that much more interesting.
I was able to hitch a ride downtown with them, and am now in the slickest internet cafe I've been in on this trip: it actually has flat-screen monitors and Windows XP. After lunch (now that I'm feeling better), I'll hit up the tourist information office down the street, and plan to head out sightseeing around downtown once the worst heat and crowded bustle of the day has passed. Tomorrow evening I leave on a two-day boat cruise on the river Niger, and I should be in touch again on the other end, in the port town of Mopti, on Thursday.
I hope everyone is well at home... I'm never sure how to sign off these posts without sounding like I'm trying to be a minor celebrity or a know-it-all, so I'm really looking forward to the chance to have actual conversations (rather than one-way presentations) about some of the stuff on this blog when I get back. A la prochaine.
posted by Emily @ 12:31 p.m.
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