In Ouagadougou

Debby and I arrived here in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on Sunday, January 27th, in the late afternoon. We started the trip on Thursday at 11:30. It was a flight to Detroit then on to Amsterdam and finally arriving Friday evening in Accra, Ghana. No one met us at the airport, so we took a cab to the S.I.M. guesthouse.

Saturday morning we were up at 5 am to be at the bus station by 6 for our 7 am bus. No bus arrived. The 8 am bus didn’t show either. By 9 I was starting to look for something else. So off to another bus station and we found a bus going only as far as Kumassi – 1/3 the way – but it was something. Back at the first bus station, the bus showed at 10am so we got on that one and left by 11:15 for the 12 hour ride to Tamali, Ghana.

The seats were hard and some of the road was very, very bad. The bus didn’t have the promised a/c, but they refunded some money for that. We actually didn’t need the a/c because we are having a very strong “hamarttan.” This is a wind that blows down from the Northeast and kicks up a lot of dust. The wind is cool and the dust blocks the sun. In fact they have recorded record lows here. For us it is very funny to see the Africans in full winter dress, just because it gets down into the 70’s. But this year it got even lower down to 50 degrees. No a/c needed.

Sunday morning we were to get a taxi or bus on to Bolgatanga then a taxi to the border of Burkina. The taxi driver that picked us up at the hotel said he would take us all the way – yeah. So we paid him and in less than 4 hours we were at the border. Then an hour for processing out of Ghana and into Burkina. Then fight for a good price with the ‘Bush Taxi” – a very old Peugeot 505 wagon, and get in and go. In about 2 hours more we were in Ouagadougou. We made very good time! We stopped by a couple of banks to find a working ATM for international withdrawal, and got the local currency to pay the bush taxi and buy a few things, like bottled water.

Other than the bad start waiting for the bus to Tamali, Saturday morning, everything went pretty good. Thank you so much for praying for our travels.

There are always so many things to do to get ready to leave the US. Sorry I didn’t get anything up on the blog before we left – but I was so busy. Not only did I have to get Burkina visas for Deb and I, and a Benin visa for Deb, but we have 8 people coming over in a week and they needed Ghana and Benin visas. Doing the visas is a lot of work. Ghana, for an example requires 4 forms each hand written each with a photo. Most of the team did most of their paperwork, but we had to add some things to the forms, check them and write cover letters. Then you go to the post office and buy money orders and send it all by express mail with a prepaid return express mail envelope inside. Burkina raised their prices and was late and slow to send ours back, but when we got them we were pleasantly surprised to get 4 years visas instead of only 90 days. Yeah! Won’t have to do them again for a few years.


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Fred