What is it like there?

I was thinking about that question as I took a taxi home from our meeting this afternoon. Let me try to describe a typical taxi ride.

At the corner of the market, next to the lady where I often buy my fruit (right now, papayas, grapefruit, avocado, pineapple) I can often find a taxi. The corner has lots of people around, and across the street is a moto parkade – more motos than I’d ever seen in one place, neatly placed one against the next. It costs 50CFA (10 cents) to park your moto in the lots. Also in front of the market is one of very many plastic bucket sellers. I’m not sure why, but many corners have a woman with a large array of brightly coloured plastic buckets, and occasionally other things like jugs, baskets and garbage cans. The taxis are all painted green, and almost all are in dreadful condition… often, you can either open the door from the outside or the inside – but rarely both. And the inside handle is often a twisted piece of wire. The windows are stuck where they are (so if it rains, you get wet). The upholstery has a general red tinge from the dust. The car often sounds and looks as if its on its last legs (they all do). I pile in, with a number of other people and head off. Sometimes, there’s two people in the front bucket seat, and up to 4 in the back. (These are small cars!)

The main roads downtown are paved, but on the edges the pavement breaks. There’s no sidewalks, just red dust. Even downtown the smaller roads are unpaved. As we head for the first rond-point (traffic circle), we pass many men with sticks displaying cell phone recharge cards, 2 or 3 on every block. We may pass the pillow salesman, walking down the road with a stack of 4 pillows on his head, and two hanging from each arm. Or the bag salesmen, with 10 different backpacks or sports bags hanging from them. Or one of the dozens of women with a large tin bowl or platter balanced on her head, containing bananas or papayas or something else. We also will pass the beggars, there’s a family on each of several corners; the kids dressed in fancy dresses (that surely came from the clothing donations that are packaged and sent to Africa in 1-ton cubes) with small plastic bowls and sad eyes. We will also see a number of 10-12 year old boys with boxes balanced on their heads, containing travel-sized packages of Kleenex, or toothbrushes, or some other random thing. We will pass several “telecentres” which are Burkina’s answer to public phones – they’re private businesses that let you make a phone call for a fee. There are always a group of 6 or 7 men hanging around the foosball table that’s on one corner.

Past the rond-point, we’ve now left the “urban” area and get to the “suburbs”. Now we pass more women carrying loads of fruit or wood, or other packages on their head. At least 2/3 of them have a baby strapped to their back, almost always sleeping or quietly looking around (never crying or fussing). We will pass on each corner a woman sitting on a stool in front of a little charcoal burner that has ears of corn being roasted, or sometimes plantains. There is a plethora of plywood stalls, sometimes just a bench with a sunshade, sometimes a small building; they sell fruit or eggs or sometimes drinks.

The taxi turns to the right, off the paved road and into the “quartier populaire,” either Balomakote or Sarfalo – the first time this happened, I just about had a heart attack. Now I know that 80% of the taxi’s I take will swing through one of the neighbourhoods bordering my own. The pavement ends, 5 meters from the main road, and the road becomes a rutted obstacle course, with huge grooves carved by the rainfall, and goats (many goats), and occasionally donkeys, cows and rarely pigs. There are small children everywhere, often wearing a t-shirt & underwear and nothing else. The houses are all made of red mud brick and some look quite tidy but many appear as if they are about to fall down. There are markets out there too, but rather than the stalls of the Grand Marché, there are plywood benches with a roof, each with a scanty pile of tomatoes, or peanuts, or peppers. We pass people collecting water from a communal tap, some with oil drums on wheels (I think those are small businesses that then deliver water to homes & businesses), some by girls and sometimes boys with buckets or large bowls that then get hoisted onto the head and gingerly walked home. On several corners we pass what are effectively garbage dumps, in the middle of the road; there is often someone picking through to find any recyclable, and often an animal or two rooting around in there as well. Sometimes we’ll pass some bigger girls carrying firewood on their heads, and a smaller sibling walks behind with one small thing, learning to balance it on his or her head. The kids stare at me peering out of the taxi and yell “toubabu, toubabu” and I smile & wave and they get a huge kick out of that. Eventually, we drop off the other passengers and continue back on the paved road towards my house.

At my corner, we turn to the left, down a street that almost never sees taxis (people who live on this street own cars, except me!)… despite the fact that its one of the fancier neighbourhoods, the roads are just as rutted but there’s little garbage around. And instead of mud brick houses, the streets are lined with the walls of the homes, each with a metal gate and a driveway for the car. There are trees & shrubs along the sides, and it is green, much greener than the neighborhood we’ve just left. And in comparison, there is hardly anyone about, just a guard sitting board in front of each door, and a couple kids running around. And then, I walk into my house (which is as big as 6 houses in Sarfalo), with the refrigerator running, and turn on my fan and lights, pull out my computer or my books, and look at my garden. My home existence is so very privileged. Even though I have few “toys”, no TV, or stereo, and only a few books, and my house is sparsely furnished, its hot running water, fridge, stove and air conditioners are still unimaginable luxury compared to how the vast majority of Burkinabé live.