Meeting Nico

What was I excited when I sat off to Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to meet Nico…

I left the house at 7:30 in search for a minibus that goes up north. Within an hour I had found a bus and personally was more than ready to leave, but well … here in Africa the bus leaves only when it’s fuller than full and this was only the case at 10:30. Though, even then my bus was not able to depart, as one lady passenger had decided to go to the market while waiting for departure and so we had to find her first. The ride was long with many stops on the way to unload and upload passengers, eat and pray. There was one part of the road north of Kara in a rather good condition and many other parts with amazing arrays of holes. Lovers of slalom would have had a great time; people suffering from motion sickness perhaps not. It was only about 18:00 when we arrived in Dapoang, my stop for the night.

At 6:15 the next morning the journey continued ... first an overcrowded taxi to Sinkasse (the border town) and then a moped taking me to the different control posts and the bus station. There I found rather quickly a minibus (the bigger quicker busses I had just missed, as the Burkina official took ages to process my visa request … ) and like usual I had to wait a while till departure. While waiting I was entertained by a drunk local, who just wouldn’t want to leave my side despite many attempts by employees of the bus station to convince him to go elsewhere. Eventually, the busses departure at 9:00 am saved me. The bus ride was a bit more comfortable than the day before, but also very long with many annoying stops…

At 16:00 I finally arrived at the Ouagadougou airport. Normally Nico’s plane was supposed to land at 15:40, so I would have been perfectly on time, but well the plane was late … and I had to wait an annoying 5 hours before Nico finally appeared…