For a few hours in the morning both Fidel and an uncle of Patrick’s was visiting Reciproka briefly. This brief visit was to see what the extent of flora was, that was gathered the previous day with Patrick, but then to allow for Patrick’s other uncle to see that he may need to get a few examples of flora from around his region. His uncle soon left for work, but with Fidel staying we soon worked out the exact necessities and the fact that Francouis needed an updated list for collection.
With Fidel staying for lunch and us being more relaxed, then not being able to stay any longer it was then soon after lunch time gave way for Patrick and I to leave to the ’suburb’ of ignorance (Ouaga 2000). On the journey over, him and I want to Francouis’ work. This was what got me more curious then ever. On many occasions I had been able to observe the people who had little vending ’stores’ along the road, but it was Francouis and his partner that were the first two people that I knew personally to be able to observe their working… functions. It was a fairly sad means of getting an income to sustain one’s family, but he was one overly positive person to be with. The harder thing to be a part of was Francouis’ ability to only speak Moore, not even my French abilities were able to tap into his stories of life. With Patrick being the speaking man, I wrote the precise list of essentials for examples to be gathered, that was yet to be grabbed from Patrick’s and my previous experience, and Patrick gave a little run down to Francouis.
This done, and a little bit of speaking to fill in the time, Patrick and I went about the main objective of the day. Wow, going past some reasonably lavish hotels I was able to take a lavish number of photos of total contrast to a good 95% of the country’s typical housing. Hah, it also seems the hot deal with embassies, and so on, was to move their structures to an oversized mansion in the midst of Ouaga 2000. This was causing me to get the jitters, this put to shame the structure of Hate’s, the last time I was in Ouaga 2000, during the storm, with the vastness of their size. Thinking that these embassies were an embarrassingly large size would only make one gasp when looking at the residence of the President of the country. Where a standard house in Ouaga 2000 would be three times larger then the standard Australian house, an embassy would be three to four times larger then the houses and the presidential house would be approximated to being about eight times larger then the largest of the embassies.
People were prohibited from being stagnant for too long on the isolated near 1km long road but after going past the welcome roundabout the poorer people began making appearances. Amongst sections of Ouaga 2000 poor people had established bases for their very unsuccessful businesses, either waving fans over cooking corn or waving their banners of prepaid phone cards and clothing ’sticks.’ With Patrick having an enormous appetite, he was already hungry enough to demolish a large head of corn and I joined him in a BBQ corn. Even though the corn looked a little burnt and derelict, the corn was pretty tasty. While munching this, I went about taking photos of the architecturally designed buildings, where some of the houses had a top to bottom window system and others had ivy climbing over one side of near windowless walls. One horrific richness emphasis was one cage that held a horse and several chickens, with the cage being barely enough to hold the horse itself, as well as only a bag worth of green grass being used as all the animals.
Imagine, this was the last vision I had of the insides of Ouaga 2000 I had. So, even though it was the designated rich zone, there were still hints of the true nature of the land’s lack of overall richness (caged horse, street workers, litter) But this view was a minor part of the true nature of, even, the city. As Patrick and I were going back to Reciproka we accidently too the wrong path from the normal route, to find ourselves in an area that wreaked of rotting rubbish, pollution and actually some pleasant smelling spices and meats being prepared along the roadsides. Even though the road had been covered in tarmac, the dirt that carried along the motorbikes was able to collect upon the merchants’ clothing on the side of the road, where colour had been depleted with the settling residue. With this in mind, it was my duty, upon arrival to Reciproka, to quickly write pages on my blog directly relating to my opinions of the divisions of Burkina Faso that I had experienced (Rural, city and high society)
The people at Reciproka (Donat, and some of his friends) noted the vast difference between their living and what they saw on my photos (Donat lived in a comfortable, yet still amidst the community). Patrick had now been in a slight conflict with Oua and even though he was unable to spend much time with me for the rest of the day, he had other things, beyond Oua, to tend to. It is actually from hereon that I think he did not spend time with Oua, and even neglected to respond her calls. I will forget to put the correct info in for the correct date (soon after today), but the reason for Oua’s change in nature was due to her being sick. Aah yea, it was Yvonne who had told me this tomorrow, at our… romantic meeting place.
