But first, the view from my office window in Patte d'Oie (literally, "foot of the goose"), a neighborhood just across the bridge from the upscale and uberchic Ouaga 2000 district.) Often in the evenings, Ouagalais schoolboys gather and play soccer in the red clay field.
On the dusty avenue towards Ouaga 2000.
That modern turnabout thingy below -- I think it's a conference center of some sort.
The contemporary stucco houses.
The Sunset Boulevard palm fronds. Funnily enough, this place still isn't too chic to avoid the ubiquitous donkey carts or oxen ambling by.
Really, quite a sterile, loveless place. Half of the houses I passed were in the middle of being constructed -- large hulks of concrete and steel set at chic anges, electrical wires poking out.
The Sofitel (popularly known as Hotel Libya). I stepped inside, browsed the bookshop, and bypassed the French manicure salon. Nice, but it has all the makings of a terribly ugly and utiliarian structure on the outside.
The road I took leading to the turnabout was aptly named Muammar Quadaffi Boulevard. Burkina, it seems, maintains political ties with a number of supposedly rogue governments like Libya. Many countries will offer generous foreign aid in return for political recognition.
Burkina Faso is also one of the few remaining African countries to recognize Taiwan and not P.R. China, which is nonetheless attempting to lure Burkina into its camp through generous cotton subsidies. For the curious, the rest of pro-Taiwan Africa includes the relatively obscure and economically peripheral nations of the Gambia, Malawi, Swaziland, and Sao Tome & Principe.
Word on the street is that my district Zone du Bois was the Ouaga 2000 of old. Personally, I think it's much homier. For one, there's no outrageous presidential manson. I turn the corner and see roast chicken and goat brochette stands on the corners; tin-roofed convenience stores selling powered milk and Lucky Strike cigarettes; and brightly-clothed market women balancing enormous bowls of mangoes on their heads. People still say hello in passing. It's what I would call a neighborhood.
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