For the past 5 days, since I arrived in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Francesca and I have been putting 12+ work hour days formatting, entering and comprising the massive collection of observations we recorded for the past 6 weeks in norther Ghana.
Arriving in what was a french colony up to 1960 and one of the poorest countries in Africa was quite an adventure. Crossing the border at Paga, in Ghana, we almost got left by the bus that was taking us to Ouagadougou, since we had to request a 200 dolar visa at the immigration site in Posa -I believe it was- with our improving but deleterious french. After having called for an exchange guy, who by the way took for himself a handsome commission, we changed our dollars to CFA to pay the extraordinary fee to the officers before having to fill out an extensive for in french. All this with the assistant for the bus driver telling us to hurry up. Running out of immigration and running across the border, like mexicans trying to get into the U.S, to find our bus with our bags on the roof, we managed to find the bus driver in a corner cursing into the air. We managed to pronounce pardon and came into the bus expecting further insults from our dear passengers. They found the whole situation hilarious and we were able to laugh it out with them. Looking back at it we should have taking the offer from our carry-bag helper in Ghana, where he proposed an exchange where he would take is illegally into Burkina for 100 dollars.
In a brief connotation of our experience, Lucas managed to open up a box of sangria and toasted the bad experience. We laughed out loud and enjoyed the 5 hr bumpy rainy ride into Ouaga. Our highlight of the day came when our Professor took us out for a welcoming dinner to Paradisio where I ate my first complete meal in 7 weeks, a whole pizza.
What was to come during the next week wasn't a presentation to Burkina society and couture but a submersion into the world of numbers and programming.
To be continued...
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