Toma -> Pô -> Ouagadougou -> Bobo -> Sindou -> Ouagadougou -> Togo -> Ouagadougou -> Yako -> Toma
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Pô
“Hey kid, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Good well then come help me.”
Suddenly the task of cleaning the computer lab seemed a lot less daunting with six student helpers. The place was so full of dust and so poorly organized that I had really wanted to just clean everything out of it right away but I didn’t think I could do it alone and Neal was in a meeting for the next several hours. I knew that the students at my school would leap at the chance to work in our computer lab and evidently it was the same here.
The lab had all of the essentials of a lab, computers, fans, electricity, as well as some perks, windowed glass and an air conditioner. Unfortunately the air conditioner hadn’t been working for some time and the glass windows were pinned open by some computers, resulting in a nice pile-up of dust. I put my small army to work, taking first chairs and tables, followed by cables, monitors and towers. Then came the least fun part – sweeping.
The room was covered in almost a centimeter of dust in some places. Being in the room while it is being swept out is like getting a really bad seat on transport on a really dusty part of the road – you don’t quite end up as red as you do after transport but you feel like you do. I send three unhappy kids in armed with ‘village’ brooms – a bunch of grass or straw tied at the bottom with a cord. Sweeping the household is traditionally part of girls’ daily chores so I had chosen three boys to do the first round. I opened the windows and turned up the fans, hoping to get them some clean airflow and let them go to work. A giant dust-cloud and a few minutes later and the lab looked much better. One more thorough sweep and it almost looked like new.
By the next morning everything was back in the lab, sorted according to operability and I was madly dashing from computer to computer starting installs, entering details, testing CD drives and swapping hardware. Somehow the two days I had allotted myself to finish with the lab had slipped away under the mountain of small tasks and now I was working all out – something I really hadn’t done much of since my last big programming assignment was turned in two weeks before graduation. It was exhilarating and the teacher who came in and out the lab didn’t really know what to think of Neal and me running around crazily. And then it was time to go – I had a bus to catch.
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Ouagadougou
The next morning I was most definitely not catching the bus I promised myself I would wake up for. In fact I wasn’t doing much of anything besides feeling the effects of last night. Besides a massive hangover I had some scrapes from a late-night run in with the pavement on the way back. I struggled out of bed and forced down a liter of water before plopping right back down. I repeated this a couple times before I felt I up to the eight-hour bus ride to the other side of the country. By this time it was lunch, and after learning the next bus out of town left at 2pm, I decided to stay for delivery. After a delicious BLT and equally good grilled cheese with bacon and tomatoes I had my stuff packed out and was heading out the door. I had thirty minutes to get across town but I wasn’t too worried – buses down make a habit of leaving earlier than five minutes to five hours after they are supposed to.
Still I was quite happy to see the taxi pull up that was dropping off some other volunteers. After explaining that I was a little short for time the taxi driver was off on a shortcut to the station, only stopping once to pick up someone headed the same direction. We pulled at 2:00 on the nose. The bus was doing the ritual last minute get-on-the-bus-we’re-leaving honking and I jumped out the taxi waving them down.
Up until this point I’d never met someone running any sort of transport in Burkina that wouldn’t at least try and squeeze one more passenger on. As the bus pulled out of the station after some yelling for me to get out of the way I was shocked. Despite the two-hour wait for the next bus I was overall very impressed by the bus company, Rakieta. They stick to their schedules like clock-work, their buses were cleaner than most I’ve taken in the states, they were comfortable and best off all had air conditioning! These were all firsts for me.
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More to come later but I wanted to get this first part up because it’s been forever and a day since I posted something!
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