At the bus station were about a dozen men sleeping on the bench seats in the open waiting room. Some got up and washed themselves in readiness to pray in the prayer room off to one side of the waiting room. Others got up to use the pit toilets that we could smell everytime the doors opened and closed. One Muslim man gave us a loaf of bread to eat but we had bought some buns and cakes at a patisserie the day before so we had food for breakfast, but it was very kind of him to think of us. Sometimes those with the least have the most to give.
We realised why it was so dark...there was an hour's difference between Benin and Burkino Faso and had to turn our watch an hour forward!
The bus was huge with three seats on one side and two on the other with about 70 people altogether. We passed through lots of poor villages and the driver had to toot often to get the bicycle riders to move off the narrow sealed road and he also had to weave around donkey carts carrying goods. We saw a couple of squashed sheep on the road that didn't take any notice of a driver's horn. The goats, however, seem to be much smarter than the sheep and so manage to escape getting run over.
There are lots and lots of mopeds, that are peddled to start them, as well as motorbikes on the roads. A lot more than I would have thought there would be in a country as poor as Burkina Faso. In 2008, the UN ranked it 173rd out of 179 countries across a number of quality-of-life indicators, ranging from income and life expectancy. Half the population survives on less than US$1 per day. There seem to be very few private vehicles on the road.
When we arrived near the city centre and the bus station we saw huge black smoke clouds and a street was closed with military jeeps. We had to back up and find an alternative route to the depot.
Fortunately, we had a very short walk to the hotel. We chose it because it was close to the bus station and the city centre. One of the taxi drivers outside the depot tried to tell us the road to the hotel was closed by the military, while two others told us the direction we needed to go.
There was a nice courtyard with trees in the middle of the hotel with a thatched restaurant and bar. Our room had a double bed and a single bed with mosquito nets, a fan and an ensuite. Once we had settled in we chatted to a couple of the guests.
We met an English guy who had ridden his motorbike from Morocco. He found it pretty hard going and wanted to go to Ghana and ship his bike home from there. We had to explain the crazy Ghanaian visa rules to him as he had not done his research before setting out. Basically, if you have an embassy in your country you must get a visa there as embassies in foreign countries can only issue visas to their nationals and no visas are issued at the borders other than the airport. He was going to try to bribe his way in so we wished him good luck!
Later we met Sarah, a Danish lass. She had come to Ouagadougou to do some volunteering in a Catholic orphanage. From her we learnt that they had had a lot of soldiers in the streets outside the hotel and they were shooting for two days. On the Friday night the staff in the hotel turned all the lights out about 11 o'clock so everyone who was chatting headed for bed. She went to her room and started sorting out her gear. Ten minutes later she heard someone bashing on her door and telling her to open up. Her first thought was that it was the staff coming to tell her to hide from the soldiers. Unfortunately, when she opened her door there were eight or so armed soldiers there. They wanted money and she gave them the US$400 she had in both local currency and American dollars. They also took her camera, computer and telephone. At one stage she ran away from them and towards the office, screaming for help. All the staff had hidden and no one helped her. The soldiers grabbed her around the neck and took her back to her room where they left her.
The hotel courtyardThey moved onto the Canadian guy who was next door to her and she saw them hold him up against the wall with a huge gun. They took the same things from him and then went to the office to take money and a computer from there. The guy gave the soldiers what they wanted and after a short time decided to approach the soldiers to get his computer back. He offered them his credit card and pin number in exchange for the computer. The soldiers agreed to this and left.
Later we read a news report that the soldiers had ransacked shops, robbed guests in other more expensive hotels, and hijacked private cars they encountered in the city.
As we had arrived in the afternoon Sarah told us that all the other guests in the hotel had left. The man who was held up, cut short his three month trip, and flew to Europe. The motorcyclist headed for Togo and the Ghanaian border. Sarah decided to stay and spent the next night in a German man's room and then he left the next day. She decided that she would stay on and do the volunteering that she wanted to do, so she spent two nights in our room.
We later learnt that the smoke we saw was from the fire that the street traders had lit at the governing Political Party Headquarters.They did this in retaliation for looting by the soldiers. The city was on a curfew so we were not able to go out after 6pm. We only heard guns being fired three times on our first night and nothing after that. We had free wi-fi so we were able to read news reports from the BBC website and the French 24hr site. We were extremely disappointed with the management of the hotel who didn't communicate any advice or even inform of of the curfew!
We hid our valuable things in our room and pretty much stayed indoors the whole time. One morning the restaurant had the menu out for breakfast and when we ordered it the waitress told us they didn't have any food because the market was closed. We could tell by the mototrbikes and trucks in the street that things were returning to normal so ventured out to find some baguettes for breakfast. We did have some muesli and powdered milk with us but decided to keep it in case we were not able to get out of the hotel for a few days.
Apparently, the unrest began in Fada when students protested about the rising prices of sugar, rice (which comes from Myanmar and Thailand), milk powder, and cooking oil. Later the presidential guards went on the rampage as they had not got the rise in their housing subsidies that they were promised. After this the rest of the soldiers joined in. We read of the unrest spreading to other cities around the capital and the president sacked the chief of the army and dissolved the government.
We never felt scared and just did all we could in the situation to keep ourselves and our valuables safe. We kept a little money out and our travellers' cheques, which we knew they couldn't use but would be a way of showing that we didn't have any money as we hadn't been to the bank. John has two passports so hid one. We have a wallet with old notes from Bolivia, Costa Rica and a few other foreign locations that look impressive with their number of zeros but are worthless.
We had to get a visa for Mali and John was able to do that with a local guy who took him by motorbike to the embassy. Normally the visa takes a day but they gave it to him on the spot. John saw lots of shops that were empty and locked up. He thought that the owners had taken their stock away. We saw a few smashed windows where the soldiers had looted. Petrol is usually 1000 CFA ( NZ$3 ) a litre and the soldiers took over the petrol stations and charged 2000 CFA a litre, keeping the extra for themselves.
One day the police came to the hotel as the owner reported his losses. Sarah gave the police her statement and was told it was on the list along with hundreds of others so she will have a long time before she can get a report and make an insurance claim for her stuff.
We use the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree Forum and were pleassed we were able to leave some updates on the site for other travellers planning on visiting Burkina Faso.
Once the market opened and we had our Mali visa we headed away with this being the only photo of the sights in the city that we managed to take, and it was taken from the window of a ricketty very unsafe taxi on our way to the bus station!
