More market pictures

The black spots are flies




















No idea what this man is doing, or what his job is











































































Notice the praying area in the background













Men playing mancala. That face on the shirt is the president.

more random pics

our ducky pool thermometer
a London cab

in OUAGADOUGOU!! think of the tip you'd have to give!


Traffic lights took a bit of getting used to here. As you can see there are three red lights

Now the traffic on the road has green, i.e. the cars, taxis, motorbikes over a certain cc, donkeys, handcarts etc, while the bikes and mopeds have red still.

these lights are quite clear to see, but often the angles are off slightly, or there are bulbs out. Everyone ignores these anyway - whichever part of the road they use.

Sh*t wine

Random photo in the shop.

I wonder why this wine tastes like sh*t.

Chez Haregua

aka the Ethiopian restaurant

I went here a few weeks ago with the ladies from yoga, and promised to take Lon one day. He was rather apprehensive, since we tried Ethiopian food in the Hague years ago, and the dishes were so highly spiced as to be almost inedible, and the injera resembled a wet dishcloth and was incredibly sour.


Chez Haregua isn't like that, and the food was mildly spiced, delicious - and to my untrained palate many of the dishes wouldn't have been out of place on an Indian thali plate (in India rather than a restaurant), and the injera though a little sour was very edible. We went for the assortiment plate, with lentil, vegetable, and meat dishes - all except one were really yummy (one tasted like mustard). In order to find out which ones were our favourites to order in the future we got a run down from the waiter, and I was a bit perturbed to find out the one we had identified as meat - not sure what but its OK was tripe.
this is the aftermath...we got too excited and forgot to take a before pic...

Info on Ethiopian cuisine can be found here and here

Gringos pool hall

New place opened up nearby, and of course we had to go and check it out

Its new and so still clean pool hall with 6 or so tables - these are recently reconditioned so still pretty flat and smooth running - at 500CFA a game, it made a nice way to spend an hour or so



though much more than an hour could have driven me to distraction due to the Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, and Andy Williams country songs playing on the PA!

Fieldvisit Gaoua

I went with my colleague on a field visit to check the results of the 'Fond Commun Genre'. The Dutch Embassy is one of the sponsors of this UNDPA run fund. This fund finances small projects to create more equality between the sexes. This is a.o. done by educating men and women at the same time in a subject, for example a 'leadership training' or 'water resource training'. This way the men do not feel they are getting emancipated, but in fact they are a little bit. The women get a bit more selfrespect and a bit more courage to speak up (against their husbands and society as a whole).















An example of a meeting room, as guests we got to sit on the slightly more comfortable chairs behind the bureau.

These field trips are tiring, you travel and sit in meeting rooms in the heat, speaking french. However a fieldvisit says more then hundreds of reports. For example we noted that in the water project women were involved, but not given any key positions nor did they realy have anything to say. In other words the fund was well spent, but on water maintenance and not on genre education.















A water pump managed by a team trained by the programme.

Small things we as westerners don't think about. This little waterpump needs a committee to make sure it is maintained, people come literally for miles to this pump.

The landscape in the south-west was more hilly and a bit greener, therefore more beautiful then other parts of Burkina. For those interested look at a map for Gaoua, this waterpump was more to the west near the border with Ghana in the middle of nowhere.




















Just to show I wasn't wasting taxpayers money. Here is where I stayed. 5.000 CFA (7,50 euro) a night. We didn't smoke cigars, eat caviar and drink champagne. In fact there were no vegatables, fish and even the coca cola was finished, 'this is Gaoua' was the cool factual respons of our waiter. So I had rice with peanut sauce and spagetti bolognaise: simple but nice.

Rock a Ouaga

Fridaynight we went rocking. The fourth edition of Rock a Ouaga.
We were impressed by Jacob Salem Kuilibila. It was not the standard african music, it really could be classified as rock, with good guitar music.














It was a mixed public and a nice atmosphere. We liked the man with the tall hat to the right in the photo. The hat of the man in the middle of the photo looked just like a bag. The hairstyles here are more interesting than in Rwanda, where men all seem to have short shaven heads.

Mouma Bob was less impressive, but because of his name and clothing we just needed to see him.

Not live pic of Bob - they didn't come out :(

So Saturday we went again. When we arrived the first band was just finishing. The organisation choose The Beatles as a theme for this edition and asked every band to do a Beatle song. Oon the first night we heard Let it be, and this band also choose Let it be. We were hoping not to hear anything like this again, so not a good start. The music was recognisable, but the lyrics sounded nothing like english: Speaking worse of wissum. So we were thinking: Please, let it be!
The second singer, Kontomé, had a nice voice, but was a bit too middle of the road for us. We did not come to listen to Rod Steward.

The best of the evening was Eugène Kounker, this guitar virtuoso played well. The only criticism that you could have is that english is not his mother tongue and therefor he sometimes struggles with the lyrics.
http://www.myspace.com/eugenekounker

Tam tam

Restaurant review no. 2

last night we tried Tam Tam, a restaurant on the FESPACO road, which specialises in Austrian food - though of course its a bit cross borders

they have a better salad menu than usual, and typical steak, brochettes etc, but as well as that they have various kinds of sausages and meatloaf / fleischkaese

Lon opted for cordon bleu and potato croquettes

while I opted for the only available on Friday and Saturdays specialty of pork knuckle, sauerkraut and garlic potato option

Great apres ski food - not sure how Burkina appropriate it is, but it was good enough and made a nice change

Random pics

Just some pictures















Such a waste.
















Someone visiting, just park here.















Local Mac.




















Hats on their way to ...?


















In front of the embassy. The man in the top left corner sells phone credit, the stick is to show which ones he sells, and advertise the fact that he is selling.


















Locally made footballtables. An area with handicraft men, they make all sorts of things out of metal and wood. A lot is recicled as well.

Fruit

Often when I cycle back from work I buy my bananas at the man with the banana cart.































Little fruit stalls like this are common.




















And of course there is the market.

We felt brave and got some strange food yesterday.
















This brainlike fruit tastes ok, but every little brainpiece has a pit and it is near impossible to get the flesh of. We discovered that it is possible to bash it in some water and make a kind of lemonade.

We found this blog on the 'Weeda'

http://365project.org/miranda/365/2011-03-28
















The red things look like small grapes, they have a pit and taste rather bitter, not to my taste.





















We still don't know what these are, you meant to eat them as they are. They sell them in small piles, as you can see.

Jazz a Ouaga

Thursday night we managed to get out and see some acts which were on as part of 2011 Jazz a Ouaga

this time instead of going to the French Cultural Centre in the middle of town we went to the Jardin de la Musique Reemdoogo which is in a sector called Goughin, it turns out its a purpose built music venue - very cool!



we saw Yakomin - an instrumental group from Côte d’Ivoire

Sissao a Burkinabe diva

luckily for us, neither act could really be described as Jazz. We were also lucky to witness our friend Ronald proposing onstage to his girlfriend.

Stormy weather

Last Saturday we were treated to an incredibly impressive thunderstorm. Although we had some extreme rain in Kigali, the surrounding hills kept most thunderstorms at bay. There are no hills here and last weeks storm came towards us and broke over the house, it lasted over an hour, first the rain and the lightning in the distance, then the lightning and thunder with no rain.

Sorry for the quality of the vids, but it was after midnight hence the blackness!

Petit Dakar

Went to Petit Dakar last night


Senegalese food in Ouaga. Happy tummies.

we had
Ceebu yapp with beef - a lightly spicy fried rice dish with finely diced veg which reminded me of an Indian biriyani, and cremated beef chunks

and
Thiou a la viande - a beef stew in a tomatey sauce and whole vegetables served with white rice

we ended up swapping as we each preferred the others dish.

Excellent value at 3,000 cfa (4.50 euros) each. We'll be happy to take any visitors there if you come! For those who want to experience something similar at home look here for recipes