Vicuna's Travel Stories | On the Road in Burkina Faso

Traveling in Burkina Faso is quite an adventure and a fantastic photographic experience. I went to this fascinating African country at the Sahel border twice and used many different ways of transportation.

The first thing to know is that if you leave the capital city Ouagadougou, there are less and less roads. Instead, there mainly are tracks made of laterite, a soil very rich in aluminium and iron—thus, this very red color. The dust clouds made by the cars, buses, or trucks passing by are heavy and cover you very quickly (don’t expect your clothes to remain clean, and avoid white shirts), but give some very photogenic scenes to shoot.

Traveling by car is the most convenient way to get around. It allows you to capture some scenes that show you the essence of how the people go from one place to another in this country. It’s the movement, the speed, and a bit like the heartbeat of local life. People are always on the move, the tracks are never empty, and you meet a lot of people by bike, motorbike, or walking along the path. In the first shot above, I was sitting on the open back of a 4×4 car when I saw that we were about to overtake this couple transporting a bike while riding a motorbike. I just had a few seconds to decide when to press the shutter to capture the speed and dust, hoping it would be sharp enough. And it was!

Another way of transportation that allows you to literally feel the pulse and life of the country is through the bus. The first time I went to Burkina back in 2008, there where still some old American school buses in service. It was a very unique experience but only if you’re not too obsessed with security rules and perfect driving! The bus is much slower as it stops at every little village but this allows you to see that this is an important moment of the day as the locals sell things to eat and drink to the travelers, especially when there are some European tourists inside.

Driving with this speed on small tracks makes you fear that an accident can happen, of course, and one did happen with a herd of zebus! They were crossing the track very slowly, and the driver was honking loudly to make them get out of the way as he sped towards them but wasn’t stepping on the breaks. The zebus ran away but one of them was slower and… bam! The bus hit the zebu, which was projected to the side but apparently unharmed as it ran away after that. The bus driver and some passengers laughed out loud, and a few hundred meters later the bus stopped as well. Something was broken. Immediately a lot of people came around the bus, trying to repair the front that was damaged. After a surprisingly quick repair we moved on to the next village where the bus stopped for a more serious repair that took some hours. I talked to the driver and asked him why he didn’t stop before he hit the zebu. He simply answered that the brakes weren’t good enough to stop the bus at that speed.

After a long day of travel, we finally reached our destination and were relieved nothing more happened during this bus trip!

written by vicuna on 2015-07-21 #places #location #burkina-faso #regular-contributor #vicuna-travel-stories