29. 12. Ouagadougou pass through

Feeling real bad in the morning. In Ouagadougou we were looking for a camping site mentioned in our travelling guide. After a long time searching, a moped driver led us to a huge, empty space. The buildings there had no roof, and the owner apologized for having neither water nor electricity. The site was actually closed down.

I insisted for immediate truck repair, and the owner of the camping site brought us to a place around the corner, where they fixed the hole in the exhaust within half an hour for almost no money.

Then internet café and phone, linking with our Ouagadougou contact Günther, a Viennese who works there for UNESCO. Stefan and I had met his wife Petra in Ruanda last year. My beloved colleague Mihael Milunovic was also supposed to be in Ouaga, but I was too weak to do anything. At the end Manuel and Stefan insisted to continue for Benin, and it had some logic: the rest of our Trash on Tour team, Joachim Hainzl and Maryam Mohammadi were waiting for us in Cotonou, Benin on December 31^st, and Manuel wanted to be there for his girl friend to celebrate New Year´s Eve together. Good reasons, but the very bad feeling to skip an interesting country.

People here behaved really different from Mali. Nobody asked for money or presents, taking photos was no big deal. The country is even poorer, but there is a well-paved street (called “highway”) running through, most of the people seemed to have bicycles, we saw many green fields…

At night we stopped near a village and asked a farmer, if we could stay on his land.