Wild & woolly Ouagadougou

Ouagadougou. Pronounced waga-doo-goo, it is shortened to Ouaga for the initiated. As a name, it must rank among the most mellifluously conceived on the planet, up there with Timbuktu and Beaverton. It is, simply, fun to say. Ouagadougou. Where are you going? Ouagadougou. You contracted dysentery where? Ouagadougou.

As a city, Ouaga occupies a stretch of dusty plain on the central African plateau not too far from absolute nowhere. Already the first breath of the harmattan, the annual West African trade wind from the Sahara, has arrived. Many of the streets are either dirt or so covered with dust as to seem dirt, and this is forever being stirred in the air like an upturned snow globe. We take to calling it Ouagadusty.

Though employing a Los Angeles-like city planning approach, the center of town is surprisingly compact and easy to navigate. It revolves around the Grand Marche, a big block building that once housed the main market until it was gutted by fire in 2003 and is, like so much in the city, left to decay in its own good time.

Bicycles and motorcycles command the streets here, unlike in Ghana, where until one gets to the north you only rarely encounter a two-wheeler. Crossing the street at the busy Place des Nations Unies circle in Ouaga is a challenge and may be enough to have your health insurance suspended. How the vendors selling phone cards and napkins work the passing vehicles is a wonder on the order of those levitating Indian yogis.

Of the city generally there is a sort of derelict air. Everything is worn and weathered. It seems barely sustaining itself against the sun, the ravages of the dust and the general disinterest of its military dictatorship. As many of the 1 million population came from simple villages one questions if the city returning to a more primitive condition is not a perfectly acceptable outcome to them.

The sections that appear to have made the greatest attempt at modernity seem the roughest. Passing the old Palais de Justice, desks and chairs, as if tossed from the windows, lie here and there in the yard amid other debris and garbage. A man sleeps on a piece of discarded planking at the top of the steps.

But somehow the presence of French on signs and billboards adds a soupcon of character that cancels out some of the other. I can’t identify what it is exactly, but despite the general state of disrepair, the dust and monumental heat, I like Ouaga. But maybe it’s just the name.

(Picture: The Grand Mosquee in the central district of Ouaga)