Gate crashing a graduation party: Come Chop!

So yesterday, Opeyemi convinced me to accompany her and her young male cousin Tobi, to this graduation party in Thamesmead (London's answer to the Bronx, no kidding). It was her cousin's party, and from experience I know that there will always be in high drama in turning up at events that people hadn't invited you to. So I was initially slightly embarassed that we'd arrived too early, and were the first ones to get there, plus we'd all arrived hungry, with watering mouths. But alas someone, the 'graduand's' (very naija word) uncle, dropped the bombshell, of no show, no food. i.e. we had to wait for all the other obviously-naija-guests-who-have-a-habit-of-stylishly-arriving-late-to-everything to even smell the food. Na wa o! Plus the uncle's music was so old-school, that it only made my hunger more pronounced, and not even the small sausages and scotch eggs could pacify. Alternatively I could have drunk myself silly (with diet coke), but that would have defeated the point as I needed space in churning tummy for proper food. Fact was, there was a program to follow, plus opening prayer, and 'keynote' address, before we arrived at number 3 on the list DINNER!! But then, alas, I had to leave for rehearsals, and it didn't seem like we would ever get to the food. Even when we did, Opeyemi, silly girl, was rationning my take away portions, despite hinting that she should put more. I was sooooo upset, now I would have to eat cold food, mini-size, in a bumpy car ride on the way back to Vauxhall, plus the other guests and hosts would think I had only come to the 'graduand's' party to chop. Anyway sha, never again. Gate crashing doesn't always pay, and I am not quite sure how Opo managed to convince me. It's that stupid, baby look and baby voice she puts on when she's trying to be convincing or persuasive. Let's just hope that same look and voice it lands her a good guy.........as on the way to her house earlier on in the day, she kept, saying that I should interceede on her behalf for a decent guy.

Sahel Diaries III: Journey for Bobo to capital, Ouagadougou

27 April, 2008 – (4 hours approximately)
This time we set off from the Auberge hotel with Will Chen in the back seat. Wall was the Canadian-Chinese young missionary I had met, along with his 22yr-old pilot missionary friend, Caleb Ng, at the Auberge hotel in Bobo. Will slept through most the journey. There were scores of little villages, dotted along the tarred road between Bobo and Ouaga. The European Union (EU) had made sure to clearly advertised itself as the donor of the tarred road, which served both man and beast, car and bicycle. At times it did feel like we were the only ones travelling on the road, though we often came across the occasional broke down lorry or passenger bus. Some of the villages and towns we passed included Sabou, Bomboro, Ouezindougou, to name a few, most seemed to end with ‘ou’!!! Anyway our arrival into Ouaga was quite unspectacular. Further in, the city turned out be quite lovely, well planned and easy to navigate, and yet again in the middle of Jazz in Ouaga festival. How lucky could I get. It meant a week of music, music and more music!!

Pictures: Ouaga's answer to the Eiffel Tower, artistes on stage at the Jazz in Ouaga festival, local musicians at the Musée de la Musique in Ouaga.

Sahel Diaries II: Journey from Segou to Bobo Dioulasso

26 April 2008: Again, all of the road from Segou (Mali) to the Burkinabé town of Bobo on our journey was paved. During this stretch of the journey, there were quite a few road blocks. Whilst private vehicles like ours were let through, commercial ones had to pay their way through. We drove over an interesting little bridge known as Bani, again over the River Niger, though this portion of the River was thin on water, clearly frying up in the scorching heat. Although this part of Mali isn’t that far up north, you could already see that it was the transition to the Sahel, due to the extremely dry and scorched brown earth and withering trees. Even the cattle, donkeys, and goats seemed to suffer under the weight of the Sahelian sun and most looked starved, barely able to walk. We came close to hitting animals on the road quite a few times, they didn’t seem to jump or budge at the sight or sound of vehicles.

About an hour and a half into our journey, we reached the border town of Koutiala, and then Kouri, where we came to a police border post. I got my passport stamped by a nice, unassuming border police man. The driver, Keita, said we also had to stop at the next post about 100 metres up, the gendarmerie – the driver had earlier warned me, perhaps quite unfairly that ‘les Burkinabés peuvent etre un peu compliqués’ (Burkinabés can be a bit complicated), and that if any demands for money came up, I should let him do the negotiations. Hugh the cheek, like I was incapable, no seriously, guess he was right, as I wouldn't have known where to start. Luckily it was a smooth passage, relatively. We had to pay CFA5,000 at the customs post another 500metres or so up the road, and about 30mins afterwards, yippee, we came across a Celtel billboard, saying ‘Bienvenue a Burkina Faso'.

The terrain and trees had already started turning noticeable greener and lusher, once we've crossed over into Burkina Faso and we came across a very green field (not greenfield as in mining/geological terminology), rice field, apparently, which could have fit right into the English country side.

When we entered Bobo, it wasn’t spectacular, actually a lot less exciting than I had expected (thanks to the frequent exxagerations of Lonely Planet (West Africa)). Anwyay we wandered around aimelessly -Keita didn't know how exactly to get to the hotel - for about 30mins before locating the Auberge, which wasn’t spectacular either, but seemed to be about the best hotel in town frankly. I was just glad to have a place to lie and put my head. At least I was in Africa.

Places to go: Musée Provencale, Bobo D, shown in my picture above

Journey time: 4.5hours

In the heat in Dubai

Too much gloss and glamour, too little character sums up my impression of Dubai during my short 2 -day business trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the end of June. Everything was flash, the cars, buildings, the houses! But I couldn't help wondering what was behind all that. I'm always keen to find out the true life and real character of a city, town or country when I vist, business or pleasure, but I couldn't help wondering whether that was all there was to the much touted Dubai. Granted, it's good for shopping. Infact you don't even have to wander far from Dubai international airport to purchase enough clothes, food and jewellry for a year, but I was just waiting for some presenter to come and pull back the curtains on the canvas of high rise concrete and space-touching buildings to reveal the Dubai we never see. However, the truth is, it seems there's no such thing as the Dubai you never see! It's all there, what you see is what you get....I admit 2 days isn't exactly the longest period to gather as much knowledge and local-feel on a city, but that was the other problem, there was no local-feel. Of course there were indigenous Emiratis, who along the Western expat community formed much of the middle-class, but the next tier down was the hundreds of South Asian and Oriental workers on construction sites and in the service industries (hotels, restaurants etc.). Didn't see a single black soul outside of Dubai Airport - which incidentally must have single most diverse airport transit section - any race, nationality etc that you could possibly think of on this earth - in the entire world was there. Seriously.

Dubai wasn't really my cup of tea, but I will take my lovely mum's advice to go back and stay in one of the beach hotels and do the desert ride, oh and there's the indoor ski slope in a shopping mall or the gold souk, or.......... (yawn...)