Beware the Taximan

A Ouagadougou traffic jam.
Photo: Emily Babin



Some sculpture at FESPACO.
Photo: Emily Babin



If your first impression of Ouagadougou, capital city of Burkina Faso, is the taximen, you are liable to come away prejudiced against the place from the start. Perhaps you’ve seen the Amazing Race, when two competitors paid 4000 CFA for a ride from the airport to the train station. Eight dollars might not seem like a lot for a taxi ride, but if you hailed down a cab on the street, you could get to the station, which is not far, for 200 CFA per person. The taxis at the airport have several advantages working in their favor, though. First, they’re dealing with people fresh off the airplane, who may not be familiar with local prices, and are probably used to paying far more for taxis in western cities. Also, they have a bit of a monopoly. Although within easy walking distance of downtown, the airport is surrounded by a few hundred meters of empty space, which you probably don’t want to carry luggage across, and certainly not at night, if you value your belongings. So the taximen know you’re stuck with them, and even the most seasoned negotiator isn’t getting a ride to anywhere from the airport for less than 1500 CFA, at the absolute minimum.

Coming into town on a bus isn’t quite as bad but you still aren’t going to get a fair price at the bus station; better to walk a few feet down the road and hail a cab already on route. Taxis are not private here, and you may end up sharing with three, four, six people, anyone the driver can find heading in roughly the same direction. There are no meters but the prices are standard, 200 CFA per person for shorter distances, increasing incrementally if you want to go all the way across town. Armed with this information, never discuss the price if you hail a cab off the street. Just get in and go and the driver will respect that you know what you’re doing. Otherwise, sensing a naive foreigner, they will demand wildly inflated prices, and become irate at refusal to pay. It has been known to get violent.

Crooked taximen aren’t the only annoyance that awaits in Ouaga, which, by the way, is pronounced “Wagadougou,” not “Oogadougou” as some have been known to err. As far as big cities go, it’s pretty safe. There are occasional purse snatchings and robberies at knife point, but following a few common sense precautions and avoiding certain areas at night, like the vacant lot outside the airport, should keep you out of trouble. There is little you can do, however, to stay out of the clutches of the faux types. Faux types, literally, “fake people,” are the guys who approach you out of nowhere, especially in areas that tourists tend to congregate like the central market. They say, “My friend, I want to talk to you.” Don’t be fooled. One way or another, they’re after money, whether through pick pocketing, a clever scam, or selling overpriced artisan crafts. The best strategy, I’ve found, is other than a slight shake of the head, to ignore these people entirely. It feels a bit odd at first to ignore someone actively seeking your attention from a few feet away, but any acknowledgment at all, even a no thank you, will only encourage them. They will walk with you for blocks, trying various techniques: “Come look at my art, it will only take a minute,” “Do you remember me? We hung out last week,” “I’m a refugee from Liberia and I need money to get back home.” Sometimes, these lines failing, they resort to provocation: “What, you won’t talk to a black man?!? Racist! Racist!” Never mind, he too will eventually drift off, in search of an easier mark.

The seamy side of the city was captured well one of the first nights I was there. A group of volunteers was sitting outside at a bar on Kwame Nkrumah, a street named after the intellectual, revolutionary agitator, and first president of Ghana, an African hero who was deposed nine years after independence in reaction to autocratic rule. The road is lined with clubs and restaurants and is popular with expatriates and wealthy Burkinabe. Naturally, we attracted a small gathering of salespeople, selling belts, CDs, trinkets, anything and everything that might be attractive to tourists. The turbaned Tuaregs walking around with four foot scimitars are a bit intimidating, but they too are just looking for a sale. As the night progressed, however, the crowd grew and took on a sinister air, no longer making sales pitches but pressing ever closer, closer, until the point when we dove in the taxi to leave and were physically slapping hands away from our pockets and purses.

Once you figure out how to navigate the faux types and evil taximen, Ouaga can be nice place to spend a few days. The food is the primary draw- there are many kind of restaurants, Lebanese, Italian, Chinese, Indian, etc. Finally you can satisfy your dreams of pizza, cheeseburger, ice cream, lamb vindaloo, whatever cravings you’ve been having in village. You can go to concerts, soccer games, or go swimming and watch the Olympics at the US embassy.

As well as serving as a destination for hungry Peace Corps volunteers, Ouaga is also the host of several international festivals, notably, SIAO (Salon International de l'Artisanat de Ouagadougou)and FESPACO (Festival Panafricain du Cinéma et de la Télévision de Ouagadougou), held biannually on alternating years. SIAO is a vibrant artisan festival, and artists come from all over the continent, with booths offering any kind of craft imaginable, Nigerian silver, Algerian rugs, masks, traditional clothing, higher quality versions of the junk people sell on the street. FESPACO is a film festival, the largest in Africa, a week’s worth of movies, both locally and foreign produced, by and/or about Africa. The 2007 edition featured, for example, among many others, a Tunisian documentary about a man making garden art from debris washed up on the beach, a Guinean film about two young men trying to escape poverty and emigrate to Europe, and the American blockbuster Blood Diamond. It may not be as famous as its European counterparts, but FESPACO still attracts crowds of viewers, tourists, and movie buffs from around the world, as well as the accompanying faux types and pickpockets that pray on the unsuspecting.

With about 1.2 million inhabitants, Ouaga certainly has a large population living in poverty, in densely packed houses down dirty alleys. However, it has yet to attract the huge number of destitutes in sprawling, filthy slum towns that other large African cities are famous for, such as Nairobi and Johannesburg. Nonetheless the duality of rich and poor is striking. While driving past towering hotels and fancy round-points that dot the city, commemorating famous dates and institutions, you are solicited by beggars at the stoplights. Boys selling phone cards dart in between cars, gesturing and waving their sign boards, seeking your attention. “Go play in traffic,” you want to tell them, but . . .

Another interesting aspect is the lack of cars. Traffic can be heavy, especially in the morning and evening, but nothing near the mass of rush hour cars in any other big city in the world. Aside from the ubiquitous white NGO SUVs, the vast majority of commuters go by bike or motorcycle, crowding the roads five abreast. This is a matter of financial necessity, not conscientious choice, but it makes for far more pleasant commuting and is perhaps a good example for the rest of us.

Ouaga is forever trying to spruce up its image. Large tracts of housing downtown have been bulldozed to make way for a new commercial center. And then there is Ouaga 2000, a planned community ostensibly for mixed socioeconomic levels but in reality an exclusive zone for the rich. The minimum house size requirement and price for a tract of land precludes all but the most successful merchants, government ministers, and foreign heads of state from building there. The presidential palace and American Embassy, as well, are moving there from their convenient downtown locations. The neighborhood is not complete, and in fact is currently a bizarre collection of fancy mansions, skeletal concrete frames, and vacant lots. The nickname “2000,” it seems, is a bit premature.

To improve access to the neighborhood, a big chunk of development money was sunk into cloverleaf interchanges connecting to major routes serving the rest of the city. They are a novelty in Burkina and for months there have been television commercials instructing people how to use them: “To go right, make the first right. To go left, make the second right . . .” Traffic is pretty sparse, still, and it makes for a picturesque scene- a modern exchange route, leading to a ghost town, the roads nearly empty save a donkey card, following the wide curl all the way around to the right so he can make a left turn.