Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) and the administrative, communications, cultural and economic centre of the nation. It has a population of about 1,400,000 . The city's nick name is Ouaga It does not have much in the way of sightseeing . It actually does not have much of anything except warm, kind people, but those aspects are hard to photograph.

I landed  there on a Friday evening and spent a very long, very boring weekend in a very drab two star hotel, the most disappointing of the hotels I stayed at in the 57 countries visited over the last four years.


The embassy driver pointed out this  "zero center" monument  - marking the  geographic center of the city.  It was the only thing of distinction I saw in the city.




This was my view when i got to the center of the city.





This was a fruit and vegetable stand outside the largest supermarket in town.






The mosque  off to the left of the photo was a familiar site that I saw everywhere I went in West Africa. Islam is the dominant religion in the region.






So many of the buildings in the new part of the city  - Ouaga 2000 - were still under construction.



When will contraction be complete?  Have the builders run out of money?




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