Day 28: A Minor Incident
Of course deciding to take only one bottle of mineral water, rather than my standard two, and finding my first air conditioned bus of the trip meant my luck would have to turn…
The Burkinabe bus company STMB’s slogan is “le professionnel”. The back of the a/c bus from Bobo to Ouagadougou, Burkina’s capital, had a dangling flap under the bumper proclaiming “vive la fraternité et l’amour”. (Long live brotherhood and love.)
We left only 10 minutes after the scheduled departure time of 10am, after relaxing in an a/c waiting area - I should have known it was too good to be true!
At 11.10am, with Canadian band Great Big Sea’s cover of “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” being piped into my ears by my MP3 player, the bus drove into deep mud grooves caused by the last dregs of the rainy season.
The bus stuck fast and, thanks to the speed at which it had approached the track, very nearly tipped over onto its left side.
Leaning at a dangerously precarious angle to the left, we all clambered off the bus to wait in the mid-day sun. A crowd gathered from a nearby village to stare. How many hours would it be before we left?
Finally someone went to collect shovels to dig us out. Everyone clapped when the bus backed up and out of the quagmire and we were back in business - all in an astonishing 25 minutes.
I popped my earphones back in and two songs later, Great Big Sea appeared again - this time, “Sea of No Cares”.