November 9, 1980

OUAGADOUGOU, UPPER VOLTA
After three weeks in Niamey, the most remarkable thing about Ouagadougou, Upper Volta is that the coffee vendors use a different brand of condensed milk. Because I'm anxious to get my boat and plane reservations made (from Ivory Coast) and because I didn't expect Upper Volta to have a markedly different character from Niger, I planned on the first train to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, which would leave at 1:30pm. Because it's Sunday, I couldn't send any letters, so I spent the morning reading in the train station. At 8am, it was already too hot to do a tour of the town, especially since, for the first time in a month, I had to carry my pack with me. As I returned from getting a few provisions, at about noon, the crowd made a rush for the departure gate. I was in the middle of it and until I found my way to the side wall, I was really afraid of being trampled. Got a window seat, though, so I was happy.

I hadn't been able to find out just when we'd arrive in Abidjan, but had the impression it would take more or less a full day. Every two adjacent seats faced each other and each fit two people snugly. After a while, there were three people in all the seats and I was really cramped, but everyone was doing it and everyone shared space willingly, so I accepted it in the same spirit.

I also continued in the spirit of enjoying the ride. We made frequent stops, but they were all a gas—women and girls, a few boys, would rush over to the windows, standing below us with all kinds of food on their heads. I'm always amazed at the things they can balance there: trays of eggs, huge bowls of bananas, even small tables equipped with all their merchandise on their way to set up a vending stall. They paraded past us, running when they spotted a customer, frantically making last-second sales as the train started off. Around dinner time, many of them showed up with fried chicken; in general, the menu became gradually more varied with new items, as we progressed south to the port city.

We stopped around 8pm at Bobo Dioulasso, Upper Volta's second biggest city. A couple of hours later, we must have crossed the border to Ivory Coast, but miraculously, there were no police checks of any kind. Night fell suddenly. I was pretty tired, but there were not many comfortable ways to sleep. The one fortunate thing about having six people packed into those two seats was that if we fell asleep, at least we couldn't fall over.

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