Its crazy town, off the wall, mad and chaotic, hot and dusty, 12 out of 10 experience wise, busy, crowded and stifling. The restaurants and food stalls dont look like restaurants and food stalls and are sort of hard to identify, hard to explain. I now have my bearings just fine, and between a growing library of landmarks and alternate street names, can get around just fine day or night. I carry a small LED torch which has been invaluable, I flash it on the roadway when a car with no lights is hurtling towards me so they veer. The traffic and the shared zone factor makes walking anywhere exhausting, as you are constantly concentrating and trying to second guess traffic movements.
Centre Ville is a square about 1.5km by 1.5km. I can find my way there from anywhere and it does NOT involve leaving the ground at a 40 degree angle. There is an entire area of town that is all dust, newly graded, getting laid out for new drainage and roads. It is an area of about 1km square. Apparently a few years ago it was a ramshackle part of town with lots of mudbrick buildings, very old and decidedly un-modern. The authorities simply bulldozed the lot, an entire sq km in the city centre. Its still just flat dust, but at least it is getting laid out now. They’re not into incremental gentrification.
The airport is also in Centre Ville. You can walk to the terminal from the main street.
One thing I admire about this place. Here you are, you’re the worlds poorest country (in the bottom 3 the rankings are probably arguable), and landlocked. Sahel on the south side, Sahara on the north. What do you do? You organize an International Film Festival every odd numbered year. It attraacts thousands of Western tourists and film makers who all stay for a week. On average, including accomodation, the thousands of Westerners spend a couple of thousand each. From just an idea, and a serious interest in cinematography, they are getting a lot of euros and dollars coming in. The big modern hotels, with their 200 to 300 rooms each, and all the little restaurants and bars around, are all employing thousands of locals. Taxis are earning money. Its amazing that from a single idea, a poor city in the middle of the desert is able to look after its people a bit.
I would have liked to have been there though, at the inception. I imagine a few guys in an adobe thatched hut sitting in the sand, discussing the usual things, when suddenly one of them comes up with an idea: lets start a biannual pan african film festival along the lines of Cannes. We’ll host it in Ouagadougou and invite international jurists and directors. I bet he got some odd looks that night.