The Gorom-Gorom Thursday market
After a couple of days eating lasagne and doing other like-minded things in Ouaga that you can’t do in West Africa outside of major cities, we journeyed to the northeast of Burkina Faso, entering the Sahel for a couple of days before we begin out journey south.
We went to a remote village called Gorom-Gorom, whose Thursday market is perhaps the most famous in all of West Africa. All sorts of traders from around the area descend on the village each week, making for a colourful and chaotic scene. I probably enjoyed the Monday market at Djenne more because I felt that we were left alone more than at Gorom-Gorom, but it was still a great sight to see all the people there. The most interesting were the Fula women, some of whom have very beautiful but extremely heavy earrings that cause their ears to drop markedly (making them not dissimilar to most representations of the Buddha).
Though the market was nice, the Sahel is still very hot and incredibly hazy, and as soon as we were back in this semidesert area we were glad that we decided not to go to Niger in these conditions. A traveller friend reported that it was 49 degrees Celcius (about 128 Farenheit) in the Nigerian capital Niamey a couple of days back! Anyway, the point of all this is to say that we found out that last August, a huge flood devastated Gorom-Gorom and the surrounding region, wiping out many houses (and tourist campements, for that matter) and causing much damage. It’s incomprehensible at this time of year to imagine this barren place flooded (sort of like imaginging two weeks of almost non-stop rain in Doha during the Asian Games…), but I saw pictures of dirt roads turned into virtual rivers.
Last night we stayed in the village of Bani, another place greatly affected by the flood. Bani has seven mud-brick mosques and parts of the beautiful Grand Mosque, which is the most impressive building I’ve seen in West Africa, collapsed in the flood and are in various stages of repair. I’m thinking of writing to UNESCO to ask them to consider Bani for a World Heritage listing, as there are none in Burkina Faso, and Bani is far more interesting, and more in need of funds, than Timbuktu.
Now we’re back in Ouaga eating at cosy, arty restaurants and feeling slightly guilty that 95 per cent of the Burkinabe can’t afford to do so. Tonight there’s some sort of live music at the Baratapas, so hopefully that will be fun. We’ll probably stay again tomorrow because we have some things to so, and then continue travelling on Sunday. We have one more village to see in Burkina Faso, then it’s onto Ghana.
Meanwhile, the exciting news of the day is that I’ve finally been able to upload some photos of Mali and Burkina Faso, which you can see here.
Tags: Africa, Burkina Faso, Travel, UNESCO, West Africa
Nick
Hi
You can find out more about the flood in Gorom-Gorom, where I have been working for 15years, and the work we have been doing to help rebuild homes at my blog:
http://www.voiceinthedesert.org.uk/keith/archives/emergency_aid/index.html