Ouagadougou: A City of Broken Promises and Frying Pans

ouagadougou is the capital of burkina faso, a place where the french colonial past meets the scorching present. the heat here hits like a sandal-clad high-five, and i just checked-it’s 24.35°C, which sounds moderate but feels like someone stuck a soufflé under your arm and told you to walk to the market. no one escapes the humidity. it’s the kind of sweat that turns your hair into a matted curtain. if you get bored, bobo-dioulasso is 350 km west, which is either a short drive or a long taxi ride, depending on how suspicious the driver’s nodding turd is. koudougou is closer, but who besides history nerds cares about that?

the city’s streets are a cacophony of honking bikes, goats dodging cars, and the occasional donkey cart rolling past a brick-rendered skyscraper. founded in the 1300s by the mossi people, it’s got more history in its dirt patches than most countries. the morho naba, or great king, still lives here in a palace that’s basically a crumbling fairytale. they’ll pour you some millet drink and nod sagely as you trip over a pothole older than their empire. the national museum has a couple of ancient guitars and a tableau about french colonization that’ll make you mutter ‘poor things.’ don’t bother with the zoo-they’ve got one lonely elephant on display since 1969. i heard the hippos died of thirst last year, which is a bummer.

the grande marche is where the real magic (and chaos) happens. last week, someone told me that pickpockets here use smiley emojis on their phones to distract tourists. seems plausible. the stalls overflow with tô, that millet paste sludge people eat with their hands while arguing about football. if you’re lucky, they’ll hand you fried yam with a covering of red stew-don’t be weirded out by the flies. it’s authentic, they say. the smell of shea butter perfume and fried plantains hangs in the air like a greeting card. hey, i tried the bushmango sorbet once. it tasted like tree bark dipped in motor oil. classic.

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