Sylvia's Journal

Monday was a holiday, 2nd Easter Day- celebrated by the Christian half of the population but enjoyed by all; except a few of us preparing the final details for our leadership workshop that starts tomorrow.

We met in the nicely air-conditioned library of the West African health organization, an institution of the Economic Council of West Africa. It is tri-lingual; with 7 French speaking member countries, 5 English speaking and 2 Portuguese. It is not as bad as the EU with its 2 digit languages, but complicated enough. We decided to write the flipcharts in English and then speak in French. The Anglophones get the pretty and final version of the facilitator notes because that’s our first language; the French version is still a draft. Luckily the Lusophones, in a minority, have adjusted and speak/understand both languages.

My colleague A. and I divided the facilitation tasks and hope to include one more member today – a longtime friend and co-facilitator from Guinea with whom I last worked more than 10 years ago. His boss is also someone I worked with, even longer ago, and was one of my Guinean students in a senior leadership program.

The restaurant of my new hotel is, like the old one, not very frequented. At 8 PM I was told no more orders were taken – as if any orders had been taken at all: there was no trace of any dining activity. I was referred to the nuns, around the corner. A faint memory of having eaten there in 1993. I was served a delicious meal of sole and spinach in the courtyard of the convent. I had a small Flag beer and pondered the difference between my recent experience in Asia and West Africa.

There is of course the price and star difference between the hotels I stayed in (5 star versus half a star, if that) but even so, the difference appeared to be in the details and the quality of the interactions with staff, I concluded. It was probably no coincidence that the woman who greeted me at the restaurant’s gate, led me to my table, took my order, served my meal and then accompanied me back to the gate was from Vietnam.

Attention and quality of service is in the mind and therefore not necessarily expensive, but priceless indeed. Here there is a long way to go: no young trainees standing by the reception desk to learn how to deal politely with a customer. There is an attitude here of ‘globalement, c’est bon,’ (overall everything is OK), so what’s your problem, and ‘it’s not my fault,’ a quick defensive reaction that stops all further inquiries, as there are no answers.

My new room is smaller than my old one, and less well equipped (no fridge and no jacuzzi which my last hotel had even though it didn’t work as there was no water pressure). But the bed is more comfortable, the door lock, shower, toilet and airco work, and the internet is about the same, intermittent. Only the pillows was a step down, consisting of three pillowcases that were filled with small pieces of jagged foam. It made me think longingly of my pillow menu in Manila.

Instead of taking a bus for the five hour drive to Bobo Dioulasso, I took the 40 minute plane ride in a small twin engine prop plane, operated by Air Colombe. Based on the language of the instructions and the accent of the crew, I deduced that it was run by a Portuguese company.

It was the most efficient airline trip I have ever taking (other than my own flights). Drive to the airport 5 minutes; check-in 2 minutes, security control 1 minute and waiting for boarding 20 minutes – from hotel to sitting down in the plane 45 minutes. I was hardly able to finish drinking my breakfast: a cappuccino (from a package) and a giant and greasy pain au chocolat.

One of the planes parked at the airport had a red and white tail marking that looked like a Coco-Cola ad from a distance. For a moment I did actually think that Coca Cola ads were sustaining the domestic airline industry, what a concept. But it turned out that it was the marking of a domestic or regional carrier.. I can just imagine some entrepreneur dragging out of his unconscious some good feeling coke association and designing his company’s logo.

I settled into my hotel which is run by people who don’t pay attention to details, such as whether your door lock works, water runs through the toilet, shower has water and everywhere cement splatters on walls and doors.

I had lunch with my colleague who is brandnew here himself, and tried to extract as much information as I could about the organization I am about to work with. Tomorrow is still holiday (Easter) and we are working in an empty office. I had dinner alone in a giant restaurant. I seem to be the only guest, while watching France’s TV5 for the 100th time replaying France’s news of the day.

The heat was interrupted by a violent thunder and rainstorm while I tried to fall asleep under a fan to augment the effect of the feeble airco. The fan made a clickety clack sound, like a horse galloping or two coconut shells clicking together. And so I galloped into a deep sleep.

The best thing about Air France is its lounge in Paris where, in a spacious section of Terminal E, an army of waitresses and cleaners try to make your stay as comfortable as possible. This includes changing the menu of the food buffet according to the time of day. After pain au chocolat and croissants, artisanal brown bread with raw ham, yogurt fruit and more, lunch consists of soup, salad, cheese platters, roasted veal, couscous salad and fancy pastries. All this, if you want, arrosé de bon vin français, or champagne. I did not take advantage of the Clarins treatment room where you can relax while consuming Clarins products. Even without that my six hour wait was quite pleasant and passed quickly.

But that’s about all AF has going for it. In the plane the seats were so close together that when the seat in front of me went back it hit my chin. Like in a line of dominos, you cannot have one person sit up straight; if the person in the front reclines, everyone behind has to recline. The flight was only pleasantly interrupted by another great meal. Still, I take Delta anytime over AF. I hope they ask me to comment on the flight in an après-flight email, so I can say this officially.

We arrived at Burkina Faso’s international airport at 8 PM with a temperature of 35 Celsius. In about 24 hours I had gone from 35 Fahrenheit to 35 Celsius. It’s a big change.

The airport is visible from all sides by a giant neon sign that someone had fun with programming. It never says more than one word at a time so you may see ‘International’ or ‘airport’ or ‘Ouagadougou.’ Sometimes the words fly in from one or another side, sometimes they overlap making it unreadable altogether, and the typeface changes from New York Times Gothic to Courier to Arial. It was an interesting neon ballet to watch while I waited for my shuttle driver to take me to my hotel in the oppressive night heat.

This is my 5th trip to Burkina in over 2 decades. Last time I was here in 2001. At that time there were no smart phones here and internet access was hardly expected. In fact, I am not sure I traveled with a computer at that time, being somewhat of a Luddite as I saw my computer carrying colleagues struggle with unsolvable problems.

Now, smart phones are everywhere – business men clutch two at all times – and cell companies are now internet companies and advertise everywhere competing for market share. But other than that, Ouagadougou doesn’t seem to have changed a whole lot – no high rises that had transformed the cityscape. The airport remains sleepy and small with a row of small shops (a butcher shop for all your chicken and meat needs when travelling), a tiny parking and a rather informal feel to it. Although the security merchants have sold Burkina all the gadgets one could want.

The round eyeball cameras to take your picture and the green neon-lighted finger print machines are here too. The immigration people are still stamping your passport by hand but everything else is computerized.