right now in this moment i am sitting in a room with four white walls without any stains from smashed bugs, bug faecies or dirty water that has found its way through the roof and the ceiling and left long reddish trails as it made it for the floor. The room has a comfortable temparature that I can adjust as I please by turning a littlie knob on the american made ac. next to my toshiba satellite laptop is a tv connected to the world by three 2m diameter satellite dishes which brings me: CNN. Only a few steps away is a well equiped bathroom with toilet paper, a toilet seat that doesnt bite your ass, the water running from the tap is clear, the towels have the same color as when they were made and disease carrying mosquitoes doesnt rise in clouds from the toilet bowl when you take a piss. This is a summary of the luxeries I am enjoying in this moment. I write this to remind me that I in this moment enjoy simple materialistic effects, that I in this moment put a million miles between me and the world I have just left but still is still visible from my window. I have a set of heavy drapes serving as little berlinian walls in cloth to make sure I can shut it out as I please. My consciousness is fine, tip top in fact. No sense of guilt from having in a country where that is a rarity. No feeling of having to give from my relative vast fortunes. I have already seen how giving is obsolved in this place. But all this is most people from my part of the world end up feeling after living in this world for a while. Where did this come from ? turn on CNN and you will never know. Turn to your local charity organisation and they will fill you with lies. You can never know it without coming here. I can never tell you because it comes from feelings formed little by little by tiny incidences those little differences that arent significant enough to be remembered as "experiences". This is why I am going to leave this subject as it is, mentioned but not described. Instead I want to describe my flight out of Bobo as it stands out as something halfway between these two worlds. The airport in Bobo is a small white building, that in size is as a normal danish provins railway station, a smaller building with offices of the police and one where people pay fees bringing too much luggage and a runway. But I guess that's all that's needed considering the airport is serving as the one end of the only domestic air route. When I first entered the building I was surprised to find a spacious bare room with two lines of people, one with only men and one with women only, leading up to two doors. It turned out to be part of a security precaution as behind the doors, or at least the doorwith the "hommes" sign, was a small room with two officers of some branch of the national police who searched each passangers luggage thouroghly before letting them through. I entered the room the my heavy suitcase, my backpack and my djemba pushing the two officers up into each their corner. To my surprise one of them disclosed english language capabilities as I refused to use my limited french. On his command I put my suitcase on a small table and unlocked it with hands that were still shaking from my case of malaria. I was nervous about seeming nervous to the two officers causing them raise their suspecion and tear my things apart looking for explosive devices. This consideration made me wonder why they would think that anybody would blow up a plane on a dometic route in one of the poorest countries in the world carrying no people of political importance or say military personal. But then I figured that since it is the only route and it is only served by one old fokker machine, probably a leftover of the former frrnch colonial empire, blowing up this machine would be a serious blow to the countrys infrastructure. About ten minutes later I got through and out on the other side. The other side was a room where people checked in so to speak. Everything was done in handwriting, the luggage was weighed on an old scale simular to one a saw at booth on the market where an old woman was selling potatoes. Needles to say that handling all of the five people waitng in front of me took quite a while. Once through this procedure people were left to wait at the side of the runway for the old bus with wings. After a few minutes of waiting strange thug thug noises from somewhere up and to the left warned people that the older fokker would be landing soon somewhere in the near vicinity. As the machine landed, on the runway I have to say, as wasnt pleased to notice that the first thing that came to my mind was a picture of an albatros after a sardin frenzy that just managed to land on that rock called home and was now gasping for air. With a cough the engines stopped, the little door close the cockpit opened. People got out people got on. Luggage was unloaded then loaded. After about twenty minutes the machine was ready to head back to Ouaga. Reluctantly I started moving towards the old rustpile not sharing the calmness of my fellow african passangers at all. I had for about a month seen how they get about running leftover cars from europe, that on any other continent would have been declared hopeless and dead, with a welding here a sparepart from a deseased tractor there and to top it off carboard to keep the red dust from rising up from the road and into the cabin. This plane looked to me as it was kept on the wings in the same manner. I decided to aboard all these sissy considerations and board the plane. The cabin was much as I expected to be. It looked like a polish citybus except for the seatbelt that I didnt dare put on afraid to rip out of the seat. Ofcourse I got the seat at the emergency exit so there was leaning against the wall for more comfort. not that the space for each passenger allowed anything but sitting straight up like pupils at a single sex british boarding school. takeoff was surprisingly like most other takeoff I have experienced. No oxcarriage to turn the gal around and point its nose towards the far end of the run way. Surely the machine skipped the ground a few times. But at this point I had decided that the experience was an adventure and anything less would have disappointed me. The machinery screamed for oil as the pilot raised the the landing gear. cadot to burkina air. All that was needed now was that ores would appear for all us passengers to pull to make the wings flap fast enough to take us home. I felt like bursting out "yellow submarine" but I bit my tongue as good sense told that would be over doing it. The first part of the flight the weather was clear. I could tell the color of the eyes of a passing eagle. I could tell all the features of the land passing beneath us exhausted by either being burned by the sun or eroded by the rain as everything that gives it shade or holds it together was being stripped away. It makes you wonder when you see something as hopeless as this. It is not like this country has been invaded by crazy italians who insist that thze best pizza is made in firewood fed stone oven. But people are hungry and here the land gives little and quickly dies from giving and people are still hungry. I, on the otherhand, was feeling a little queezy from the bumpy ride and the brochettes I had for lunch that I suspect was cooked quite enough. Better to turn face forward, turn on the walkman, let talvin singh take me to india, close the eyes and supplies the pictures. A little before Ouaga the plane entered bad weather. I became aware of this when the plane first dropped what felt like 50 meters, then stabilized more or less but still shaking from the chock. I guess it isnt easy being a thirty year old fokker during rainy season. I expected people to react in mild panic when what is to them modern technology suddenly got into trouble. But even the fat women on the other side of the aisle where sitting as calmly as they do everyday on their mopeds going in and out cars and trucks with no breaking facilities. But that seems to be the african way. As the plane descended towards the Ouaga runway, raindrops appeared on the window. Landing on a wet runway didnt appeal to me as I expected the plane to skid off the runway break through the safety net, old and deteriorated as it probably was, and end up in the barracks where all the hungry people would loot our luggage. that didnt happen instead it landed nicely and that was the end of my 250 french franc ride. I got up from my seat in the midst of all the confusion of people who were trying to get out at the same time as on everyother seat. As I was stucked for a little while I noticed this strangely little person who was almost disappearing in the seat and wearing really wornouit clothes. After closer inspection I found that it was a cripple and that the reason she, as it turned out to be, seemed so little was that she had no legs. My first thought was that having no legs really worked on peoples pity or guilt or whatever is the reason why they give them money. But then I remebered a months of an ordinary worker doesnt even cover the cost of this flight why it seemed unlikely that this person had mustered such a sum just asking for it. Even when one considers her horrible fate. A little later I saw her being carried off the plane by somebody and she left my mind. I made my way quickly towards the arrival......room that I had entered once before about a month earlier. Inside I was surprised to find that I had to go through all the same procedures when disembarging from a domestic flight as from an international one. I guess the authorities responsible for airport procedures were too lazy to make out two manuals for the airport personel. Or maybe they expected the personel to get lost and confused when faced with more than one set of options when dealing with the incoming passengers. True to their nature they would in all cases handle everybody according the one procedure that would cost least effort. After my experiences with working here in Africa I believe the ladder to be true. the last experience worth mentioning on my way to this safe haven was an encounter with two customs officers. As my farthers visa had expired he had some trouble entering burkina eventhough he was arriving from burkina. Because of this we were the last passengers to go through customs why the two officers had plenty of time finding ways to huzzle us. One might wonder why there was a customs check when everybody were arriving from another city in the same country why they probably had very little to declare. But then one hasnt been to africa. Among our luggage was a broken printer that my farther was bringing back to france for repair. I guess that was what looked most valuable because that was what the officers decided could not go through without thourugh investigation. Eventhough my farther had all the right papers, old customs declarations and such, the two insisted it had to be redeclared. Afterall you can't declare a thing too many times. I was standing in the background being really bored with the situ ation that didnt seem to reach a quick resolution. My boredom became real annoyance when I saw the cripple I had seen being carried off the plane was making her way past us sliding and pushing her with a stick across the dirty floor. If I had had a skateboard I would have been the samaritan and easy her hardship. But I didnt and I was getting pissed off that this person was gonna make it out of the airport before us. What were the odds of that ? But then this it is always unsafe to bet on the odds in Africa. An associate from an associate institute of the one I had been working at had comed to pick us up and was now entering the discussion. He was seeminly upset by the scenario that was obviously a way to hassle my farther untill he got so tired of the situation that he would give thel some money to get out of it. To me that made sense since this country was already up to its neck in the red mud of trouble (had it been during the drought season it would be choking halfway to death on red dust) and corruption would surely be the ugly boot on its head to send it all the way under. Therefore he also angrily refused the suggestions of another airport employee, who was handling the luggage cart, to pay the two officers 15000 fcfa (150 f fr) to get out of the situation. This guy was obviously an associate of the two vultures. In character he resembled what I imagine joe pesci would look like if he was african, second rate hustler eating the scraps of the first rate hustlers. After our friend the associate had wrest led us from the vultures ugly claws I was kicking his little ass all the way to my hotel room. The ass kicking didnt stop untill CNN told me that the EU had lifted the ban on british beef and the british had solemnly sworn never again to feed a grass eater other animals.