![]() After he was killed, the French, embarrassed that their civilising mission in their colonies had gone awry, attributed Voulet’s activities to the maddening heat of Africa.Ħ. When his superiors tried to rein him in, he told his troops he was no longer French but a “black chief,” who would found his own empire. Captain Paul Voulet, who led the French expedition, was a real-life Kurtz figure, who stuck victims’ heads on poles, roasted children over fires, and strung up soldiers who displeased him at a height where their feet could be reached by hyenas’ hungry jaws. A tribe of brilliant horsemen (which may account for the profusion of betting shops in Bobo), the Mossi repelled slave raiders and other rivals and remained intact for 400 years until their kingdom fell to the French. The country is dominated by the Mossi ethnic group. The French made good use of Upper Volta’s human resources, however, forcing hundreds of thousands to build railways, farm cocoa and fight in the First World War trenches.ĥ. It even stopped being a country for 15 years from 1932, when it was carved up between its more important neighbours. The French only colonised it because it was a bridge between their coastal territories of Benin and Ivory Coast and their desert holdings in modern-day Mali and Niger. It also boasts the desert market town of Gorom-Gorom (so good they named it twice), Bouroum-Bouroum (ditto), Fada N’Gourma, Tin-Akof, Niangoloko and, er, Rambo.Ĥ. Leafy Bobo-Dioulasso, from where I am writing this, is the second city. ![]() Its capital – one of the oldest cities on Earth – is Ouagadougou. The country has arguably the world’s best place names. Known in colonial times as Upper Volta, Burkina Faso means ‘Land of the Honourable People.’ Burkinabes are known as among the most honest folk in Africa.ģ. It’s still too crowded though for the 3.5 million Burkinabe who live and work in neighbouring Ivory Coast.Ģ. At 15 million, however, it is still under-populated compared to Great Britain, which is of similar size but has four times more people. As a consequence, the population has increased five-fold in the past half-century. The average Burkinabe woman has six children. Located in the heart (and heat) of West Africa, between the Sahara desert and the forests of the south, Burkina Faso has one of the highest fertility rates in the world. ![]() Here’s a beginner’s guide to one of the world’s poorest countries:ġ. We are now in Burkina Faso, the last stop on what has been a fascinating and somewhat challenging tour of West Africa.
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