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Things not going well in Burkina Faso

elfenix

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crash_davis

crash_davis 23113

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Africa is an interesting topic. I get that for the past 100+ years, the West and now China rape Africa of natural resources and shit on the people by bribing assholes and using force to keep them in corrupt leadership but got damned if they don't make their some of their own shitty luck sometimes. Am I wrong to think that?

 

I'm not versed on Burkina Faso. Is the President a "good" guy or is he there because some Western country made it so he could be their puppet? Should I be concerned (mildly) or happy he's gone missing?

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Telegraph_it

Telegraph_it 3357

Posted
Posted
22 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Africa is an interesting topic. I get that for the past 100+ years, the West and now China rape Africa of natural resources and shit on the people by bribing assholes and using force to keep them in corrupt leadership but got damned if they don't make their some of their own shitty luck sometimes. Am I wrong to think that?

 

I'm not versed on Burkina Faso. Is the President a "good" guy or is he there because some Western country made it so he could be their puppet? Should I be concerned (mildly) or happy he's gone missing?

Obligatory. 

racist comedy central GIF

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52-80

52-80 19158

Posted
Posted
33 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Africa is an interesting topic. I get that for the past 100+ years, the West and now China rape Africa of natural resources and shit on the people by bribing assholes and using force to keep them in corrupt leadership but got damned if they don't make their some of their own shitty luck sometimes. Am I wrong to think that?

Both can be true. Belgians and Brits and French and etc fucked them up something fierce. 

But same goes for other countries elsewhere. 

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31471

Posted
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1 hour ago, crash_davis said:

Africa is an interesting topic. I get that for the past 100+ years, the West and now China rape Africa of natural resources and shit on the people by bribing assholes and using force to keep them in corrupt leadership but got damned if they don't make their some of their own shitty luck sometimes. Am I wrong to think that?

 

I'm not versed on Burkina Faso. Is the President a "good" guy or is he there because some Western country made it so he could be their puppet? Should I be concerned (mildly) or happy he's gone missing?

I think that, not only was Africa exploited, but its people were dragged from a tribal agrarian society to full-on western civilization within a couple of hundred years, while being exploited, that really fucked them up.

It took western civilization several centuries to "get it right," more or less, with evolving notions of government and self-determination, while generally not being exploited and ruled from afar.

Africa got no modern opportunity to "figure it out for itself," so it's doing it now, only with factions armed with modern weapons and tribalism still very much intact.

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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8349

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There is a chapter in Guns, Germs and Steel on this....read it decades ago, but one problem is they had no domesticable beasts of burden, so that held back their development. They tried with zebras. Zebras don't play that. Maybe the same with African elephants.

Still-endemic tropical diseases is another huge problem, esp sleeping sickness and malaria. Also, parasites and shit. Stuff we take for granted. People just feel like shit a lot of the time. The US South was similar until very recently, when shit like ringworm was all but eradicated. 

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Assman

Assman 1830

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We were making weekly shuttle runs from Ramstein down to Niamey (Niger) with occasional stops along the way.  One of our planes broke in Ouagadougou and needed an engine and prop change.  Just the week prior, the local sect of Al Qaeda or ISIS or some other fun loving group attacked the French embassy, killing a few people.  The good news is the attackers were never caught, and the group was threatening more attacks.  So if you're like me, you're probably thinking this is the perfect opportunity to spend a few days downtown while your plane gets fixed. 

So my crew and I, along with a group of maintainers, flew down to Ouagadougou on a C-17.  We were told when we landed to walk to a certain checkpoint on the airfield, and that a car would be waiting to take us to the hotel.  We walked through the checkpoint, which was manned by armed guards who insisted on going through all of our bags.  After they had confiscated all of our knives and fleshlights, they allowed us to proceed through to a parking lot, where a man in all black with dark sunglasses on was waiting for us.  He was standing next to an idling Land Cruiser that looked like it had recently taken gold at the Burkina Faso demolition derby.  I look at my crew, back at this guy, back at the crew, shrug my shoulders, and throw my shit in the back.  I figured there was a 50/50 shot I ended up in some hostage video on CNN, but I was going to trust my gut on this one. 

The next 30 minutes were some of the most nerve racking of my life.  The driver, whom I still wasn't completely convinced was the guy we were supposed to meet, was weaving in and out of traffic like Dale Jr.  I was almost sure he was taking us straight to Bin Laden himself.  Here we were, 4 white guys in a Land Cruiser with untinted windows, amongst nothing but shit box cabs, mopeds, and bikes, speeding through city streets like we were in a 1-party police pursuit.  At one point I was so convinced this guy was taking us to the eventual spot of our beheading that I started coming up with a plan to kill him.  But alas, before I had to practice my Rex Kwon Do, we pull up to a building surrounded by a 10' iron fence, surrounded by guards holding AK-47s.  This was either the presidential palace or our hotel.  It ended up being the latter.  I spent the next 3 days drinking cold African beers by the pool while the maintainers fixed our plane.  Life of aircrew.

 

20180320_070835.jpg

20180320_064412.jpg

20180319_142032.jpg

Edited by Assman
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fattyflattie

fattyflattie 4639

Posted
Posted

Used to have an engineer that reported to me, from BF.  He was a bright kid, but would spend 3x the time trying to find a way to cheat instead of just doing the work. Anyhow, he traveled to Mexico with me for a pretty good spell, and that fucker would take the car on the weekends with a pocket full of pesos and take several hour road trips to meet up with girls he met on Facebook. I remember he took our bonus one year and flew home for the first time in something like 15 years.  The party they threw was massive, and I’ll never forget he had bought a shiny maroon suit. Think I heard he made a bunch of money then went back over there.  Wonder what he’s up to. 

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fattyflattie

fattyflattie 4639

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, ztejas said:

Apparently the leader of the cous dresses in a maroon suit and speaks pretty good English - and even a little Spanish.

Oh wow - just saw your comment flatty. 

Damn, that's funny.

One time we were shopping down at the market in Cd del Carmen, and he was wearing a Terrell Owens jersey and these fancy looking aviators.  People kept giving our group a wide berth, and smiling, and pointing and whatnot.  About halfway thru, we realized (I think) they thought he was TO.   He was athletic, but like 5'8".  Not sure if they were just star struck or something.  Dude loved Mexico. Hope he's not leading the coup. 

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South Austin

South Austin 52504

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Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, Assman said:

We were making weekly shuttle runs from Ramstein down to Niamey (Niger) with occasional stops along the way.  One of our planes broke in Ouagadougou and needed an engine and prop change.  Just the week prior, the local sect of Al Qaeda or ISIS or some other fun loving group attacked the French embassy, killing a few people.  The good news is the attackers were never caught, and the group was threatening more attacks.  So if you're like me, you're probably thinking this is the perfect opportunity to spend a few days downtown while your plane gets fixed. 

So my crew and I, along with a group of maintainers, flew down to Ouagadougou on a C-17.  We were told when we landed to walk to a certain checkpoint on the airfield, and that a car would be waiting to take us to the hotel.  We walked through the checkpoint, which was manned by armed guards who insisted on going through all of our bags.  After they had confiscated all of our knives and fleshlights, they allowed us to proceed through to a parking lot, where a man in all black with dark sunglasses on was waiting for us.  He was standing next to an idling Land Cruiser that looked like it had recently taken gold at the Burkina Faso demolition derby.  I look at my crew, back at this guy, back at the crew, shrug my shoulders, and throw my shit in the back.  I figured there was a 50/50 shot I ended up in some hostage video on CNN, but I was going to trust my gut on this one. 

The next 30 minutes were some of the most nerve racking of my life.  The driver, whom I still wasn't completely convinced was the guy we were supposed to meet, was weaving in and out of traffic like Dale Jr.  I was almost sure he was taking us straight to Bin Laden himself.  Here we were, 4 white guys in a Land Cruiser with untinted windows, amongst nothing but shit box cabs, mopeds, and bikes, speeding through city streets like we were in a 1-party police pursuit.  At one point I was so convinced this guy was taking us to the eventual spot of our beheading that I started coming up with a plan to kill him.  But alas, before I had to practice my Rex Kwon Do, we pull up to a building surrounded by a 10' iron fence, surrounded by guards holding AK-47s.  This was either the presidential palace or our hotel.  It ended up being the latter.  I spent the next 3 days drinking cold African beers by the pool while the maintainers fixed our plane.  Life of aircrew.

 

20180320_070835.jpg

20180320_064412.jpg

20180319_142032.jpg

Reminds me of that time I landed in Newark.

Edited by South Austin
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Assman

Assman 1830

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Posted
huh. pools empty. 
I'm pretty sure I took that pic pretty early in the morning. When I say I spent 3 days by the pool, I mean I spent almost 72 hours by the pool. I would sleep in my room, wake up, immediately head down to the pool, and stay there until it was time for bed. The rooms sucked, all the TV shows were in French, and we couldn't leave the premises. Literally nothing else to do. I ate every single meal I had pool side.

But the pool got crowded around noon and stayed that way until the sun went down. Apparently BF and the Laiko Hotel is about as cheap a "resort" vacation gets for the French, so you had a decent amount of them roaming around. Also had some Air France flight attendants hanging their tits out so that was nice.
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Parliament

Parliament 14260

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Posted
8 hours ago, Assman said:

We were making weekly shuttle runs from Ramstein down to Niamey (Niger) with occasional stops along the way.  One of our planes broke in Ouagadougou and needed an engine and prop change.  Just the week prior, the local sect of Al Qaeda or ISIS or some other fun loving group attacked the French embassy, killing a few people.  The good news is the attackers were never caught, and the group was threatening more attacks.  So if you're like me, you're probably thinking this is the perfect opportunity to spend a few days downtown while your plane gets fixed. 

So my crew and I, along with a group of maintainers, flew down to Ouagadougou on a C-17.  We were told when we landed to walk to a certain checkpoint on the airfield, and that a car would be waiting to take us to the hotel.  We walked through the checkpoint, which was manned by armed guards who insisted on going through all of our bags.  After they had confiscated all of our knives and fleshlights, they allowed us to proceed through to a parking lot, where a man in all black with dark sunglasses on was waiting for us.  He was standing next to an idling Land Cruiser that looked like it had recently taken gold at the Burkina Faso demolition derby.  I look at my crew, back at this guy, back at the crew, shrug my shoulders, and throw my shit in the back.  I figured there was a 50/50 shot I ended up in some hostage video on CNN, but I was going to trust my gut on this one. 

The next 30 minutes were some of the most nerve racking of my life.  The driver, whom I still wasn't completely convinced was the guy we were supposed to meet, was weaving in and out of traffic like Dale Jr.  I was almost sure he was taking us straight to Bin Laden himself.  Here we were, 4 white guys in a Land Cruiser with untinted windows, amongst nothing but shit box cabs, mopeds, and bikes, speeding through city streets like we were in a 1-party police pursuit.  At one point I was so convinced this guy was taking us to the eventual spot of our beheading that I started coming up with a plan to kill him.  But alas, before I had to practice my Rex Kwon Do, we pull up to a building surrounded by a 10' iron fence, surrounded by guards holding AK-47s.  This was either the presidential palace or our hotel.  It ended up being the latter.  I spent the next 3 days drinking cold African beers by the pool while the maintainers fixed our plane.  Life of aircrew.

 

20180320_070835.jpg

20180320_064412.jpg

20180319_142032.jpg

I spent 2 weeks there in 2000.  My cousin was in the Peace Corps, so his brother and I went to visit.  Your story brings back memories.  I learned to keep my head on a swivel when I saw a post office being guarded by "soldiers" wielding FAL heavy assault rifles.  These guys all looked 15 and I imagined them flipping to full auto and spraying the room if shit went down.

 

Great trip though.  Would recommend.

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Armybrat

Armybrat 40845

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4 hours ago, Assman said:

But the pool got crowded around noon and stayed that way until the sun went down. Apparently BF and the Laiko Hotel is about as cheap a "resort" vacation gets for the French, so you had a decent amount of them roaming around. Also had some Air France flight attendants hanging their tits out so that was nice.

Did the hotel confiscate your camera  before noon?

Edited by Armybrat
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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

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19 hours ago, conVINCEd said:

When was the last time things were going well in a landlocked Western African country?  I’ll hang up and listen.

Why just landlocked? Tunisia, libya, mozambique, Somalia, angola, in about 15 other iddy biddy countries along equatorial West Africa say hi.

Africa - where military coups are no extra charge on your hotel bill!

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SimonBolivar

SimonBolivar 10958

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Posted
20 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

There is a chapter in Guns, Germs and Steel on this....read it decades ago, but one problem is they had no domesticable beasts of burden, so that held back their development. They tried with zebras. Zebras don't play that. Maybe the same with African elephants.

Still-endemic tropical diseases is another huge problem, esp sleeping sickness and malaria. Also, parasites and shit. Stuff we take for granted. People just feel like shit a lot of the time. The US South was similar until very recently, when shit like ringworm was all but eradicated. 

Funnily enough, my wife teaches 2nd grade and she has a kid that has both lice and ringworm right now. So that's fun.

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crash_davis

crash_davis 23113

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Posted (edited)
7 hours ago, Assman said:

I'm pretty sure I took that pic pretty early in the morning. When I say I spent 3 days by the pool, I mean I spent almost 72 hours by the pool. I would sleep in my room, wake up, immediately head down to the pool, and stay there until it was time for bed. The rooms sucked, all the TV shows were in French, and we couldn't leave the premises. Literally nothing else to do. I ate every single meal I had pool side.

But the pool got crowded around noon and stayed that way until the sun went down. Apparently BF and the Laiko Hotel is about as cheap a "resort" vacation gets for the French, so you had a decent amount of them roaming around. Also had some Air France flight attendants hanging their tits out so that was nice.

fucking french. only the french would think flying to a dangerous ass country and spending 24/7 in a glorified Best Western constitutes a "resort" vacation. i need to open Best Westerns in South Chicago and Juarez and market it to the French as resort destinations.

Edited by crash_davis
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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89668

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, SimonBolivar said:

Funnily enough, my wife teaches 2nd grade and she has a kid that has both lice and ringworm right now. So that's fun.

You can be in the wealthiest part of Austin, and you're going to have somebody in elementary school with lice.  It's weird.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45685

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23 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

There is a chapter in Guns, Germs and Steel on this....read it decades ago, but one problem is they had no domesticable beasts of burden, so that held back their development. They tried with zebras. Zebras don't play that. Maybe the same with African elephants.

Still-endemic tropical diseases is another huge problem, esp sleeping sickness and malaria. Also, parasites and shit. Stuff we take for granted. People just feel like shit a lot of the time. The US South was similar until very recently, when shit like ringworm was all but eradicated. 

Everyone should read this book.

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31471

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20 hours ago, Assman said:

We were making weekly shuttle runs from Ramstein down to Niamey (Niger) with occasional stops along the way.  One of our planes broke in Ouagadougou and needed an engine and prop change.  Just the week prior, the local sect of Al Qaeda or ISIS or some other fun loving group attacked the French embassy, killing a few people.  The good news is the attackers were never caught, and the group was threatening more attacks.  So if you're like me, you're probably thinking this is the perfect opportunity to spend a few days downtown while your plane gets fixed. 

So my crew and I, along with a group of maintainers, flew down to Ouagadougou on a C-17.  We were told when we landed to walk to a certain checkpoint on the airfield, and that a car would be waiting to take us to the hotel.  We walked through the checkpoint, which was manned by armed guards who insisted on going through all of our bags.  After they had confiscated all of our knives and fleshlights, they allowed us to proceed through to a parking lot, where a man in all black with dark sunglasses on was waiting for us.  He was standing next to an idling Land Cruiser that looked like it had recently taken gold at the Burkina Faso demolition derby.  I look at my crew, back at this guy, back at the crew, shrug my shoulders, and throw my shit in the back.  I figured there was a 50/50 shot I ended up in some hostage video on CNN, but I was going to trust my gut on this one. 

The next 30 minutes were some of the most nerve racking of my life.  The driver, whom I still wasn't completely convinced was the guy we were supposed to meet, was weaving in and out of traffic like Dale Jr.  I was almost sure he was taking us straight to Bin Laden himself.  Here we were, 4 white guys in a Land Cruiser with untinted windows, amongst nothing but shit box cabs, mopeds, and bikes, speeding through city streets like we were in a 1-party police pursuit.  At one point I was so convinced this guy was taking us to the eventual spot of our beheading that I started coming up with a plan to kill him.  But alas, before I had to practice my Rex Kwon Do, we pull up to a building surrounded by a 10' iron fence, surrounded by guards holding AK-47s.  This was either the presidential palace or our hotel.  It ended up being the latter.  I spent the next 3 days drinking cold African beers by the pool while the maintainers fixed our plane.  Life of aircrew.

 

20180320_070835.jpg

20180320_064412.jpg

20180319_142032.jpg

Didn't have to meet with this guy?

Nicolas-Cage-in-Lord-of-War-nicolas-cage

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crash_davis

crash_davis 23113

Posted
Posted

Things still not going well.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/gold-mining-site-blast-reportedly-kills-59-burkina-83031930

Quote

Gold mining site blast reportedly kills 59 in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso's national broadcaster says at least 59 people are dead after an explosion at a gold mining site in the southwest

By SAM MEDNICK Associated Press
February 21, 2022, 9:39 PM
 
3:02

On Location: February 22, 2022

 

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso -- A strong explosion near a gold mining site in southwestern Burkina Faso killed 59 people and injured more than 100 others Monday, the national broadcaster and witnesses reported.

The provisional toll was provided by regional authorities following the blast in the village of Gbomblora, RTB reported. The explosion was believed to have been caused by chemicals used to treat gold that were stocked at the site.

“I saw bodies everywhere. It was horrible,” Sansan Kambou, a forest ranger who was at the site during the explosion, told The Associated Press by phone.

The first blast happened around 2 p.m., with more explosions following as people ran for their lives, he said.

Burkina Faso is the fastest-growing gold producer in Africa and currently the fifth largest on the continent, with gold being the country’s most important export. The industry employs about 1.5 million people and was worth about $2 billion in 2019.

Small gold mines like Gbomblora have grown in recent years, with some 800 across the country. Much of the gold is being smuggled into neighboring Togo, Benin, Niger and Ghana, according to the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies.

The small-scale mines are also reportedly used by jihadis linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State, which have staged attacks in the country since 2016. The groups reportedly raise funds by taxing miners, and also use the mine sites for recruiting fighters and seeking refuge.

Mining experts say the small-scale mines have fewer regulations than industrial ones and thus can be more dangerous.

“The limited regulation of the artisanal and small-scale mining sector contributes to increased risks that can be very dangerous, including the use of explosives which are often smuggled into the country and used illegally,” said Marcena Hunter, senior analyst at Global Initiative, a Swiss-based think tank.

 

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BabaYaga

BabaYaga 15298

Posted
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On 1/24/2022 at 6:33 PM, MaybeACoordinator said:

but one problem is they had no domesticable beasts of burden, so that held back their development. They tried with zebras. Zebras don't play that. Maybe the same with African elephants.

Are the watusi domesticated at all?  Heard old cowboy stories about how many initial "cowboys" were from Africa and Mexico.  Combining the horsemanship and rope work of the two for working cattle.  

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