Les Boutiques

Whenever you need something in Burkina, you pretty much need to go to a boutique. Boutiques are the general store – they sell just about everything. I’ve mentioned them a few times before (I’ve bought little cakes there, toilet paper, bottles of Lafi water, Dafani juices, soap, etc.). Generally you can spot them pretty easily, either because they have a sign that says boutique, or they have an ad for Nescafé on the front (you can also kind of tell just by what it looks like they’re selling).

Here’s the outside of one not too far from my villa:

I tried to get a good shot of the inside, but it was hard. There’s the counter in the foreground, with a wire fence thing in front that has lots of candies and cakes and stuff hanging from it. Behind it, in the darkness, there are lots of cubby-hole like shelves, stocked with pretty much anything you would generally need.

Boutiques seem to be the closest Burkina equivalent to our big box stores (although comparing it to a Walmart or a Target seems almost insulting … to the boutique, of course). 

I did find it entertaining though, because today I bought soap (I told Amadou I would use it to wash my hands, clothes, whatever, and this is what he said I needed). I was faintly amused, because it suddenly occurred to me that all the hippies and hipsters in the US want to buy artisanal everything. Right? Well, this soap looks an awful lot like a lot of the “artisanal soaps” I’ve seen in farmers markets and the like, sold for a crapload more than this one. I guess it doesn’t get much more artisanal than Africa.

 

I should also quickly mention that the black plastic bag you see around the soap is ubiquitous in Burkina – anytime you buy ANYTHING, they put it in a black plastic bag. Amadou said that they’re trying to put in place a ban on the infamous sachet noirs, because they’re such terrible pollution (it’s true, you see them on the ground everywhere). It will be interesting to see if the change does take place. Given the trash removal situation (spoiler alert, Amadou informs me that there is a private company that does it and the service is … unpredictable, at best), the plastic bags are an environmental disaster.

It also occurred to me, family and Lake George family, that living in Africa is kind of like the ultimate Lake George test. Can this person roll with the flow? Can they keep their cool in the face of various surprises? I’m doing my best  :)