Next time someone tells you Africans are lazy, send them to Ouagadougou

Its 40C, what do you fancy doing? Sitting in the shade, drinking some ice-cold beer, going for a swim? Work wouldn’t be at the top of your list would it? If you had to work, you’d probably envision some kind of air conditioned environment and a source of ice cubes for your cold drinks. You bone idle slob! What about lugging a pile of granite on your head up a steep slope or swinging a bloody great sledge-hammer all day,…

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Cotonou Benin – African streetlife

Arriving at night in Cotonou, the commercial capital of Benin and typical of West African cities, you  are enveloped in a mist of dust, smoke of cooking fires and burning rubbish, as the dawn breaks these flavours are joined by less savoury ones such as traffic fumes and sewage. The dust is courtesy of the Harmattan wind that is progressively delivering the Sahara desert and every bit of loose dirt in the Sahel region on its southern borders, to the…

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