Burkina Faso

Have not written for a long time as Ghanaian internet is horrendously slow and their are so many power cuts that often the internet cafes cannot function.
We're in the capital city, Ouagadougou, of the neighbouring country, Burkina Faso, this weekend though and I've found a very fast connection in a lovely cold air con room - luxury. Crazy though that this is a much poorer country than ghana yet standards are higher, seems the french have left a much better mark in their ex-colonies than we left in ours! Here you can even get proper bread and real cheese (all ghana has to offer is sweet bread and laughing cow cheese!).
Been enjoying a relaxing few weeks in my parent's village of Bongo, until last week when our friend Joan's dad died and I got malaria. Not the nicest of weeks but then I am getting a real african experience, not just the one an ordinary tourist would get...
Got quite a bit planned for my last week here; we're planning to drive slowly back down to Accra going to a national park on route to hopefully spot some elephants, and then to the volta region to the big dam which provides most of the country with its power.
Leaving Burkina later today and hoping to visit a volunteer friend of my parents in a village called Tumu which has its own resident hippo we may get to see if lucky!