![]() ![]() Burkina Faso’s transition, then, seemed to be back on course. Gilbert Diendéré, the man behind the coup, had agreed to step down and, provided he received certain security guarantees, acquiesce in the disarming of the regiment that had carried it out. In the days immediately preceding our departure, Gen. But a railway employee named Salif took pity on me, went behind the counter and came up with one at the standard price: 35,000 francs CFA, or about $60 - more expensive than traveling by bus, but about five times cheaper than a one-way plane ticket. 25, I was told all first-class seats for the Saturday train were booked. When the ticket-sellers finally returned to work on the morning of Friday, Sept. Cargo piled up at the station, while the ticket counters remained unstaffed. Even after the borders were re-opened, anti-junta demonstrations - including in western Burkina Faso, through which the train travels after passing out of northern Côte d’Ivoire - threatened the security of the route. First, the Burkina Faso junta had closed the borders, stranding the trains. The coup came less than a month before scheduled elections that were supposed to restore democratic rule following an uprising last October that toppled President Blaise Compaoré, who had been in power for nearly three decades.įor about a week after the coup, the Treichville station had been deserted. Less than two weeks earlier, a group of elite soldiers in the neighboring country of Burkina Faso, our destination, had upended a delicate political transition by storming the presidential palace and detaining the interim president, prime minister and two cabinet ministers. At the roadside, porters greeted taxis bearing new passengers, guiding them and their bags into the crowd. ![]() Children at play weaved among suitcases and cardboard boxes reinforced with masking tape, as did women selling plastic sachets of water from the basins they’d hoisted onto their heads. Across from the crowd control barriers, ticket-holders sipped Nescaf é on a concrete ledge, shielding their faces from the bright morning sun. Three hours before the train to Ouagadougou was scheduled to leave, the station in Treichville, in southern Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire, hummed with more activity than it had seen in days.
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