Alphabet Travel

[Seth]

J’s have been bothering us. We want to get one in Burkina Faso or Benin, because we want Hombori to be our H, and there are loads of I’s in the Dogon country. But there’s a woeful lack of J’s, and a definite excess of DJ’s (and Y’s and I’s–J really is a redundant letter, the Romans had it right). It’s all a product of different transliteration strategies of course, and there’s no right answer, but the objective has to be to choose towns and villages that are as uncontroversial as possible, so that some smartarse doesn’t come up to us one day and correct our rendering of Arabic into (normally) Roman letters.

So, Djougou, also known as Jugu, is out, so is Jibasso/Djibasso, Jmansogo/Imansogo, and Jerifoula/Yerifoula. We’ve found one place, Joures Ouidi, which is about 20 miles south of Ougadougou in Benin. It’s definitely a conurbation of sorts, as Google Earth shows. But there’s not a lot to it. I reckon we’ll programme the coordinates into our GPS, find a friendly taxi driver, and commission him for the day.