![]() ![]() ![]() Instead, he made clear there would be no tolerance for self-enrichment by officials and banned the use of limousines by high-ranking members of his government. Sankara had put his small country in the news and begun shaking up his region not by executing opponents or expelling migrant trading communities from distant continents or declaring himself emperor, president for life, or field marshal, as was happening around this time in other African countries. Then, smiling, he urged me to sit down and, speaking as much to the murmuring crowd as to me, said that as a foreign “friend”, I was welcome. Sankara inquired what America made of his country’s new revolution, causing me to stumble awkwardly through an unprepared answer. He asked me to introduce myself, and I said that I was a reporter from the United States. Somehow I had gotten word of a public meeting he was holding in a quiet neighbourhood in the city, and made it there in time to find him sitting in a tree-shaded spot and engaging in relaxed conversation with a group of ordinary citizens.Īs the lone foreigner present, and a quite tall one at that, I soon caught Sankara’s eye. I met Sankara by happy accident shortly after arriving in Ouagadougou by train from Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, where I lived. ![]()
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