Dig Deeper

Not all travel is easy.

Occasionally, when working in emerging world markets, it is necessary to travel to risky places. In 2019 a coworker and I traveled to Burkina Faso in West Africa to resolve some product problems we were having. There had been a spate of terrorist attacks by groups in the region, such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State which made our hosts nervous.

They said they were a little worried about us, but we would probably just be held hostage and a demand made for ransom. However the people in the office were nervous that in so doing the terrorists might just come in and shoot everyone in the office.

They asked us to stay out of site, and hurried us back to our nearby hotel on mopeds. We jumped on the back of the mopeds in their compound and rode straight to the hotel where they honked their horns and the gates opened and closed immediately behind us so that we spent as little time as possible visible in public.