Things were looking hopeful for the West African country of Burkina Faso. Since gaining independence in 1960, the former French colony was ruled primarily by the military and experienced several coups. Last year, the 27-year rule of a former president ended after a mass uprising and protests, and a democratically elected president was inaugurated on December 29.

And then, on January 15, terrorists attacked a hotel and café, setting off explosions and targeting guests and employees. In all, 20 people were killed and dozens more wounded. The North African Branch of Al Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the attack, is the same group that held 170 people hostage and killed 22 at a hotel in Bamako, Mali in November.

Along with the rest of the world, I mourn the senseless loss of those lives, but I also feel such profound sadness for the people of those desperately poor countries trying to build lives for themselves. The New York Times explains that while tourists and business people who escaped last week’s carnage can hurry away on the first available plane, the workers who are lucky enough to hold such jobs can’t consider leaving no matter how frightening the situation becomes. “There aren’t many jobs here,” one employee observed.

Formerly known as Upper Volta, Burkina Faso’s name means Land of Incorruptible People. Since meeting some of those people during a 14-day visit to the country in 2004, I have been pulling for them from afar and rejoicing with each new development. And now this. So very sad.

African Tales, the compilation of stories from the six African countries I visited with my cousin, Dorothy Woodson, retired curator of African collections at Yale, is progressing distressingly slowly on this website. But with recent news events taking me back to those wonderful experiences, I was re-inspired to write more about the Land of Incorruptible People. The latest addition, about Burkina Faso, is “The Festival of the Masks.”

Well actually, it was the only time. But how many times in my life will I get the chance to say those words? Between Ouaga as it’s called for short and Bobo-Dioulasso, I was in the country of Burkina Faso a total of 14 days. You can read about why by hopping over to my book, African Tales. This blog post is a shameless attempt to get you to do just that.

I bring up Ouagadougou because it’s in the news today. The New York Times has a piece about “tens of thousands” marching through Burkina Faso’s capital city yesterday demonstrating against a proposed change to the West African country’s constitution that would allow President Blaise Compaoré to run again next year. He’s already been in power 27 years, and the people are saying “enough is enough.” Some people threw rocks. The police fired tear gas. See how similar all our countries are?

Our own country went through a similar controversy over presidential term limits back in 1944 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term. Afterward, our country also said “enough is enough” and in 1951 passed the 22^nd Amendment barring a president from serving more than two full terms. I was alive then but not paying attention to such things. These days, both the country and the president seem grateful to have the four or eight years come to a conclusion.

Burkina Faso is a usually peaceful place with friendly people who have lived since 1991 under a constitutional democracy “in theory at least,” as one writer put it, “if not always effectively in practice.” The nation, formerly known as Upper Volta, experienced a number of military coups following independence from France, the most recent of which put the current president in power.