Bon Arrivee

I wish I could somehow bottle the feeling I have right now and store it for the bumps in the road during the coming year and a half. I’ve felt genuinely happy to arrive in Bobo and am excited to begin to settle into my new home and to dig into this project. It’s a really nice place to start, having everyone exchanging ideas and bringing their own thoughts to the table. We’ve established ground rules of speaking whichever language you feel most comfortable (French or English) and asking when you don’t understand. So far, the system seems to be working well and no one seems too shy or proud to call time-out and ask for clarification. I have a feeling that people still find my grammar rather amusing since sometimes a smile will creep across the face of the person I’m talking with and I am suddenly aware of some error in how I phrased something, although not always sure what unless the other person corrects me.

It’s been really nice to reconnect with several people from the research center who remembered me from my visit here in July. In addition, I’ve met new people with whom I’ll be working over the next several months. All of the Burkinabe greet me warmly, first with a handshake, saying, “Bon arrivee!” and then four air kisses on my cheeks, alternating left, right, left, right. Without fail, each person asks about my travels into town, my family and friends at home in the US and the folks working in Dakar.

I arrived in Ouagadougou, the capital, late on Monday night, but right on time – 11:00 pm. That was a pleasant surprise since the last time I had flown on the same route, the flight arrived at 3 am. I had left Dakar convinced that it would be delayed again. (I shouldn’t be so pessimistic.) I flew with a co-worker from Dakar to Bamako and enjoyed having company for the first stretch of the trip. From Bamako, the flight to Ouagadougou is just over an hour, and from the air, as the plane approaches Ouaga, the ground is spotted with bright blue-hued lights (perhaps halogen?) stretching outside the city center, then yellow lights in the middle of town.

I was surprised to find the road from the airport to the hotel, dry with no evidence of the recent flooding that devastated other parts of the city. From the very little I saw of Ouaga and the outskirts of town (on the west-bound road to Bobo) the following day, you wouldn’t know that the capital had been flooded just two weeks earlier, so I have to assume that it was a different part of town that was the most affected. On September 1, nearly 12 inches of rain fell and destroyed the homes over 100,000 people in the capital, most of whom are the city’s poorest. They have been displaced to temporary shelters and have lost nearly everything.

I had a ticket and was scheduled to leave Ouaga at 8 am on a flight to Bobo, but arrived at the airport to be informed by an agent there that the flight had been cancelled. The driver of the hotel shuttle took me to the bus station for the local company, TCV, and waited while I purchased a ticket for the next bus, leaving at 9 am. I lucked out since the 9 o’clock was a VIP bus, meaning that there are only 4 seats in each aisle, as opposed to 5 seats on the non-VIP bus (but squashed into the same width bus).

The bus left promptly at 9:05 and I had a window seat. The girl sitting next to me was about my age and was grooving to the music playing on the bus. When we stopped in Barolo, I asked her where the toilets were and she said to follow her. We stepped off the bus into a crowd of women and children selling nuts, bananas, sesame biscuits, chewing gum, cold sodas, and individual packets of tissues. She waited for me as I jumped over the puddles of water and tried to avoid slipping in the mud, and led me to the toilets: 3 stalls behind a corrugated tin door with ‘Femmes’ written in white paint across the door. The stalls were simple pit latrines, without a roof and with 3 sides each, i.e., no door where you did your business. My seatmate handed me a tissue, the last of her packet, and disappeared to the other side of the wall.

When I walked out, I was surprised to find her waiting for me, and more surprised when she said that she had paid the 25 CFA each for me and for her. She paused at a cart where men were grilling meat outside and I asked if she was going to eat. She nodded so I motioned “two” to the guy behind the grill and exchanged a few coins for a black plastic bag filled with grilled beef and onions and a couple of toothpicks wrapped in brown paper. She asked if I wanted bread, and I nodded when I turned and saw the “village bread” (as we’ve come to call it) – fresh soft white mini baguettes – for sale from a woman standing behind me.

We boarded the bus and took our seats, and spread out our lunch to share. I nibbled on the meat, much of it was really tough or really fatty and I tried my best to covertly sneak some pieces into the tissue in my hand while I saw only one bone sitting on a tissue in her lap. After I had finished and we tossed the remnants and the bag into a plastic trash bin circulating the bus, she offered me a piece of chewing gum, the brand which is named ‘Hollywood’. Her name was Alice, and she was traveling from Ouaga to Bobo to see a brother, then on to Bamako a few days later to visit another. We watched a few African sitcoms playing on a DVD on the bus, and I understood only a few of the jokes, but those that I got were pretty funny. I was pretty amazed by how effortlessly she responded to my questions and her willingness to make the trip for me a more pleasant one.

I went for a run this morning before heading to the research center and it was already hot at 7:30, almost unbearable. I passed groups of men sitting drinking tea in a roadside stand, women sitting on tiny stools fanning a fire over which to fry doughnut balls by the side of the road, phone card stalls and hair salons opening up. I passed one man fixing a motorcycle and he looked up as I passed and shouted, “Courage!” and smiled. Young kids yelled, “Toubabou! Toubabou!” It’s really cute how the kids here do a little dance and outstretch their arms like a scarecrow and shake their hips when they shout “Toubabou!” which is the same as “Toubab” (foreigner) in Dakar, but the extra “ou” on the end is somehow more endearing.