Once in a Blue Moon

As Christmas approached I was feeling homesick and wishing I had booked a ticket home to be with my family and friends there, despite a few jovial souls keeping me company as my two housemates and I prepared for our first Christmas away from home. I decided that a change of scenery was necessary. My housemates were easily convinced into the idea of taking a trip to the beach in Ghana, until we realized that we could fly to Paris for the same price as a ticket from Ouagadougou to Accra, and the same route by bus would take 25 hours. Instead, we opted to travel within Burkina, avoiding the hassles of getting a visa and reducing our bus travel time by about 23 hours. We chose Banfora, located about 80 km southwest of Bobo, as our destination for Christmas as we’d heard that there are peaks to climb and hippos to see, and that it’s a beautiful, green area with waterfalls, sugar cane and rice fields.

Our friend Bo gave us the name and phone number of a good friend of his in Banfora and we contacted him when we arrived. In typical Burkinabe hospitable fashion, he asked when he could meet us to show us around, and we settled on meeting at our hotel at 5pm. We had a cold bissap and learned that he teaches English in Orodara, where our study will take place. He led us on foot around Banfora, bustling with traffic hauling goods along the main road (from Ouagadougou to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire), tourists, and the end of the market day. We stopped three times so he could greet people he knew.

We ate Christmas Eve dinner at a restaurant called McDonald’s – fortunately not the yellow arches (which I have yet to see in West Africa) but a charming family-run place serving grilled fish and frites (French fries). We returned to our hotel to find a concert in progress so we ordered a ½ bottle of wine and enjoyed the music… until we went to bed and suddenly the disco next door started blaring techno so loud that it caused the masks decorating our walls to thump and thud with the bass. I was afraid one would come crashing down on my face. Not exactly my idea of a Merry Christmas.

Christmas morning was sleepy, sunny, and hot. We lazed around, drinking coffee and going to the pool at the hotel. Feeling the urge to “do something” we made arrangements for a guide to take us to the domes of Fabedougou, volcanic rocks that apparently are a favorite spot for West African artists to film their music videos. We climbed to the top and enjoyed the 360-view by ourselves for a bit, then were joined by another group of people. We were perched atop one of the domes, admiring the view of the sugar cane fields and waiting for the sunset, nearly half-asleep enjoying the peace and quiet of the area, when our guide lit a cigarette and started playing music on his cell phone, piercing the silence. My heart sank and I couldn’t help but scowl and think, “Why would you spoil a such perfectly chill moment?” just as the other group of people looked up at us with what I interpreted to be the same thought. But then someone laughed and we all giggled and started to boogie.

My housemate Robin heard the other group speaking Spanish and liked their reaction to the music sparring between our domes, so she sauntered over to chat. As with every resident of countries outside the US, these folks spoke nearly flawless English and were a group of friends from Barcelona traveling around Burkina for two weeks.

The next morning we were up early and met Bo’s friend at 8 and set off in search of hippos. We drove on motorbikes to Lake Tengrela, about 10 km from Banfora on a red dirt road, and spent the morning floating on the lake. We didn’t see any hippos but it felt great to be out on the water, especially since someone else was paddling (and made us flower necklaces as cadeau!).

We set off on a second hippo hunt after lunch, this time with a brother of a friend of a second cousin of someone leading us along another red dirt road to an unnamed lake. We stopped for a minute on the motorbikes to wait for a couple of others to catch up after stopping to buy fuel, and 10 children came running out of the courtyard connecting of a set of banco (traditional construction materials, a mix of mud and straw and earth) homes together, yelling “La Blanche!” and shyly shook my hand and stared at me, giggling wildly.

We flew down the road on motorbikes, over a small bridge under which people were washing clothes in the river and past sugar cane fields. We left the main dirt road and continued along singletrack to a clearing where I could see a lake covering in lillypads, framed by the surrounding fields and hills. We arrived wind-blown and sun-kissed, and walked down a path to the water’s edge where we found two pirogues (wooden canoes) sitting on the dry land. One of the guys picked up a huge branch and jumped into one of the canoes and pushed off into the water to check for leaks in the boat. Once we established that water was not collecting in the boats, we took the boats out on the lake in search of hippos. After 2 hours of floating along, watching the fishermen cast their nets, birds flying overhead, and the irrigation system in action over the sugar cane fields, we turned back towards dry land. At that moment, we heard a noise that was a hippo, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared.

We rode back into Banfora as the sun was setting. I had the feeling that I often have at the end of a day skiing or hiking: content, exhausted, wind-blown, and purely spent… only I had spent the day sitting in a canoe while someone else did the hard work, or sitting on the back of a motorbike. I was filthy by the end of the day – both Robin and Nancy told me that I looked like a street urchin, covered in dust and dirt combined with sweat and sunblock – but happy. It felt like one of those days in Africa where anything seems possible.

We showered and met Amadou and his wife and son for dinner, to say thank you for the tour of Banfora. It was a really lovely dinner, and their 16-month-old son was both a comedian and a charmer. As we said goodbye outside the restaurant, a group of people arrived in a 4x4 and approached the front door. I was in the middle of tickling the 16-month-old when I looked up to see it was the party of traveling Spaniards. The restaurant was closing and we were on our way to another place to go dancing, so we decided to go together and ended up dancing the night away before returning to Bobo the next morning.

The following Monday, we received a text message with an invitation to join the Spaniards in Koudougou to celebrate the New Year. One of them was involved in the design of a new cultural center and there were special activities planned for the weekend. Robin and Nancy and I live together and work together, and the Christmas holiday was approaching borderline too much togetherness. As keen as we were to meet up with the others (new people!), not everyone had equal enthusiasm for traveling together.

Robin wrote a message to me at work on Skype saying, “I need a vacation from work and work people.”

I wrote back, “Including me?”

“Especially you,” she responded, then looked up at me across the table and started giggling. “Oh, Shelby.”

In the end, we decided to go and survived the 7-hour bus ride, with live chickens on board, no air conditioning, Robin sitting on top of my lap for most of it, and me sitting on Nancy while we shared my headphones. (7 hours thanks to someone forgetting to attach the wheel after the bus had been in the shop for 6 months of repairs!) It was well worth it; we had a blast touring the newly constructed cultural center, dinner at the mayor’s house, dance party ‘til 4 in the morning under the blue moon, and another party the following day, with traditional dancing and music from local and traveling troupes. The best part? An open invitation to visit Barcelona anytime.