Burkina Faso

I think it’s fair to say that the names of towns and cities in Burkina Faso are the most fun to say. Ouagadougou. Bobo-Dioulasso. Banakeledaga. Orodara. Souroukoudougou.

All places I’ll be visiting and working here. Seriously, how awesome?

Bobo is so green! That's what stands out first. Trees everywhere, and leafy, lining the streets and provided much-needed shade. There was a downpour for about two hours after my flight landed this morning, then it cleared up this afternoon. It's cooled off somewhat but the heat hasn’t let up much. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve seen many people riding bicycles that I think this, but the air seems a bit clearer here than in Dakar ... unless you’re riding a bike or walking along the road when a moped passes, trailing exhaust, and then it’s just like any other urban center with lots of traffic.

Our flight from Dakar to Ouagadougou was delayed 4 hours so another co-worker (who was traveling with me, and brought about 20kg of study supplies for us in her checked luggage) and I arrived at "Le Splendid Hotel" at 3:30 am ... and proceeded to take a 2-hour nap before the car picked us up at 6:30 am. The hotel was far from splendid, but fine for a hot shower and a bed.

My flight this morning was uneventful, fortunately, and just a quick 40 minute flight from Ouaga to Bobo. When I landed, Bo, the student with whom I'm working these next 2-3 weeks, and a driver from the research center picked me up, and I’ve been warmly welcomed. I’m here to help facilitate and supervise a nutrition study where we’ll assess the acceptability of a peanut butter-like supplementary food, which is added to children’s foods to provide extra energy and essential nutrients. It’s very similar in methodology to the study that I first worked on in Dakar, and again we’ll be recruiting mother/infant pairs to taste the product and tell us what they think of the product and how they feed it to their child (easier said than done in an environment where women, especially in rural areas, aren’t frequently asked for their opinion).

The house that we’re renting for the visiting study staff is funky - very open and spacious, with wrought-iron fencing and swirl-design iron window coverings painted bright green. There are 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a dining/living room area, a kitchen with a fridge and gas oven/stove, and another room that we’ll convert to an office or spare bedroom. Eventually, there will be 5 study coordinators from the university working and living in Bobo, and we expect to have visiting scientists and students staying there from time to time. The garden is the finest part - outside there is a big palm tree, bougainvillea crawling up the side of the walls, tiny yellow flowers bursting from tall green stalks, a mango tree and a citrus tree.

I took a nap on the couch this afternoon and did a little bit of work on the laptop, but mostly took time to get my stuff sorted out and to recover from the long air travel. I hung up the mosquito net in my room that my housemate Katie, another research coordinator from the US, had bought for me, and unpacked my bags.

Independence Day

The 4th of July was a memorable celebration in Dakar. I was invited to a poolside BBQ by the fellow who Jessica and I met on the boat to Goree (the one wearing the Red Sox hat, who gave me his business card) and celebrated the holiday with about a dozen Americans and a few non-Americans who were game to partake in a little Americana. I loved watching one Senegalese man listen intently to the recipe for constructing the perfect “hamburger Americain” and then trying his first burger, fresh off the grill. Most of the folks at the BBQ work together and the gathering also served as an office-warming party … which sounds weird until you see that the office could have been transported straight from Santa Barbara. It’s one level, a sprawling house-converted-to-office space (like many offices in Dakar) overlooking the ocean, with palm, mango and citrus trees, a pool, and an outdoor firepit that would look at home in a Sunset magazine shoot.

I brought a couple of salads and bread, the daughter of the fellow who hosted the party made a fruit salad and a pasta salad, and the guys grilled hamburgers, chicken, and ribs. After dinner, sitting around the table outside on the patio under a near-full moon, enjoying the warm but no longer hot evening and refreshing occasional breeze, someone popped open a laptop and found the Declaration of Independence online, so we all took turns reading aloud a section.

I would have been perfectly content to leave the party while it was good and mark that down as a terrific 4th of July, and go home. However, I had been invited by the gardener at the house where I’m dog-sitting to his neighborhood’s wrestling championship matches. I couldn’t pass up the chance to watch traditional Senegalese wrestling. We were instructed to arrive around 8 pm but arrived at 20 ‘til midnight, and yet our timing couldn’t have been better – the first match (of 7) was just underway.

We were led to a row of chairs and seated us in the third row, right in perfect view of the “lutteurs” (wrestlers) and the dancing that is part of each pre-match warm-up, and where the winners are presented with flags and envelopes of money. Although each match only takes 20 seconds, the pre-match psych-up goes on for 20 minutes with drumming, singing, and each wrestler and his team dancing together in a choreographed routine, with a few individuals doing free form or improv. The first rows of seats were couches and big, overstuffed armchairs, sitting in the sand. They were empty when we arrived but slowly began to fill up with people who looked very important, like parents, women wearing impeccable makeup and sparkly fabrics, men wearing boubous, and when the professional wrestling champions arrived, and the crowd went nuts.

RIP, MJ (PYT)

“ ‘Where were you when Michael Jackson died?’ is going to become THE question,” declared the woman sitting across from me at dinner. I was at a little tapas place overlooking the ocean, with a group of women who work in Dakar, where the only requirement for being on the list-serv is to “know a little bit of English”. I figured I’d give it a try – I hadn’t been to one since I had flown through Dakar for 2 days last September and I was keen to meet some new people.

I will, in fact, remember MJ’s death well. It was nearly 11 pm here, and I was getting ready to close up my laptop for the night after watching “Weeds” – which has replaced “The Closer” which I’ve (sadly) finished season 3 and will have to wait to get a new hook-up for the subsequent seasons – when a series of emails from close friends in Seattle appeared in my inbox. The first email was simply a link to the LA Times with “MJ hospitalized!” and then, sent 15 minutes later, “OMG! CNN said he died!” which was countered with, “So says AP!” I had to tear myself away from reading the news, but awoke to find his image everywhere online, and even heard the local radio stations broadcasting the news in French and Wolof.

Turns out that 5 of the 8 of us at dinner all know a friend of mine in the States, so it was yet another “small world” incident that I have been finding frequently lately. One mentioned that they were en route to a MJ Tribute Dance Party at a club downtown after dinner, then asked if I wanted to come (ahem, hello, rhetorical question!). It was a stitch: these little kids who didn’t look old enough to be in a club were moonwalking and doing full routines to Thriller and Bad. The DJ was turning MJ tunes all night and the place was packed; it was amazing.

The Neighborhood Watch

One of the women in our office rescued a stray kitten outside her apartment building and a few of us “cat-sat” in the office while she was at a conference. It was a rather welcome diversion from working at the computer when we had to feed the kitten and give it time to run around the office outside of its crate.

Chantal and Alex are two stray dogs that, I’m told, were left behind by their former owners. Chantal had a littler of six puppies in an empty lot across the street from a house where I was house- and dog-sitting, so part of my daily routine also included feeding Chantal and checking the status of the puppies every day. Unfortunately, their introduction to the world was a pile of garbage in the remaining frame of a house on the empty lot. Despite the fact that I can’t say what breed they are, the puppies are pretty adorable.

Nearby where the puppies are living, a pair guards hold court every day. They remind me so much of the Muppet characters, Statler and Waldorf (the two grumpy old men who heckled everyone from the balcony). However, the two guards are anything but disagreeable. Each sits in his own wooden chair and watches the action in the neighborhood. One wears a wool ski cap and holds a radio with a long antenna in his hand every day; the other sits with one leg bent so his foot rests on the seat of his chair and curls his bare foot over the edge while the other foot rests on the unpaved ground. When I drive by in the car, they both look at the car, stop their chatter, put down the radio, and smile ear-to-ear as they stretch out their arms to wave or to clasp their hands together with their arms raised. It cracks me up and I marvel at the constancy of that same enthusiastic greeting. Another guard nearby sits and reads an English dictionary while on duty; I see him holding the massive book every time I see him.

Bloom Where You’re Planted

I had a fun reunion with Jessica (with whom I went to Tanzania) in Dakar when she conveniently arrived for my birthday (and a conference). I was so happy to see a good friend after feeling, quite frankly, a bit homesick. One of her colleagues joined us for lunch on the water near their hotel and we feasted on fish kebabs. We made our way downtown to a café and, fueled by strong coffee and a chocolate sweet, we took on the downtown market scene in search of fabric. One of the street ticks decided to follow us, relentlessly hoping we’d want to follow him for a tour of Dakar, and I asked him several times to please leave us alone. After the twelfth time he was insisted that he would show us the market, we stopped in front of a group of street vendors – all older men, too – and I said loudly and firmly, “Please leave us alone.” All eyes were suddenly focused on the annoying guy and the older men started shouting stuff at him in Wolof and he left us alone.

Or so we thought. About 8 blocks and 10 minutes later - seemingly out of nowhere - someone approached us and pointed a finger in my face, scolding, “You are bad!” I turned my head to see that it is the same street man who previously followed us. We walked away and went through the same routine of asking him to leave us alone when we were standing in front of a group of men huddled around a small shop who all yelled at the man for bothering us, again. I burst out laughing when the three of us had rounded a corner away from the crazy persistent guy and Jessica said, “You are bad!”

We ended up going to another market and buying two fabrics – enough material for both Jess and I to have two jupes (skirts) and a dress each made – and made it to the tailor before closing, with the promise to finish Jess’s clothes before her week in Dakar ended. That evening we discovered a great Moroccan restaurant where we shared a chicken and abricot tagine, a chicken pastilla, and deliciously spiced couscous.

The next day, we visited Ile de Goree for the annual garden and art walk. On the ferry ride from downtown Dakar to the island, I overheard an American man pointing out all the Dakar landmarks to a few other Americans, so I started eavesdropping. As we were arriving on the island, we started chatting – or, I should say, Jessica said, “This is my friend Shelby, she lives here and needs some friends”. She obviously had picked up on my pangs of homesickness. In turn, a man wearing a Red Sox hat gave me his business card and said to get in touch some time.

It was a great weekend to be on Goree – the weather was perfect and some of the people who own homes there had opened their gardens to local artists to display their work. We wandered in and out of leafy patios, past brightly painted Mediterranean-style homes, and small shops, bought some necklaces after much haggling over the prices, and had lunch on the island. Goree’s history isn't as pretty as the island is today; it is most notable for it’s role as a port for the slave trade. While there, we toured the Maisons des Esclaves, with the “Door of No Return” and listened to a tour guide recount the stories of people who passed through Goree.

I took the next day off from work so Jess and I went to Toubab Dialaw, just an hour south of Dakar, right on the ocean. We found ourselves at a Peace Corps hangout - a hotel decorated with shells called the Sobobade and wandered around half expecting to see gnomes. Lounging in the sun for a couple of hours while overlooking the ocean wasn’t half bad, though. We later had some pool time at Jessica’s hotel back in Dakar, and went for a killer run (in the heat!) along the water. So good to have her here!

Dinner Club, Dakar-Style

I had another visitor from Seattle last week and am enjoying this trend (2 visitors in 4 months, with another arriving in June!). Jonathan, a friend from school and a fellow dinner/cooking club pal, was here to set up a research project which will bring him back to Senegal later this summer. When he arrived, it was a little like Christmas as he unloaded two bags full of goodies from REI and Trader Joe’s that my parents had kindly sent with him, as well as a gift from dinner club friends in Seattle. Not that I am roughing it here, but it was really fun to receive items from home that just don’t exist here. It reminds me of the thrill of receiving mail at summer camp (only I’m not in a cabin in the woods, nor singing campfire songs, though I can smell a heap of trash burning as I write … okay, still not quite the same).

Jon and his parents, who live here, picked me up for dinner and met the (very sweet) dog that I’ve been taking care of while the dog’s owners are traveling. We noticed three worms that had burrowed under the dog’s skin, which is apparently very common here when the temperature rises in warmer weather. There are more flies that appear when the mango trees bloom this time of year, and the flies lay eggs that can burrow under skin of animals and humans (clothes and sheets have to be ironed here after drying outside to kill any eggs that might be on the fabric). My skin crawls just thinking about these worms. However, none of the others were fussed at all and Jon's dad, a surgeon, took the worms right out while I squirmed more than the dog. This is after they treated me to dinner – I think the next dinner will have to be on me.

I joined Jon and his co-workers/fellow students for dinner later in the week, at a restaurant serving fish kebabs and tajines, fried plantains, and mighty strong mojitos. The server brought us a menu in English, although we were all equally perplexed by some of the translations (bananas Nordic?). We sat outside on the patio, seemingly the only customers for the evening. It wasn’t until we were just leaving, close to 10:30 in the evening, that other tables starting filling up (and this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this here). They regaled me with their travel stories and updates from Seattle and I was a bit nostalgic when we said farewell.

Gym Class

I went for a run yesterday evening with a co-worker and his brother and it was the first time I’ve gone running without being heckled. The beach is usually crowded with people, but I don’t see many women exercising, only a few runners and small groups of foreigners sometimes playing Frisbee on weekends; by and large, the beach is ruled by soccer players and their nightly matches before sunset.

Usually I can’t go for a run without at least one person hissing at me (the equivalent of whistling at someone in the US, trying to catch someone’s attention in a not-very-welcome way), following me for a few paces repeating, “Bonjour Madame! Ou, mademoiselle? Je t’aime!” or kicking a soccer ball into my path (or at me). But running yesterday, beside two tall Senegalese men, there was none of that. It was a dream.

We stopped at one part of the beach with a small hill and did a series of training exercises and stretches, led by my co-worker. I was standing like a triangle, stretching my right arm to my left ankle, when I heard a bunch of giggling not far behind me. I released the stretch and stood up, turning my head to see 6 little kids mimicking the stretch and laughing uncontrollably. They stopped for a second when they caught me looking at them, but I waved them over and said, “Come here!” in Wolof. They scurried over, started following our stretches and kept giggling wildly.

There were 5 girls, all dressed in multi-color and multi-pattern pagnes, probably between 4 and 8 years old, and one little boy, who looked about 2 but it’s hard to tell. He was wearing a red t-shirt with “50 Cent” written on it and a picture of a gun. The little boy stood there while his sisters jumped around, howled with laughter, and joined us doing sit-ups and push-ups. When the girls ran off to dip their toes in the ocean, and I was sitting on the beach with my arms wrapped around my knees and felt a little tug on my shirtsleeve. The little boy held my shoulder absentmindedly while watching his sisters splashing in the water. He didn’t say a word the whole time.

We decided to leave once the girls came out of the water and we said goodbye. They were still giggling and one of them took the little boy by the hand and they skipped off in the opposite direction. When my co-worker and his brother and I parted ways, I thanked them for such a fun run and we agreed to do it again soon.