Santé, Prospérité, Moins de Problemes

In Koudougou there was lots of head-bumping: left, right, left, right. It’s the traditional New Year’s greeting, accompanied by the phrase, “Santé, Prospérité, Moins de Problemes” (health, properity, few problems) and sometimes an additional “best wishes.” For the following week at work, we were still bumping heads and wishing everyone happy new year. It still makes me laugh every time I shake someone's hand and they bump my head four times. I can't imagine the same greeting in America, but it makes me smile and reminds me that I find Burkina is remarkable for the people. I’m most impressed with the sense of pride that people have in their country and their traditions, and their sense of humor, particularly in light of limited resources. Most people I have met here through work say they wouldn’t want to leave: this is home.

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.

'Tis the Season

Last week I met a scientist that was visiting the research center in Bobo for a couple of meetings with the ethics committee, seeking their approval to proceed with a study. He’s Burkinabe and has studied in Europe and the US and has returned to Burkina Faso to work. I asked about his project and he explained some of the delays; we decided it’s part of these kinds of projects. We spoke about the funding agency for the study he is working on in a rural area north of the capital city, and he said to me, “You Americans, who have so many resources, must share them.” He said it so straightforward, matter-of-factly, shrugged his shoulders and smiled. We who are given much have a responsibility to share. Simply by virtue of where I was born and raised, I have had the opportunity to go to school and pursue work that I find interesting and meaningful. I’m lucky.

Ride Safe (Let Us Entertain You)

Last night my housemate and I were preparing to leave work just as it was getting dark, so we took our bike lights out of our bags as we slung the bags over our shoulders and put on our bike helmets, before saying goodnight to our collaborators. We didn’t get out the door quickly – the two Burkinabe guys who were sitting in the conference room with us were staring at our ensemble of helmets and lights and started bantering with us about our attention to safety. Injury prevention seems to be the slowest public health trend to reach Burkina; although motorbikes are the pride and joy of many folks here, riders rarely wear helmets, and it often seems a luxury if seatbelts can be found in a car.

Once we escaped further good-natured heckling from our collaborators and left work, we rode our bikes through downtown, past the early signs of Christmas (shops exploding with tinsel, 3-foot plastic trees, an occasional strand of holiday lights) mixed in with the usual ever-changing lively soundtrack of music blaring from one shop or bar to another. Just as we were about halfway up the long hill that climbs ever so slightly, but constantly, to our neighborhood, I noticed a teenage boy following me on his bicycle. I slowed down, he slowed down. I picked up the pace, he peddled faster. Although young children (and grown men alike) yell, “Les Blanches!” or “Toubabou!” and wave as I ride up the hill each evening, I thought it bizarre to be followed so closely since most people don’t pay much attention to foreigners (other than a quick shout-out).

Eventually, I saw the boy riding in front of my housemate, looking back every few seconds to make sure we were still there. We were nearing the turn-off to our house when I noticed that young boy of about 10 years was also following us, riding a tired BMX bike and keeping my pace. We continued past our house and rode a little further, to a bar where every stool was taken. We stopped in front of the bar and waited to see what the boys would do. We’d not been standing there for 2 minutes when a man, who looked about 30 and was wearing a tracksuit, walked over to us and asked if all was well. I said that we had been followed on our bikes.

He asked, “By whom?”

I turned around and motioned towards the corner, where the younger boy had paused. The older boy had kept riding and was out of sight. “By the young boy there, and another one, a bit older.”

His eyes followed the direction of my hand and he asked, “That one, there?”

I nodded and said, “Oui, oui,” as is frequently said here, as if saying yes once isn’t clear.

The man yelled, “Hey! Le petit! Come here!” Somehow everyone, everything little here is best described as, or called directly, “le petit”. One can refer to “le petit” in choosing a watermelon or in describing a younger sibling or a child.

The young boy rode over on his bike and stopped a few feet away. The man started talking to the boy in Dioula and then asked a question. The boy looked at the ground, then up at the man, then back to the dirt. He said a few words, glancing at us a couple of times.

The man started laughing as the boy finished speaking and turned towards us. He relayed that the young boy, in response to him asking why he had followed us up the hill, explained that he’s not used to seeing white people on bikes, nor with hats and lights. He was simply curious about the fanfare cycling up the hill in the dark. Apparently we were a bit of a circus on our two bikes with our red, flashing tail lights and reflective helmets.

My housemate and I started giggling and reached out our hands to the little boy to shake on it and declare “no problem.” He smiled shyly and then rode off into the neighborhood. We thanked the man for helping us to understand and shared another laugh over it.

This morning we couldn’t wait to tell our collaborators the story. As anticipated, they found it highly amusing and were hardly surprised – they practically finished the punch line before we could tell it.

Boromo

Burkina has a few wildlife parks, one of which is located halfway between Bobo and Ouagadougou. Intrigued by the idea of seeing elephants and ready to have a change of scenery, Leslie and I decided to take the bus to Boromo last weekend to visit the park there, the Deux Bale Forest.

We arrived in Boromo and asked about a taxi that would take us to a lodge situated inside the park, overlooking a river where the elephants go to find water. The first guy we asked simply laughed, “There aren’t any taxis in town!” We walked across the street from the bus station to a gas station where the attendant was sitting outside. I asked him if he knew the lodge and he said he did, but that it was closed for construction. I said that we were looking for a guide to take us into the park. He pointed west and said, “Walk down the street a few hundred meters, go to the bar called ‘La Solution’ and ask for Woulouwoulou.”

We walked down the main road in the direction he pointed and had nearly reached the edge of town when we saw the sign for La Solution. When I asked the bartender (who looked about 17) if he knew Woulouwoulou, he giggled – almost as if blushing – and said he’d call him. He disappeared for a few minutes and, in the meantime, three little girls rushed up to us holding sesame cookies packaged in small, unlabeled, clear plastic bags, reciting, “Biscuits! With vitamins! Vitamins A, B, C, D, E all the way to Zed! Cent francs! Cent francs!”

I asked, “Really, all those vitamins?”

The oldest girl, who looked to be about 8 years old, nodded and repeated, “Vitamins A, B, C, D, E all the way to Zed!”

I couldn’t help myself; I tried to turn it into a teachable moment on actual sources of vitamin A and zinc and the like; we ended up just listing foods like carrots, mangoes, and eggs. They didn’t seem all that convinced and resumed singing all the letters of the alphabet. One thing was certain – they were adorable, and persuasive sellers. We bought a package from each of them, vitamins or none. (At least vitamin E in the sesame.)

The bartender returned and, still unable to stop smiling, said that Woulouwoulou was out in the field but would come by “soon” to meet us and talk about going to the park the following day. Leslie and I sat down and split a beer while waiting for word from this mysterious guide.

The daylight was beginning to fade, so we paid the bill and told the bartender that we were going to go check into a room at the hotel we’d spotted across the street. He nodded and said that he’d tell Woulouwoulou that he could find us there.

The hub of Boromo, at least at first glance, is the bus station. The main drag has bars, small restaurants, a few hotels, signs for the park, a national police guard station, and a mix of kitschy tourist shops selling souvenirs. We saw huge trucks traveling through, carrying grains and other goods heading for a market, or loaded with rows of motorcycles. Some carried animals, and a few others carried people sitting on top of watermelons. The main attractions seem to be an annual mask festival in March, and the park, but it was the off-season for spotting wildlife.

So when the hotel receptionist said that there were no available rooms, Leslie asked - about three times – if he was sure that there were no vacancies. He suggested another hotel located just outside of town and gave me the number to call. The guy on the other end of the line said that they had rooms available and agreed to come pick us up. He showed up about 20 minutes later but on a moped. Leslie and I ro-sham-bo’d for who would go first on the moped while the other guys laughed at our decision-making process. I went first and sat on the pannier rack of the P-50 (pronounced “pay-cinquante”, short for the Peugeout 50, an older model motor scooter with a single seat, rather than a seat large enough for two). We drove a few kilometers out of town to a small compound of bungalows. By then it was dark and a few halogen lights lit up the compound while a generator whirred.

The guy was just about to return to town to pick up Leslie when the headlights of another moped appeared; the other hotel receptionist drove up with Leslie hanging on behind. We checked into one of the bungalows and discovered that, not only were we the only guests, but the kitchen was closed because the chef was on vacation, and there were no other places to eat nearby. However, the guy was willing to drive back into town to get some food for us, so we gave him money for rice and sauce.

We sat down at a table that he had set up outside for us and had a beer while we waited for dinner and started to wonder if we should call Woulouwoulou. As if on cue, a motorcycle appeared and a guy walked over and introduced himself as Mamadou and said that he was a guide. We asked if he knew Woulouwoulou; turned out that he went by any one of four names, and that he was indeed Woulouwoulou.

We arranged for Woulouwoulou/Mamadou to drive us into the park and lead a walking tour of one area of the park the following morning. He regaled us with stories of elephant sightings near the road in Boromo but said that we had a 50% chance of seeing elephants. Leslie and I had decided, before leaving Bobo, to set our expectations very low, and thought 50% seemed high, but we were willing to go have a look anyways.

The next morning all went as planned – surprisingly enough; we were picked up promptly at 7 am, stopped for an omelet and coffee, then drove into the park and stopped at the lodge under construction. We didn’t see another soul – not another person, no wildlife. We walked through the bush and it was reminiscent of walking house-to-house for the census at work, only there were no houses. Woulouwoulou pointed out a few elephant tracks, but that was as close as we got. We finally returned to the lodge construction area and Leslie and I sat down in a hammock strung across the deck. We were just agreeing that it was time to go back to catch a bus to Bobo when we suddenly found ourselves falling to the deck with a loud thud. The hammock broke, sending us down on our derrieres! We broke up laughing and decided it was the icing on the cake for our weekend jaunt.

Jack O’ Melon

I tried to explain Halloween to a Burkinabe co-worker and I think he was just being polite when he said that he understood what I had described, from carving pumpkins to trick-or-treating in costumes. Although there are various types of squash found here, I hadn’t see any pumpkins recently and by late yesterday afternoon, I felt a little crushed by the thought of letting Halloween slip by unnoticed. I announced to my housemates that I was going to pick up some veggies for dinner and to find the closest substitute vehicle for a jack o’ lantern: a watermelon. Two of them laughed and said they’d come with me, so we walked down the street to the market stand together, just as the wind was picking up. We stood before the pile of watermelons in search of one that was round enough, the right size, and would stand up on its own. We selected one and bought a few other veggies just as drops of rain began to fall. By the time we were halfway home, the rain turned to a downpour and we arrived home soaking wet.

We changed into dry clothes and started making a veggie and bean soup while the rain poured outside. While the soup simmered, Katie and I cut the top of the watermelon and started scooping the insides out. We made ‘cocktails’ with the leftover watermelon juice, lime and carbonated water (only missing a dash of vodka). We carved a design in the watermelon but discovered that we didn’t have any candles, so Leslie turned on her cell phone flashlight and put it in the watermelon.

You Can’t Outride a Thunderstorm

I’ve been taking French classes two evenings each week and find the courses both helpful and amusing. There’s just one class for students of all levels, which isn’t exactly ideal, but the class is a nice mix of conversation, grammar, reading and writing, with exercises in pronunciation and vocabulary (and, often, Pictionary and charades). The previous week, the topic was “emotional reactions” and we learned how to express irritation, frustration, or outrage. For an hour, we took turns exclaiming phrases such as, “I’m at the end of my rope!” or “That noise will make me crazy!” or “What a scandal!” My favorite was the phrase in which all of our vocab words were combined in one: “Je suis indigné, outré, scandalisé, offusqué, ulcéré, révolté.” I was laughing by the time I finished reading that one aloud, trying to picture just when it would be necessary to put that to use.

This past Thursday, our vocabulary lesson revolved around going to the cinema. It’s ironic that we learned how to ask, “How many screens are in the theater?” when there is one movie theater – with one movie screen – in town, which routinely plays action movies. Although the French Cultural Center frequently screens films, they’re always “en version francaise (v.f.)”.

One of the other students read the phrase, “I dislike musical comedies but I like westerns.” He looked up from the page and asked, “What’s a western?” The teacher is a sprite French woman with hipster glasses who sports a short spiky haircut, and is usually clad in flowy outfits. She asked me, the lone American in the class, to explain the meaning of a ‘western movie’. I mustered up a working description, referring to a horse, a lasso, a gun, and a man wearing a cowboy hat. The latter finally elicited a reaction from the student, who brightened and nodded, “Oh! A co-boy film?”

I repeated, “A co-boy?” and looked to our teacher to translate.

She laughed and said, “Ah oui, we say ‘co-boy’ instead of ‘cowboy’ film,” putting forth her best American accent, rendering it “cowwwboy”. I giggled, and soon the class was laughing with (at?) me. Although several words are spelled the same between the languages, the changes in pronunciation are often subtle enough to leave me perplexed as to what the word is until I see it written. Others are words that originate from the U.S. and are therefore said in English with a twist. Rarely are they so funny, though.

After the class finished, I walked out to the street and, as I gave the parking attendant 50 CFA and attached my bike light to my handlebars, the wind was picking up and the air felt cooler than before class. I sensed a storm was on the way, but I was confident that I’d make it up the hill before the sky opened and released a downpour.
Wrong! Not 5 minutes later, the drizzle became driving rain. Shopkeepers hardly had time to close umbrellas and break down tables and bring their goods inside where they’d be safe from the storm. I tried to keep going, as I thought to myself, “I’m from Seattle! I’m not afraid of rain! I’ll be home in 10 minutes!” However, the rain was so heavy, and the wind so strong, that I was forced to pull over and seek shelter under the awning of a row of shops, where other people had stopped as well.

It’s an amazing force of nature, the rainstorms that unleash a week’s worth of rain in 20 minutes. I was soaked head to toe and could feel puddles of water squishing in my shoes, but was pleased to discover that my Timbuk2 bag is indeed waterproof. The cool rain felt refreshing on my skin after the stifling heat during the day and it was kind of mesmerizing to watch the downpour and hear nothing but rain pounding into the ground.

After 15 minutes of waiting, the rain grew less intense and I heard a drum circle start nearby. I turned my lights on again and climbed onto my bike, braving the lingering rain. Slowly, people began to spill back into the road and ride up the hill. By the time I reached the top of the hill, where the women sell vegetables on the corner, a few vendors had set up shop again, and there were even a few stars visible in the sky.

I arrived home to find that one of my housemates had prepared dinner. By the time I changed into dry clothes, 3 bowls of lentil soup were on the table, with crusty bread and cucumber salad. I was grateful to dig in.