Hello everyone. The last week has been a whirlwind of finishing classes, packing, puking and trying to figure out how to get around the ridiculous set of rules imposed on us. Last weekend, a bug hit the girl’s house ripping apart their insides like an alien fetus darning socks out of their intestines. At least this is how it was described to me. I however was lucky enough not to catch this 24-hour flu (knock on wood). I actually have been really healthy here so far, which sort of surprises me (knock on wood again). With the huge health care debate going on in the US at the moment, I keep reminding myself how lucky we are to even have healthcare. Burkina Faso has 1,300 doctors, which is one for about every 5,000 people. A few weeks ago, our housekeeper, Salimata’s, brother died of typhoid at 25. They misdiagnosed it as malaria and because of the flood; there is now only one hospital so you can imagine how much attention he was given. The saddest part is that they most likely would have been able to save him had they diagnosed it correctly. Sorry I didn’t mean to go off on a depressing tangent. Anyway… I’m glad I have not gotten sick.
Last night was our last dance class. I am going to miss that class so much. It ended up being our loophole to get out of the house a few nights a week to see more of the city. The program is just so worried that something will go wrong that they have made some pretty unreasonable rules. This is why I do not necessarily feel guilty breaking these rules slightly. Again, if you are Michael Kevane or David Pace, have mercy. There is a festival going on right now in the city called Waga Hip Hop showcasing different Burkinabé hip hop artists and dance crews. So last night after dance class, we hopped in a cab and instead of going home, we went to a local venue and watched a freestyle battle with our friends. Imagine rappers dissing each other in front of a crowd of hundreds of people. Now imagine them free styling in a mixture of Moore and French. There were no women in the crowd and we made up half of the white population. It was quite an experience. I had a conversation with the guy behind me about Tupac, the Nabba (chief) of hip hop and how Biggie does not compare. Let it be known that I really don’t care and I really know nothing about Biggie and Tupac, but somehow I talk more about them with people here than I do about Barack Obama.
I am about to go to bed and get up at 5am to leave for our villages. I will be staying in the village of Béréba with my friend Meghan. It’s strange because I feel as nervous and giddy as I did when I left to come to Ouaga. We are embarking on a completely new experience for the next five weeks. I am excited and ready to live simply with little to no communication with the world outside the village. Meghan and I will be living in a two room house with no electricity or plumbing, while we work in the village library organizing programs, tutoring and promoting literacy. I hope to come back being able to speak Dioula, the local language. Basically, this will most likely be my last post until mid November unless I find an internet café on one of our visits to the nearest city, Bobo-Dioulasso. Thank you everyone for being so supportive.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
My friend Elena has inspired me to write this entry. A problem we have all encountered is articulating our experience here in Burkina Faso to those back home. Its not that it’s too profound and silly Americans could never understand. Not at all. Its just that in sharing our experiences here, there is no way to really do justice to the experience itself or change I am going through. I cannot explain the little moments and observations that are too small to point out but without these hundreds of seemingly unimportant events, I would not be able to interpret the bigger picture that makes this experience incredible.
My housemate Yuki, just walked in a minute ago as I was writing this and his first disenchanted words were, “Its incredible how everyone in this country always wants something from you.” Sometimes it is hard when writing home not to romanticize the experience into stories of self-realization and world discovery. Trust me there is plenty of that, but there is just as much difficulty and frustration. As I have said before, I have found the Burkinabé to be sweet, beautiful and generous but sometimes I feel like every time I have a conversation I end up lying about having a husband, no phone and no email. And I cannot blame these people either. There are no opportunities here. Half the population would be ready to get on a plane out of Burkina Faso tomorrow. The positives and negatives of being here are sometimes too hard to balance bringing on a state of confusion that is difficult to reconcile. As I try to articulate this to you I myself am trying to come to terms with the irrelevance of my own culture and its comforts. But don’t worry; I’m not depressed or ungrateful. I’m happy and healthy having the time of my life here. If it were all just a series of heart-warming anecdotes, then I wouldn’t have wanted to come anyway.
My housemate Yuki, just walked in a minute ago as I was writing this and his first disenchanted words were, “Its incredible how everyone in this country always wants something from you.” Sometimes it is hard when writing home not to romanticize the experience into stories of self-realization and world discovery. Trust me there is plenty of that, but there is just as much difficulty and frustration. As I have said before, I have found the Burkinabé to be sweet, beautiful and generous but sometimes I feel like every time I have a conversation I end up lying about having a husband, no phone and no email. And I cannot blame these people either. There are no opportunities here. Half the population would be ready to get on a plane out of Burkina Faso tomorrow. The positives and negatives of being here are sometimes too hard to balance bringing on a state of confusion that is difficult to reconcile. As I try to articulate this to you I myself am trying to come to terms with the irrelevance of my own culture and its comforts. But don’t worry; I’m not depressed or ungrateful. I’m happy and healthy having the time of my life here. If it were all just a series of heart-warming anecdotes, then I wouldn’t have wanted to come anyway.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
A Bit of Political History
Burkina Faso has a pretty interesting history. Unlike its neighbors, Burkina has not experienced an internal conflict in its modern history unless you count five coup d’états since independence. Burkina Faso is most known for its revolution in 1983 where young Marxist leadership, Thomas Sankara, took power. The previous regime had made Sankara prime minister fearing the backlash of the young militants. Because of disagreements between the young and old leadership’s clashing ideals, Sankara and his friend were jailed in mid-1983, but Sankara’s best friend and political ally, Blaise Campaoré, fled returning months later to free his friends from prison and on August 4, 1983, Thomas Sankara became president at the age of 34 in a coup d’état. Campaore was his prime minister. From 1983-1987, Sankara gave a huge amount of power to peasants, farmers and the working class kicking out Europeans and foreign imperial investment, like any good Marxist would do. He is still thought of as a kind of savior for Burkina Faso, fighting corruption and driving himself around in a beat up Peugeot. He increased literacy to 60%, provided vaccinations and improved women’s rights. Sankara changed the country’s name from Upper-Volta, its colonial name, to Burkina Faso, which is a combination of Moore and Dioula meaning land of the honest or uncorrupt.
Of course many people weren’t happy, especially the bourgeoisie and the United States, and in 1987 Blaise Campaoré, his best friend, took power killing Sankara. And guess who is still president today… Blaise Campaoré. There is not much political expression or opposition to Campaoré out of fear but he is not a horrible president by African standards and Burkina Faso has been stable despite its painfully slow growth. 2010 is an election year but its hard to imagine Blaise not winning. I don’t think he will ever step down and he is still young, 57. It scares me to think about the future of Burkina Faso and how they will or will not get rid of him. Either this means a violent revolution or twenty more years of corruption and little to no growth neither of, which a country as poor as Burkina can afford.
Of course many people weren’t happy, especially the bourgeoisie and the United States, and in 1987 Blaise Campaoré, his best friend, took power killing Sankara. And guess who is still president today… Blaise Campaoré. There is not much political expression or opposition to Campaoré out of fear but he is not a horrible president by African standards and Burkina Faso has been stable despite its painfully slow growth. 2010 is an election year but its hard to imagine Blaise not winning. I don’t think he will ever step down and he is still young, 57. It scares me to think about the future of Burkina Faso and how they will or will not get rid of him. Either this means a violent revolution or twenty more years of corruption and little to no growth neither of, which a country as poor as Burkina can afford.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Ouagadougou weekend
Ani-Sogoma!
Last week was a dark time for the FAVL students. Some people didn’t make it through with their sanity but I managed to come out of it relieved and happy. Three tests, one French novel, various lectures and a dance performance. They have completely front-loaded our classes so that we have the bulk of our work done before we leave for the villages in two weeks. Its like cramming five 4-unit classes, three of which are upper division, into a five-week period. On top of that our Economics/Service learning/program director professor went back to the states two weeks ago, so for our huge econ test we had to teach ourselves three fourths of the material based on readings and uninformative guest lectures. Now we cannot wait to get to our villages and have ten hours a day of free time.
After a day of recovery I got rid of the nervous twitch my eye had acquired specially for our econ test, and I was happy to get out of the house to explore more of Ouaga. Lizzie, Elena and Meghan were in a small dance performance for our bi-weekly dance class at the French cultural center that afternoon so we all headed over there to admire and simultaneously make fun of them. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you are aware of the somewhat extreme rules imposed on us about going out so if you run into David Pace or Michael Kevane one day on the street, please don’t tell them about this blog. Or if you are one of these two men, have mercy. That said, after the performance, Lizzie, Elena, and I took a cab to meet up with our friend Meredith, and some burkinabé friends we know from dance class, Marius, Romielle and Baya the drummer and a French girl working in microfinance. After drinks, we went dancing at an out door bar and ate brochettes (goat meat on a stick, soooo gooood) for 50cfa (about 10cents) apiece. It was so much fun to get away from all of the white hang outs we end up at and actually get out in Ouagadougou. Don’t worry we were really safe… mom.
I’ll keep trying to upload photos!
Bisous,
Merry
Last week was a dark time for the FAVL students. Some people didn’t make it through with their sanity but I managed to come out of it relieved and happy. Three tests, one French novel, various lectures and a dance performance. They have completely front-loaded our classes so that we have the bulk of our work done before we leave for the villages in two weeks. Its like cramming five 4-unit classes, three of which are upper division, into a five-week period. On top of that our Economics/Service learning/program director professor went back to the states two weeks ago, so for our huge econ test we had to teach ourselves three fourths of the material based on readings and uninformative guest lectures. Now we cannot wait to get to our villages and have ten hours a day of free time.
After a day of recovery I got rid of the nervous twitch my eye had acquired specially for our econ test, and I was happy to get out of the house to explore more of Ouaga. Lizzie, Elena and Meghan were in a small dance performance for our bi-weekly dance class at the French cultural center that afternoon so we all headed over there to admire and simultaneously make fun of them. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you are aware of the somewhat extreme rules imposed on us about going out so if you run into David Pace or Michael Kevane one day on the street, please don’t tell them about this blog. Or if you are one of these two men, have mercy. That said, after the performance, Lizzie, Elena, and I took a cab to meet up with our friend Meredith, and some burkinabé friends we know from dance class, Marius, Romielle and Baya the drummer and a French girl working in microfinance. After drinks, we went dancing at an out door bar and ate brochettes (goat meat on a stick, soooo gooood) for 50cfa (about 10cents) apiece. It was so much fun to get away from all of the white hang outs we end up at and actually get out in Ouagadougou. Don’t worry we were really safe… mom.
I’ll keep trying to upload photos!
Bisous,
Merry
Sunday, October 4, 2009
9-28 First free weekend in ouaga
September 28, 2009
This past weekend was our first weekend in Ouagadougou with no traveling after arriving about 26 days ago. During this time we have been non-stop working FAVL machines. Class has been 4 days a week for about 7 hours a day and then there’s homework and scheduled outings, so we were very content to stray from our monotonous daily routine. Of course we are very grateful and we are learning so much but everyone has their limit and all nine of us reached ours last Friday night.
Friday was our first free day to ourselves so we decided to go to the pool at the International school of Ouagadougou. A very good idea for the price of 2,000 cfa. Elena wanted to play marco polo but none of us would indulge her so we splashed around and tried to even out our ridiculous tan lines. We then headed back to our respective housed to get ready for the night ahead of us.
David Pace (from now to be refered to as Naaba Pace, the mossi word for chief as we call him), our photography professor and man in charge when Michael isn’t here, had invited us all to go to a small outdoor music concert at the French cultural center in the evening. Little did he know, we also had plans. Meredith, a friend of ours from djembe class doing her masters research here in Ouaga, invited us all to go out dancing to experience the Ouaga nightlife. Also, some questionably creepy American rednecks from the US Air Force were having a party that evening in one of the nicest areas in the city, literally called Ouaga2000, and we were invited to that little shindig as well. Everyone was stoked to have a night out to unwind and hang out with other people that weren’t the nine of us. Granted we get along better than any of us could have expected after living and working and stressing with each other over the last month. Needless to say, I wanted to talk to people who weren’t part of this group.
At the concert, everyone was decked out in the cutest dresses, showered, legs shaven and wearing makeup for the first time in a month. Such was our excitement and thrill for the plans we had made. We met Naaba Pace at the concert.
“You ladies look nice” observed Naaba Pace
“We are very excited about dancing with Meredith and meeting up with some of our Air Force friends after the concert. The concerts going to be a ball too though! What fun!”
“Air Force? Dancing? No, no this is your first night, I don't really think it's smart or safe to run around the city. Plus, it's already going to be late when we leave the concert, you will probably be tired and want to sleep.”
Bad move my friend, bad move. A little man against 5 stir-crazy young women, used to being able to do what they want. Pace did not understand, he wasn't walking on thin ice, he was tap dancing on thin ice waking up the sleeping carnivorous beast sleeping below. At the concert we could hardly focus on the music because the threat of not having fun was too great to shake off. I decided to plea our case.
“Don't you think it would be safer, nay the safest possible option to go to an Air Force party? I mean, it's a bunch of ex-pats. Plus, their job and principle responsibility is to protect America, we are Americans. I think it's pretty clear Pace...”
“Merry, do you know why those men are here?”
“No…”
“Neither do I. They are probably on some covert operation to overthrow the government and no one wants that.”
Pace you commie San Francisco bastard! Granted I agree with him but did not tell him and in any other situation I would never go near a group of Southern fighter pilots. But they have tortilla chips, flip cup, an oven, free beer and peanut butter and this was a rare occasion where I would be willing to put my political opinions aside for one night. Also, my tax dollars paid for all of these luxuries so we might as well take advantage of them.
We finally reached a compromise where we were allowed to go out dancing with our friend Meredith and two bukinabé from our dance class as long as our program assistant Elisée would come with us (swoon), and we had to be home by midnight. Feeling 14 years old again, we said goodbye to our concert friends and went to an outdoor dancing club nearby. This was probably ten times more fun than an air force party anyway. We had some much needed time to unwind and rolled back home around 1 in the morning.
The next night however, we made it to an air force house down the street from us without the knowledge of our fearless leader. There were peace corps volunteers there too who were really nice to talk to and when the air force guys were not creepily hitting on us, they were pretty cool people. They also have a fish-shaped pool and we got to illegally use 26,000 dollar night vision goggles on their roof. By the end of the night I had charmed my way into getting one of their beaded Kenyan Obama bracelets to “borrow” but they are never seeing that thing again. In fact, even though it was a fun night, I really don’t think I will hang out with them again. It’s too weird. I don’t know why they’re here and they can’t tell me. Its frightening stuff.
This past weekend was our first weekend in Ouagadougou with no traveling after arriving about 26 days ago. During this time we have been non-stop working FAVL machines. Class has been 4 days a week for about 7 hours a day and then there’s homework and scheduled outings, so we were very content to stray from our monotonous daily routine. Of course we are very grateful and we are learning so much but everyone has their limit and all nine of us reached ours last Friday night.
Friday was our first free day to ourselves so we decided to go to the pool at the International school of Ouagadougou. A very good idea for the price of 2,000 cfa. Elena wanted to play marco polo but none of us would indulge her so we splashed around and tried to even out our ridiculous tan lines. We then headed back to our respective housed to get ready for the night ahead of us.
David Pace (from now to be refered to as Naaba Pace, the mossi word for chief as we call him), our photography professor and man in charge when Michael isn’t here, had invited us all to go to a small outdoor music concert at the French cultural center in the evening. Little did he know, we also had plans. Meredith, a friend of ours from djembe class doing her masters research here in Ouaga, invited us all to go out dancing to experience the Ouaga nightlife. Also, some questionably creepy American rednecks from the US Air Force were having a party that evening in one of the nicest areas in the city, literally called Ouaga2000, and we were invited to that little shindig as well. Everyone was stoked to have a night out to unwind and hang out with other people that weren’t the nine of us. Granted we get along better than any of us could have expected after living and working and stressing with each other over the last month. Needless to say, I wanted to talk to people who weren’t part of this group.
At the concert, everyone was decked out in the cutest dresses, showered, legs shaven and wearing makeup for the first time in a month. Such was our excitement and thrill for the plans we had made. We met Naaba Pace at the concert.
“You ladies look nice” observed Naaba Pace
“We are very excited about dancing with Meredith and meeting up with some of our Air Force friends after the concert. The concerts going to be a ball too though! What fun!”
“Air Force? Dancing? No, no this is your first night, I don't really think it's smart or safe to run around the city. Plus, it's already going to be late when we leave the concert, you will probably be tired and want to sleep.”
Bad move my friend, bad move. A little man against 5 stir-crazy young women, used to being able to do what they want. Pace did not understand, he wasn't walking on thin ice, he was tap dancing on thin ice waking up the sleeping carnivorous beast sleeping below. At the concert we could hardly focus on the music because the threat of not having fun was too great to shake off. I decided to plea our case.
“Don't you think it would be safer, nay the safest possible option to go to an Air Force party? I mean, it's a bunch of ex-pats. Plus, their job and principle responsibility is to protect America, we are Americans. I think it's pretty clear Pace...”
“Merry, do you know why those men are here?”
“No…”
“Neither do I. They are probably on some covert operation to overthrow the government and no one wants that.”
Pace you commie San Francisco bastard! Granted I agree with him but did not tell him and in any other situation I would never go near a group of Southern fighter pilots. But they have tortilla chips, flip cup, an oven, free beer and peanut butter and this was a rare occasion where I would be willing to put my political opinions aside for one night. Also, my tax dollars paid for all of these luxuries so we might as well take advantage of them.
We finally reached a compromise where we were allowed to go out dancing with our friend Meredith and two bukinabé from our dance class as long as our program assistant Elisée would come with us (swoon), and we had to be home by midnight. Feeling 14 years old again, we said goodbye to our concert friends and went to an outdoor dancing club nearby. This was probably ten times more fun than an air force party anyway. We had some much needed time to unwind and rolled back home around 1 in the morning.
The next night however, we made it to an air force house down the street from us without the knowledge of our fearless leader. There were peace corps volunteers there too who were really nice to talk to and when the air force guys were not creepily hitting on us, they were pretty cool people. They also have a fish-shaped pool and we got to illegally use 26,000 dollar night vision goggles on their roof. By the end of the night I had charmed my way into getting one of their beaded Kenyan Obama bracelets to “borrow” but they are never seeing that thing again. In fact, even though it was a fun night, I really don’t think I will hang out with them again. It’s too weird. I don’t know why they’re here and they can’t tell me. Its frightening stuff.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
9-22 Weekend in Pobe
September 22, 2009
This past weekend, we left Ouaga again in groups of three with a professor. Lizzie, Brian and I went with our professor, Helene Lafrance, a quebecoise librarian at Santa Clara, to visit her daughter who happens to be a peace corps volunteer in a village called Pobe in Northern Burkina Faso. We rode the bus from Ouaga at 530am and arrived at the Northern town called Ouaigouya (sp?). As my friend Meghan says, Ouaigouya is like everything you hate about Ouagadougou. As we waited for the car to pick us up to bring us to Pobe, we remarked on the startling number of vultures in the air, on buildings, and walking along the streets. Adamah, Pobe’s richest man and consequently its only owner of a car, picked us up in his twenty-five year old white Toyota Carina II (to be precise). If I ever need a car, I am searching for this one. This little car went through 2 feet of water, across the savannah, and made the two and a half hour trek from Ouaigouya’s dusty holey roads to Pobe countless times. At one point while crossing a small river (seriously), we were surprised to discover a hole in the bottom of the car that water seeped through.
When we arrived in Pobe, we looked like we had had a spray tan. Our faces were covered with orange dust from driving with the windows open. If you look at a map you will notice that Burkina Faso is landlocked and the border between north and sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara actually ends in Northern Burkina, very close to Pobe, so even though this is the rainy season, it was hot and dry and dusty.
We arrived at Helene’s daughter Emilie’s home. She lives in a two room mud brick house like every other house in almost any village in Burkina. Emilie has been there for one year now and has one year left. She is working on a project for women’s empowerment, which is really frustrating because culturally women have few rights. Pobe is predominantly Muslim village so there is a lot of polygamy (Adamah has three wives) and even though she is supposed to be working with women, very few have been educated, so she can’t communicate with them. The main language of Pobe is very rare and dying out so the Peace Corps taught her another local language in training instead so she has to learn this language by herself. I think it’s frustrating for her and she has ended up doing a lot having to do with education and she is trying to get a library in the village. We visited the school where she ended up teaching last year. In some classes there are 150 students to one teacher. It’s hard to imagine learning in that environment, and that’s probably why as the years go on, fewer and fewer kids return to school.
Emilie’s friend and neighbor, Sita, showed us around the village. He was absolutely amazing. He took us to these huge ponds that form during this season to see if the crocodiles were out. Yes crocodiles. When we got there, we saw no crocodiles but kids were playing right by the water and Emilie said that people swim in it all the time. Sita explained that the crocodile is their totem (sacred animal spirit), so it would never hurt them. Apparently Sita once wrestled a goat out of the jaws of a hungry crocodile because he really believes it would never do anything to hurt him. Maybe it wouldn’t.
The next day, we woke up early and Adamah drove us to visit a Taureg family whose son Emilie had met at the market one day. From what I know about the Tauregs, they are a nomadic people who used to all live in Mali until their rebellion at the end of the 1980s and had to flee the territory they normally occupied. There are many in Burkina but they don’t consider themselves as Burkinabé. So were drove to see them. We were on the road and suddenly Adamah took a sharp left into the bush and then we saw about 20 camels and a few brightly colored patchwork tents. They served us tea and we talked to the young man, Ibrahim, the only one who spoke some French and Moore. He then asked us if we wanted to help them with the morning milking…of the camels. I have never milked any animal, but now I’ve milked a Taureg’s camel. Then they saddled one up and we all got to ride them one by one. It was such an amazing experience and our visit with the Taureg family has been the highlight of my stay so far.
Later that day we realized that the next day was the last day of Ramadan so buses wouldn’t be running as frequently. The thought of hanging out with the vultures of Ouaigouya was too horrific. Luckily there were rumors of a bus leaving at 1pm that we decided to hope for. That night there was a huge thunder and lightning storm like I’ve never seen before. Rain on a tin roof makes it sound worse that it really is but this rain was deafening. We looked outside and saw a lazy river running through the town. Lizzie and I were imagining ourselves stranded on the roof the next day but Brian, who is from Seattle, thought we were crazy and he was right. The next day it had all been soaked up.
It wasn’t the last day of Ramadan for Pobe (because they hadn’t seen the moon) so Adamah could drive us back to the vulture capital of the world. We got the bus at one and we were home by 6. It was an amazing weekend.
This past weekend, we left Ouaga again in groups of three with a professor. Lizzie, Brian and I went with our professor, Helene Lafrance, a quebecoise librarian at Santa Clara, to visit her daughter who happens to be a peace corps volunteer in a village called Pobe in Northern Burkina Faso. We rode the bus from Ouaga at 530am and arrived at the Northern town called Ouaigouya (sp?). As my friend Meghan says, Ouaigouya is like everything you hate about Ouagadougou. As we waited for the car to pick us up to bring us to Pobe, we remarked on the startling number of vultures in the air, on buildings, and walking along the streets. Adamah, Pobe’s richest man and consequently its only owner of a car, picked us up in his twenty-five year old white Toyota Carina II (to be precise). If I ever need a car, I am searching for this one. This little car went through 2 feet of water, across the savannah, and made the two and a half hour trek from Ouaigouya’s dusty holey roads to Pobe countless times. At one point while crossing a small river (seriously), we were surprised to discover a hole in the bottom of the car that water seeped through.
When we arrived in Pobe, we looked like we had had a spray tan. Our faces were covered with orange dust from driving with the windows open. If you look at a map you will notice that Burkina Faso is landlocked and the border between north and sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara actually ends in Northern Burkina, very close to Pobe, so even though this is the rainy season, it was hot and dry and dusty.
We arrived at Helene’s daughter Emilie’s home. She lives in a two room mud brick house like every other house in almost any village in Burkina. Emilie has been there for one year now and has one year left. She is working on a project for women’s empowerment, which is really frustrating because culturally women have few rights. Pobe is predominantly Muslim village so there is a lot of polygamy (Adamah has three wives) and even though she is supposed to be working with women, very few have been educated, so she can’t communicate with them. The main language of Pobe is very rare and dying out so the Peace Corps taught her another local language in training instead so she has to learn this language by herself. I think it’s frustrating for her and she has ended up doing a lot having to do with education and she is trying to get a library in the village. We visited the school where she ended up teaching last year. In some classes there are 150 students to one teacher. It’s hard to imagine learning in that environment, and that’s probably why as the years go on, fewer and fewer kids return to school.
Emilie’s friend and neighbor, Sita, showed us around the village. He was absolutely amazing. He took us to these huge ponds that form during this season to see if the crocodiles were out. Yes crocodiles. When we got there, we saw no crocodiles but kids were playing right by the water and Emilie said that people swim in it all the time. Sita explained that the crocodile is their totem (sacred animal spirit), so it would never hurt them. Apparently Sita once wrestled a goat out of the jaws of a hungry crocodile because he really believes it would never do anything to hurt him. Maybe it wouldn’t.
The next day, we woke up early and Adamah drove us to visit a Taureg family whose son Emilie had met at the market one day. From what I know about the Tauregs, they are a nomadic people who used to all live in Mali until their rebellion at the end of the 1980s and had to flee the territory they normally occupied. There are many in Burkina but they don’t consider themselves as Burkinabé. So were drove to see them. We were on the road and suddenly Adamah took a sharp left into the bush and then we saw about 20 camels and a few brightly colored patchwork tents. They served us tea and we talked to the young man, Ibrahim, the only one who spoke some French and Moore. He then asked us if we wanted to help them with the morning milking…of the camels. I have never milked any animal, but now I’ve milked a Taureg’s camel. Then they saddled one up and we all got to ride them one by one. It was such an amazing experience and our visit with the Taureg family has been the highlight of my stay so far.
Later that day we realized that the next day was the last day of Ramadan so buses wouldn’t be running as frequently. The thought of hanging out with the vultures of Ouaigouya was too horrific. Luckily there were rumors of a bus leaving at 1pm that we decided to hope for. That night there was a huge thunder and lightning storm like I’ve never seen before. Rain on a tin roof makes it sound worse that it really is but this rain was deafening. We looked outside and saw a lazy river running through the town. Lizzie and I were imagining ourselves stranded on the roof the next day but Brian, who is from Seattle, thought we were crazy and he was right. The next day it had all been soaked up.
It wasn’t the last day of Ramadan for Pobe (because they hadn’t seen the moon) so Adamah could drive us back to the vulture capital of the world. We got the bus at one and we were home by 6. It was an amazing weekend.
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