It's Wednesday, May 26th, and I'm going home! I'm waiting in the Amsterdam airport for my flight and its exciting to think that I'm potentially surrounded by other Vancouverites. I can't wait to fly over the Georia Strait and the coast mountains and see my family waiting at the gate.
As some of you may know, yesterday I was back in Paris with my friends and their baby. It was also my 25th birthday, so we toasted champagne and went salsa dancing. I hadn't wanted to make a big deal about it, but Matias an Alessandra are lovely and wouldn't hear of anything less. It was my first time salsa dancing in four and a half months!
It doesn't quite feel real that I'm going home, but then, it didn't quite feel real when I left for West Africa either. To all of you who read this blog, thank you so much. Writing it was one of my greatest pleasures on this trip, and it would have been pointless without you.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Welcome to Stepford, I mean Geneva
Have you ever been to a place that just feels too clean? A place so perfect that it must be hiding something? If you haven't, then you should go to Geneva.
Nestled among the Swiss Alps next to a sparkling glacial lake, Geneva has some of the best views in the world. I went hiking with my friend who moved here recently and the beauty of our surroundings blew me away. The only difference between hiking in the Alps and hiking in BC's mountains is that at home you have to be alert for bears and cougars, and in the Alps the only animal that might attack you would be a sheep, or at worst a rabid squirrel. Europeans killed all their wildlife a long time ago.
But Geneva appears to have no soul. It has lots of watches, banks, and clean air, but no soul.
So what happened? I have a theory that Geneva sold its soul for neutrality and got very, very rich in the process. Geneva claimed neutrality during WW2 and then proceeded to hold Nazi assets - meaning they hid the Nazis' looted property in high-security vaults. Swiss banks issued credit to the Third Reich and Swiss companies participated in, and profited from, the military-industrial marriage that fuelled Germany's economic recovery after the Depression. The Nazi military-industrial complex was especially profitable because it used slave labour from the concentration camps. In a sick twist of history, a Swiss company also designed the gas spigots disguised as shower heads that played the lead role in murdering those same prisoners. Today Swiss banks hold the assets of warlords and dictators just as bloodthirsty, kleptomaniacal and sociopathic as ever Hitler was, no questions asked, utter discretion guaranteed. I think the city lost its soul when it stopped asking questions.
Another theory is that a city whose population is 40% financiers never had a soul. One thing's for sure, the Genèvois are fairly cold and they run like clockwork - they look down on you if you're five minutes late. It's so different from West Africa, where people are generally warm, welcoming, and at least half an hour late for everything.
I'm sorry if you're of Swiss descent and you think that I'm spouting out opinions without actually knowing or living in Geneva. The thing is I didn't get to know any Swiss people who could have balanced my views because they're rather insular and xenophobic. My friend, who is laid back and friendly, has lived here for 6 months and all the friends he's made are expats.
So Geneva is a quiet little town amidst beautiful scenery. There's great hiking and boating around the lake, and no perceivable social inequities. I loved looking out at Montblanc every morning, walking the lakeshore, and eating fondue. It is a city with lots of clean air and dirty money, and if you like Stepford-esque perfection then it's the place for you.
Nestled among the Swiss Alps next to a sparkling glacial lake, Geneva has some of the best views in the world. I went hiking with my friend who moved here recently and the beauty of our surroundings blew me away. The only difference between hiking in the Alps and hiking in BC's mountains is that at home you have to be alert for bears and cougars, and in the Alps the only animal that might attack you would be a sheep, or at worst a rabid squirrel. Europeans killed all their wildlife a long time ago.
But Geneva appears to have no soul. It has lots of watches, banks, and clean air, but no soul.
So what happened? I have a theory that Geneva sold its soul for neutrality and got very, very rich in the process. Geneva claimed neutrality during WW2 and then proceeded to hold Nazi assets - meaning they hid the Nazis' looted property in high-security vaults. Swiss banks issued credit to the Third Reich and Swiss companies participated in, and profited from, the military-industrial marriage that fuelled Germany's economic recovery after the Depression. The Nazi military-industrial complex was especially profitable because it used slave labour from the concentration camps. In a sick twist of history, a Swiss company also designed the gas spigots disguised as shower heads that played the lead role in murdering those same prisoners. Today Swiss banks hold the assets of warlords and dictators just as bloodthirsty, kleptomaniacal and sociopathic as ever Hitler was, no questions asked, utter discretion guaranteed. I think the city lost its soul when it stopped asking questions.
Another theory is that a city whose population is 40% financiers never had a soul. One thing's for sure, the Genèvois are fairly cold and they run like clockwork - they look down on you if you're five minutes late. It's so different from West Africa, where people are generally warm, welcoming, and at least half an hour late for everything.
I'm sorry if you're of Swiss descent and you think that I'm spouting out opinions without actually knowing or living in Geneva. The thing is I didn't get to know any Swiss people who could have balanced my views because they're rather insular and xenophobic. My friend, who is laid back and friendly, has lived here for 6 months and all the friends he's made are expats.
So Geneva is a quiet little town amidst beautiful scenery. There's great hiking and boating around the lake, and no perceivable social inequities. I loved looking out at Montblanc every morning, walking the lakeshore, and eating fondue. It is a city with lots of clean air and dirty money, and if you like Stepford-esque perfection then it's the place for you.
Poor, but Sexy
You'll have to wait for an explanation of the title, but I'll give you a hint: it doesn't refer to me.
I spent five days in Berlin, from May 16th to May 20th, which is nowhere near enough. If you want to understand the events of the 20th century, then you have go to Berlin because that's where it all went down. I doubt any other world capital has had to rebuild itself so many times. This is the city where the First World War was lost and the Second was born. During the Great Depression one trillion Reichmarks was worth one US dollar and couldn't buy a loaf of bread. In desperate times people turned to extreme politicians promising extreme measures. Goebbels burned thousands of books and organized the "spontaneous" anti-Semitic riots of Kristalnacht. In the Reichstag, people passed the laws that institutionalized anti-Semitism and murdered my relatives. Hitler killed himself in this city, buried in a shallow grave by terrified junior officers trying to get out ahead of the Red Army. They could feel the ground shake as millions of Soviet soldiers marched into Berlin amid the ruins of the Third Reich. After WW2 colonialism began its slow death, in part because the war nearly bankrupted the Great Powers of the 20th century. East and West stared each other down at Check Point Charlie for forty years, the Berlin Wall and its "Death Strip" became the definitive symbol of the Cold War's divisiveness, cruelty, and paranoia of "the other." And it was East Berliners who stormed checkpoints and tore down the Berlin Wall, ushering in a new era of unification and peace for Europe (except the Balkans), but also an era where wars between countries gave way to savage wars and genocides within countries from Kosovo to Rwanda. So if you get Berlin, then you get the twentieth century.
I visited a concentration camp. It was an emotionally exhausting day, but I got a lot out of it. I count myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit a concentration camp and the trans-Atlantic slave forts in one year. The Holocaust hit European Jews like a tsunami - fast, violent, and devastating. The slave trade was more like erosion. It took smaller amounts of people at a time, but over 400 years it shredded the soieties of West Africa. Both showed me what happens when one group of people thinks that another is sub-human.
But I greatly admire Berliners' ability to remember. They don't try to gloss over the terrible things that happened in their city, nor do they sweep them under the rug. I have never been to a city with so many memorials. And Berliners are very careful about which memories they emphasize and which ones they keep in the background. The Holocaust memorial takes up a full city block and never fails to spark the interest of passers-by. Not coincidentally, it is a stone's throw from Hitler's bunker, which is covered by a parking lot and only marked by the smallest of signs. The German government has decided against allowing people to enter and excavate it, fearing that it might turn into a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis. There's a used clothing collection box on the corner where Hitler's body was found, and no kind of plaque or recognition. This juxtaposition shows very clearly whose memory Germany intends to honour.
I went out a lot in Berlin because I have friends there and because it's so cheap! Berlin doesn't tax alcohol, so a bottle of good wine costs between 4 and 5 euros. If you really wanted to splurge you might spend 15 euros on wine. My favourite night out took me to the Maria Club in former East Berlin. The Maria Club is an old warehouse on the Rhine that has been converted into a haven for electronic music lovers. Actually, all of Germany is a haven for electronic music lovers. Whenever the cigarette smoke got too intense I could just go to the little patio and breathe the air from the river. I don't think Europeans got the memo about smoking being deadly.
I walked past the East Side Gallery to get home. The East Side Gallery is the largest remaining segment of the Berlin Wall and it's covered with colourful, artistic graffiti. It wasn't lit up at all and I almost missed it. I suppose the fact that the Wall is dark at night is one of the most potent signs of the Cold War's end. Only 20 years ago it would have been flood lit so that armed guards could shoot anyone attempting to escape.
Today, Berlin is a hip, vibrant city that I didn't want to leave. It discusses its problems - both past and present - with a frankness and vigour that's very refreshing, and then they usually do something about their problems. Berliners today don't earn much compared to the rest of Western Europe, but they love their city and they don't seem to desert for higher wages. They say that they are arm, aber sexy - poor but sexy. Who couldn't love a place like that?
I spent five days in Berlin, from May 16th to May 20th, which is nowhere near enough. If you want to understand the events of the 20th century, then you have go to Berlin because that's where it all went down. I doubt any other world capital has had to rebuild itself so many times. This is the city where the First World War was lost and the Second was born. During the Great Depression one trillion Reichmarks was worth one US dollar and couldn't buy a loaf of bread. In desperate times people turned to extreme politicians promising extreme measures. Goebbels burned thousands of books and organized the "spontaneous" anti-Semitic riots of Kristalnacht. In the Reichstag, people passed the laws that institutionalized anti-Semitism and murdered my relatives. Hitler killed himself in this city, buried in a shallow grave by terrified junior officers trying to get out ahead of the Red Army. They could feel the ground shake as millions of Soviet soldiers marched into Berlin amid the ruins of the Third Reich. After WW2 colonialism began its slow death, in part because the war nearly bankrupted the Great Powers of the 20th century. East and West stared each other down at Check Point Charlie for forty years, the Berlin Wall and its "Death Strip" became the definitive symbol of the Cold War's divisiveness, cruelty, and paranoia of "the other." And it was East Berliners who stormed checkpoints and tore down the Berlin Wall, ushering in a new era of unification and peace for Europe (except the Balkans), but also an era where wars between countries gave way to savage wars and genocides within countries from Kosovo to Rwanda. So if you get Berlin, then you get the twentieth century.
I visited a concentration camp. It was an emotionally exhausting day, but I got a lot out of it. I count myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit a concentration camp and the trans-Atlantic slave forts in one year. The Holocaust hit European Jews like a tsunami - fast, violent, and devastating. The slave trade was more like erosion. It took smaller amounts of people at a time, but over 400 years it shredded the soieties of West Africa. Both showed me what happens when one group of people thinks that another is sub-human.
But I greatly admire Berliners' ability to remember. They don't try to gloss over the terrible things that happened in their city, nor do they sweep them under the rug. I have never been to a city with so many memorials. And Berliners are very careful about which memories they emphasize and which ones they keep in the background. The Holocaust memorial takes up a full city block and never fails to spark the interest of passers-by. Not coincidentally, it is a stone's throw from Hitler's bunker, which is covered by a parking lot and only marked by the smallest of signs. The German government has decided against allowing people to enter and excavate it, fearing that it might turn into a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis. There's a used clothing collection box on the corner where Hitler's body was found, and no kind of plaque or recognition. This juxtaposition shows very clearly whose memory Germany intends to honour.
I went out a lot in Berlin because I have friends there and because it's so cheap! Berlin doesn't tax alcohol, so a bottle of good wine costs between 4 and 5 euros. If you really wanted to splurge you might spend 15 euros on wine. My favourite night out took me to the Maria Club in former East Berlin. The Maria Club is an old warehouse on the Rhine that has been converted into a haven for electronic music lovers. Actually, all of Germany is a haven for electronic music lovers. Whenever the cigarette smoke got too intense I could just go to the little patio and breathe the air from the river. I don't think Europeans got the memo about smoking being deadly.
I walked past the East Side Gallery to get home. The East Side Gallery is the largest remaining segment of the Berlin Wall and it's covered with colourful, artistic graffiti. It wasn't lit up at all and I almost missed it. I suppose the fact that the Wall is dark at night is one of the most potent signs of the Cold War's end. Only 20 years ago it would have been flood lit so that armed guards could shoot anyone attempting to escape.
Today, Berlin is a hip, vibrant city that I didn't want to leave. It discusses its problems - both past and present - with a frankness and vigour that's very refreshing, and then they usually do something about their problems. Berliners today don't earn much compared to the rest of Western Europe, but they love their city and they don't seem to desert for higher wages. They say that they are arm, aber sexy - poor but sexy. Who couldn't love a place like that?
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Rain in Spain
Hola de Barcelona, where it's grey and cloudy. The rain in Spain inspired Audrey Hepburn to burst into song, but I have not felt the same desire.
I arrived in Madrid a little later than expected because of the volcano, but that was ok because I met some really nice musicians. I was sitting next to this band on the plane and we chatted for the whole flight. They're called the Skatalites; I'd never heard of them before but apparently they're a big deal.
From Madrid I caught the train to Salamanca, where I stayed with my good friend Juan and his family. Juan's mother is not quite five feet tall and she's really cute. She is also an amazing cook and she took it upon herself to ensure that I sampled all the dishes of Spain. Any weight I may have lost has surely been regained. Juan showed me around old Salamanca and introduced me to the delightful Spanish custom of taking canas y pinchos at random times during the day. Canas are small servings of beer - about a glassfull - and pinchos are a small snack, like fried cheese or bread with tomato, that comes with the cana. The Spanish indulge in this custom any time they feel like it, so basically you can drink all morning in Spain and nobody judges you.
After a few days in Salamanca and an afternoon in Madrid, I hopped on a plane to Barcelona where I met my dad. It was so great to see him! We stayed in this little apartment in the trendy Gothic Quarter, where we bore witness to the fact that Barcelona never sleeps. The week passed in a pleasant blur. Pavement was pounded, sights were seen, and art appreciated. My favourite things about Barcelona were La Rambla and its market, the Gaudi houses, and the tapas.
La Rambla is the place to meet the weird and the wonderful, and even the famous. I met Michael Jackson, Edward Scissorhands, Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas, the Nutty Professor, and many fairytale princesses. You just never know who will dress up as what. There were some street performers dressed as demons who managed to hover above the pavement. I couldn't figure out how they did it. It was really cool.
The market is a swirling bustle of colour and noise that opens off La Rambla. The front part is full of fruit and candy while the fish-mongers are at the back. Did you know there are three different sizes of octopus? And that a tuna's head weighs as much as I do? The market was like Granville Island on steroids.
Gaudi was a renowned and imaginative architect from Barcelona, and even if he weren't from Barcelona they would probably tell you that he was. (Aside: they claim that anyone famous is from Barcelona, even Christopher Columbus, who was Italian). Gaudi lived during the golden years of the fin-de-siecle. This period was marked by Barcelona's industrialization and the rise of modernism - a cultural movement which sought to cast off all things related with the 19th century. The nouveau-riche were looking for nouveau houses to demonstrate their wealth. Enter Gaudi. The bourgeois hired him to build them houses that would stand out from all their neighbours' and gave him a blank cheque. The results were spectacular. My favourite house was Casa Batllo, which was constructed without a single straight line. Walking in the front door feels like entering a magical underwater realm. I wanted to live there.
And the tapas... oh, the tapas! Spanish tapas are so good! Dad and I decided to be adventurous and try the All You Can Eat Tapas restaurant. We rolled each other home, but it was worth it.
After our week was over my dad went home and I boarded a flight to Berlin. Onwards to the land of bratwurst!
Monday, May 10, 2010
A Canadian in Paris
It's so cold!! Do you know what temperature it is here? It's 10 degrees. And it's May. What is wrong with this country?? Why did I think it would be a good idea to come here? I need a check up from the neck up.
It was 46 degrees on the day I left Ouagadougou. I was wearing a sundress and flip flops when I disembarked to 6 degrees in Paris at 6 am on Monday, May 3rd. I still had my hair in braids and the wind whistled through them icy as the reaper's own breath. Luckily I had brought the Air France blanket with me and I wrapped it around my shoulders. It was quite the fashion statement.
As soon as I got my bags I made a beeline for the bathroom and changed into my jeans, which were still warm from the African sun despite 7 hours in the baggage hold. Then I got myself to the metro and began my journey to the heart of Paris. I was still wearing the Air France blanket.
After several misadventures with broken escalators and heavy bags, I made it to my friend Matias' flat in downtown Paris. He and his partner, Alessandra, kindly put me up in the spare room even though Alessandra is studying for a career move and they have an eight-month old baby boy. Luca, the baby, is too cute for words and both new parents are besotted.
I borrowed sweaters and rain gear and hit the town. For the first time in months I felt comfortable giving my camera to a stranger so that I could be in the picture. So now I have pictures of Erica beside the Eiffel Tower, Erica at the Arc de Triomphe, Erica on the Champs d'Elysees, Erica by the River Seine, etc etc.
And the food is amazing. If I have to choose between sheep's head and fondue, or to and baguette, I will choose fondue and baguette every time. It's nice to be in a place where I can eat cheese and drink wine for a fraction of the price I'd pay in Canada. And since I lost a few pounds (when it's 45 degrees your body sheds anything that counts as insulation) I can eat as much Brie and Camembert and chocolate as I want!
I spent some time in Notre Dame, which is my favourite cathedral. A world-renowned choir was going to perform there the next day and I happened to drop in for the dress rehearsal. It was exquisite. On the way out I checked the schedule of who would perform mass the coming week. I noticed that neither the regular priest or many of the visiting priests came from Europe. They all came from Africa. Europe now has so few faithful and produces so few priests that all the up-and-comers are from Africa. In a beautifully ironic twist of history Africans are coming to Europe as missionaries, bringing the light of God to non-believers.
I spent a few more days in Paris hanging out with Alessandra, Matias, and Luca, and now I'm heading to Spain. I sure hope it will be warmer there!
It was 46 degrees on the day I left Ouagadougou. I was wearing a sundress and flip flops when I disembarked to 6 degrees in Paris at 6 am on Monday, May 3rd. I still had my hair in braids and the wind whistled through them icy as the reaper's own breath. Luckily I had brought the Air France blanket with me and I wrapped it around my shoulders. It was quite the fashion statement.
As soon as I got my bags I made a beeline for the bathroom and changed into my jeans, which were still warm from the African sun despite 7 hours in the baggage hold. Then I got myself to the metro and began my journey to the heart of Paris. I was still wearing the Air France blanket.
After several misadventures with broken escalators and heavy bags, I made it to my friend Matias' flat in downtown Paris. He and his partner, Alessandra, kindly put me up in the spare room even though Alessandra is studying for a career move and they have an eight-month old baby boy. Luca, the baby, is too cute for words and both new parents are besotted.
I borrowed sweaters and rain gear and hit the town. For the first time in months I felt comfortable giving my camera to a stranger so that I could be in the picture. So now I have pictures of Erica beside the Eiffel Tower, Erica at the Arc de Triomphe, Erica on the Champs d'Elysees, Erica by the River Seine, etc etc.
And the food is amazing. If I have to choose between sheep's head and fondue, or to and baguette, I will choose fondue and baguette every time. It's nice to be in a place where I can eat cheese and drink wine for a fraction of the price I'd pay in Canada. And since I lost a few pounds (when it's 45 degrees your body sheds anything that counts as insulation) I can eat as much Brie and Camembert and chocolate as I want!
I spent some time in Notre Dame, which is my favourite cathedral. A world-renowned choir was going to perform there the next day and I happened to drop in for the dress rehearsal. It was exquisite. On the way out I checked the schedule of who would perform mass the coming week. I noticed that neither the regular priest or many of the visiting priests came from Europe. They all came from Africa. Europe now has so few faithful and produces so few priests that all the up-and-comers are from Africa. In a beautifully ironic twist of history Africans are coming to Europe as missionaries, bringing the light of God to non-believers.
I spent a few more days in Paris hanging out with Alessandra, Matias, and Luca, and now I'm heading to Spain. I sure hope it will be warmer there!
Wedding Bells are Ringing
Potatoes: 100 kg
Rice: 250 kg
Sheep: 5
Chickens: 50, minimum
Bulls: 1
Tomatoes: 500, approx.
Cube Maggi: don't ask
Drinks: open bar
Kitchens: 5
Cooks: a small army
Slaughter, chop, roast, and serve.
This is the recipe for a large, successful Burkinabe wedding. The Zidas invited 200 or so guests to the wedding but everyone knew that another two-hundred people - at least - would show up although they weren't invited or even informed. And they were factored into the food preparations. Wedding crashing doesn't seem to be perceived as a problem here.
The food detailed above is only what the Zida family provided. Mama Zida's family in Manga contributed 5 pigs to the wedding feast and Yako's Naaba made a contribution of several sheep.
I was put in charge of filming the wedding preparations with Papa Zida's video camera. I guess they figured it was a Western device and I'm a Western girl, so there should be no problem. But the problem was precisely that I was a Western girl trying to film a Burkinabe wedding. How was I supposed to know that Auntie's arrival with a large basket of cook-ware for the bride was a hugely important ceremony? And when the nuns showed up to congratulate the proud parents, I just didn't realize that I was supposed to drop everything and run to film them. Most of the time I was alerted to my filming duties when someone started yelling, "Mais, ou est Erica/ la nasara!!" But all's well that ends well, and the most important thing is that I managed to film the entire 4 hour wedding ceremony even though the video camera battery only has a 90 minute life span.
The wedding was a typical Catholic wedding (read: long, with a strong emphasis on the joys of monogamy) but there were some twists. There was lots of drumming and joyful ululating, for one, and the priest went out of his way to make the service really funny. There were two choirs, one to sing in Moore and the other in French, and at the end of the service the entire wedding party conga-lined down the aisle dancing and singing while the crowd ululated some more. I think conga lines should be a part of all wedding ceremonies!
It should go without saying that it was hot. I'm not sure what the temperature was, but 44 or 45 feels like a safe bet. I spent the whole day on my feet running around and filming things, but despite my exhaustion I was far from the tiredest person there. That prize went without a doubt to Adama and Armelle, neither of whom had slept for 48 hours. They looked like they'd been bitten by zombies. I had at least managed to grab 5 hours of sleep every night that week by avoiding late-night planning meetings and making myself scarce after 11 pm.
The celebrations continued long into the night of the wedding. After the church service all 200 official guests went to Wend Panga for lunch and gift-giving, and after that we joined the 200 unofficial guests who were waiting at the Zida household. There were large tents set up in the courtyard and outside the property to accommodate everyone, and we ate until we nearly burst. The DJ kept the beats pounding and as the sun went down the Moore choir showed up with their djembes. That's when the party really began.
Around 9 pm most people went home and we wrapped up the festivities because we had to get Armelle ready to go to her husband's house. (After the reception the groom went to his house while the bride went to hers and waited to be called). Mama Zida and the Aunties made sure that Armelle had everything she would need - the pots, the millet flour (for making to), the bowls made from gourds, the cooking utensils, etc. And then all 100 of us sat down for a well-earned break.
Adama's brother came over around 11 to tell us that they were ready for their new family member. There was another flurry of activity while we got Armelle and her culinary materiel into a pickup truck and packed about 40 of her closest relations into a bus (hire for the occasion) to see her off. Armelle couldn't help because she had to be totally veiled so that no one but her family and her husband whould see her that night. Auntie guided her into the pickup and off they all went, leaving Papa Zida looking a little teary.
I took a nap for an hour and then went to an Uncle's house with the rest of the under-30 crowd. Uncle had kindly offered his courtyard up as a makeshift disco and we danced until 4 in the morning.
I guess marriage was on the mind, because I got an unusual amount of propositions that night. Most of them were pretty standard (like, "You're pretty. I've always wanted to marry a foreigner." Forget about getting to know me or anything like that). But there was one proposal that stands out as worthy of mention. I got proposed to by somebody's mother. She was one of the Aunties who spent a little more time drinking dolo and a little less time helping, and she came up to me endearingly tipsy. She put her arm around my waist and whispered confidentially, "I've been watching you and seem like a nice girl. I want you for my son. He's been to university, you know, and he has a good job with the state telephone company. You talked to him earlier, do you remember? No? That's OK. Come, we'll go ask Papa Zida to give you away."
Papa Zida had been fielding requests for my hand all day - mostly joking ones from his friends - so he just informed Auntie that there was a queue and he would see what he could do to get her name bumped up the list.
The next morning I overslept and missed my bus back to Ouaga. Luckily my plane didn't take off until 8 pm, so I was able to hitch a ride into town with an Uncle and Auntie and their small kids. This meant there was ample time for a now sober Auntie to reiterate her request and remind me to take her son's contact info. I also learned what we do with sheep's heads in Burkina. All parts of the animal must be eaten, nothing is wasted. I left the room when Armelle started chowing down on an eye and Adama dug into a brain.
I made it to the airport in plenty of time and said goodbye to Burkina in the relatively cool twilight when I love it most. I was feeling a little sad as I went through security, but then my stomach made that ominous, all too familiar sound and I had to make a break for the bathroom while the guard was searching my carry-on. There are some things I won't miss.
Goodbye Burkina, I'll miss you.
Rice: 250 kg
Sheep: 5
Chickens: 50, minimum
Bulls: 1
Tomatoes: 500, approx.
Cube Maggi: don't ask
Drinks: open bar
Kitchens: 5
Cooks: a small army
Slaughter, chop, roast, and serve.
This is the recipe for a large, successful Burkinabe wedding. The Zidas invited 200 or so guests to the wedding but everyone knew that another two-hundred people - at least - would show up although they weren't invited or even informed. And they were factored into the food preparations. Wedding crashing doesn't seem to be perceived as a problem here.
The food detailed above is only what the Zida family provided. Mama Zida's family in Manga contributed 5 pigs to the wedding feast and Yako's Naaba made a contribution of several sheep.
I was put in charge of filming the wedding preparations with Papa Zida's video camera. I guess they figured it was a Western device and I'm a Western girl, so there should be no problem. But the problem was precisely that I was a Western girl trying to film a Burkinabe wedding. How was I supposed to know that Auntie's arrival with a large basket of cook-ware for the bride was a hugely important ceremony? And when the nuns showed up to congratulate the proud parents, I just didn't realize that I was supposed to drop everything and run to film them. Most of the time I was alerted to my filming duties when someone started yelling, "Mais, ou est Erica/ la nasara!!" But all's well that ends well, and the most important thing is that I managed to film the entire 4 hour wedding ceremony even though the video camera battery only has a 90 minute life span.
The wedding was a typical Catholic wedding (read: long, with a strong emphasis on the joys of monogamy) but there were some twists. There was lots of drumming and joyful ululating, for one, and the priest went out of his way to make the service really funny. There were two choirs, one to sing in Moore and the other in French, and at the end of the service the entire wedding party conga-lined down the aisle dancing and singing while the crowd ululated some more. I think conga lines should be a part of all wedding ceremonies!
It should go without saying that it was hot. I'm not sure what the temperature was, but 44 or 45 feels like a safe bet. I spent the whole day on my feet running around and filming things, but despite my exhaustion I was far from the tiredest person there. That prize went without a doubt to Adama and Armelle, neither of whom had slept for 48 hours. They looked like they'd been bitten by zombies. I had at least managed to grab 5 hours of sleep every night that week by avoiding late-night planning meetings and making myself scarce after 11 pm.
The celebrations continued long into the night of the wedding. After the church service all 200 official guests went to Wend Panga for lunch and gift-giving, and after that we joined the 200 unofficial guests who were waiting at the Zida household. There were large tents set up in the courtyard and outside the property to accommodate everyone, and we ate until we nearly burst. The DJ kept the beats pounding and as the sun went down the Moore choir showed up with their djembes. That's when the party really began.
Around 9 pm most people went home and we wrapped up the festivities because we had to get Armelle ready to go to her husband's house. (After the reception the groom went to his house while the bride went to hers and waited to be called). Mama Zida and the Aunties made sure that Armelle had everything she would need - the pots, the millet flour (for making to), the bowls made from gourds, the cooking utensils, etc. And then all 100 of us sat down for a well-earned break.
Adama's brother came over around 11 to tell us that they were ready for their new family member. There was another flurry of activity while we got Armelle and her culinary materiel into a pickup truck and packed about 40 of her closest relations into a bus (hire for the occasion) to see her off. Armelle couldn't help because she had to be totally veiled so that no one but her family and her husband whould see her that night. Auntie guided her into the pickup and off they all went, leaving Papa Zida looking a little teary.
I took a nap for an hour and then went to an Uncle's house with the rest of the under-30 crowd. Uncle had kindly offered his courtyard up as a makeshift disco and we danced until 4 in the morning.
I guess marriage was on the mind, because I got an unusual amount of propositions that night. Most of them were pretty standard (like, "You're pretty. I've always wanted to marry a foreigner." Forget about getting to know me or anything like that). But there was one proposal that stands out as worthy of mention. I got proposed to by somebody's mother. She was one of the Aunties who spent a little more time drinking dolo and a little less time helping, and she came up to me endearingly tipsy. She put her arm around my waist and whispered confidentially, "I've been watching you and seem like a nice girl. I want you for my son. He's been to university, you know, and he has a good job with the state telephone company. You talked to him earlier, do you remember? No? That's OK. Come, we'll go ask Papa Zida to give you away."
Papa Zida had been fielding requests for my hand all day - mostly joking ones from his friends - so he just informed Auntie that there was a queue and he would see what he could do to get her name bumped up the list.
The next morning I overslept and missed my bus back to Ouaga. Luckily my plane didn't take off until 8 pm, so I was able to hitch a ride into town with an Uncle and Auntie and their small kids. This meant there was ample time for a now sober Auntie to reiterate her request and remind me to take her son's contact info. I also learned what we do with sheep's heads in Burkina. All parts of the animal must be eaten, nothing is wasted. I left the room when Armelle started chowing down on an eye and Adama dug into a brain.
I made it to the airport in plenty of time and said goodbye to Burkina in the relatively cool twilight when I love it most. I was feeling a little sad as I went through security, but then my stomach made that ominous, all too familiar sound and I had to make a break for the bathroom while the guard was searching my carry-on. There are some things I won't miss.
Goodbye Burkina, I'll miss you.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Fleeing the Frying Pan
I really love West Africa, but I can't wait to leave the climate. I'm back in Burkina after 10 days in Mali (April 8-18). I spent a few days with Mamina and her family in the village (April 19-22), which was lovely. Safane is a little cooler than Mopti, which means that the heat of the day usually peaks at 44 or 45 degrees instead of 49 or 50. The only reason civilization is possible as far north as Mopti is because the rivers meet there. I suppose Timbuktu is further north still, but from what I understand it's more of a frontier outpost than a self-sufficient city.
Anyways, I was happy to see everyone in Safane and they were happy to see me. They've gotten a little rain these last few weeks so the village was quieter than usual because many people had gone to the fields to prepare the ground for spring planting. Until 4 or 5 years ago, Mamina's husband told me, spring planting would already have been underway because the rains would have been guaranteed to come in May. But since 2005, the annual monsoon hasn't come until June even though it still finishes in September. And this year the hot weather started a month earlier than normal. Remember how relieved I was to leave the 45 degree weather at the end of February and head to Ghana? Well, that heat shouldn't have come until the end of March. Some climate change models project more rain in the Sahel, but that doesn't appear to be the scenario that's unfolding.
This time Mamina took me to visit the medical centre in Safane, which serves the 45 or so villages that make up the Commune of Safane. It has one ambulance, which serves Safane and its two neighbouring Communes - that's appoximately 250 000 people. The ambulance is overdue for maintenance but the medical centre can't afford to pay for it. There are a few nurses and midwives, and no doctors at all who serve those 250 000 people on a permanent basis. Annual checkups are unknown, and when people don't feel well they go to the centre later rather than sooner. If people are hospitalized they have to pay for everything themselves, and that includes sterile gloves, syringes, and cleaning the room. The state doesn't even pay to keep the hospital clean. Mamina and about 40 other literate people in Safane help out during state-funded village vaccination campaigns and they are take the opportunity to raise awareness among villagers about getting early care, not practicing femal genital mutilation, birth control, not giving birth at home, things like that. But they can't go out to the villages without the support of the vaccination campaign, which provides mopeds and petrol. They are so frustrated by not being able to improve their community's health indicators that they have recently organized into an NGO-union. Their first action as a group was to volunteer a day of their time every month to clean the medical centre. They want to be able to go to the villages and conduct health surveys while raising awareness about the things mentioned above. They also want to be able to lobby the state to give them a doctor and pay for ambulance maintenance. They've all contributed 2500 CFA francs (about 6 CDN, a difficult sum to raise in Safane) to get their organization started, and they have fundraisers planned. If you know of any health-related NGOs or unions or municipalities or whatever who might be interested in partnering with these people, please pass this message along. I have their contact information and can facilitate communication, including translation.
I left the village on Thursday to spend the weekend in Ouaga and thus cleverly avoided going to church in Yako on Sunday. I go back to Yako today and I'll spend my last week in Africa there. Armelle and Adama get married on May 1st, and my flight leaves May 2nd.
Europe, land of boradband and easy banking, here I come!
Anyways, I was happy to see everyone in Safane and they were happy to see me. They've gotten a little rain these last few weeks so the village was quieter than usual because many people had gone to the fields to prepare the ground for spring planting. Until 4 or 5 years ago, Mamina's husband told me, spring planting would already have been underway because the rains would have been guaranteed to come in May. But since 2005, the annual monsoon hasn't come until June even though it still finishes in September. And this year the hot weather started a month earlier than normal. Remember how relieved I was to leave the 45 degree weather at the end of February and head to Ghana? Well, that heat shouldn't have come until the end of March. Some climate change models project more rain in the Sahel, but that doesn't appear to be the scenario that's unfolding.
This time Mamina took me to visit the medical centre in Safane, which serves the 45 or so villages that make up the Commune of Safane. It has one ambulance, which serves Safane and its two neighbouring Communes - that's appoximately 250 000 people. The ambulance is overdue for maintenance but the medical centre can't afford to pay for it. There are a few nurses and midwives, and no doctors at all who serve those 250 000 people on a permanent basis. Annual checkups are unknown, and when people don't feel well they go to the centre later rather than sooner. If people are hospitalized they have to pay for everything themselves, and that includes sterile gloves, syringes, and cleaning the room. The state doesn't even pay to keep the hospital clean. Mamina and about 40 other literate people in Safane help out during state-funded village vaccination campaigns and they are take the opportunity to raise awareness among villagers about getting early care, not practicing femal genital mutilation, birth control, not giving birth at home, things like that. But they can't go out to the villages without the support of the vaccination campaign, which provides mopeds and petrol. They are so frustrated by not being able to improve their community's health indicators that they have recently organized into an NGO-union. Their first action as a group was to volunteer a day of their time every month to clean the medical centre. They want to be able to go to the villages and conduct health surveys while raising awareness about the things mentioned above. They also want to be able to lobby the state to give them a doctor and pay for ambulance maintenance. They've all contributed 2500 CFA francs (about 6 CDN, a difficult sum to raise in Safane) to get their organization started, and they have fundraisers planned. If you know of any health-related NGOs or unions or municipalities or whatever who might be interested in partnering with these people, please pass this message along. I have their contact information and can facilitate communication, including translation.
I left the village on Thursday to spend the weekend in Ouaga and thus cleverly avoided going to church in Yako on Sunday. I go back to Yako today and I'll spend my last week in Africa there. Armelle and Adama get married on May 1st, and my flight leaves May 2nd.
Europe, land of boradband and easy banking, here I come!
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Authenticity and its Discontents
I finally figured out how Mali manages to charge so much and deliver so very little in the way of services and infrastructure. Their strategy is two-fold. First, they don't offer the locals a choice: Malians can like it or lump it. I have noticed that West Africans almost never complain about poor service, so this part of te strategy works quite well. But how do they keep the tourists from complaining, especially given that most of them are French? Normally they would go on strike.
The secret is in Mali Tourism's marketing syrategy, and it's ingenious in its simplicity. They've marketed themselves as "Authentic Africa." And what do most Westerners think of as "authentically African"? Animals, villages, underdevelopment, violent conflict, disease, famine, djembes, basically whatever the media shows us. We certainly don't think of air conditioned buses and well developed tourism infrastructure.
So the tourists - mostly French - who I met in Mali were there looking for an "authentic" experience. And since they mostly hadn't visited other African countries they believed that Mali's terrible bus service was also "authentically African," and therefore an essential part of their African experience, albeit an unpleasant one.
This discussion begs the question, what the heck is an "authentic" experience? And why are people willing to pay so much for one?
Authenticity is a term that is meant to be applied to objects: this painting is an authentic Wooster, not a fake like that one over there. It means that that object is the real thing. But I can't have a fake experience. Everything I have experienced in Africa is authentically African, from the absurd to the sublime.
As for the answer to the second question, why are people willing to pay so much for an "authentic" experience, well, I just don't know. If someone tells me that this bus trip will be airconditioned when it actually won't be, then I got authentically duped. If I paid for an airconditioned bus ride and instead got a sweltering greenhouse on wheels, then I got authentically ripped off. And so did the French tourists.
The secret is in Mali Tourism's marketing syrategy, and it's ingenious in its simplicity. They've marketed themselves as "Authentic Africa." And what do most Westerners think of as "authentically African"? Animals, villages, underdevelopment, violent conflict, disease, famine, djembes, basically whatever the media shows us. We certainly don't think of air conditioned buses and well developed tourism infrastructure.
So the tourists - mostly French - who I met in Mali were there looking for an "authentic" experience. And since they mostly hadn't visited other African countries they believed that Mali's terrible bus service was also "authentically African," and therefore an essential part of their African experience, albeit an unpleasant one.
This discussion begs the question, what the heck is an "authentic" experience? And why are people willing to pay so much for one?
Authenticity is a term that is meant to be applied to objects: this painting is an authentic Wooster, not a fake like that one over there. It means that that object is the real thing. But I can't have a fake experience. Everything I have experienced in Africa is authentically African, from the absurd to the sublime.
As for the answer to the second question, why are people willing to pay so much for an "authentic" experience, well, I just don't know. If someone tells me that this bus trip will be airconditioned when it actually won't be, then I got authentically duped. If I paid for an airconditioned bus ride and instead got a sweltering greenhouse on wheels, then I got authentically ripped off. And so did the French tourists.
Forty-eight Degrees and Rising
It's forty-eight degrees Celsius right now, or maybe forty-nine, the bar man wasn't sure. That's in the shade - I don't know what it's like in the sun. Welcome to northern Mali.
I knew April and May were the hottest months in West Africa, but it's one thing to know and another to understand the implications of that knowledge. I'll spare you the descriptions of how one's body reacts to that kind of heat, suffice to say that I've gotten two different types of heat rash and I wake up every three hours during the night from the heat (it only cools down by about ten or fifteen degrees at night). I take a cold shower, re-soak my sleeping sheet, and go back to bed knowing that I'll do the whole thing again at 4 am. It's fun, you should try it.
Mali is the first country I've visited that's left me lukewarm about the experience. Not because of the heat, but because it's a rip off. A taxi ride in Bamako (the capital) costs a minimum of 1000 francs, while the minimum price for a taxi ride in Ouaga is 300. A plate of riz sauce (rice with peanut sauce and a few pieces of goat meat) costs between 1500 and 2500 francs in Mali, but in Burkina you can get it for 250 francs. And as for transport... Mali has figured out how to get people to pay large amounts of money to receive terrible service. The 11 hour bus ride from Bamako to Mopti cost 7500 francs, which is what I would have paid for a similar trip in Burkina or Ghana. But in Burkina and Ghana the bus would have been air conditioned with clean and comfortable seats and the driver would not have made 2 hours worth of unscheduled stops to pick up unauthorized passengers whose fares went directly into his pocket. I'm not saying that such bus rides can't be had in other countries, but you pay a lot less for them. And to top it all off, the locals hike up prices for toubabous (white people) more here than in the other countries I've visited. No, Mali is not a country for the faint of heart, or the faint of wallet.
But putting all that aside, I've seen some really cool things in Mali. Bamako is without a doubt the most beautiful of the three African capitals I've visited. I think that the urban planner who designed Bamako must have really loved it. The Niger river bisects the city from north to south, keeping the temperatures in the mid- to high thirties. The city follows the river's contours and expands outwards from its banks. The downtown core is a well-laid out grid of tree-lined avenues along the west bank of the Niger. It has a higher percentage of paved roads than Accra or Ouaga's downtown cores. Someone thought to build a pleasant riverside walkway with terraced gardens and benches. There are landmarks like statues and monuments that you can use to find your way, and the wide sidewalks make it easy to get around on foot (where there are sidewalks). Somatro's - Bamako's tro tros - zip around the city for a minimal fee. Compared to the humid jungle that is Accra or Ouaga's transit-less, landmark-free muddle of streets, Bamako is something special.
The nightlife in Bamako is fantastic. Mali has probably produced more world-famous musicians than any other African country except South Africa, and every big name in the African music scene makes a stop there at some point. The problem is finding them. If you don't understand the radio ads in the local dialect then you really have to know someone in the industry or haunt the downtown billboards in order to know what's going on. The stars don't seem to bother advertising their performance schedules online when they're playing Africa, or if they do then a half hour online search isn't long enough to find them. I tried to go see Oumou Sangare sing but didn't get lucky, so I went to rue Princesse, which is one of Bamako's clubbing strips. I took in the scene there for a while, happily drinking the first beer I had found in the city. Bamako takes its position as the capital of a 95% (or thereabouts) Muslim country seriously enough to make alcohol hard to find during the day, but not so seriously that it hurts the city's nightlife. If you go out at night in Bamako the liquor flows like water. But here's the rub: Bamako's nightlife doesn't really get going until 3 in the morning. You know why? It's because people don't want anyone they know to know that they're going out because it could hurt their reputation as a good Muslim. Senegal is as Muslim as Mali, but nobody there cares about such things. According to my friend who lived there for years, you'll frequently see Senegalese men leave the mosque in full bou-bous and head to the maquis across the street for a cold one. Another example of Bamako's capricious relationship with Islam is that the city closes down on Sundays. Shouldn't it be Friday?
I left Bamako and boarded a horrible bus for the overlong trip to Mopti, several hundred kilometres north. The further north you go in Sahelian countries, the closer you get to the Sahara. That's when it starts to get really hot. I'm writing this post from my hotel in Mopti.
Mopti is a neat place. It's a port town on the edge of the massive inland delta that covers much of central Mali. The Niger and Bani rivers merge at Mopti, bringing together people from five different ethnicities for trade and, during the dry season, survival. During the rainy season you can take a three-day boat trip from Mopti to Timbuktu on the edge of the desert, passing Bozo fishing camps, Tuareg villages, travelling Peuhls, and maybe even catching sight of Mali's desert elephants along the way. At any time of year traders ferry shallow-bottomed gondolas called pirogues between Mopti and Timbuktu, bringing slabs of salt as big as a coffee table from the desert and carrying vegetables back up north. I went on a one-hour pirogue tour with some French tourists and saw all these things, except the desert elephants.
The next day I went to the Dogon Country. The Dogon Country consists of fourteen village strung along a 250 km stretch of cliff formed millions of years ago. I didn't even realize Mopti was on an inland plateau until we arrived suddenly, spectacularly, at the brink of the cliff and looked down at the plain spread out a thousand feet below.
The first village I visited was called Djigibombo (pronounced Jiggy-bombo) and it was just before the brink of the cliff. It was supposedly founded by the slave caste of the Dogon people, who were fleeing the forcible conversion to Islam occuring further west. It was very small and very traditional, with cylindrical graneries with their conical roofs and a strong animist presence. People still live there, but you only see old people and children at this time of year because everyone of working age has gone to Bamako or another big city to earn money. It was also touristy. There was a small hotel in the village with a satellite dish that stuck out like a sore thumb.
The next village I visited was built into the cliff. If you know what the cliff dwellings in Arizona look like, this village was like that. The major difference is that the cliff dwellings in Arizona were abandoned 500 years ago and the cliff dwellings here were only abandoned 50 years ago. The villagers rebuilt on the plain directly under their former houses and many elders remember growing up on the cliff-face. They had to abandon their homes because there wasn't enough water, though now there's a pump in the village so everything's fine. UNESCO takes care of the cliff dwellings, including the painted walls sealing off the home ofthe Dogon spiritual chief. Before they left the cliffs for good, the Dogon spiritual chief had a tenure of 60 years. For those 60 years he wasn't allowed to leave his cliff-dwelling because he had to remain in constant communication with the spirit world. He couldn't even leave to bathe, and even if he'd been allowed to descend he still wouldn't have been able to bathe because he wore sacred charms - gri gris - which couldn't get wet. So he would call a serpent, and the serpent would come and bathe him with its saliva. Sixty years of snake spit... Right now the Dogon don't have a spiritual chief because he last one died 20 years into his mandate and the spirits only select a new one every 60 years, no matter what happens in the meantime.
Soon I go back to Burkina and I can't tell you how excited I am. It will be a little less hot and a lot less expensive. Malians are among the poorest people on the planet -I think the only country that ranks worse on the UN's Human Development Index is Afghanistan. If I'm feeling squeezed by the prices here, how do they manage?
I knew April and May were the hottest months in West Africa, but it's one thing to know and another to understand the implications of that knowledge. I'll spare you the descriptions of how one's body reacts to that kind of heat, suffice to say that I've gotten two different types of heat rash and I wake up every three hours during the night from the heat (it only cools down by about ten or fifteen degrees at night). I take a cold shower, re-soak my sleeping sheet, and go back to bed knowing that I'll do the whole thing again at 4 am. It's fun, you should try it.
Mali is the first country I've visited that's left me lukewarm about the experience. Not because of the heat, but because it's a rip off. A taxi ride in Bamako (the capital) costs a minimum of 1000 francs, while the minimum price for a taxi ride in Ouaga is 300. A plate of riz sauce (rice with peanut sauce and a few pieces of goat meat) costs between 1500 and 2500 francs in Mali, but in Burkina you can get it for 250 francs. And as for transport... Mali has figured out how to get people to pay large amounts of money to receive terrible service. The 11 hour bus ride from Bamako to Mopti cost 7500 francs, which is what I would have paid for a similar trip in Burkina or Ghana. But in Burkina and Ghana the bus would have been air conditioned with clean and comfortable seats and the driver would not have made 2 hours worth of unscheduled stops to pick up unauthorized passengers whose fares went directly into his pocket. I'm not saying that such bus rides can't be had in other countries, but you pay a lot less for them. And to top it all off, the locals hike up prices for toubabous (white people) more here than in the other countries I've visited. No, Mali is not a country for the faint of heart, or the faint of wallet.
But putting all that aside, I've seen some really cool things in Mali. Bamako is without a doubt the most beautiful of the three African capitals I've visited. I think that the urban planner who designed Bamako must have really loved it. The Niger river bisects the city from north to south, keeping the temperatures in the mid- to high thirties. The city follows the river's contours and expands outwards from its banks. The downtown core is a well-laid out grid of tree-lined avenues along the west bank of the Niger. It has a higher percentage of paved roads than Accra or Ouaga's downtown cores. Someone thought to build a pleasant riverside walkway with terraced gardens and benches. There are landmarks like statues and monuments that you can use to find your way, and the wide sidewalks make it easy to get around on foot (where there are sidewalks). Somatro's - Bamako's tro tros - zip around the city for a minimal fee. Compared to the humid jungle that is Accra or Ouaga's transit-less, landmark-free muddle of streets, Bamako is something special.
The nightlife in Bamako is fantastic. Mali has probably produced more world-famous musicians than any other African country except South Africa, and every big name in the African music scene makes a stop there at some point. The problem is finding them. If you don't understand the radio ads in the local dialect then you really have to know someone in the industry or haunt the downtown billboards in order to know what's going on. The stars don't seem to bother advertising their performance schedules online when they're playing Africa, or if they do then a half hour online search isn't long enough to find them. I tried to go see Oumou Sangare sing but didn't get lucky, so I went to rue Princesse, which is one of Bamako's clubbing strips. I took in the scene there for a while, happily drinking the first beer I had found in the city. Bamako takes its position as the capital of a 95% (or thereabouts) Muslim country seriously enough to make alcohol hard to find during the day, but not so seriously that it hurts the city's nightlife. If you go out at night in Bamako the liquor flows like water. But here's the rub: Bamako's nightlife doesn't really get going until 3 in the morning. You know why? It's because people don't want anyone they know to know that they're going out because it could hurt their reputation as a good Muslim. Senegal is as Muslim as Mali, but nobody there cares about such things. According to my friend who lived there for years, you'll frequently see Senegalese men leave the mosque in full bou-bous and head to the maquis across the street for a cold one. Another example of Bamako's capricious relationship with Islam is that the city closes down on Sundays. Shouldn't it be Friday?
I left Bamako and boarded a horrible bus for the overlong trip to Mopti, several hundred kilometres north. The further north you go in Sahelian countries, the closer you get to the Sahara. That's when it starts to get really hot. I'm writing this post from my hotel in Mopti.
Mopti is a neat place. It's a port town on the edge of the massive inland delta that covers much of central Mali. The Niger and Bani rivers merge at Mopti, bringing together people from five different ethnicities for trade and, during the dry season, survival. During the rainy season you can take a three-day boat trip from Mopti to Timbuktu on the edge of the desert, passing Bozo fishing camps, Tuareg villages, travelling Peuhls, and maybe even catching sight of Mali's desert elephants along the way. At any time of year traders ferry shallow-bottomed gondolas called pirogues between Mopti and Timbuktu, bringing slabs of salt as big as a coffee table from the desert and carrying vegetables back up north. I went on a one-hour pirogue tour with some French tourists and saw all these things, except the desert elephants.
The next day I went to the Dogon Country. The Dogon Country consists of fourteen village strung along a 250 km stretch of cliff formed millions of years ago. I didn't even realize Mopti was on an inland plateau until we arrived suddenly, spectacularly, at the brink of the cliff and looked down at the plain spread out a thousand feet below.
The first village I visited was called Djigibombo (pronounced Jiggy-bombo) and it was just before the brink of the cliff. It was supposedly founded by the slave caste of the Dogon people, who were fleeing the forcible conversion to Islam occuring further west. It was very small and very traditional, with cylindrical graneries with their conical roofs and a strong animist presence. People still live there, but you only see old people and children at this time of year because everyone of working age has gone to Bamako or another big city to earn money. It was also touristy. There was a small hotel in the village with a satellite dish that stuck out like a sore thumb.
The next village I visited was built into the cliff. If you know what the cliff dwellings in Arizona look like, this village was like that. The major difference is that the cliff dwellings in Arizona were abandoned 500 years ago and the cliff dwellings here were only abandoned 50 years ago. The villagers rebuilt on the plain directly under their former houses and many elders remember growing up on the cliff-face. They had to abandon their homes because there wasn't enough water, though now there's a pump in the village so everything's fine. UNESCO takes care of the cliff dwellings, including the painted walls sealing off the home ofthe Dogon spiritual chief. Before they left the cliffs for good, the Dogon spiritual chief had a tenure of 60 years. For those 60 years he wasn't allowed to leave his cliff-dwelling because he had to remain in constant communication with the spirit world. He couldn't even leave to bathe, and even if he'd been allowed to descend he still wouldn't have been able to bathe because he wore sacred charms - gri gris - which couldn't get wet. So he would call a serpent, and the serpent would come and bathe him with its saliva. Sixty years of snake spit... Right now the Dogon don't have a spiritual chief because he last one died 20 years into his mandate and the spirits only select a new one every 60 years, no matter what happens in the meantime.
Soon I go back to Burkina and I can't tell you how excited I am. It will be a little less hot and a lot less expensive. Malians are among the poorest people on the planet -I think the only country that ranks worse on the UN's Human Development Index is Afghanistan. If I'm feeling squeezed by the prices here, how do they manage?
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Easter in Yako
God spare me from any more church. I have attended twice as many church services in the last few days as the accumulated total in my life up to now. There's only so much religion a girl can take, especially when there's no chocolate involved (the Easter Bunny is unknown here).
I arrived in Yako on Thursday, April 1st with the coolers in tow. Mama Zida was pleased, and she will never know what a hassle they were. Aside from the unplanned trip back to Accra and the heat stroke episode, border officials like to extort people carrying "luxury items" such as coolers. I had a few conversations where I had to play very, very dumb and open my innocent blue eyes very wide in order to hang on to my money. Stupid border officials.
Anyways, Mama Zida wanted me to go to church on Thursday evening after resting, and she told her second youngest child, Aristide aka Titi, to take me once I'd woken up. Titi, however, being a bit of a punk, went out with his friends instead and I had no idea I was expected to be at church. So whenTiti came home briefly for dinner and invited me to go back with him and his friends to Wend Panga (the hip place to drink and dance in Yako), I said yes. He drove his cousin there first and said he would come back to get me, but he never did. Adama, who will soon be joining the Zida family as Armelle's husband, showed up and brought me to Wend Panga on his own. Adama is really awesome, and Titi got stupid drunk. Did I mention that Titi is studying to be a border official?
On Good Friday I woke up to find the breakfast table set for one. Mama and Papa Zida take Lent very seriously: nobody in the family eats or drinks until the sun goes down, for the full forty days. It's the dame idea as Ramadan but during the hot, dry season instead of October when it's cool. That afternoon I went to visit the Sawadogos and I went to church in the evening. The service was in Mooré and it was very hot, but it was only an hour long and it made Mama Zida happy.
Saturday was the big day. The house was full of guests in the morning and a ridiculous amount of chicken was served. Mama Zida assured me that this was nothing, they were holding back because Armelle and Adama's wedding is coming up on May 1st. In the afternoon I went with Mama and Papa Zida while they did the rounds, and then we all went home to rest before church that evening.
The service began at 9pm. We pulled up in front of the church to find that there were so many worshippers that they had set up the service outside. Nobody but me seemed surprised by this high attendance rate.
We set up our lawn chairs near the back of the crowd and I took in the scene. There were hundreds of people in the open area in front of the church; those who had arrived too late to sit on the makeshift pews mostly stood. Everyone held candles and the hundreds of flames cast a flickering light over the trees, the church, and the crowd of faithful worshippers. The priest swept up to his pew on the steps of the church and the service began.
This is where I started to nod off. It was deliciously cool after a hot day, I was so tired, and the service was in Mooré. I awoke abruptly when the crowd rose up and ululated as one. This is a routine part of West African church services, but I can't tell you why they do it. Just picture hundreds of believers holding up their hands to the heavens and ululating for Jesus.
I nodded off again but this time my candle slipped and spilled hot wax on my lap. This happened a few more times because I wanted to stay awake and putting out my candle would have been an admission of defeat. Finally Mama Zida put out my candle for me.
I remember waking up a couple times and looking around in confusion. The first time a long line of people was getting baptized, and the second time an even longer line of people was taking communion.
When I woke up 4.5 hours later the service was still going on. It lasted another thirty minutes and wrapped up at 2 am. I couldn't believe it. How could a church service last for more than two hours? If Canadians were asked to attend a five hour church service, the few worshippers that remain in our country would promptly desert. Papa Zida explained that the priest's underlings hadn't been there and the priest had had to do all the baptisms and confirmations himself. Easter is considered an auspicious time to get baptized and confirmed, so it had dragged on. I went out dancing with my friends even though it was 2 am. I wasn't about to let wayward underpriests ruin my evening.
Sunday morning I slept in. Mama Zida laughed at me for still being tired after sleeping through the whole service, and she had a point. But who wouldn't have slept through that service, I ask you? We visited the Zida's friends in the afternoon and got home in time for dinner, which consisted of copious amounts of chicken prepared in an endless variety of ways. More people came to visit in the evening and we in the younger generation went out to Wend Panga once again.
Monday was pretty relaxed, I spent most of the day reading and playing with Ange (Adama and Armelle's baby, Mama and Papa Zida's first grandchild, quite colicky (sp?)). He's grown a heck of a lot since I last saw him as a newborn in January! I visited the Sawadogos in the afternoon and went out to Wend Panga yet again. I haven't been to a town with only one watering hole since I lived in Ottawa.
On Tuesday I went to the orphanage in the morning. The oldest kids - 3 years old or so - had mostly been moved to foster families or been picked up by their remaining relatives; some had been adopted by Europeans. A new cadre of babies had moved in, many of them in really rough shape due to malnutrition.
Here's a success story that shows just how effective the orphanage is. When I was last at the orphanage in January, there was a new arrival, a little boy, about 4 or 5 months old, who was so malnourished he couldn't even sit up. After two months of proper nutrition and the careful attention of the orphanage's nurse, he's now sitting up, taking in things around him, and scooting a little on his bum. He's still far behind the average child his age, but he's catching up quickly and his brain and body are developing normally. Without the orphanage, he would surely be dead.
If the orphanage does work that sounds like something you'd want to support, it's easy to donate at http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s88132.
I left Yako the next day and headed to Ouaga to get my visa for Mali. Soon I'll write to you from there!
I arrived in Yako on Thursday, April 1st with the coolers in tow. Mama Zida was pleased, and she will never know what a hassle they were. Aside from the unplanned trip back to Accra and the heat stroke episode, border officials like to extort people carrying "luxury items" such as coolers. I had a few conversations where I had to play very, very dumb and open my innocent blue eyes very wide in order to hang on to my money. Stupid border officials.
Anyways, Mama Zida wanted me to go to church on Thursday evening after resting, and she told her second youngest child, Aristide aka Titi, to take me once I'd woken up. Titi, however, being a bit of a punk, went out with his friends instead and I had no idea I was expected to be at church. So whenTiti came home briefly for dinner and invited me to go back with him and his friends to Wend Panga (the hip place to drink and dance in Yako), I said yes. He drove his cousin there first and said he would come back to get me, but he never did. Adama, who will soon be joining the Zida family as Armelle's husband, showed up and brought me to Wend Panga on his own. Adama is really awesome, and Titi got stupid drunk. Did I mention that Titi is studying to be a border official?
On Good Friday I woke up to find the breakfast table set for one. Mama and Papa Zida take Lent very seriously: nobody in the family eats or drinks until the sun goes down, for the full forty days. It's the dame idea as Ramadan but during the hot, dry season instead of October when it's cool. That afternoon I went to visit the Sawadogos and I went to church in the evening. The service was in Mooré and it was very hot, but it was only an hour long and it made Mama Zida happy.
Saturday was the big day. The house was full of guests in the morning and a ridiculous amount of chicken was served. Mama Zida assured me that this was nothing, they were holding back because Armelle and Adama's wedding is coming up on May 1st. In the afternoon I went with Mama and Papa Zida while they did the rounds, and then we all went home to rest before church that evening.
The service began at 9pm. We pulled up in front of the church to find that there were so many worshippers that they had set up the service outside. Nobody but me seemed surprised by this high attendance rate.
We set up our lawn chairs near the back of the crowd and I took in the scene. There were hundreds of people in the open area in front of the church; those who had arrived too late to sit on the makeshift pews mostly stood. Everyone held candles and the hundreds of flames cast a flickering light over the trees, the church, and the crowd of faithful worshippers. The priest swept up to his pew on the steps of the church and the service began.
This is where I started to nod off. It was deliciously cool after a hot day, I was so tired, and the service was in Mooré. I awoke abruptly when the crowd rose up and ululated as one. This is a routine part of West African church services, but I can't tell you why they do it. Just picture hundreds of believers holding up their hands to the heavens and ululating for Jesus.
I nodded off again but this time my candle slipped and spilled hot wax on my lap. This happened a few more times because I wanted to stay awake and putting out my candle would have been an admission of defeat. Finally Mama Zida put out my candle for me.
I remember waking up a couple times and looking around in confusion. The first time a long line of people was getting baptized, and the second time an even longer line of people was taking communion.
When I woke up 4.5 hours later the service was still going on. It lasted another thirty minutes and wrapped up at 2 am. I couldn't believe it. How could a church service last for more than two hours? If Canadians were asked to attend a five hour church service, the few worshippers that remain in our country would promptly desert. Papa Zida explained that the priest's underlings hadn't been there and the priest had had to do all the baptisms and confirmations himself. Easter is considered an auspicious time to get baptized and confirmed, so it had dragged on. I went out dancing with my friends even though it was 2 am. I wasn't about to let wayward underpriests ruin my evening.
Sunday morning I slept in. Mama Zida laughed at me for still being tired after sleeping through the whole service, and she had a point. But who wouldn't have slept through that service, I ask you? We visited the Zida's friends in the afternoon and got home in time for dinner, which consisted of copious amounts of chicken prepared in an endless variety of ways. More people came to visit in the evening and we in the younger generation went out to Wend Panga once again.
Monday was pretty relaxed, I spent most of the day reading and playing with Ange (Adama and Armelle's baby, Mama and Papa Zida's first grandchild, quite colicky (sp?)). He's grown a heck of a lot since I last saw him as a newborn in January! I visited the Sawadogos in the afternoon and went out to Wend Panga yet again. I haven't been to a town with only one watering hole since I lived in Ottawa.
On Tuesday I went to the orphanage in the morning. The oldest kids - 3 years old or so - had mostly been moved to foster families or been picked up by their remaining relatives; some had been adopted by Europeans. A new cadre of babies had moved in, many of them in really rough shape due to malnutrition.
Here's a success story that shows just how effective the orphanage is. When I was last at the orphanage in January, there was a new arrival, a little boy, about 4 or 5 months old, who was so malnourished he couldn't even sit up. After two months of proper nutrition and the careful attention of the orphanage's nurse, he's now sitting up, taking in things around him, and scooting a little on his bum. He's still far behind the average child his age, but he's catching up quickly and his brain and body are developing normally. Without the orphanage, he would surely be dead.
If the orphanage does work that sounds like something you'd want to support, it's easy to donate at http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s88132.
I left Yako the next day and headed to Ouaga to get my visa for Mali. Soon I'll write to you from there!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
My Phone Number
As of Monday, March 29th, I'll switch back to my Burkinabe number:
011 226 7500 2125
I look forward to hearing your voices!
011 226 7500 2125
I look forward to hearing your voices!
Burkina-bound after a malarial scare
After seeing the hippos I booked it down from Tamale to Accra on a mission for Mama Zida. Coolers (you know, what you keep beer in at a BBQ) are useful items in sub-Saharan Africa, and she asked me to pick some up for her while in Ghana. Apparantly they are cheaper in Ghana than in Burkina. I had intended to buy the coolers in Tamale and continue to Ouaga from there (it's only a few hours from the border), but the people in Tamale assured me that even with the price of bus tickets there and back, it would still be cheaper to buy the coolers in Accra.
One twelve hour bus ride later, I arrived at the Volunteer Abroad house in Accra on the evening of Thursday, March 25th. It was planned as a surgical strike: I would buy the coolers on Friday and by Saturday morning I would be Burkina-bound.
But life always has its own plans for you. On Friday I got the coolers at a store called Melcom (with fixed prices, it was shopping heaven!!). I decided to take them back to the VA house and drop them there before buying my bus ticket to Burkina.
Upon my return I developed a headache. Then my joints and muscles started to hurt. I felt feverish. And I was nauseated. "Great," I thought, "this is probably malaria."
I waited a few hours just to see if the symptoms would pass on their own, and when they didn't I dragged myself to the closest clinic. It was an interesting glimpse into Ghana's health care system.
First I had to register with the clinic, which cost 6 cedis (approx. $4 CDN), and only after that did I get to sit and wait to see the doctor. Everyone, including Ghanaians, has to pay this "user fee" to access healthcare here. This might explain why there was absolutely NO line of people in front of me waiting to see the doctor. After working in my Dad's busy Canadian clinic where patients routinely wait an hour for their appointments, this experience with a pivate (or possibly public-private) healthcare clinic was a bit of culture shock. I wondered how many people felt as awful as I did but couldn't afford the 6 cedis.
The doctor asked a few questions, checked my vaccination record, and prescribed a malaria test. The test cost 8 cedis (about $5-6), which locals would also have had to pay.
The nurse used a rather large needle to pierce my vein and withdraw my precious bodily fluids, but after that the process was really cool. The clinic had this neat little centrifuge, about as big around as a dinner plate, that spins the blood super fast to separate the serum from the cells. Then they check the serum for malaria and have the results in a matter of minutes. Normally one has to wait at least a day for bloodwork results, so I was thrilled.
My malaria test was negative, thank goodness, and the doctor figured I was probably suffering from mild heat stroke and exhaustion. I had travelled far and hard over the last week, and for the last five nights I hadn't slept in the same town two nights in a row.
Still, he prescribed malaria meds just in case and forbade me to travel on Saturday as I had planned.
So I bought my ticket for Monday (tomorrow) and spent the weekend resting and eating. And today (Sunday) I went with everyone to watch Ghana's national soccer team, the Black Stars, play against Burkina Faso's Etalons. Ghana won, of course, but the score was only 1-0. Considering the Black Stars made it to the final game of the Africa Cip of Nations and will represent their country in South Africa this year, the Burkinabe team did pretty well.
I leave tomorrow at 10am and I am really excited about going back to Burkina. Time for Easter and a wedding - it'll be party time! And church time, too. I'm not kidding myself on that one.
One twelve hour bus ride later, I arrived at the Volunteer Abroad house in Accra on the evening of Thursday, March 25th. It was planned as a surgical strike: I would buy the coolers on Friday and by Saturday morning I would be Burkina-bound.
But life always has its own plans for you. On Friday I got the coolers at a store called Melcom (with fixed prices, it was shopping heaven!!). I decided to take them back to the VA house and drop them there before buying my bus ticket to Burkina.
Upon my return I developed a headache. Then my joints and muscles started to hurt. I felt feverish. And I was nauseated. "Great," I thought, "this is probably malaria."
I waited a few hours just to see if the symptoms would pass on their own, and when they didn't I dragged myself to the closest clinic. It was an interesting glimpse into Ghana's health care system.
First I had to register with the clinic, which cost 6 cedis (approx. $4 CDN), and only after that did I get to sit and wait to see the doctor. Everyone, including Ghanaians, has to pay this "user fee" to access healthcare here. This might explain why there was absolutely NO line of people in front of me waiting to see the doctor. After working in my Dad's busy Canadian clinic where patients routinely wait an hour for their appointments, this experience with a pivate (or possibly public-private) healthcare clinic was a bit of culture shock. I wondered how many people felt as awful as I did but couldn't afford the 6 cedis.
The doctor asked a few questions, checked my vaccination record, and prescribed a malaria test. The test cost 8 cedis (about $5-6), which locals would also have had to pay.
The nurse used a rather large needle to pierce my vein and withdraw my precious bodily fluids, but after that the process was really cool. The clinic had this neat little centrifuge, about as big around as a dinner plate, that spins the blood super fast to separate the serum from the cells. Then they check the serum for malaria and have the results in a matter of minutes. Normally one has to wait at least a day for bloodwork results, so I was thrilled.
My malaria test was negative, thank goodness, and the doctor figured I was probably suffering from mild heat stroke and exhaustion. I had travelled far and hard over the last week, and for the last five nights I hadn't slept in the same town two nights in a row.
Still, he prescribed malaria meds just in case and forbade me to travel on Saturday as I had planned.
So I bought my ticket for Monday (tomorrow) and spent the weekend resting and eating. And today (Sunday) I went with everyone to watch Ghana's national soccer team, the Black Stars, play against Burkina Faso's Etalons. Ghana won, of course, but the score was only 1-0. Considering the Black Stars made it to the final game of the Africa Cip of Nations and will represent their country in South Africa this year, the Burkinabe team did pretty well.
I leave tomorrow at 10am and I am really excited about going back to Burkina. Time for Easter and a wedding - it'll be party time! And church time, too. I'm not kidding myself on that one.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Hippo Hunting (With My Camera)
After getting dropped off in Wa I took a tro-tro to Wechiau. I had to buy food before leaving because the hippo sanctuary will cook food for you but they don't provide the ingredients. This is because there are no stores. Villagers near the sanctuary grow their own food and anything they don't grow they bring in from Wechiau.
In Wechiau I went to the Hippo Sanctuary Centre to register and get a guide. Strangely, it was full of knickknacks and bags with Calgary written all over them. I wouldn't find out why until later. Two British volunteers - Alice and Iona - were sitting there waiting to leave and I joined them for the weekend.
Eventually our guide arrived and we boarded the back of a suspensionless pick up truck for the 18km trip to the hippo sanctuary. Half of the road was paved, but the other half made the road to Mole feel like an eight-lane super-highway.
We arrived around 4:30 took a look around. The sanctuary's excursions are based from a tiny village thirty minutes walk from the Black Volta River, where the hippos live. The village is so small that if you turn in all four directions, this is what you see: .......nothing........a tree!.......nothing.........a donkey! Certainly no stores. On a busy day you will see kids playing xylophones ingeniously constructed from bamboo stalks suspended over a hole in the ground.
Our guide, Adams, was only 18 and possibly the most adorable person I have ever met. He asked our permission before going to pray, bless him, as though we had any right to say no. Once he'd finished praying and we'd finished packing our overnight bags, we set off for the Hippo Hide, where we would spend the night.
The Hippo Hide is a tree platform built in a giant tree like the one Rafiki lives in in The Lion King. It's about 6 metres off the ground and sleeping there was so cool! We got set up, ate dinner, applied near lethal amounts of deet, and chatted with Adams about hippos and his family. We watched the river change colour as the sun set and went to bed when the bats in our tree woke up for their nightly hunt. The Black Volta separates Ghana from Burkina, and as night fell we could hear Burkinabe fishermen on their own nightly hunt.
The best time to see hippos is very early in the morning. They're nocturnal creatures, leaving the river at night to feed on nearby grasses. When morning comes they lumber back to the safety of the water and scuffle around before going to sleep.
We woke up at the crack of dawn to go on our canoe safari. The bats were going to sleep above us and the birds in our tree had just started their morning songs. We got into the flat-bottomed canoe without disaster, though Iona nearly capsized us all, and started heading upstream. We weren't even on the water for five minutes when we saw hippos!
They were a family of six - four adults and two babies - just hanging out in the water. We could see their nostrils, eyes, and ears, and then one of them lunged at another. Then I got a clear view of their teeth and truly appreciated just how huge these animals are. Adams said it was either an adult male asserting himself over a younger male, or a tussle for dominance among two females. Apparantly males and females do not fight each other unless a male from a different family of hippos attacks the young.
Hippos are sacred to the people of Wechiau, but their numbers are very low due to poaching (for ivory and meat), slash and burn agriculture, and loss of habitat. There are around 20 hippos in the sanctuary; they are one of only two wild hippo populations in Ghana. Their status as a protected species clearly wasn't enough to protect them.
So in 1999 a consortium of village chiefs decided to do something to protect their sacred hippos. Eco-tourism was the perfect solution as it made the presence of living hippos a cornerstone of the local economy.
Here's where Calgary comes in. Somehow the Calgary Zoo got wind of this project and it partnered with the chiefs to make it a reality.
Alice, Iona, Adams and I went back to Wechiau that afternoon and had traditional Moroccan tea with Adams' friends. If you've never had it, you should. You prepare three or four tiny pots of tea from the same leaves, each one sweeter than the last. You drink it from large shot glasses, and somehow it brings out the best in you.
This entry is already really long, but our tro-tro ride back to Wa is worth reading about because I got peed on by a sheep. Tro-tros are large minivans that seat 13-15 people. Ours had 17 adults in it, 2 babies, 3 goats, and a case of chickens. Eight more men were on the roof, as well as our bags. I thanked my lucky stars that I was sitting next to an open window.
About half way along the bumpy road to Wa - after our driver hit a pig on the road without even trying to avoid it (so sad as it dragged itself away) - I felt something dripping on my leg. I looked at the window in confusion and saw a stream of urine flowing down the side of the tro, much of it onto me.
I freaked out a little. I couldn't believe that one of the men on the roof was peeing down the side of the tro. I didn't make a scene, but I was so visibly grossed out that a kindly passenger explained what was going on. His sheep was tied to the roof of the tro, and this was the most likely source of the urine. I thanked him and dibsed the first shower when we got to the hotel in Wa.
In Wechiau I went to the Hippo Sanctuary Centre to register and get a guide. Strangely, it was full of knickknacks and bags with Calgary written all over them. I wouldn't find out why until later. Two British volunteers - Alice and Iona - were sitting there waiting to leave and I joined them for the weekend.
Eventually our guide arrived and we boarded the back of a suspensionless pick up truck for the 18km trip to the hippo sanctuary. Half of the road was paved, but the other half made the road to Mole feel like an eight-lane super-highway.
We arrived around 4:30 took a look around. The sanctuary's excursions are based from a tiny village thirty minutes walk from the Black Volta River, where the hippos live. The village is so small that if you turn in all four directions, this is what you see: .......nothing........a tree!.......nothing.........a donkey! Certainly no stores. On a busy day you will see kids playing xylophones ingeniously constructed from bamboo stalks suspended over a hole in the ground.
Our guide, Adams, was only 18 and possibly the most adorable person I have ever met. He asked our permission before going to pray, bless him, as though we had any right to say no. Once he'd finished praying and we'd finished packing our overnight bags, we set off for the Hippo Hide, where we would spend the night.
The Hippo Hide is a tree platform built in a giant tree like the one Rafiki lives in in The Lion King. It's about 6 metres off the ground and sleeping there was so cool! We got set up, ate dinner, applied near lethal amounts of deet, and chatted with Adams about hippos and his family. We watched the river change colour as the sun set and went to bed when the bats in our tree woke up for their nightly hunt. The Black Volta separates Ghana from Burkina, and as night fell we could hear Burkinabe fishermen on their own nightly hunt.
The best time to see hippos is very early in the morning. They're nocturnal creatures, leaving the river at night to feed on nearby grasses. When morning comes they lumber back to the safety of the water and scuffle around before going to sleep.
We woke up at the crack of dawn to go on our canoe safari. The bats were going to sleep above us and the birds in our tree had just started their morning songs. We got into the flat-bottomed canoe without disaster, though Iona nearly capsized us all, and started heading upstream. We weren't even on the water for five minutes when we saw hippos!
They were a family of six - four adults and two babies - just hanging out in the water. We could see their nostrils, eyes, and ears, and then one of them lunged at another. Then I got a clear view of their teeth and truly appreciated just how huge these animals are. Adams said it was either an adult male asserting himself over a younger male, or a tussle for dominance among two females. Apparantly males and females do not fight each other unless a male from a different family of hippos attacks the young.
Hippos are sacred to the people of Wechiau, but their numbers are very low due to poaching (for ivory and meat), slash and burn agriculture, and loss of habitat. There are around 20 hippos in the sanctuary; they are one of only two wild hippo populations in Ghana. Their status as a protected species clearly wasn't enough to protect them.
So in 1999 a consortium of village chiefs decided to do something to protect their sacred hippos. Eco-tourism was the perfect solution as it made the presence of living hippos a cornerstone of the local economy.
Here's where Calgary comes in. Somehow the Calgary Zoo got wind of this project and it partnered with the chiefs to make it a reality.
Alice, Iona, Adams and I went back to Wechiau that afternoon and had traditional Moroccan tea with Adams' friends. If you've never had it, you should. You prepare three or four tiny pots of tea from the same leaves, each one sweeter than the last. You drink it from large shot glasses, and somehow it brings out the best in you.
This entry is already really long, but our tro-tro ride back to Wa is worth reading about because I got peed on by a sheep. Tro-tros are large minivans that seat 13-15 people. Ours had 17 adults in it, 2 babies, 3 goats, and a case of chickens. Eight more men were on the roof, as well as our bags. I thanked my lucky stars that I was sitting next to an open window.
About half way along the bumpy road to Wa - after our driver hit a pig on the road without even trying to avoid it (so sad as it dragged itself away) - I felt something dripping on my leg. I looked at the window in confusion and saw a stream of urine flowing down the side of the tro, much of it onto me.
I freaked out a little. I couldn't believe that one of the men on the roof was peeing down the side of the tro. I didn't make a scene, but I was so visibly grossed out that a kindly passenger explained what was going on. His sheep was tied to the roof of the tro, and this was the most likely source of the urine. I thanked him and dibsed the first shower when we got to the hotel in Wa.
Face to Face With an Elephant
The road to Mole National Park in northern Ghana is undoubtedly one of the worst in the country. It is 170km from Tamale, the northern regional capital and closest big town. At least half of the road is unpaved ruts, craters, and sink holes coated in a thick layer of red-brown dust. The drive took 5 hours.
I had left Kumasi on the STC bus at 10am that day (March 21) and arrived in Tamale around 5:00. On the way I made friends with the German girl sitting next to me and we decided to team up and hire a taxi to take us and her parents to Mole that same night. By the time we finished bargaining it was nearly 6:00 and getting dark, but we headed out nonetheless.
I have never been filthier than when we pulled up in front of the Mole Motel that night. The dust was caked so thickly onto my skin that I looked like I'd rolled in it. The dorm was full and I thought I might have to sleep on the floor of the Motel Reception, but thankfully the German family was kind enough to let me sleep in their room.
It was all worth it for the animals. Mole Park is home to warthogs, baboons, monkeys, bushbucks (small deer), kops (antilope), and elephants. There are also lions (haven't been spotted since 2004), crocodiles, and several hundred bird species. We weren't sure how long it would take, but we were determined to see all the animals - with the exception of the lions.
It turned out that we really didn't have to work too hard to see the animals. We woke up before dawn the next morning to go on a walking safari, and walked out the door to find a warthog and its baby rooting through our trash. Then a monkey stole the German father's toast off of his breakfast plate.
We joined the safari group and followed Christopher, our guide, into the bush. We saw baboons clambering through trees, bushbucks staring at us as they chewed the foliage, and kops fleeing like deer from our approaching footsteps. Then, after an hour of walking, we arrived at the watering hole to find ourselves staring at an elephant on the other side of it, about 200 metres away.
It was a young adult male, Christoper said, because his tusks were still small. The elephant looked at our excited group, considered us briefly, and went back to drinking. I had known that elephants drink a ridiculous amount of water, and our elephant friend confirmed that by drinking non-stop for forty minutes, plus whatever he had had before our arrival. A small posse of white egrets followed his every move, snapping up the insects he disturbed with his movements. Finally he tired of drinking and moved off around the water hole, which brought him even closer to us. I scrambled to get closer, but Christopher only let us get within 100 metres of the elephant. Young males can be unpredictable. Still, I got some great photos.
We moved on to the crocodile pond, where floating logs turned suddenly into crocs lunging at passing fish. They seemed pretty small and never came out of the water. After visiting the sacred crocodiles near Ouagadougou though, any other crocodile experience is anticlimactic. In Ouaga enormous crocodiles bask on the muddy shore, gorging on the live chickens visitors are required to purchase for them. Some measure up to 2 metres long, but they're so well fed that you can squat over them and hold their tails, which I did.
After the crocodiles our walking safari was over. My plan was to sleep in the dorm that night and continue to the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary in the extreme north west of Ghana the next day. This would entail another trip on the evil road leading to Mole, only this time in a crowded bus leaving at 4am. I went to reception to see if I could get into the dorm that night, and found a guy who was driving a Canadian and a Brit to Wa (the transfer point for Wechiau) in a 4x4. They had an extra space and took me with them that afternoon! As I relaxed in air condioned comfort with my new friends, I felt that I had never made a better decision in my life.
I had left Kumasi on the STC bus at 10am that day (March 21) and arrived in Tamale around 5:00. On the way I made friends with the German girl sitting next to me and we decided to team up and hire a taxi to take us and her parents to Mole that same night. By the time we finished bargaining it was nearly 6:00 and getting dark, but we headed out nonetheless.
I have never been filthier than when we pulled up in front of the Mole Motel that night. The dust was caked so thickly onto my skin that I looked like I'd rolled in it. The dorm was full and I thought I might have to sleep on the floor of the Motel Reception, but thankfully the German family was kind enough to let me sleep in their room.
It was all worth it for the animals. Mole Park is home to warthogs, baboons, monkeys, bushbucks (small deer), kops (antilope), and elephants. There are also lions (haven't been spotted since 2004), crocodiles, and several hundred bird species. We weren't sure how long it would take, but we were determined to see all the animals - with the exception of the lions.
It turned out that we really didn't have to work too hard to see the animals. We woke up before dawn the next morning to go on a walking safari, and walked out the door to find a warthog and its baby rooting through our trash. Then a monkey stole the German father's toast off of his breakfast plate.
We joined the safari group and followed Christopher, our guide, into the bush. We saw baboons clambering through trees, bushbucks staring at us as they chewed the foliage, and kops fleeing like deer from our approaching footsteps. Then, after an hour of walking, we arrived at the watering hole to find ourselves staring at an elephant on the other side of it, about 200 metres away.
It was a young adult male, Christoper said, because his tusks were still small. The elephant looked at our excited group, considered us briefly, and went back to drinking. I had known that elephants drink a ridiculous amount of water, and our elephant friend confirmed that by drinking non-stop for forty minutes, plus whatever he had had before our arrival. A small posse of white egrets followed his every move, snapping up the insects he disturbed with his movements. Finally he tired of drinking and moved off around the water hole, which brought him even closer to us. I scrambled to get closer, but Christopher only let us get within 100 metres of the elephant. Young males can be unpredictable. Still, I got some great photos.
We moved on to the crocodile pond, where floating logs turned suddenly into crocs lunging at passing fish. They seemed pretty small and never came out of the water. After visiting the sacred crocodiles near Ouagadougou though, any other crocodile experience is anticlimactic. In Ouaga enormous crocodiles bask on the muddy shore, gorging on the live chickens visitors are required to purchase for them. Some measure up to 2 metres long, but they're so well fed that you can squat over them and hold their tails, which I did.
After the crocodiles our walking safari was over. My plan was to sleep in the dorm that night and continue to the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary in the extreme north west of Ghana the next day. This would entail another trip on the evil road leading to Mole, only this time in a crowded bus leaving at 4am. I went to reception to see if I could get into the dorm that night, and found a guy who was driving a Canadian and a Brit to Wa (the transfer point for Wechiau) in a 4x4. They had an extra space and took me with them that afternoon! As I relaxed in air condioned comfort with my new friends, I felt that I had never made a better decision in my life.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Sometimes you just need a break
The signs that you need a break from shoestring travelling are easily recognizable. First, you start to lose your sense of humour. Instead of shrugging amusedly when the pipes stop carrying water to your shower on the third floor while you are covered in soap - for the third time - you get frustrated.
Then you start to lose your temper. Like when the jerk who is supposed to be sitting behind the front desk (but is instead sitting by the tiled stairway) complains that the sound of your flip flops coming down the stairs disturbs his conversation with the pretty cleaning lady, you forget that proper protocol is to speak to his superior and instead go ape sh*t on him, embarassing him in front of his love interest, for which he punishes you by taking extra long to do everything from then on.
The third and final sign is cravings for western standards of living. These can be deadly for your wallet.
Yeah, Sammo's Guest House in Cape Coast kind of took it out of me. Normally it would have been fine - I was only paying 10 cedis (about 7.50 CDN) per night and I didn't expect five star service. But after two months on the road living as cheaply as possible, I finally reached my limit.
I started to crave spring mattresses, functioning plumbing, a private bathroom that doesn't smell like used toilet paper (the pipes can't handle toilet paper), and a swimming pool. I craved hotel staff that didn't leer at me or ask for my contact info, staff so obliging that they almost make you feel guilty, but not quite.
So I decided to take a break for one night. I'm overnighting (March 20-21) in Kumasi on my way to see the elephants in Mole National Park, and I checked in to the Golden Tulip Hotel and Resort. They told me the price of their cheapest room, I closed my eyes, held my breath, and gave them my credit card.
Now that the part where I blew my budget to smithereens is over, I feel pretty good. My room at the Golden Tulip has everything I had been craving, plus air conditioning! And the staff... they're not just obliging, they're downright obsequious. I could rhapsodize about them all night.
So for one night and one night only I will travel in style, and cheerfully go back to my budget tomorrow. I figure that making it halfway through my trip without breaking is pretty good, and I should be able to get through the other half without splurging like this again.
Then you start to lose your temper. Like when the jerk who is supposed to be sitting behind the front desk (but is instead sitting by the tiled stairway) complains that the sound of your flip flops coming down the stairs disturbs his conversation with the pretty cleaning lady, you forget that proper protocol is to speak to his superior and instead go ape sh*t on him, embarassing him in front of his love interest, for which he punishes you by taking extra long to do everything from then on.
The third and final sign is cravings for western standards of living. These can be deadly for your wallet.
Yeah, Sammo's Guest House in Cape Coast kind of took it out of me. Normally it would have been fine - I was only paying 10 cedis (about 7.50 CDN) per night and I didn't expect five star service. But after two months on the road living as cheaply as possible, I finally reached my limit.
I started to crave spring mattresses, functioning plumbing, a private bathroom that doesn't smell like used toilet paper (the pipes can't handle toilet paper), and a swimming pool. I craved hotel staff that didn't leer at me or ask for my contact info, staff so obliging that they almost make you feel guilty, but not quite.
So I decided to take a break for one night. I'm overnighting (March 20-21) in Kumasi on my way to see the elephants in Mole National Park, and I checked in to the Golden Tulip Hotel and Resort. They told me the price of their cheapest room, I closed my eyes, held my breath, and gave them my credit card.
Now that the part where I blew my budget to smithereens is over, I feel pretty good. My room at the Golden Tulip has everything I had been craving, plus air conditioning! And the staff... they're not just obliging, they're downright obsequious. I could rhapsodize about them all night.
So for one night and one night only I will travel in style, and cheerfully go back to my budget tomorrow. I figure that making it halfway through my trip without breaking is pretty good, and I should be able to get through the other half without splurging like this again.
Surfing with Slavery's Ghosts
You might not expect a surfer's paradise to be steeped in the history of slavery, but that's the combination that awaits you on Ghana's Gold Coast.
I pulled up to Busua Beach on the afternoon of March 10th and promptly fell in love. The beach is a long ribbon of clean golden sand protected by Abokwa Island, a small atoll covered in palm trees. The people are a mix of eccentric ex-pats and friendly locals. Little hotels dot the beachfront, seeming to grow naturally from the sand. The intimate scale of tourism in Busua brings locals and obrunis (white people) together with an ease I have not experienced since leaving my friends in Burkina. The sound of crashing surf welcomed me and I felt the deep peace that only the ocean can evoke. After sweaty, grabby, frenetic Accra, Busua was heaven.
It was the work of a moment to rip through my backpack, clothes flying everywhere, and find my swimsuit. I was on my way to the ocean when some very happy Rastas called me over to join their table. This proved to be the first of many memorable and wonderful encounters I would have with the motley crew that populated Busua.
Our table was soon joined by an intriguing bearded man on a motorbike. He was really cool and promised me a ride on his bike. He fishes in the area and he told me that he once caught an eighty pound stingray off the promontory, and he frequently catches sharks. They all lit up and I went for my swim, not at all convinced that I would come out with the full complement of limbs.
The next day I went to Black Star Surf Shop and signed myself up for two hours of surfing. I'm not too sure why I thought I was capable of two hours, especially given that I neglected to wear board shorts and ended up with an extraordinarily painful rash on my thigh. I admit here and now that I never used the second hour.
Some of the moments and memories that stand out from my week in Busua are swimming in the ocean under the full moon, discussing the finer points of Nayabingi philosophy with a hard core Rasta who addressed me as "Empress" (I think all men should address me as Empress), and getting hammered (sorry mom) on 20p gin shots with the most diverse group I've ever drunk with. There was Will, the Kiwi P.E. teacher turned anthropologist who is studying private military companies, aka modern day mercenaries. There was Ekke, the strapping German farmer who's lived all over North and West Africa working for an NGO that teaches sustainable farming techniques. There was Ben, the spindly, hard-drinking 19 year old British gap-year backpacker. There was Clement, the Ghanaian surf instructor who got sucked into this and was too polite to leave even though he was bored out of his mind. And finally there was Abby, the brash 20 year old American whose verbal jousting was just barely on the right side of the line between amusement and shocked outrage. So we drank a lot of cheap gin and talked politics. Just try explaining the difference between human security and national security when your slurring your esses.
Busua's idyllic present contrasts sharply with the region's tragic past. From the late 1400s to the mid 1800s, Ghana was the port of passage for an estimated 32 000 000 slaves sent to work the cotton and sugar plantaioms of the New World. Busua is unsuitable for harbour, but its two neighbours - Dixcove to the west and Butre to the east - are overshadowed by the remains of European slave forts. In their lifetimes they sent thousands of Africans to a life of slavery.
These forts were relatively small, sending approximately 1000 slaves a year to the Americas. The three big forts were in Elmina, Cape Coast, and Accra, which are further east. Each of them shipped between 3000 and 4000 slaves to the colonies every year. Most of the slaves came from Ghana; many were prisoners from intertribal wars whose captors sold them to the slavers. There were also organized slave raids as far north as Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso.
This is one reason why Ghana's coastal inhabitants have such a diversity of family names and skin tones. The other is that European slavers stationed in the forts raped their captives at will. If slaves became pregnant they were freed (to give birth and raise a child without any support, yay!) and the child took the father's last name. One of my tour guides in Cape Coast Castle was 100% Ghanaian and named John Morgan.
Sometimes the Europeans would take slaves or local women as mistresses. The genesis of Ghana's formal education system was the need to educate the children born of these unions without sending them back to Europe where the wife and legitimate children lived.
Of the four forts I visited, Elmina Castle is the one I most recommend. Built by the Portugese between 1471 and 1482, it is the oldest European structure in sub-Saharan Africa. It strikes the right balance between giving you the facts and chilling you to the bone. The last time I was so powerfully moved by a tour was in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. After Elmina, I found Butre's fort to be the most poignant. It is the only one of the four not to have been restored, and the jungle is taking it back. It overlooks the dirt poor fishing village, the uncared for remains of an unwanted history.
It was hard to leave Busua, but I eventually made my way to Cape Coast on the 18th. From there I visited Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle, and I also took day trips to the canopy walk in Kakum National Park and Monkey Forest primate rescue shelter. Monkey Forest was awesome! The owners are a middle-aged Dutch couple with quirky senses of humour. Their monkeys were named things like Spok and Captain Kirk, and one of the cats was named Hannibal the Cannibal. They have civet cats and other abused wild animals as well as monkeys.
Today I travelled to Kumasi and tomorrow I'll continue to Mole National Park. I'll also see the hippo sanctuary in the extreme north-west before going back to Burkina for Easter. Also, one of my host sisters is getting married and I'll be there for that, no question!
I pulled up to Busua Beach on the afternoon of March 10th and promptly fell in love. The beach is a long ribbon of clean golden sand protected by Abokwa Island, a small atoll covered in palm trees. The people are a mix of eccentric ex-pats and friendly locals. Little hotels dot the beachfront, seeming to grow naturally from the sand. The intimate scale of tourism in Busua brings locals and obrunis (white people) together with an ease I have not experienced since leaving my friends in Burkina. The sound of crashing surf welcomed me and I felt the deep peace that only the ocean can evoke. After sweaty, grabby, frenetic Accra, Busua was heaven.
It was the work of a moment to rip through my backpack, clothes flying everywhere, and find my swimsuit. I was on my way to the ocean when some very happy Rastas called me over to join their table. This proved to be the first of many memorable and wonderful encounters I would have with the motley crew that populated Busua.
Our table was soon joined by an intriguing bearded man on a motorbike. He was really cool and promised me a ride on his bike. He fishes in the area and he told me that he once caught an eighty pound stingray off the promontory, and he frequently catches sharks. They all lit up and I went for my swim, not at all convinced that I would come out with the full complement of limbs.
The next day I went to Black Star Surf Shop and signed myself up for two hours of surfing. I'm not too sure why I thought I was capable of two hours, especially given that I neglected to wear board shorts and ended up with an extraordinarily painful rash on my thigh. I admit here and now that I never used the second hour.
Some of the moments and memories that stand out from my week in Busua are swimming in the ocean under the full moon, discussing the finer points of Nayabingi philosophy with a hard core Rasta who addressed me as "Empress" (I think all men should address me as Empress), and getting hammered (sorry mom) on 20p gin shots with the most diverse group I've ever drunk with. There was Will, the Kiwi P.E. teacher turned anthropologist who is studying private military companies, aka modern day mercenaries. There was Ekke, the strapping German farmer who's lived all over North and West Africa working for an NGO that teaches sustainable farming techniques. There was Ben, the spindly, hard-drinking 19 year old British gap-year backpacker. There was Clement, the Ghanaian surf instructor who got sucked into this and was too polite to leave even though he was bored out of his mind. And finally there was Abby, the brash 20 year old American whose verbal jousting was just barely on the right side of the line between amusement and shocked outrage. So we drank a lot of cheap gin and talked politics. Just try explaining the difference between human security and national security when your slurring your esses.
Busua's idyllic present contrasts sharply with the region's tragic past. From the late 1400s to the mid 1800s, Ghana was the port of passage for an estimated 32 000 000 slaves sent to work the cotton and sugar plantaioms of the New World. Busua is unsuitable for harbour, but its two neighbours - Dixcove to the west and Butre to the east - are overshadowed by the remains of European slave forts. In their lifetimes they sent thousands of Africans to a life of slavery.
These forts were relatively small, sending approximately 1000 slaves a year to the Americas. The three big forts were in Elmina, Cape Coast, and Accra, which are further east. Each of them shipped between 3000 and 4000 slaves to the colonies every year. Most of the slaves came from Ghana; many were prisoners from intertribal wars whose captors sold them to the slavers. There were also organized slave raids as far north as Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso.
This is one reason why Ghana's coastal inhabitants have such a diversity of family names and skin tones. The other is that European slavers stationed in the forts raped their captives at will. If slaves became pregnant they were freed (to give birth and raise a child without any support, yay!) and the child took the father's last name. One of my tour guides in Cape Coast Castle was 100% Ghanaian and named John Morgan.
Sometimes the Europeans would take slaves or local women as mistresses. The genesis of Ghana's formal education system was the need to educate the children born of these unions without sending them back to Europe where the wife and legitimate children lived.
Of the four forts I visited, Elmina Castle is the one I most recommend. Built by the Portugese between 1471 and 1482, it is the oldest European structure in sub-Saharan Africa. It strikes the right balance between giving you the facts and chilling you to the bone. The last time I was so powerfully moved by a tour was in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. After Elmina, I found Butre's fort to be the most poignant. It is the only one of the four not to have been restored, and the jungle is taking it back. It overlooks the dirt poor fishing village, the uncared for remains of an unwanted history.
It was hard to leave Busua, but I eventually made my way to Cape Coast on the 18th. From there I visited Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle, and I also took day trips to the canopy walk in Kakum National Park and Monkey Forest primate rescue shelter. Monkey Forest was awesome! The owners are a middle-aged Dutch couple with quirky senses of humour. Their monkeys were named things like Spok and Captain Kirk, and one of the cats was named Hannibal the Cannibal. They have civet cats and other abused wild animals as well as monkeys.
Today I travelled to Kumasi and tomorrow I'll continue to Mole National Park. I'll also see the hippo sanctuary in the extreme north-west before going back to Burkina for Easter. Also, one of my host sisters is getting married and I'll be there for that, no question!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
One Week in Accra
Tuesday, March 2: arrive in Accra with aforementioned Catholic sisters, eventually get to Volunteer Abroad house, meet the indefatigable Poppo, go to bank, resist urge to kill slow teller. Am surrounded by exposed legs, in sharp contrast to majority Muslim Burkina Faso where only children and nasaras show skin below the knee. I can see why the missionaries chose Ghana for their HQ: their work here is done.
Humidity is 75%; my hair feels like a limp blanket. Sweat pours from areas that have never sweated. The VA house has wifi!!!
Wednesday, March 3: go to bank again because they can't cash all my traveller's cheques on the same day. Drop by Kyle's gym (Kyle is the Canadian VA coordinator) and drool over the air conditioning and hardwood floor (so good for dancing salsa). Have best smoothie of life at gym resto-bar. Get one week free trial pass and promise to return the next day.
Go to Reggae Night at La Badie Beach with Kyle, Poppo and volunteers. Reggae Night is a bohemian expat dream come true: a stage set up on the sand, live reggae music, a cool breeze off the crashing surf a hundred metres away, cheap and delicious local food, and enough pot smoke wafting around to make me feel right at home.
Thursday, March 4: Thursday is gospel day in Accra. Self-styled preachers prostletise (in Twi) through megaphones to anyone who might be able to hear. Some of them stay put and attract small crowds, while others prefer to walk the streets blaring the Word.
Go to gym with Kyle and undergo my free training session with Kyle's personal trainer, Foster "Serious and Wicked" Twum. He chose those middle names for himself after I informed him that my middle name was "Danger." After the session I suggest that he substitute "Sadistic" for "Wicked," and he readily agrees. Am sore for four days and do not go back to gym, not even for the smoothies.
Friday, March 5: get my hair braided (relief!) and do my laundry by hand (pain). In evening meet Boris Zida, Mama and Papa Zida's second child, who is here studying English.
In afternoon went to bank to cash final traveller's cheque. All my transport within Accra is by public transit, which means tro-tros. Tro-tros are rickety, stripped-down minivans that travel fixed routes at speeds suitable for Nascar rallies. They are emblazoned with stickers and decals, most of which say something Jesus-related. However, I did see a tro-tro with "Harry Potter" written in stickers and another that said "FEAR WOMAN." Feminists, make of that what you will.
Saturday, March 6: Ghanaian Independence Day, the country turns 53. Accra is jumping. I go to Independence Square with the volunteers. We arrive at 11 am, just in time to see everyone leave. This must be the one Independence Day where they started and ende on time. Apparantly we missed a lot of marching and the Presidnt's speech.
While walking around Square, got informally interviewed by Ghanaian journalists who ask if I think Ghana is truly independent. I say no, but that no country is truly independent under globalization and that eco-footprint analysis shows just how dependent the neo-colonizers are upon the neo-colonized, blah blah tied aid blah blah political corruption etc. They laugh and give me a high five.
Ghanaians do not respect one's personal space like Burkinabes do, and nowhere is this more evident than in a crowd. They do not grab anywhere inappropriate, but they grab often and determinedly. One overzealous young man grabbed my elbow after I ripped my hand away, and then he kissed it. Weird.
We walk to a beautiful beachfront bar about 20 minutes away, passing random groups of rollerbladers skating the streets in tight formation. I get sunburned despite SPF 60. The humidity just melts the sunscreen right off.
At night I stay home and nurse my sunburn, but Accra is thumping all night long.
Sunday, March 7: am awoken at 6 am by the church across the street, where people are speaking in tongues over the PA system. I do NOTHING all day. Except read Paradise Lost and hang out with Boris.
Monday, March 8: International Women's Day passes without much fanfare, which surprises me a little because they've been preparing for it in Burkina for over a month. But I guess preparing for Independence Day is enough work by itself.
I go clothes shopping in Makola Market with Patience, the sassy girlfriend of Michael the building manager. Makola Market is a sprawling warren of densely packed stalls selling everything from cabbages to King's Hair Pommade. The clothing vendors are found on the streets surrounding the actual market. Patience and I wander through mounds of second hand clothes shipped from developed countries and I get a new, humidity-resistent wardrobe plus a skirt for Patience for under $25.
We go home and I wash my new acquisitions by hand (pain).
Tuesday, March 9: go to Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Museum and, after a long, circuitous walk, also visit the National Museum in the morning. After lunch go to La Badie Beach Resort and pay the 15 Cedi (approx $12) fee for an afternoon of poolside bliss. I am writing this blog from there.
Tomorrow I leave for the coast and I'm really excited to get out of the city. I'll write to you again when I next have Internet!
Humidity is 75%; my hair feels like a limp blanket. Sweat pours from areas that have never sweated. The VA house has wifi!!!
Wednesday, March 3: go to bank again because they can't cash all my traveller's cheques on the same day. Drop by Kyle's gym (Kyle is the Canadian VA coordinator) and drool over the air conditioning and hardwood floor (so good for dancing salsa). Have best smoothie of life at gym resto-bar. Get one week free trial pass and promise to return the next day.
Go to Reggae Night at La Badie Beach with Kyle, Poppo and volunteers. Reggae Night is a bohemian expat dream come true: a stage set up on the sand, live reggae music, a cool breeze off the crashing surf a hundred metres away, cheap and delicious local food, and enough pot smoke wafting around to make me feel right at home.
Thursday, March 4: Thursday is gospel day in Accra. Self-styled preachers prostletise (in Twi) through megaphones to anyone who might be able to hear. Some of them stay put and attract small crowds, while others prefer to walk the streets blaring the Word.
Go to gym with Kyle and undergo my free training session with Kyle's personal trainer, Foster "Serious and Wicked" Twum. He chose those middle names for himself after I informed him that my middle name was "Danger." After the session I suggest that he substitute "Sadistic" for "Wicked," and he readily agrees. Am sore for four days and do not go back to gym, not even for the smoothies.
Friday, March 5: get my hair braided (relief!) and do my laundry by hand (pain). In evening meet Boris Zida, Mama and Papa Zida's second child, who is here studying English.
In afternoon went to bank to cash final traveller's cheque. All my transport within Accra is by public transit, which means tro-tros. Tro-tros are rickety, stripped-down minivans that travel fixed routes at speeds suitable for Nascar rallies. They are emblazoned with stickers and decals, most of which say something Jesus-related. However, I did see a tro-tro with "Harry Potter" written in stickers and another that said "FEAR WOMAN." Feminists, make of that what you will.
Saturday, March 6: Ghanaian Independence Day, the country turns 53. Accra is jumping. I go to Independence Square with the volunteers. We arrive at 11 am, just in time to see everyone leave. This must be the one Independence Day where they started and ende on time. Apparantly we missed a lot of marching and the Presidnt's speech.
While walking around Square, got informally interviewed by Ghanaian journalists who ask if I think Ghana is truly independent. I say no, but that no country is truly independent under globalization and that eco-footprint analysis shows just how dependent the neo-colonizers are upon the neo-colonized, blah blah tied aid blah blah political corruption etc. They laugh and give me a high five.
Ghanaians do not respect one's personal space like Burkinabes do, and nowhere is this more evident than in a crowd. They do not grab anywhere inappropriate, but they grab often and determinedly. One overzealous young man grabbed my elbow after I ripped my hand away, and then he kissed it. Weird.
We walk to a beautiful beachfront bar about 20 minutes away, passing random groups of rollerbladers skating the streets in tight formation. I get sunburned despite SPF 60. The humidity just melts the sunscreen right off.
At night I stay home and nurse my sunburn, but Accra is thumping all night long.
Sunday, March 7: am awoken at 6 am by the church across the street, where people are speaking in tongues over the PA system. I do NOTHING all day. Except read Paradise Lost and hang out with Boris.
Monday, March 8: International Women's Day passes without much fanfare, which surprises me a little because they've been preparing for it in Burkina for over a month. But I guess preparing for Independence Day is enough work by itself.
I go clothes shopping in Makola Market with Patience, the sassy girlfriend of Michael the building manager. Makola Market is a sprawling warren of densely packed stalls selling everything from cabbages to King's Hair Pommade. The clothing vendors are found on the streets surrounding the actual market. Patience and I wander through mounds of second hand clothes shipped from developed countries and I get a new, humidity-resistent wardrobe plus a skirt for Patience for under $25.
We go home and I wash my new acquisitions by hand (pain).
Tuesday, March 9: go to Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Museum and, after a long, circuitous walk, also visit the National Museum in the morning. After lunch go to La Badie Beach Resort and pay the 15 Cedi (approx $12) fee for an afternoon of poolside bliss. I am writing this blog from there.
Tomorrow I leave for the coast and I'm really excited to get out of the city. I'll write to you again when I next have Internet!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Body Imaginings
Staying at the Volunteer Abroad house in Accra is great, though I must admit it's a little strange to find myself surrounded by white people, Canadians no less.
The majority of the volunteers staying in Accra right now are girls between 18 and 22, and they spend a great deal of time obsessing about their weight. Have they gained weight? Where have they gained weight, and when? Did they lose weight from other parts of their bodies? Are they just retaining water? The food is so oily! Why oh why are their stomachs bloated? Oh, how can they go back to Canada looking like this?! (I shouldn't make too much fun, I was worse than them at their age).
Africans don't have these hang ups in the same way. When I was in Yako I attended the Miss Puge-Bedre competition, which literally means Miss Big Woman. The winner weighed 120 kg, close to 300 pounds. Burkinabes admitted that 300 pound is a little excessive, but there is a deep appreciation for well-built women in West Africa. They are strong, healthy, and impervious to life's difficulties and dangers. All of the tailors here have postets of women modelling the various fashions they can sew for you, and not one of those models has an hourglass figure. When people here tell me I've gained weight, I take it as a complement because it means they think I look good.
And that is the point I'm trying to make. So much of our relationship with our bodies is based on what we imagine our weight signifies. Our body image - that mixture of self-perception and self-esteem - depends utterly on the meaning we attach to weight. If we live in a place where love handles are a sign of health and wealth, then their presence ceases to be a problem.
I think the biggest difference between Africans' and North Americans' relationships with their bodies is that Africans tend to accept their bodies as they are and not sweat it. North Americans almost always want to change something, and our relationships with our bodies are so often tainted by dissatisfaction, self-hatred, and envy/resentment of others' figures. Our campaigns to convince girls that every body is beautiful don't work because, as a culture, we don't believe it.
The idea behind Miss Puge-Bedre was to celebrate everybody, and to make sure the African body image keeps going strong.
The majority of the volunteers staying in Accra right now are girls between 18 and 22, and they spend a great deal of time obsessing about their weight. Have they gained weight? Where have they gained weight, and when? Did they lose weight from other parts of their bodies? Are they just retaining water? The food is so oily! Why oh why are their stomachs bloated? Oh, how can they go back to Canada looking like this?! (I shouldn't make too much fun, I was worse than them at their age).
Africans don't have these hang ups in the same way. When I was in Yako I attended the Miss Puge-Bedre competition, which literally means Miss Big Woman. The winner weighed 120 kg, close to 300 pounds. Burkinabes admitted that 300 pound is a little excessive, but there is a deep appreciation for well-built women in West Africa. They are strong, healthy, and impervious to life's difficulties and dangers. All of the tailors here have postets of women modelling the various fashions they can sew for you, and not one of those models has an hourglass figure. When people here tell me I've gained weight, I take it as a complement because it means they think I look good.
And that is the point I'm trying to make. So much of our relationship with our bodies is based on what we imagine our weight signifies. Our body image - that mixture of self-perception and self-esteem - depends utterly on the meaning we attach to weight. If we live in a place where love handles are a sign of health and wealth, then their presence ceases to be a problem.
I think the biggest difference between Africans' and North Americans' relationships with their bodies is that Africans tend to accept their bodies as they are and not sweat it. North Americans almost always want to change something, and our relationships with our bodies are so often tainted by dissatisfaction, self-hatred, and envy/resentment of others' figures. Our campaigns to convince girls that every body is beautiful don't work because, as a culture, we don't believe it.
The idea behind Miss Puge-Bedre was to celebrate everybody, and to make sure the African body image keeps going strong.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Ouaga to Accra in 22 hours flat
First things first, my Ghanaian phone number is 011 233 276 050 372. Hope to hear from you all!
My last week in Ouagadougou was fairly uneventful. I spent time with friends, did laundry, bought a bag in which to store souvenirs, and lay down every day from 12 to 4 and waited to die from the heat. It was hitting 44 degrees with frightening ease, and the human body is set at 37.5. To add insult to injury, there were power outages for at least several hours every day. Imagine 44 degrees without a fan. Burkina can't produce enough power through its own power plants - mostly diesel generators with a very small amount of hydropower in the south - to meet domestic demand. The Burkinabe government recently signed a deal to buy hydro-produced electricity from Cote d'Ivoire, but this isn't working very well. I think the deal is stupid in both the short- and long-term. It's stupid in the short-term because Cote d'Ivoire is politically unstable and its infrastructure is neglected and vulnerable to attack. It's stupid in the long-term because seasonal rain patterns are changing as the plane heats up, already they're coming later and lasting shorter periods of time. Why would you become dependant on a politically unstable country that uses a power source vnerable to global warming? I still agree with Papa Zida that the best option for Burkina and all Sahelian countries is to invest heavily in solar and wind-power technology and supply renewable energy to Europe.
I got my visa for Ghana without mishap. There was one frightening moment at the end though, when I was walking out the door with my visa. At the door an official looking man called me back, checked my passport and said, "Mademoiselle, my boss needs to see you before you can leave." He ushered me into an air conditioned office and said to his boss with a significant look, "She's from Canada." I concentrated on not sweating too hard. "Ah," said the boss, "I see. You know, I've always wanted to marry a Canadian!"
I bought my bus ticket soon thereafter and Monday, March 1st saw me on my way to Ghana. The bus line was called STC, it's Ghana's state transport company and there are two things travellers should know. First, it runs on time. Someone was 5 minutes late for take off and they almost didn't let him on the bus. Second, you cannot leave your assigned seat and sit in one that is closer to the air conditioning or has a less overweight/more interesting seat mate. I tried to do just that and experienced the trilingual wrath of the conductor, who was determined that I would understand his displeasure whether I spoke English, French, or Twi.
Crossing the border at midday was like walking through an oven. For some reason we had to get off the bus and walk three times, each time releasing precious air conditioning. Foreigners had to go through a few extra hurdles, but this ended up being a blessing because I met Teresa and Leontine whil getting my passport scanned. Teresa and Leontine were Catholic missionaries who had just finished a mission in Bamako, Mali and were on their way to HQ in Accra before continuing on to Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. Apparantly they don't send white missionaries to Cote d'Ivoire any more because Ivoiriens are lashing out at French people as well as at each other, and they won't stop to check a white person's nationality before getting violent. Teresa and Leontine are both black and should hopefully be safe; Teresa is from Grenada and Leontine from Benin. They were the sweetest, kindest people one could imagine. When we learned that Chile had been rocked to its foundations by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake, they shook their heads and said, "We have been warned of exactly this. It is time keep working and pray."
We spent the afternoon driving south through the Ghanaian countryside. At first it looks and feels much like Burkina, with massive baobab trees and small mud-brick villages. But Burkina is the world's third poorest country and Ghana is a middle developed country, and I soon began to notice differences. For one thing, there were bulldozers by the side o the road. All the construction I had seen in Burkina was done with manual labour. Another difference was the houses in the villages. A much larger percentage of the Ghanaian village houses were of brightly painted concrete, distinguishing them from their poorer mud-brick neighbours.
A long and uncomfortable night ensued during which my large seatmate confessed his love for me. At 6:30 am, after 22 hours of travelling, we pulled up in Accra. I realized that I had no idea how to get to the Volunteer Abroad house, where I was supposed to be staying. I tried phoning them to no avail, and so Teresa and Leontine invited me to come with them to the mission house.
The mission house is in a neighbourhood called Kaneshie, which gets a sea breeze even though th Atlantic is far away. The house itself is small, cute, and very clean, which was such a relief after the nasty facilities we'd been using on the road. The other missionaries were just as lovely as Teresa an Leontine. They came from all over the world; Florence, who did the cooking, was from Ireland and treated us to a full Irish breakfast. It was of the most charming and surreal experiences to be sitting at a little outdoor table with a sea breeze in the company of people from five different countries in the middle of West Africa eating porridge, sausages, fried eggs and toast.
With the help of the missionaries' Blackberry, I managed to get a hold of Poppo at the Volunteer Abroad house and he came to pick me up. The first thing he said to me was, "Woooow, you look so much like Hillary! You're sure you're not her?" He had known my sister when she volunteered here in the summer of 2008.
He and I then went on a long and somewhat frustrating adventure to cash my travellers' cheques. We went first to Osu, an upscale neighbourhood where expats and government workers live. They couldn't cash my cheques that same day, so we peeked into Koala - a grocery store for expats with prices that boggles the mind ($80 for smoked salmon) - went to the Internet cafe, and then took a tro-tro to High Street.
The route to High Street took us through Jamestown, the oldest part of Accra. The lighthouse in Jamestown was built by the British in 1830. High Street is also home to old colonial buildings, like the Court of Justice and an Anglican cathedral that looked so much like Christchurch Cathedral in Vancouver that I almost believed myself at home.
My first impressions of Accra are mostly positive. It's a big, crowded, bustling, confusing city. It's not hot, at least not compared to Burkina, but it's humid. The humidity settles upon you like a second, oily skin. You can get some beautiful views of the ocean and the old city, but you have to watch out for open sewage. And there are a lot of nice cars here. The missionaries told me that banks here are encouraging people to take loans and lines of credit in order to buy cars and other big ticket items when many people may never have had a bank account before. It just seems like another sub-prime mortgage crisis in the making. And last but not least, Obama is everywhere. He was big in Burkina, but in Ghana he's huge! I heard a song on the radio today commemorating his visit.
My last week in Ouagadougou was fairly uneventful. I spent time with friends, did laundry, bought a bag in which to store souvenirs, and lay down every day from 12 to 4 and waited to die from the heat. It was hitting 44 degrees with frightening ease, and the human body is set at 37.5. To add insult to injury, there were power outages for at least several hours every day. Imagine 44 degrees without a fan. Burkina can't produce enough power through its own power plants - mostly diesel generators with a very small amount of hydropower in the south - to meet domestic demand. The Burkinabe government recently signed a deal to buy hydro-produced electricity from Cote d'Ivoire, but this isn't working very well. I think the deal is stupid in both the short- and long-term. It's stupid in the short-term because Cote d'Ivoire is politically unstable and its infrastructure is neglected and vulnerable to attack. It's stupid in the long-term because seasonal rain patterns are changing as the plane heats up, already they're coming later and lasting shorter periods of time. Why would you become dependant on a politically unstable country that uses a power source vnerable to global warming? I still agree with Papa Zida that the best option for Burkina and all Sahelian countries is to invest heavily in solar and wind-power technology and supply renewable energy to Europe.
I got my visa for Ghana without mishap. There was one frightening moment at the end though, when I was walking out the door with my visa. At the door an official looking man called me back, checked my passport and said, "Mademoiselle, my boss needs to see you before you can leave." He ushered me into an air conditioned office and said to his boss with a significant look, "She's from Canada." I concentrated on not sweating too hard. "Ah," said the boss, "I see. You know, I've always wanted to marry a Canadian!"
I bought my bus ticket soon thereafter and Monday, March 1st saw me on my way to Ghana. The bus line was called STC, it's Ghana's state transport company and there are two things travellers should know. First, it runs on time. Someone was 5 minutes late for take off and they almost didn't let him on the bus. Second, you cannot leave your assigned seat and sit in one that is closer to the air conditioning or has a less overweight/more interesting seat mate. I tried to do just that and experienced the trilingual wrath of the conductor, who was determined that I would understand his displeasure whether I spoke English, French, or Twi.
Crossing the border at midday was like walking through an oven. For some reason we had to get off the bus and walk three times, each time releasing precious air conditioning. Foreigners had to go through a few extra hurdles, but this ended up being a blessing because I met Teresa and Leontine whil getting my passport scanned. Teresa and Leontine were Catholic missionaries who had just finished a mission in Bamako, Mali and were on their way to HQ in Accra before continuing on to Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. Apparantly they don't send white missionaries to Cote d'Ivoire any more because Ivoiriens are lashing out at French people as well as at each other, and they won't stop to check a white person's nationality before getting violent. Teresa and Leontine are both black and should hopefully be safe; Teresa is from Grenada and Leontine from Benin. They were the sweetest, kindest people one could imagine. When we learned that Chile had been rocked to its foundations by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake, they shook their heads and said, "We have been warned of exactly this. It is time keep working and pray."
We spent the afternoon driving south through the Ghanaian countryside. At first it looks and feels much like Burkina, with massive baobab trees and small mud-brick villages. But Burkina is the world's third poorest country and Ghana is a middle developed country, and I soon began to notice differences. For one thing, there were bulldozers by the side o the road. All the construction I had seen in Burkina was done with manual labour. Another difference was the houses in the villages. A much larger percentage of the Ghanaian village houses were of brightly painted concrete, distinguishing them from their poorer mud-brick neighbours.
A long and uncomfortable night ensued during which my large seatmate confessed his love for me. At 6:30 am, after 22 hours of travelling, we pulled up in Accra. I realized that I had no idea how to get to the Volunteer Abroad house, where I was supposed to be staying. I tried phoning them to no avail, and so Teresa and Leontine invited me to come with them to the mission house.
The mission house is in a neighbourhood called Kaneshie, which gets a sea breeze even though th Atlantic is far away. The house itself is small, cute, and very clean, which was such a relief after the nasty facilities we'd been using on the road. The other missionaries were just as lovely as Teresa an Leontine. They came from all over the world; Florence, who did the cooking, was from Ireland and treated us to a full Irish breakfast. It was of the most charming and surreal experiences to be sitting at a little outdoor table with a sea breeze in the company of people from five different countries in the middle of West Africa eating porridge, sausages, fried eggs and toast.
With the help of the missionaries' Blackberry, I managed to get a hold of Poppo at the Volunteer Abroad house and he came to pick me up. The first thing he said to me was, "Woooow, you look so much like Hillary! You're sure you're not her?" He had known my sister when she volunteered here in the summer of 2008.
He and I then went on a long and somewhat frustrating adventure to cash my travellers' cheques. We went first to Osu, an upscale neighbourhood where expats and government workers live. They couldn't cash my cheques that same day, so we peeked into Koala - a grocery store for expats with prices that boggles the mind ($80 for smoked salmon) - went to the Internet cafe, and then took a tro-tro to High Street.
The route to High Street took us through Jamestown, the oldest part of Accra. The lighthouse in Jamestown was built by the British in 1830. High Street is also home to old colonial buildings, like the Court of Justice and an Anglican cathedral that looked so much like Christchurch Cathedral in Vancouver that I almost believed myself at home.
My first impressions of Accra are mostly positive. It's a big, crowded, bustling, confusing city. It's not hot, at least not compared to Burkina, but it's humid. The humidity settles upon you like a second, oily skin. You can get some beautiful views of the ocean and the old city, but you have to watch out for open sewage. And there are a lot of nice cars here. The missionaries told me that banks here are encouraging people to take loans and lines of credit in order to buy cars and other big ticket items when many people may never have had a bank account before. It just seems like another sub-prime mortgage crisis in the making. And last but not least, Obama is everywhere. He was big in Burkina, but in Ghana he's huge! I heard a song on the radio today commemorating his visit.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
An Informal Visit
One of the things Mamina and I did while in Bobo was to visit her oldest sister, Awa. Awa lives in an informal neighbourhood known as Secteur 22, way the heck out on the edge of town. To get there, we took a taxi through 20 minutes of Bobo's relatively tranquil streets and got out at a point where the number of donkeys on the street far outweighed the number of cars. From there we left the paved road and walked through narrow streets that twisted around the houses with not even a nod at the idea of a grid. No car could ever fit down those streets.
An informal neighbourhood can mean anything from the dirtiest slum to something only slightly removed from normal city life. Awa's neighbourhood is the latter.
There is no electricity other than what is stolen from the main lines, no water other than what is brought in in oil drums, no sewage system, cooking is done with wood fires and gas burners, and the people of Secteur 22 do not own their properties.
Awa's house was typical - two small rooms, one for the whole family to sleep in and another for everything else. This is what houses are like in the village too, but village homes are grouped around a family courtyard where most living actually takes place and Awa's tiny house fronts onto the street. So most of life in this neighbourhood takes place in the streets.
Secteus 22 was a clean and friendly place with lots of families. Everyone there was poor and uneducated, but it seems like the government is taking a step towards improving life in the neighbourhood. I noticed small signs on each house with the family's name and a number, which Mamina explained are the first steps towards formalizing each family's property title.
I took lots of photos, hopefully I'll figure out a way to get them posted one day.
An informal neighbourhood can mean anything from the dirtiest slum to something only slightly removed from normal city life. Awa's neighbourhood is the latter.
There is no electricity other than what is stolen from the main lines, no water other than what is brought in in oil drums, no sewage system, cooking is done with wood fires and gas burners, and the people of Secteur 22 do not own their properties.
Awa's house was typical - two small rooms, one for the whole family to sleep in and another for everything else. This is what houses are like in the village too, but village homes are grouped around a family courtyard where most living actually takes place and Awa's tiny house fronts onto the street. So most of life in this neighbourhood takes place in the streets.
Secteus 22 was a clean and friendly place with lots of families. Everyone there was poor and uneducated, but it seems like the government is taking a step towards improving life in the neighbourhood. I noticed small signs on each house with the family's name and a number, which Mamina explained are the first steps towards formalizing each family's property title.
I took lots of photos, hopefully I'll figure out a way to get them posted one day.
Two Weeks in a Small Muslim Family
I haven't been able to write to y'all these last two weeks because I've been visiting my friend Mamina, who was my counterpart during Canada World Youth. She lives in a village called Safane about 55 km north of Boromo, which places it in the west of the country in an ecosystem that has too many trees to be called Sahel but not enough water to make agriculture, and therefore life, easy.
Mamina went to school until she was 14, longer than most Burkinabes. At that point she had to drop out due to lack of means, but she retained her French which allowed her to participate in Canada World Youth. After CWY ended, she married a man from her village and moved in with his extended family, which is where I visited her last week.
Given that six years had passd and she had had two babies in that time, we weren't sure that we would recognize each other. But when my bus pulled up in Boromo and I saw her there I knew. We were a little stiff around each other at first, but it only lasted a few minutes once we squeezed into the bush taxi that would take us to Safane (a 55km trip cost $2.50). Shyness is not possible in a bush taxi when the temperature is at least 40 degrees, especially when her six month old started to cry (he's adorable, but she swears she'll box him up and ship him to me to deal with unless he stops breastfeeding every other second). Mamina's husband, a very nice and educated man named Gaoussou, picked us up at the station and, along with one of his friends, took us back to the family on mopeds.
I dismounted in the central courtyard to a scene of general surprise. The family had not asked, and Mamina had not told them, that the friend coming to visit was white. Having a white guest is a very, very big deal in rural Burkina Faso. It brings honour and status to the family in general, Mamina in particular, as well as to anyone else Mamina had me visit. I can only imagine what was going through everyone's heads when I showed up in their courtyard.
I had lots to take in as well. Mamina's father-in-law has four wives, each of whom has between four and six living children. Of them all, Gaoussou alone has finished high school. This is fairly normal for village life. The courtyard had plenty of chickens and goats, and one small cow that spent all its time in a shaded corner with its food. Three of the wives have their houses in the family courtyard while the fourth one lives with the rest of the family in Bobo-Diolasso. The father-in-law also has his house in the courtyard and he spends most of his time reading the Koran, listening to the radio, or hanging out with other old men near the mosque. The mothers-in-law still do some work around food preparation and raising the grandkids, but they have lots of leisure time too.
So much for the older generation. Gaoussou and four of his brothers also live in little houses around the compound with their wives. The other brothers live in other villages and in Bobo-Diolasso, while the sisters are all married and live with their in-laws. So far only one of the brothers has two wives. Some traditions die hard.
Family planning, however, has made an impact on the village and the younger generation has significantly fewer children than their parents had. With fewer children, odds are greater that they will go to school. Mamina is bound and determined that she will stop at two. In that, she had my full sympathy, especially when one considers how much more dangerous and excruciating childbirth is when one has undergone genital mutilation.
Life for a married woman in a big family is not easy. There's a lot of scheming and pettiness, even though individually they might all be very nice people. As the only woman in the family to have an education greater than primary school, Mamina often finds herself at odds with her female in-laws about what she should and shouldn't be able to do. They don't like it, for instance, when she works outside the home for goverent campaigns against polio or other things that require the help of literate locals. They complain that such things take her away from her cooking duties, even though they know that she and Gaoussou are the least well-off in the compound and she has to do what she can to contribute to the household finances. The father-in-law doesn't give them financial support because he's retired, he has other children to help out, and he feels that he's spent plenty on Gaoussou's education already.
Naturally everyone was very sweet to me and kept feeding me every time I turned around, and I am very fond of all of them. If Mamina hadn't told me about normal life in the courtyard I would never have known.
I stayed eight days in the village, during which time I visited Mamina's parents and siblings twice (questions mostly centred on which crops we grow in Canada), experienced two market days, attended a relative's funeral in a traditional Muslim boubou, and visited the gold mines outside the village. These were the small, Burkinabe run gold mines as opposed to SEMAFO, the much larger Canadian-run mines a little farther outside town.
After eight days in the village without electricity, running water, or anything cold to drink, I was looking forward to going to visit Mamina's uncle in Bobo. He's her father's half-brother (same father, different wife) and he's a Major in the Burkinabe army and thus quite well-off. He has a large house in Bobo, only one wife, six kids (all in school), and, joy of joys, ceiling fans!! He also has a TV, where I managed to catch a few Olympic highlights and follow the coup d'état in neoghbouring Niger and the mass protests in Cote d'Ivoire. I won't be visiting either of those countries.
Mamina and I did a lot of sightseeing and souvenir shopping in Bobo. We saw the old mosque, built in 1880, the old quarter of the city, where we actually got to go onto the oldest house in the city and see the tomb of the city's founder (he's buried standing up in the living room, only the head of the tomb protrudes above ground). It was unusual for is to get into that house because the founder's descendents still live in it.
Random fact: Bobo also goes by the name of Sia, which was the name of the founder's favourite wife who made the best dolo in town back when it was brand new.
Then Mamina, the baby, her cousin Adiaratou, and I borrowed her uncle's car, hired a chauffeur and drove the 85km to Banfora. Banfora is far in the south-west, practically on the border with Cote d'Ivoire, and it's lush and green. The country's sugar is produced there and they had fruit-bearing trees of all kinds. We first visited the Sindou Peaks, which are otherworldly hoodoos rising suddenly out of a flat and uninspired countryside. After sweating our way up and down the peaks in the midday sun we booked it for the Karifegula waterfalls. We brought a picnic and splashed around in the water for the whole afternoon. It was the first time I'd gotten cold in Burkina, and it was bliss!
Mamina and I parted ways at Boromo and I continued on to Ouaga. I'll be here for the better part of a week getting my visa for Ghana and preparing for the next part of my trip. If any of you want o call me, now would be a good time :).
Mamina went to school until she was 14, longer than most Burkinabes. At that point she had to drop out due to lack of means, but she retained her French which allowed her to participate in Canada World Youth. After CWY ended, she married a man from her village and moved in with his extended family, which is where I visited her last week.
Given that six years had passd and she had had two babies in that time, we weren't sure that we would recognize each other. But when my bus pulled up in Boromo and I saw her there I knew. We were a little stiff around each other at first, but it only lasted a few minutes once we squeezed into the bush taxi that would take us to Safane (a 55km trip cost $2.50). Shyness is not possible in a bush taxi when the temperature is at least 40 degrees, especially when her six month old started to cry (he's adorable, but she swears she'll box him up and ship him to me to deal with unless he stops breastfeeding every other second). Mamina's husband, a very nice and educated man named Gaoussou, picked us up at the station and, along with one of his friends, took us back to the family on mopeds.
I dismounted in the central courtyard to a scene of general surprise. The family had not asked, and Mamina had not told them, that the friend coming to visit was white. Having a white guest is a very, very big deal in rural Burkina Faso. It brings honour and status to the family in general, Mamina in particular, as well as to anyone else Mamina had me visit. I can only imagine what was going through everyone's heads when I showed up in their courtyard.
I had lots to take in as well. Mamina's father-in-law has four wives, each of whom has between four and six living children. Of them all, Gaoussou alone has finished high school. This is fairly normal for village life. The courtyard had plenty of chickens and goats, and one small cow that spent all its time in a shaded corner with its food. Three of the wives have their houses in the family courtyard while the fourth one lives with the rest of the family in Bobo-Diolasso. The father-in-law also has his house in the courtyard and he spends most of his time reading the Koran, listening to the radio, or hanging out with other old men near the mosque. The mothers-in-law still do some work around food preparation and raising the grandkids, but they have lots of leisure time too.
So much for the older generation. Gaoussou and four of his brothers also live in little houses around the compound with their wives. The other brothers live in other villages and in Bobo-Diolasso, while the sisters are all married and live with their in-laws. So far only one of the brothers has two wives. Some traditions die hard.
Family planning, however, has made an impact on the village and the younger generation has significantly fewer children than their parents had. With fewer children, odds are greater that they will go to school. Mamina is bound and determined that she will stop at two. In that, she had my full sympathy, especially when one considers how much more dangerous and excruciating childbirth is when one has undergone genital mutilation.
Life for a married woman in a big family is not easy. There's a lot of scheming and pettiness, even though individually they might all be very nice people. As the only woman in the family to have an education greater than primary school, Mamina often finds herself at odds with her female in-laws about what she should and shouldn't be able to do. They don't like it, for instance, when she works outside the home for goverent campaigns against polio or other things that require the help of literate locals. They complain that such things take her away from her cooking duties, even though they know that she and Gaoussou are the least well-off in the compound and she has to do what she can to contribute to the household finances. The father-in-law doesn't give them financial support because he's retired, he has other children to help out, and he feels that he's spent plenty on Gaoussou's education already.
Naturally everyone was very sweet to me and kept feeding me every time I turned around, and I am very fond of all of them. If Mamina hadn't told me about normal life in the courtyard I would never have known.
I stayed eight days in the village, during which time I visited Mamina's parents and siblings twice (questions mostly centred on which crops we grow in Canada), experienced two market days, attended a relative's funeral in a traditional Muslim boubou, and visited the gold mines outside the village. These were the small, Burkinabe run gold mines as opposed to SEMAFO, the much larger Canadian-run mines a little farther outside town.
After eight days in the village without electricity, running water, or anything cold to drink, I was looking forward to going to visit Mamina's uncle in Bobo. He's her father's half-brother (same father, different wife) and he's a Major in the Burkinabe army and thus quite well-off. He has a large house in Bobo, only one wife, six kids (all in school), and, joy of joys, ceiling fans!! He also has a TV, where I managed to catch a few Olympic highlights and follow the coup d'état in neoghbouring Niger and the mass protests in Cote d'Ivoire. I won't be visiting either of those countries.
Mamina and I did a lot of sightseeing and souvenir shopping in Bobo. We saw the old mosque, built in 1880, the old quarter of the city, where we actually got to go onto the oldest house in the city and see the tomb of the city's founder (he's buried standing up in the living room, only the head of the tomb protrudes above ground). It was unusual for is to get into that house because the founder's descendents still live in it.
Random fact: Bobo also goes by the name of Sia, which was the name of the founder's favourite wife who made the best dolo in town back when it was brand new.
Then Mamina, the baby, her cousin Adiaratou, and I borrowed her uncle's car, hired a chauffeur and drove the 85km to Banfora. Banfora is far in the south-west, practically on the border with Cote d'Ivoire, and it's lush and green. The country's sugar is produced there and they had fruit-bearing trees of all kinds. We first visited the Sindou Peaks, which are otherworldly hoodoos rising suddenly out of a flat and uninspired countryside. After sweating our way up and down the peaks in the midday sun we booked it for the Karifegula waterfalls. We brought a picnic and splashed around in the water for the whole afternoon. It was the first time I'd gotten cold in Burkina, and it was bliss!
Mamina and I parted ways at Boromo and I continued on to Ouaga. I'll be here for the better part of a week getting my visa for Ghana and preparing for the next part of my trip. If any of you want o call me, now would be a good time :).
Monday, February 8, 2010
Welcome to Ouagadougou
If only every country could have a capital with a name as cool as Ouagadougou! Mama Zida dropped me off at my adorable hotel - Le Pavillon Vert - at 8:30 Thursday morning before heading off to a planning meeting for the national orphanage association's upcoming AGM. I haven't stopped moving since.
The first thing I did was make friends with the hotel reception and get directions for the French Cultural Centre, for whence I departed after lunch. It turned out there was a concert there that evening, so I had my plans made for me. After going back to the Pavillon for a nap I went to the concert with two French girls I met at the hotel. The concert itself was put on by a French jazz trio called Hakuba Trio and every French ex-pat in Ouaga must have been there. The music was related to jazz, I guess, but it was heavily laced with psychadelic trance lounge music. The Burkinabes in the audience didn't last past the first half of the concert, and those few brave souls that remained with their white significant others looked like they were about to pass out from boredom. Personally I enjoyed the atmosphere they created in the FCC's open air venue, but I wouldn't listen to that kind of music unless it were live. I only got a few blurry pictures of the whole thing, but I feel they capture the trippy vibe perfectly.
The next morning I woke up early to see the Mora-Naaba ceremony, which takes place just outside the Naaba's palace every Friday morning at 7 am. I arrived at 7:30, but luckily for me the ceremony had been pushed back to 8:30 for some reason unknown to all the tourists but known by the Burkinabes, who showed up 5 minutes before the main event. Here's the story behind the Mora-Naaba ceremony. Hundreds of years ago, two Mossi brothers ruled the cities of Ouagadougou in the centre and Ouahigouya in the north. The Ouagalese Naaba was the elder brother and supreme ruler and, as such, carried the sacred gri-gri which gave him power. One day, his brother in Ouahigouya stole the gri-gri and brought it back to the North with him. The Ouagalese Naaba prepared for war. He walked from his house the next morning dressed entirely in red and commande his servants to saddle his horse and prepare his cannon. The lesser Naabas from Ouaga's various sectors and suburbs, learning of their king's intentions through the drumming of the palace griots (griots are the musician caste) came to the field in front of the palace and begged their king not to go to war. He listened to their pleas and advice, returned to his house, and came back out dressed in white. His horse was desaddled and the cannon fired off harmlessly outside the palace gates. To this day, every Friday the Mora-naaba prepares for war and the lesser Naabas and other prominent Mossi gather in order of importance and beg him not to go. I took no pictures, as it's forbidden.
Since then I've been out dancing, I've gone to another concet at the FCC, visited the sacred crocodiles and stayed for a village party. But more on that another day, it's siesta time now.
The first thing I did was make friends with the hotel reception and get directions for the French Cultural Centre, for whence I departed after lunch. It turned out there was a concert there that evening, so I had my plans made for me. After going back to the Pavillon for a nap I went to the concert with two French girls I met at the hotel. The concert itself was put on by a French jazz trio called Hakuba Trio and every French ex-pat in Ouaga must have been there. The music was related to jazz, I guess, but it was heavily laced with psychadelic trance lounge music. The Burkinabes in the audience didn't last past the first half of the concert, and those few brave souls that remained with their white significant others looked like they were about to pass out from boredom. Personally I enjoyed the atmosphere they created in the FCC's open air venue, but I wouldn't listen to that kind of music unless it were live. I only got a few blurry pictures of the whole thing, but I feel they capture the trippy vibe perfectly.
The next morning I woke up early to see the Mora-Naaba ceremony, which takes place just outside the Naaba's palace every Friday morning at 7 am. I arrived at 7:30, but luckily for me the ceremony had been pushed back to 8:30 for some reason unknown to all the tourists but known by the Burkinabes, who showed up 5 minutes before the main event. Here's the story behind the Mora-Naaba ceremony. Hundreds of years ago, two Mossi brothers ruled the cities of Ouagadougou in the centre and Ouahigouya in the north. The Ouagalese Naaba was the elder brother and supreme ruler and, as such, carried the sacred gri-gri which gave him power. One day, his brother in Ouahigouya stole the gri-gri and brought it back to the North with him. The Ouagalese Naaba prepared for war. He walked from his house the next morning dressed entirely in red and commande his servants to saddle his horse and prepare his cannon. The lesser Naabas from Ouaga's various sectors and suburbs, learning of their king's intentions through the drumming of the palace griots (griots are the musician caste) came to the field in front of the palace and begged their king not to go to war. He listened to their pleas and advice, returned to his house, and came back out dressed in white. His horse was desaddled and the cannon fired off harmlessly outside the palace gates. To this day, every Friday the Mora-naaba prepares for war and the lesser Naabas and other prominent Mossi gather in order of importance and beg him not to go. I took no pictures, as it's forbidden.
Since then I've been out dancing, I've gone to another concet at the FCC, visited the sacred crocodiles and stayed for a village party. But more on that another day, it's siesta time now.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Christmas at the Orphelinat Teega-Wende (Jan. 23 2010)
Christmas at the orphanage took place today, Saturday January 23rd. All the orphans and vulnerable children who live in and around Yako with their extended families came to the orphanage for food, gifts, and good company.
We started preparing the food the day before. A full fifty kilo sack of rice was emptied into an enormous cauldron over an outdoor log fire. Beef cubes sizzled in six inched of oil, eggplants and tomatoes were chopped, and untold cabbages gave their heads to make riz gras. I chopped the tomatoes over a bucket with the tomato in my left hand and the dull knife in my right, as one does in Burkina Faso, and managed not to cut myself. Five chickens were slaughtered in front of me that evening. Because I was there, I helped carry two of them over to the block. Their feet were warm in my hand, which for some reason I had not expected. Vegetarian that I am, I apologized silently over and over as I carried them, and thanked them for giving their lives that we might party.
Between 60 and 75 people came to the orphanage today, and each family left with a bag full of clothes, toys, and soap, 5 pounds of dried beans and a 50 kilo bag of rice or sorghum. We were there from 8:30 until nearly 3 pm, right through the heat of the day. It went really well, even if it was somewhat subdued because there had been a death in the SEMUS, the orphanage's local partner organization. Normally there would have been beer and dolo for all.
My job was to run around and take pictures, we'll see if any of them turned out. It was great seeing all the kids who have "graduated" from the orphanage and are back with their extended families or in foster families. For me, the best part of the day was when I learned that one of my favourites from 6 years ago, who was very sickly, has grown into a healthy 8 year old.
It really is amazing to see the transformation of the orphanage from how it was 6 years ago. It used to be a small, barren place that sucked the hope out of me each time I approached the gate. Now, thanks to funding from CARO, the Canadian charity I volunteer with, the orphanage has a new building on a new site. It's full of sunshine and trees and there's lots of room for the kids to play. They stay at the building until they're 2 or 3, at which point they go back to their extended families or into foster care. The orphanage pays for all their schooling until the end of primary, which is more education than many Burkinabes ever get. Now when I go through the front gate, I know that Mama Zida's superb work and our funding means that these kids have a good chance in life.
We started preparing the food the day before. A full fifty kilo sack of rice was emptied into an enormous cauldron over an outdoor log fire. Beef cubes sizzled in six inched of oil, eggplants and tomatoes were chopped, and untold cabbages gave their heads to make riz gras. I chopped the tomatoes over a bucket with the tomato in my left hand and the dull knife in my right, as one does in Burkina Faso, and managed not to cut myself. Five chickens were slaughtered in front of me that evening. Because I was there, I helped carry two of them over to the block. Their feet were warm in my hand, which for some reason I had not expected. Vegetarian that I am, I apologized silently over and over as I carried them, and thanked them for giving their lives that we might party.
Between 60 and 75 people came to the orphanage today, and each family left with a bag full of clothes, toys, and soap, 5 pounds of dried beans and a 50 kilo bag of rice or sorghum. We were there from 8:30 until nearly 3 pm, right through the heat of the day. It went really well, even if it was somewhat subdued because there had been a death in the SEMUS, the orphanage's local partner organization. Normally there would have been beer and dolo for all.
My job was to run around and take pictures, we'll see if any of them turned out. It was great seeing all the kids who have "graduated" from the orphanage and are back with their extended families or in foster families. For me, the best part of the day was when I learned that one of my favourites from 6 years ago, who was very sickly, has grown into a healthy 8 year old.
It really is amazing to see the transformation of the orphanage from how it was 6 years ago. It used to be a small, barren place that sucked the hope out of me each time I approached the gate. Now, thanks to funding from CARO, the Canadian charity I volunteer with, the orphanage has a new building on a new site. It's full of sunshine and trees and there's lots of room for the kids to play. They stay at the building until they're 2 or 3, at which point they go back to their extended families or into foster care. The orphanage pays for all their schooling until the end of primary, which is more education than many Burkinabes ever get. Now when I go through the front gate, I know that Mama Zida's superb work and our funding means that these kids have a good chance in life.
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