The Naaba-fest (Jan. 29 2010)

In Burkina, traditional chiefs play an important role in local politics. The major Mossi chiefs (the Mossi are Burkina's dominant ethnic group) are so important that the Burkinabe government still makes a show of consulting them before taking major policy decisions.

Here in Yako, the chief, or naaba, is holding his annual meet and greet to welcome in the new year. It's a two week process during which several hundred people have come to Yako from the surrounding villages to pay their respects. Different villages come on different days, and they all come loaded down with enough food to feed everybody in Yako several times over. Women gather in the naaba's compound to prepare the food while the men and superfluous women sit around under trees socializing and drinking dolo.

As night falls the party really gets started. Drums pound, drink flows, and the women's ululating cries carry into the night. I know, because the Zidas live so close to the naaba's compound that I can hear the party from my room every night. I can even hear it now.

Tomorrow it's the turn of Yako's more important families to greet the chief and I'm lucky enough to be invited to that ceremony. Tonight I went to the naaba's compound with Mama Zida and helped get ready for the next day. I must have peeled 50 cloves of garlic while the women around me chopped what looked like several hundred onions. People, and by people I mean women, here chop vegetables without the use of such frivolous things as tables or cutting boards. Why would you need them when you can chop the vegetable into your hand over a bucket? They don't seem to cut themselves, even though one of the women was using a traditional hunting knife and the woman next to me was chopping onions into her bare hand with a switchblade.

Tomorrow (the 30th) I'm going to go greet the chief and I'll tell you all about it!