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 :).