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!
Monday, April 26, 2010
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!
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