Thanksgiving and Protest season

Thanksgiving was a complete bust this year. When I was living in London for study abroad the American students (and one Frenchman) got together to have a decent dinner with a frozen turkey roll thing. It was a lovely time and later we went to the pub and convinced them to put on the NFL games.

In Ouagadougou last week, I had to work. The Embassy, due to a low turn-out last year, decided to not hold a Thanksgiving celebration at the American Recreation Center. So, Thanksgiving this year consisted of me proctoring a final exam in mathematics at one of my schools in the morning and teaching my normal class at the house that night. Yay!?

The following day however, was an Islamic holiday here in Burkina called Tabaski (no way that’s spelled correctly). Anyway, that celebration goes down like this; if you’re rich you buy a bull, if you’re in the middle you buy a goat, below that a sheep, and below that you just get a chicken. No matter what your socioeconomic class the animal you by gets chopped up and eaten. It does not normally fall this close to thanksgiving but it was pretty darn close this year.

I didn’t get to celebrate with anyone as I was taking a road trip down to Bobo-Dioulasso (meaning home of the bobo). Good times making the trip by car rather than bus although the road has more pot holes than the surface of the moon. Bobo is the second largest city in Burkina and when we arrived it was clear that it was a holiday. Our first day consisted just searching out places to eat and stay for the night. One major personal goal of mine was to find some local home-made beer.



The beer is called dolo (dough-low) and it’s made in some pretty sketchy places from millet. It smells like barf and taste roughly the same. In an attempt to find a dolo bar I was volunteered by my travel mates to do all the talking to the random people on the street, always a good time. The first gentleman I spoke with was roughly 6’7” I’d say about 220 maybe a little less. I asked him where we could find a bar. Nothing is easy in Burkina so he said he would take us to his cousin’s place. I said we’d pass, he didn’t look happy. I conferred with the car; they also said we’d pass. I spoke with him once again to see if he would just tell me where the bar was he said three blocks straight ahead on the right.

I got back in the car and while the car mates were looking backwards I was telling the driver to “RUN!!” They thought I was referring to the large gentleman behind us but in fact I was talking about the very drunk man ahead of us making a b-line for the car. “Run” I said again, “from the scary man in the blue tank-top! The one yelling “HEY WHITE, WHITE!”” Just as Greg got his wits about him and realized who I was talking about he hit the gas and the man hit the car. Don’t worry we didn’t run him over but he did punch the side of the car as we speed away.

Using our great judgment we decided that it was a better idea to not stop merely three blocks away and continued to another section of town. When we got to a good looking street we stopped and I began my street integrations again. “Where’s there a dolo bar?” I would ask. I would receive answers like, “they don’t serve it at bars” and “women make it, you have to find the women”. Great eventually I asked one person and again they said we were three blocks away, I was sensing a pattern. We eventually made it to the dolo bar. It smelled like burning vomit so I knew we were in the right place. The proprietor of the establishment filled up a litter and a half bottle with dolo for us for 250cfa (roughly 50 cents).



Contrary to what you may be thinking it did not taste great. Please pardon the vomit references but they most accurately describe dolo. You know the sour feeling you have in your mouth just before you throw-up? Yeah, that’s what it tasted like. At the bar you drink out of bowls that are gourds cut in half from what I could tell. At the hotel I drank mine from a glass…bowl, I didn’t want to break tradition. We only drank half the bottle between the four of us. The rest of the trip was good, not a ton to do in Bobo, just visit the mosque and the market but it was wonderful to get out of Ouaga and relax for a bit in a large city with small town noise.



December marks many things in the year; the start of winter, the end of the year, the epicenter of commercial holidays. In Burkina it marks protest season. My collogues at my three schools have been warning me for a few weeks now that normally in December we go on strike and there are many protests. Last week the information changed slightly to them warning me that it may not be safe for me to come to work next week.

The past two weeks my students have all been taking their exams. You would think that after exams we would have a winter break. That is not the case here, we continue on through December and take about a week for vacation right before Christmas and New Year’s starting on the 22nd. Now back to what this has to do with the protest. On December 3, 1998 there was a journalist (I should say supposedly) murdered by the government and of course no investigation and all that good stuff.

According to my students the journalist (Norbit Zongo, first name may be spelled incorrectly wrong) was killed then burned in his car. He is said to have had information about the government that was most likely incriminating so the government took him out, that is according to my students. So every year since 1998 there has been protests in December looking for answers. Some of my co-workers feel that the protest have become disconnected from the original purpose and after 10 years of protest without answers I would agree. The feeling now is that the students continue the protests not to find answers (although that is the reason for some) but rather to get out of classes.

It is more common now for the students to just go home and not bother with the protests. While I was asking my class about these things yesterday I tried to figure out why the students have been protesting at the schools. The people they are upset with are down town at the national assembly my question to them was “why aren’t you downtown?” Their response was that the administration would not let them leave. Clearly we need to work on our protesting skills here. My students are scared to protest downtown because it is dangerous and they may get arrested for three hours. I tried to convince them that that is the point and there is no reason for them to protest at the schools. I told them that people only see the protests as a joke now and an excuse to get out of classes.

I’m pretty sure my supervisor at the school didn’t want me encouraging my students to protest. His words to me yesterday morning were, “be careful, watch your students they like to try and protest during this time”. Then he assigned one of my students to escort me to my own class room. I think I will continue to encourage them to stand up for justice and human rights despite their (at times) misguided efforts.

I ran out of time in class yesterday but I walked out with one of my students who was explaining to me that they “can’t” protest downtown because it is dangerous or they may get in trouble and are not able to leave the school. I told him that if it is something they truly believe in, and if they really want answers in this 10 year old murder case then seeking out those answers, taking the fight to the government down town is well worth the dangers. If they truly want to make a difference they must be willing to take on the struggles and dangers that come with fight for justice.