nearly home

Ok so it's been two solid months, sorry. To be perfectly honest not too much has happened since the last time I wrote. It has started raining again so that's good news. Six months + without any rain is not my idea of fun. I've been on my own now since the end of April when my housemates moved home. So now's it's me, the dog, the guards, and some days in the week the cleaners and Tanti. It get's lame at times but there's still enough people around town that it's no problem.

I made another trip out to Bongande about three weeks ago now. While there I helped out at the maternity clinic weighing babies. Basically the babies are placed in a leather or cloth harness, much like would be used for one of those baby jumper toys we have in the states. The you take the kid and hang them on a hook that's a bent piece of re-bar with a small scale on the bottom. If I remember correctly at this point we weighed and gave shots to around 180 or more children. I didn't give anyone any shots.

This trip itself was less fun than normal. I was hotter than normal and the water at the pump kept being cut off. There still had not been any real significant rain at that point. The end of hot season is a bit rough because the types of food available diminish if you're not in Ouagadougou or a larger city. So at the Bogande market there were onions, small onions, big onions, onions with flies, onions with green stuff, and a various leaves. So at the end of the trip we were both ready to leave and get back into Ouaga.

It did rain once while we were in Bogande. As chance would have it we had decided to go out for a walk to the lake when it was rolling up. So as we were walking the large wall of dust and sand that precedes each storm was rapidly moving toward us. Imagine a wall of orange dust that stretches maybe 20 stories into the air and as far as you can see in either direction moving toward you at a rapid rate with winds blowing about 25mph. No think that you're not near your house. oops. We ended up right beside one of the two hotels in the town and ducked in there just as the rain got going. Doesn't matter the rain isn't the problem the dust is. So I've had a nice sniffle since this trip about three weeks ago.

Exams ended in my classes which was very nice so I have had no day time classes since mid-may. I continued teaching my night classes at the house just so I and my students would have something to do. But for the last week pretty much all my work has been finished. So now I'm waiting for my tickets out of Ouaga, should be the 19th. Tomorrow I'm leaving again for Bongande until Sunday, hopefully it's a better trip this time, like it would be nice if there's water this time.

This past Sunday we made it out to Pastor Zongo's church. IT's a one hour drive both ways to get there but the good news is we get feed, church wise and lunch wise. Pastor was nice enough to pray for my return to home. He prefaced the prayer with an explanation to the congregation saying, "We need to pray for Ben because he has to fly a lot and planes have a tendency to fall out of the air for no reason." Thanks pastor. At that church we pray out loud. So the congregation of maybe 50 all turned toward us and started yelling at us and God that we make it home safely. Good stuff.

I also manged to wash my passport about two weeks ago cause Africa hates me. So I had to go to the new US embassy very nice, huge, and chilled to the bone with America land style air conditioning. I'm sad there was no line for me to have to wait in. Sent my stuff off and got it back in a week. Sometimes it's good to live in a country no one's heard of. No I'm trying to get my visa (which is still valid) moved into my new book and not having a good time with it. Better luck next week perhaps. And if all fails they look at me like I'm stupid, tell me my visa's not right and kick me out anyway. It's win win. The pictures are from the forest near my house (that's the croc) and the other is from a mask festival that I didn't go to but my friend gave me pictures from it and it looks cool.

peace,
Ben

Vacation!!!!

The blog up-dates are getting far in-between because I’m just not shocked as often any more. It’s hard to think of what would be interesting to read about because way too many things are just becoming common place at this point. So here’s the run down for the last month. Last time I wrote to you I said it was hot. Good news, it’s hotter. I recently had vacation at the end of our second trimester of school. I started my vacation with “Man Camp”, a two day extravaganza in Dori in the northern part of the country. I’ll spare you the guessing, it was hot. It was in fact so manly that when I arrived I wanted to leave because it was smelly and dirty. Then I got over it. We were indeed manly drinking booze and eating slabs of meat while watching Rambo 4 (DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE IT IS BAD) (disclaimer: this is not a good definition of “manly” it is purely for entertainment purposes). Vacation was two weeks long and Man camp was a highlight of the first week. For the second week I took a trip down to the southwest to a town called Banfora. Banfora is the only real tourist area in Burkina and is roughly the only money making area in the country. They have tons of crops and a large sugar industry. One region does not a rich country make. Our first night in town we were greeted by a loud chorus of street kids YELLING “TOUBAB!!” which is Jula or Djula for white or white thing. This is really getting old at this point. The local language here in Ouagadougou is Mooré and the word is “nassra”. I mostly hear it from small children; that is less annoying because you can rationalize that they don’t know any better. When adults do it is very frustrating. I think I’m having issues because I’m from the United States where it is rude if not flat out racist to call someone by the color of their skin. I don’t think that most people are trying to be intentionally rude with this but you can certainly tell when they are. The big market is the worst area for this so next week me and a friend are going to go to the market, buy nothing and just sit on a bench and say nothing, just to see how nuts it will drive all the vendors. Anyway, it was surprising to get called white over and over in Banfora because it is a tourist area, so the excuse of us being the first white people or things they’ve ever seen just doesn’t work. So hearing constantly, “le blanc, donne moi cadeau”, meaning “white, give me a gift” gets old fast. When I was riding my bike down to the cascades in Banfora one kid about 11 years old stepped out into the road with his arms stretched out saying we couldn’t pass unless we stopped and gave him a gift. I just rode straight at him and he got out of the way pretty quick, judge me if you want I don’t mind I’m tired of feeling like a zoo animal. Other than the more gutsy children, Banfora was wonderful. They have in the area three natural attractions; the cascades, the domes, and the hippo lake. We visited all three camping out one night near the lake. The cascades are basically and natural water park and there were loads of people visiting. The road out of town goes through large sugarcane fields for about 15 kilometers. Once you are near the area there are loads of mango trees. We played around in the cascades for a few hours before moving on down to the hippo lake. I may have shisto in a few months but I think it was worth it. For whatever reason when you don’t know an area bike rides always feel longer. The ride from the cascades to the hippo lake, we were told, is only 3k. It took us an hour and we had to ride through loads of fields following an irrigation “canal” ditch is more accurate I think. The crop diversity was a bit impressive considering most of this country just grows onions. We passed banana trees, mango trees, papaya trees, rice, sugar cane, corn, millet, and I’m sure some others. The irrigation is very good in Banfora but mangoes are growing all over the country right now. I don’t really understand how because it has not rained since last October, very impressive tree. So our 3K bike ride took almost an hour and a half if not longer. We reached the lake area and stayed one night at a camp site/hotel and we were the only guest roughly 200 meters from the lake. It was a nice site with beds set-up outside of the rooms with nets because it is just too hot to be sleeping in a mud brick hut which basically acts as an oven. Around 2:30 in the morning I woke up and heard so very loud mooing then I heard a really really big splash. Hippos are dangerous and I don’t think mud brick walls, much less a mosquito net could hold one back if needed. They guy taking care of us at the hotel and the guides at the lake said the best time to see the hippos is first thing in the morning. So we headed out at about 5:30am to head down to the lake with the guy from the hotel. We took a small single paddle row boat out on the lake. Did I mention hippos are dangerous? The hotel guy took us over to this one spot of the lake were a certain group of hippos likes to hang out. I counted 5 in that group and we saw a few more on our way back in. After the lake we biked back up towards the cascades to the domes. It’s an area of rocks that have been carved down by erosion. You’ll just have to look at the pictures. It was fun for about 20 minutes then I turned my ankle. I kept climbing stuff but I think I hate turning my ankle more than being called white. For Easter I headed out to Bongandé. The church service was complete full and we had to sit outside under a tree with about 200 other people all trying to stay out of the sun. I wasn’t a great service. I couldn’t concentrate. It’s hard to pay attention when there are goats and pigs running around in front of you and small children playing “who can get closest to the white people” game. One lady seriously moved across the yard found a chair (of which there weren’t many) put it down three feet from me and sat down with her child, harmless so far. Then the staring started. The she took her infant child and sat him on the ground closer to me. The whole time she was whispering to the child, “look over there, look, do you see that.” Then she took the child’s hand, reached it out, and petted my knee with it. I had to say something; I was trying to avoid it, being as we were in the middle of Easter Mass. She stopped after that, moved away then came back and started the staring again. Needless to say we left church early. Later that evening we stopped by the Nun’s house and kicked it with them for a few hours. Way better than the Mass and far more refreshing.

They said i should up-date my blog

Up-date: It's hot in Africa. It's even hotter in Africa when it's hot season. It's hot season therefore it is hotter in Africa right now. It has not rained since early October. They say it will most likely rain once in March...Then it will get hotter. Great.
It's the season of the 40 days before Easter, why?, because apparently there's no word in Burkina French for Lent. That means fasting, which means at roughly 2:00pm in the afternoon (when it's hot) I haven't eaten anything since roughly 6:00am when it was less hot. That means at about 2:00pm I'm hot, and hungry, and sometimes angry.I'm waiting on my bloody Jesus shirt for Easter Sunday, you'll understand once you see the pictures.
We cooked fried chicken, biscuits, with coleslaw and sweet tea this past weekend, i nearly cried it was so good.
It's exam week right now which means I've got class loads of papers to grade this weekend and next week, boo. It wouldn't be hard but reading really bad English just isn't easy. I'm going to try to make a trip at the end of this month, should be some pictures then of hippos and rocks. I know you're excited.
Peace,
Ben

Everything I own is turning reddish orange

Not the most eventful month of all time but I suppose that’s not all bad. Burkina did make the international news however. We have a visitor from Guinea, Captain Camara; he was shot in the head back a few months ago. He was flown here from Morocco to finish “healing”/we’re keeping him out of Guinea so nothing else crazy happens there. Apparently he had no idea and when he got off the plane he thought he was back in Guinea.

Also this was the month of “village iron chef” aka people who teach and live in Ouaga go out to village and cook food mostly to entertain peace corps friends. It was fun and it was tasty. This trip’s highlight was not the cooking however but the 43 mile bike ride through the Sahel or the edge of the Sahara Desert. I prefer saying the edge of the desert cause it makes it sound more bad-ass. I met up with a friend in her village about 80K south of our final destination. We left from Bogandé about 7:30am and reached the main road in Tatarko about 1:00pm,ish.



Our whole route was a dirt road with little cover (desert) but with villages maybe every 15 miles. We stopped twice once in Mani where we got some of the best yogurt I’ve ever had. Apparently the “polls”, (spelled for ease of pronunciation) the ethnic group that lives in the north of Burkina as well as some other countries make some dang good yogurt. I’ll save you from having to wonder, a sachet of yogurt and half an orange Fanta was not the best choice for a mid 40 mile bike ride snack in the desert. No real problems though until we were roughly 12 miles out from Tatarko when the harmattan winds decided to pick up. So for about the last 10 miles or so we were ridding straight into a head wind happily the dust was not bad at all so there was no problems with seeing or breathing.



In Tatarko we stopped and had lunch which was pretty much the saltiest rice I’ve ever had in my life. The resto was just beside a video club spot. Explanation time; when someone has a TV or something of that sort at a bar or what have you, they place one large speaker outside of their establishment and turn it up as loud as humanly possible. People here LOVE kung-fu movies. SO, the end of our biking day was met with really salty rice and really loud kung-fu sounds. I was dirty, sweaty, salty form being sweaty, dehydrated, my butt hurt I couldn’t think and on top of that even if I would have been able to think I wouldn’t have been able to hear myself over the clashing of swords and kung-fu sounds of hands moving rapidly. All in all it was a good trip; it always feels good to do something physical especially when most of my days are spent in classrooms.



If you take a trip through the desert I’ve found it is best to just wear your flip-flops and a little bit of sun screen. Being prepared just seems like too much work. I’ll get pictures to you soon, I think my camera is broken so I’ll have to steal them.



Peace.

Long December (in a good way)

Yes I know, it’s been a solid half month since I wrote last, everyone just calm down it just means I’ve got loads to tell you. Let’s start with happy New Year, hope Christmas and/or other coinciding December holidays went well.

On December 20th, for some reason, Sean Paul (a famous singer for those who need a reference) came to Ouagadougou to put on a concert. His style can be described as a popish reggae. The concert was at the national football stadium “Stade du 4 Août”. This is a very large venue and I expected the place to be packed. Then we got to the concert and remembered that we’re in Burkina and no one has any money. The lowest priced tickets were 5000cfa ($10), great deal for a Sean Paul concert but still way too expensive for the population here.



One advantage to there being no people was that we could walk right up to the stage, and back stage and no one really said anything. Sean Paul was however 3 ½ hours late so the 6 o’clock concert didn’t start until 9:30pm. Here’s the fun part, there was loads of space on the field in front of the stage, yet most of the people had the 5000cfa seats in the bowl of the stadium. The people got restless and began jumping down on to the field. One, then two, then forty it was loads of fun to watch. In the madness someone found a later to help their friends down, it was as though they just pulled it out of their pants or a scene out of a Mel Brooks movie where things escalate faster than reason would assume.

The police, God love them, armed mostly with night sticks and a few AKs stopped most of this mad rush. It was amazing to watch because they basically told the people to sit down and they did. My friend, with whom I was sitting, and I observed that were it a group of Americans there’s no way we would have sat down without being beaten, we would have headed for the crowd and blended in as fast as possible. Now this was all with the stadium lights still on, so just imagine what happened when the lights went out. We watched as flood of human silhouettes leaped down onto the field as soon as the lights were off. Nothing the police could do about that one, it was beautiful.

The concert itself was ok, not spectacular, there were no warm-up bands it was pretty much just the main event. Sean Paul does not speak French, and Burkina Faso does not speak English. This little situation made it quite comical when Sean Paul would yell for the crowd to “put your hands up” and “jump” and asked questions like “do you love Sean Paul?” All questions and commands were promptly responded to with a resounding “quoi?” (What?). Stop talking in English and sing, you’re three hours late.

On to brighter subject, like scaring my students to within an inch of their lives. It was not on purpose I was checking individually how their listening comprehension and oral skills were progressing. So I called each student up and asked them simple questions; “write your name, name a factor of education, what is a job for a woman (this month’s topic is gender issues, I only got one response that said “there isn’t one, she can do anything”), and what do you want to do after school?”

Anyway my students were so petrified that I could see them visibly shaking while I was asking them questions. They were not even being graded on this exercise I think maybe they thought I would yell at them or something for not being perfect. One girl was so worried she crossed herself when we finished.

For Christmas I took a trip down to Ghana with some friends. Allow me to run you through the whole adventure. The day I bought our tickets I travelled across town on my bike at 6:30am and arrived at the bus station (gare) at about 7. There were very few people there and I went into the office. The man told me I would have to wait until 10 to buy the tickets because he was very busy. Did I mention that at the time I was the only person there? Any way I waited and met two university students from California who were doing an exchange at the University of Ghana in Accra. They were a well spring of information briefing me on everything from what they white people are called in Ghana to double counting you money as people like to count out the correct amount then slip some out and hand you the wrong amount, to where to get the best beans and rice in Busua (our final destination).

Our bus left a few days later on the 23rd at 9am (pay attention). We arrived in Accra at about 10am the 24th. Then we switched busses to get us to Takoradi we arrived in Takoradi at about 1pm or so in the afternoon. Then we got a taxi to take us to Busua so we pretty much got to our room at about 2pm on the 24th. That’s about 28 hours of transit from Ouagadougou to Busua, roughly a 500 mile journey. Compare that to doing a nearly 900 mile route on a gray hound bus from Greensboro to Quebec City, Canada in about 21 hours (by car only 17). Point is unpaved roads SUCK.
The difference between Ghana and Burkina Faso, where development is concerned is staggering.

I feel the stark contrast between the two nations is captured perfectly at the border crossing. There is similar land on either side of the border, similar size villages on either side of the border, and one major difference, different countries. In the Burkina immigration office there is one officer seated at a desk armed with a BiC pen and a large notebook so they can handwrite all the names and passport numbers of people leaving and entering the country. On the Ghana side (even at 4 in the morning) there are at least 6 immigration officers armed with (I saw) 4 computers with a passport scanner for processing people entering and leaving Ghana.



I know that may not sound like much but believe me it makes all the difference in the world after being in BF for 6 months. Ghana is at least 30 years ahead of Burkina and that could be due to many things, one of the largest factors in my opinion is access to an ocean. A small bag (half a liter) of water in Burkina cost 50CFA roughly 10 cents, and in Ghana a small bag of water cost 10 Ghana pesos which is about 30CFA and about 6 cents. Burkina, while one of the poorest nations in the world, is pretty much the most expensive nation in West Africa.

Well now, it was completely confusing to have to speak English with local people. At this point every African I see I just go ahead and speak in French, because that’s how we roll in BF. Adjusting that habit took a couple of slip ups in Ghana. Things like bags of water, which I was really first exposed to here in BF are hard to order when you don’t know what to call it in English. Sachet de l’eau in BF becomes sachet (with the T pronounced) of water in Ghana, but we didn’t know that so we just went around saying “what do you call a bag of water in English?” Life is hard sometimes.
We stayed 4 nights in Busua Beach, don’t bother trying to find it on a map it’s not there, the closest large town is Cape Coast and Takoradi.

It was beautiful, coconut palms all over the place, hills sloping gently into sandy beaches with clear sea green water. A small island with a couple of palm trees and tiki torches at night just off the coast provides a break from the larger ocean swells and makes the bay and beach picturesque and great for swimming. On the far side of that island waves looked like they were breaking with an extra 6 feet, just beyond the west end point of the bay the waves were breaking with what looked like about an extra 4 feet. The waves grew all three days that I went out surfing so that on our last day the waves were about 6 foot with anywhere from 9-10 foot waves in the big sets. It was wonderful; I got up every morning at 7am to rent my board and normally had the first three hours of the day to myself with 4-5 foot waves, glassy, no wind and no swimmers.



The surf shop is a chain called “Black Star Surf Shop” they’re located up and down the Ghana coast. The one in Busua has a restaurant with it and they serve frick’n good burritos. They also have something called “Rastafari beans and rice” which is black beans in a cream sauce with mango, avocado, and white rice, amazing. There a place called “Dan the Pancake man”, we had breakfast there once and Daniel informed us that if we wanted a lobster dinner to let him know in the morning and he’d have it for us that night, also amazing.Our room was right on the beach front, two double beds and a mat on the floor slept the 5 of us very comfortably for 15 Ghana Cidi a night (about 10 dollars for a beach front room).

We met a few people while we were down in Ghana. Among them was Brett Davies (worked for Rip Curl UK) and has set himself up a sweet little beach front restaurant bar. He also helped organize the first surfing competitions in Ghana at Busua. We got to watch what I believe was the second annual competition while we were there. Also met a guy named Riley from San Francisco/American University in DC, he’s working down there in the restaurant with Brett and teaching surf lessons (life can be hard sometimes). The whole atmosphere of the beach was beautiful, there nations from all over the world represented there people relaxing most of the NGO workers on holiday like us. If you get the chance to go to Busua I highly recommend it.

I managed to get hit in the chest with my board coming off of one wave so I “bruised” my rib. Happily we’re in Africa and nothing requires a doctor’s visit unless you’re really about to die. So for less than a dollar I was able to purchase some very strong Ibuprofen. I would need it for our insane trip back to Ouaga and BF.
This journey started at 3:30am the morning of the 28th. The plan was to take a bus back to Accra (4 hours) then take a “tro-tro” (bush taxi) to Akosombo at the south end of Volta Lake (largest manmade lake in the world). From there we were going to take a ferry up the lake to break up the ridiculously long trip home. The ferry would be 24hrs and cut out almost all of return back minus about 9 hours, we would have a cabin with AC and a bed split between four people costing about 5 Ghana Cidi ($3) each. It was going to be frick’n amazing.

Sadly the boats took a Christmas season break so they were not running. So we stayed one night in Akosombo, beautiful middle class Africa town looks like what you can find anywhere in the United States. Ranch style houses with big lawns and cars in the driveways situated in a valley with large rising green hills all around and more coconut and banana tress than you’d ever need (in Burkina it’s tiny mud-brick houses with broken bicycles in an all sand yard the same size as the house with sand on top of more sand with sand on the side, sand is too kind let’s just say rocky dirt).



After our one night in Akosombo, we once again rose at 3:30am to catch a tro-tro to Kumasi. This tro-tro ride was long. Tro-tro’s are the size of a 16 passenger van that forgot to eat its vegetables. My chin and knees have never been closer than they were after this ride. Luckily the scenery was beautiful as we passed the mountains and valleys all covered with lush green vegetation. One town called Nkawkaw had a mountain in its background called Apaku, I think, with very large open rock faces, looked a lot like Stone Mountain in Georgia but without the carvings and much larger. When we got to Kumasi we went straight away to our bus station.

Wouldn’t you know it, no busses to Ouaga until the following day. We searched out a new bus station that did have a bus but it didn’t leave until 7pm, when we bought the tickets it was about 11am. Mostly we just sat around and slept in front of the bus station. There was chicken shit, chickens, the Pepsi depot, and some lady who threw dirty water on us from one floor above.

We got on the bus 7pm and left Kumasi. We arrived at the BF Ghana border at 4am. Turns out the border closes at night so we sat at the border until 8am. Then the bus driver managed to make what is normally a two hour trip from Pô to Ouaga into a four hour trip. I was ready to burn the bus down. When I was exiting the bus I was greeted by a chorus of Burkinabe yelling “nassalla” (mooreé for white) so I just threw my hands up and using the same hand gesture you use when shewing goats and sheep and half yelled “Get Away From ME, AAHHA!!” That didn’t work they still attacked trying to charge us nearly three times the correct price for a taxi to take us back to our house. It’s good to be home.



New Year’s was uneventful spent it at a house party then out to a Burkinabe club for some dancing. I recommend to anyone to travel to Ghana and plan to stay about two years if you’re being a tourist. I didn’t take my camera to Ghana (that was stupid, I left it in my friend’s car in Ouaga) I’ll steel some pictures from my friends and put them soon so check back.
Peace

Y'all look cooollldd in the states

December is nearly half finished which means protest season is in full swing. That also means I have only been to work once in the last week and that trend does not appear to be changing any time soon. Here’s a rundown of the events.

Last Monday I awoke unaware of what my schedule would be for the day. Normally I have class from 9 am until noon. I woke up very early that morning to have some coffee and breakfast. While sitting in the kitchen I could hear not so distant cheers arising from a nearby school, my school (just over a 10th of a mile away). This happened to be the day that my “proviseur” (head master or principal) had told me he would text me to say if it were safe or not to come to work. At that time I had received no indication via text to say what the situation was at the school. I walked on to work not knowing what I was about to find when I turned the corner or entered the gate at the school.

The cheering had stopped so that was at least comforting. All the schools here have uniforms for their students, and not like the SNL skit catholic school girl style uniforms. These uniforms are generally just a collard t-shirt with pants or LONG skirts for the girls, most schools are easily identifiable by their uniforms. There were loads of my school’s uniforms walking around the street (with students in them) when I was approaching. Now it was time for my imagination to take off.

“Have the students deposed of the proviseur, security guard, and other teachers? Will the school be in a blaze when I round corner? Will there be random small children with AK’s and frozen bisap (comparable to Kool-Aid) waiting for me? Are these kids walking the street going to realize that ‘Hey that’s that white guy that teaches at our school once a week, GET HIM!’? Could I have more absurd and ungrounded thoughts than this?”

When I did arrive at the school I found the gate slightly open and the guard waiting. I gave my morning greetings and moved on to the copy room. In the courtyard of the school it was of those, “oh crap it’s too quiet” situations. Upon arriving at the copy room one of the administrators (the guy who runs the copy room) came out. He informed me that that morning we gave the students the week off. Great news but it would have been nice to know beforehand.

My Tuesday school did meet on their normal schedule. My Thursday school did not meet but luckily I was feeling sick that morning and rather than riding my bike out to the school to find out, I just texted a colleague to say I wasn’t coming. He just told me not to worry about it because no one else was either, bonus.
Last Friday was Independence Day (part two). I say part two because it used to be August 4th but the current President, Brother Blaise, changed it to December 11th, he’s a big fan of change kindoflikehowhechangedtheconstitutionsohecouldrunforofficeagainnextNovember,Imeanwhat?

Anyway, there was a concert last Friday night that I accidently stumbled upon with my friend Siddo and some of his buddies. There, along with an acrobatic team from Ghana who liked to stick flaming torches down each other’s pants, I saw a fellow teacher who informed me that “no school, students are on strike”. So that’s fun because that was the only school I had left that was still working. So today there was no school and I’m pretty sure the strike is spreading because I received a message from a friend who works in a village saying “a group of high school kids just walked by my house blowing whistles” and just being generally annoying. Good stuff, their reaction was the same as mine which was, get off the soccer field and go to the mayor’s house or something.

In any case I will continue to wait out the “strike/protest” so I can begin work again. While it is still ranging from 91-90F for the highs during the day I am aware that Christmas is next week, at least that’s what the calendar says. So next week I’ll be taking my temporarily unemployed-self to the beach in Ghana, I’ll be sure to have lots of pictures for you.
Peace

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.