The temperature is in the early
40s – I am almost completely flattened by it. I can see of no reason why
anyone would want to inhabit a place this hot. Let’s all move to
Scotland.
The highlight of last week –
which was a week of enormous variety charging about town interviewing various
social activists/professionals on the subject of development – was meeting the
‘chef coutumier’ or tribal chief. Oh yes, a chicken killed in front of us
and everything (due reverence from someone wanting customary justice over the
cutting down of a karité tree). A lot of alluding to powers in
incomprehensible French so that I was not sure if it was allusion or if he was
speaking Djula. He had his two ministers with him – both about 100 years old
, one blind – and he sat, a quite a young man with terrible teeth and a photo
of his father as tribal chief. Given the completely brilliant state of
everyone’s teeth here, I suspect he must have been a very, very spoilt child,
being fed sweets to flatter his father. And he is fighting a losing
corner. Diébougou is no longer a village. His greatest power was in
the allocation of ‘parcelles’ - land which newcomers can build temporary shacks
on. The good parcelles which have building-code requirements regarding
the structures, and which will get electricity and mains water (ha!) are sold
by the local council. But his allocation gets smaller as the need gets
greater – and so apparently the price of getting a parcelle from him increases
to. As D’bougou increases in size on a daily basis, allocation of
space/resources is central to power, and so his diminishing allocation must
rankle. Maybe some dead chickens at night and a few bones …
In contrast, we also met a
wonderful woman at the hospital – supposedly retired but called back to
supervise and overhaul food preparation – who had been a midwife and HIV/AIDS
counsellor. Really fabulous – utterly charming and inspiring.
Serious campaigning against female genital mutilation – euphemistically and
only known here as excision. It appears after most of these interviews
with all the local activists in development that about a quarter of the population is
trained to do HIV/AIDS counselling/education and deliver it to the other three
quarters.
Off this week-end to buy my
bike, I hope, and get it back to D’bougou from Bobo Dialassou which is the nearest
proper town. Life will pick up once I have a moped – I can go out after dark,
for example. The current curfew of 7pm is a bit trying. Not being
able to go out after 10am to shop on account of the crushing heat – this will
also be a thing of the past. At night the five minutes from the main road
– which is safe – to my house next to the sleeping policeman at the Public
Treasury office – which is safe – is 5 minutes of potentially unsafe which
becomes safe once I have transport.
Yay! I can go and meet folks for
a beer rather than having to beg a lift!
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