Living the life...

Last Friday was an outing;  Simon, who has been exploring, had visited and thought I should see a particular village.  We went on his moto up a track at the back of town, into a hilly area which I did not even know existed about 3k into the bush, and onwards for quite a while to a remote, remote place.  I began to wonder whether if the moto broke down whether we were just a bit too far off the beaten track ... my lack of courage has been a motif, I think, of this blog.

We arrived at the village - if it has a name, I do not know it.  It is at the neck of a sort of valley system, and looked at first for all the world like a medieval English village to me.  Huge old trees, kapok and baobab.  Each thatched mud-rendered house was surrounded by a mud wall creating the courtyard area, and then its land surrounded by a 6ft high wattle fence.  Sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys all around.  There were alleyways between households, hedged on both sides in wattle, and the houses had fetishes on the doorposts.  Real Africa, that - not a hint of medieval England. 

But the reason we had come was not just for the view.  Simon had identified that it had a lovely buvette - pub, really - and a lot of the folks from thereabouts were at the buvette drinking dolo - the millet beer of Burkina.  It is made on the premises - of course - as follows.  Millet is pounded and mixed with water and then boiled and strained and boiled and strained and boiled, in great basins suspended by a sort of open oven over a wood fire.  The resulting brew has yeast thrown in it, and it is left to ferment for 24 hours.  Strained again, this is dolo.  Central to weddings and celebrations, but drunk most days by everyone, including children.  Mildly alcoholic, it tastes like a sour cider - it is refreshing - and yes, I drank it from a gourd and yes, of course, spent the next five hours waiting to die of dolo poisoning. 

So we sat, and we drank, and bit by bit everyone passed by and shook our hands, and the women who had walked the 8k into town to go to market came back and stopped at the buvette and had a dolo or two.  And the children called out t'baabou ('white person') until they tired of it and Simon got to speak his Djoula and I was polite in French;  we walked around and Simon advised me to walk behind him so as not to afront (!), and it was amiable, and there was not an NGO 4x4 in sight.

I was very frustrated by the fact that I was there, in this amazing place, so very far from home, with a camera in my backpack and it is just not acceptable to take people's photographs.  I cannot show you.  I hope the description serves.