Waga Hiphop 2013

Because I am so very cool, I went to Waga HipHop on Friday night and saw the Belgian band Maky (fab), Krotal from Congo (also fab), and was supposed to see the very great Billy Billy from Cote d'Ivoire but he couldn't make it .... and finally Greg, a sort of Burkinabe version of Gareth Gates ,,, not very hiphop at all!  I realised I have to get some Converse. 

Thenain, Emefa and I had legs of lamb, strung up and roasted in front of an open wood fire.  Delicious.  I do enjoy my visits to Ouaga!

Arlette's party

Saturday night was Arlette's birthday party - and her daughter's birthday party, too.

Her daughter has always treated me with great suspicion, but a camera works wonders - here she is with her Granny.

Tabaski or Eid ul-Adha

We have had a great day in Diébougou – it has been pretty much non-stop party since this morning.  A big, big Muslim festival - and in this town it is a real event. The office and even the bank shut at 2pm yesterday so that people could get ready for Tabaski.   Last night little boys stopped by to show me their new clothes, just picked up from the tailor for today’s celebrations.  There was not a chicken left to be had, not even for ready money.  I had pre-empted disaster by getting 5 on Sunday which is when I did my big offering.  More below.

Tabaski here is the daytime equivalent of first-footing, going from house to house, eating a bit here and a bit there once morning prayers are done.  Traditionally, a ram is offered and killed in the large family courtyards and there is much mutton to be had.  Rice, salads, chicken braisé, and delicious ginger and baobab drinks. 

My celebrations started on Sunday when I sent the young off to the livestock market to buy my chickens for me.  No point in going myself – the prices were already on the ‘You cannot be serious’ side of normal.  They brought them back to my courtyard and we fed them rice and oats and water.  Yes, folks, they were still alive.  I named them.  An uncle/neighbour had been co-opted for the bit I couldn’t face, but I plucked and drew all five. ….. the birds were immersed in boiling water to make the plucking easier, and then had their down singed off by Farida using my little charcoal burner.    Quite a lot of hard work and I moaned constantly about the ease of buying supermarket chickens.  Once the birds were all on some sort of cookable state, I prepared supper for my intended guests and headed out to the orphans’ ceremony for the afternoon.

Henri

The orphans’ ceremony was predictably dull; on behalf of VARENA I presented some of the 31 school ‘kits’ of a backpack, pens, pencils, crayons, exercise books and most importantly the school fees.  I stumbled through some version of ‘I am really happy to be here today and to see so many young faces …’ and tried not to wince each time the compère described the children as the future of tomorrow.  It took me back to Gayhurst School and ‘I believe the children are our future’…..

Riotous supper of chicken – Michel and Gustave, (Henri was a little reluctant and was sent back to the oven to reflect a bit on his future) – saffron rice (thanks, Tante Claire) with aubergine sauce and as a starter my thrice-cooked chips which were a great success.  The guests spent rather too much time telling great cross-West-Africa bus journey stories which involved paying 1,000 CFA here and there in order to keep the bus on the road – customs, police, border guards and passport controls – and not enough time in wonderment at my chicken-plucking stories….

 

 

Today the remaining chickens (Emile and Albert) were cooked with pasta and sauce for the neighbours, most of whom popped in for anticipatory smelling and assurances about how hungry they were.  I sent off the platters and went elsewhere, myself…. to join the chums for rice, fish and stories about weddings in Senegal and Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire – believe me, we just don’t know how to have a good wedding the Europe – only lasts one or two days?  Amateurs, we are!  No bartering over bride money?  Where’s the challenge?  No rushing about town in a minibus honking the horns for 12 hours?  No killer local spirits followed by dolo followed by wine and beer and ……. You get the picture.  Much fun is had.

Then off to M and Mme Barry – yes, the bank manager and his wife – for another drop-in and some more chicken and salad and sugary drinks and I am now collapsed on my sofa typing this with an enormously full tummy feeling sluggish and slightly overdone myself. And I still have two visits to pay before bedtime….



 

Madame Barry and me

Using a mortar and pestle African-style

There has been much making of foutou as yams are now in season.  It is hours of hard work, and I am not wholly convinced it is worth it ..... In Cote d'Ivoire they have yam flour for making foutou and foufou - now that is an idea!

 

Here is my first lesson, from grown-up Yeri

 

And here is my second lesson, from the Sunday lunch tribe.  Sanata is doing the pounding – she is back from Bobo now that school has started – hurrah!

Beatrice and Albert the Unfortunate Children, and the Evil Trafficker, Djean

The theatre show is wonderful.  I have now seen it twice in villages, and it works really, really well.  An audience with no access to TV or radio drama, no cinema or theatre except these NGO funded events but centuries of oral traditional story-telling – they are about as receptive an audience as you can get. They laugh delightedly or intake their breath sharply at  the appropriate moments, and positively delight in the second half of the event – the audience gets to vote the characters in and out, panto-style, and the actors respond with panto gusto, booing the audience and pretending to be furious if they are judged to be a villain.  Everyone joins in and a great deal of both-handed finger wagging occurs.

Then a member of the audience is selected or volunteers to be one of the main characters in a scene promoting the key message, and they play their allocated part with the other actors in role, putting their arguments against – in our case – child trafficking, and finally, it is open-mike on the topic – and there are usually three or four folks with things to say…. Or seven or eight…. Anyway, a huge success, and at each show I am part of the most engaged audience I have ever witnessed.  What a joy.

Diebougou airport.

Today was a weird one.  Simon, fellow VSO, and I turned up in Bamako – the Burkina version, rather than the Mali version so I guess the name means ‘Stonetown’ or something – and we drove to the place we were expecting to have our first theatrical extravaganza – ‘Albert and Beatrice, the Unfortunate Children, and the Evil Trafficker Djean’ as I have dubbed it so as to give away the plot – only to see another white person – a woman – holding a women’s meeting in our spot!  And with glossy brochures and a 4x4 Cherokee Jeep as well!  Huh!  We were well outclassed!

It is really true that Burkina Faso has a project at nearly every street corner, and that most of them have glittering vehicles – even we have two motorbikes – so transport is the theme. 

I have written before about the buses – the big ones which race down roads at ridiculous speeds, full of people and luggage and furniture and motor bikes and even goats;  they are the luxury end of the transport spectrum.  Things have slowed down just a little since the rainy season started, as most of the tarmac has dropped off some sections of the major roads, but lorries and buses continue to rocket along with seemingly no consideration for speed or safety.  Lorries shed loads with a regularity most UK road users would find intolerably frustrating and they  break down all the time.  Their use seems pretty much un-policed.  I believe Customs has a reputation for leniency in exchange for currency…..

Next in the hierarchy is the ubiquitous and completely decrepit African minibus, bits falling off, doors missing, with even more people per seat and luggage per person than the coaches.  They are the cheaper way between cities, but are more prone to breaking down, and they do have more livestock and so the senses can be a mite overwhelmed.  But they get there; they are friendly, have less rigid timetables and young men ride on the roofs or hanging off ladders at the back.  Apparently for fun.  Amazing.  Like the lorries, they have each got a permanent list to one side.  They appear deadly.  Very occasionally one sees a burned-out minibus ….

Private cars are a puzzle.  There are very flash ones, usually white 4x4s, with NGO logos on the doors but sometimes there are black ones with tinted windows ….. we do not enquire about who is in them …..  and next in the pecking order come some reasonable (usually Japanese) modern small cars – rare in Diébougou  - then the imported Mercedes which resemble the minibuses in their complete decrepitude.  Owning a car is an impossible dream for most Burkinabè.   This is why roads are comparatively free of traffic and why tarmac is a rarity – major routes only.  The puzzle is how anyone can afford them.

Most folks with transport have motos – scooters to you and me – or bicycles.  They are capable of being loaded with everything one can imagine needing – metal doors, sacks of grain, double beds, goats and chickens; families of five bounce around on both bikes and scooters.  I put about £1.40 worth of petrol per week into mine – so clearly cheap to run.  We smile at each other as we cross on roads.  We accept that folks will pull out of side turnings without warning, and that donkeys or sheep may suddenly run into the road.  We are relaxed …. even in Ouagadougou.  Although I do not think I could use my moto there – I am too much of a coward.

Lastly, the dreadful private enterprise which is the town taxis.  Diébougou is not large enough to have one.  In Ouaga one goes everywhere by private or collective taxi.  Many of them make the minibuses look safe.  They are clapped-out beyond belief – my last Ouaga trip started in one so completely appalling I asked the driver to stop and let me out, despite the fact that it was dark and I had two suitcases – I had negotiated my fare at the gates of the bus station without seeing the vehicle.  Its windscreen was caved in – clearly from an accident where another road user or pedestrian had hit it – on the driver’s side.  The back windows were all missing.  There were no internal door handles.  The boot did not close …. Worst of all, the rear wheels were so misaligned that the taxi sort of wiggled down the road.  ‘Let me out – you cannot be serious’ I cried.  He replied:  ‘Calm down dear, I can only go at five kilometres an hour – what could go wrong at that speed?’  And of course he was right.  I made it through the journey in one piece, told him his vehicle needed some urgent attention, and thought that I have grown accustomed to transport here so that the incident felt normal. 

Trains?  There are none since the troubles in Cote d’Ivoire.  Planes? Only outwards and inwards;  There are supposed to be flights between Ouaga and Bobo but I am not sure they happen …. Donkey carts – yes!  Mostly driven by children….

Many people do not go anywhere they cannot walk to.  Carrying what they need.  TIA.

And lastly, because it is marked on Google Earth and you may have wondered, this is it.  The Diébougou airport.  A red dust track running into the bush. 

 

Bapla Reservoir

 

These two picures were taken this evening as I came back from a village causerie.  Bapla Reservoir has two overspill rivers in the rainy season, which dry up completely in off season.  During the day the rivers are very heavily fished - carp and catfish mostly - and these are sold by the side of the road which runs over the dam.  The reservoir is very full at the minute - you can just see the boys swimming off what we know as Bapla Plage.  They were diving off the roof of the ruined building as I rode out  at lunchtime which I loved - the reservoir is a very special for me as well as a vital resource for all the region.