West Africa Vignettes

Vignettes from 2004 in Burkina Faso

“Broken countries, but then, how come they still survive? There is something about survival in Africa that beats me, every time.” Anne Paludan


Weather

It is so hot here in the Sahel that even my shadow drips. At high noon it drips out of sight, leaving just me, dripping in the desert. Me dripping, and the riverbeds dry for months.
­ Climate is not a selling point of this place; there are no good seasons here. There are less-bad seasons, and lateral moves from one meteorological trial to the next. Winter begins in December. We are relieved because November is the month everyone burns dead branches and refuse from streets and fields, and respiratory illnesses abound. December nights and mornings are pleasantly cool (not cool enough to kill the mosquitoes) but it is still up to 36 C in the mid-day shade. Harmattan begins in January. Harmattan is a hot dry wind that blows in off the desert, bringing with it a thick haze of sand and dust (this is a lateral move from the haze of burning garbage in Nov). And just as I am fed up with sand gathering in every crevasse of my house and body, the hot season will begin. This will turn the world from clothes dryer into an oven. The rains will begin in June and hit their apex in August. The rivers of water will be essential to plant new crops, but travel is severely limited, as roads become impassable. Then in Sept-Oct the rain and the wind cease. Because there is no breeze, the number of insects hovering about multiplies. They will congregate in the pleasant confines of my well-lit house, where they drop into my food and wine, and fly down the front of my dress and into my hair. This makes me look forward to the relief that the Harmattan will bring.

Harmattan:
a hot dry desert wind that blows the sand of the Sahara into every crevasse of your mind and body.
­ I was in my office one afternoon, quietly working at my computer on a peaceful, slightly overcast day. I glanced up from my computer and the sky outside my office window had very suddenly turned an apocryphal, dark quinacrodone orange. The air was completely still. Then a strong wind came howling in from across the savannah, thick with sand from the Sahara. After a few minutes of this eerie preparation, a torrential downpour commenced, complete with thunder and lightening. The noise under a tin roof is awesome.

­ These thunderous downpours are a foil to the ‘ghost-riders in the night’. That’s what I call the cyclists that ride with no lights. Their shapes emerge like phantoms from the shadows, hardly registering on your optic nerve before soundlessly disappearing again into the darkness. The subtlety of this sight in contrast to the intensity of the downpours is a visual metaphor of life here.

Sound and Light show in Mali
­ One night we stayed in a village on the top of a high falaise (cliff). The village is built on a wide, flat rocky projection with steep cliffs on three sides, and a rocky peak on the fourth. This location provides a 300-degree view of the cliffs and sandstone pillars across the ravine. A wild electrical storm came in the night we were there. I took my thermarest chair and found a spot alone on a huge sandstone slab outside the village, and watched the storm slowly gather force in the black night.

Lightening started soundlessly in one darkening corner of the sky, and spread to surround the village. Ragged flashes would come from all directions, and for brief seconds would light up the whole sky, revealing the craggy sandstone rock formations and peaks close by. In between flashes the world was completely black. After a half hour of this spectacular light show, the audible elements joined in, like sections in a symphony. Thunder started a slow tympanic grumble in the distance, then came a howling strong wind carrying dust from the Sahel, and finally, with a sense of relief, crashing rains. In my head the orchestra played full blast.

­ We finally had a major rain this morning. Because there is no sewer system, many side roads turn momentarily into rushing rivers. I was driving down one such road, and decided to turn onto a side road and park just before my destination because I didn’t know how deep the rushing water was. But the shop was on the other side of the street- how to get across the rushing river on foot?? I managed to jump across one stream, but was now stranded on a little island in the middle of the road. Suddenly a 4X4 came rushing right for me, and I was prepared to get completely drenched as he drove by. But instead he stopped right in front of me, opened his driver side door, told me to stand on the doorframe and hold onto the handle above. He then drove me across the rushing river and deposited me safely on the other side, and with a charming smile, drove off. Did I feel like a rescued princess?? And did the Burkina fellows waiting for me in the shop have a good laugh??

Food

­ I finally made it to a restaurant that specializes in local dishes. How about Rat in tomato sauce served with ‘To’ [pronounced ‘toe’]? To is a thick, tasteless, paste [yes, that’s right- Elmer’s White Glue] made out of maize, and always eaten with a sauce. Rat was one of the most expensive dishes on the menu, as it is a specialty item. These are ‘country rats’ imported from the fields of Ghana, not the ‘city rats’ that eat garbage. How was it, you may wonder?? Never believe people who say of a strange dish, 'it's just like chicken' but decline to order it themselves. I was relieved that the head and tale were missing, but it still had a definite rat form and a gamey aftertaste. If I didn’t know it was rat I probably would have eaten more than a few bites, but it was still….. rat.

­ I recently visited my very favourite restaurant- Gondwana- which is also an art gallery displaying art from throughout West Africa. One walks from a non-descript dusty Ouaga street through the gate into another world. Three theme rooms, all decorated with original art, surround a courtyard with a beautiful small fountain and many plants. One area is a Tuareg tent, complete with sandy floor and a roof made from 500 goatskins. A West African band plays two nights a week. The free appetizer that night was a dish of sautéed caterpillars. This may seem unusual by itself, but this starter was served to us just before the dark chocolate-pistachio mousse that we came for. All was washed down with a shot glass of strong sweet Tuareg mint tea and a shooter of rum and a syrup made from local flowers.

­ Traditional West African tea is served in a social ritual that can take most of the evening. Tea is made in petite, colourful ceramic teapots heated over coals in a small wire basket. ‘Gunpowder tea’ from China is used, with lots of sugar, and fresh mint leaves. Once the tea and water boil, the liquid is poured from a height from teapot to cup over and over again, to create froth. There are always three rounds of tea:

First tea is bitter as Life
Second tea is strong as Love
Third Tea is soft as Death


Cultural Vignettes

Greetings
This is a ‘4 kiss’ area of the world, and as many verbal greetings. I am enchanted by this system of greetings- in its detail and inclusiveness. Every morning and every afternoon Mamoudou will ask me how I am, how is my health, how is my family, and if I rested well. Even service people one has never met before and strangers on the phone must be properly greeted before you ask them for help. The guards sitting in front of houses and the men looking after the roadside stalls will loudly shout greetings after me if I forget to say hello as I ride by on my bike.

Women’s Work
­ Women have such hard lives here. They have enormous responsibilities, but their work is taken for granted. If a man’s wife dies, her work will be taken over by another woman- whether it is another wife, or daughter or sister. Women are keenly aware of this imbalance. The men I speak with (even educated men) seem to accept this as the way life is and must be for women, and assume that women accept this as well. They do not. Most men are completely out of touch with what women think and feel. When a man speaks on behalf of women, I double-check his statement with women friends. Rarely do women agreed with a man’s assessment. They need Tracy Chapman to come and sing about revolution:
­ “Don’t you know we’re talking about a revolution, it sound… like a whisper.”

­ Conversation with a village woman with a baby on her back:
*-How many children do you have?
#-Nine
*- Will this ninth one be your last child?
#- [with resignation] Madame, do you not have a husband?

­ “The women have nothing to do” comments one of the Sudanese refugee men, when listing the difficulties they face. As I walk around the camp, I see women collecting water at the well and hauling it back to their tents, washing children, washing clothes, preparing meals, going into the bush to collect wood, and I think to myself, ‘There they are- doing ‘nothing’ again! Women’s work in Africa is invisible.

Loaves and fish and chewing gum
­ A package of chewing gum I received illustrates the effectiveness of the social distribution system. An American fellow who had worked with MCC in Burkina Faso in past years gave a package of gum to each of us, among other goodies. When I got back home, I gave the package to my night guard, Ousmane. He immediately split the package of 6 in half, and gave 3 pieces to the guard across the street. Ousmane ate one, but I’m sure the other two were shared when he got home, and also the three pieces that went to the other guard. It was a lovely teaching moment to see this one pack of gum spread out within hours of its first distribution. And I have been trained now that if I bring a drink or some food out to my night guard, I must also bring something for the guard across the street. The difficult side of this distribution system is the enormous expectation placed on anyone fortunate enough to have a job. They are expected to provide support (even if occasional) to their extended family in the village.




Poverty and Privilege and Choice

­ Poor people have so few choices. They cope with the difficulties of life because they have no other option. Many of them do so with great courage and even the ability to sing and laugh. I had a conversation with a woman who cooks and cleans for one of my colleagues. She said to me, ‘Life brings us so many hard things- too hard for us if we know them beforehand. But God knows, and He gives us the strength and the grace we need. I told her that I did not have such faith. ‘Ah, but you have choices’ she said. When you don’t have choices you need more faith.

­ Soon after I arrived I had an unexpected chance to visit the house of a local staff person. In our standards he is terribly poor. He has a young wife and baby and they live in one small room- mud walls, tiny windows, tin roof, with no electricity or running water. And even this modest spot was about to be demolished to build a road. But in Burkina terms he is not poor. He’s maybe closer to the bottom than to the top, but he owns that tiny bit of land (albeit as a kind of squatter). I left there with a more concrete understanding of how privileged I am. I have an air conditioner in my bedroom, and ceiling fans in other rooms of my house. Every time I go from my air-conditioned office into the reception area, I hit a wall of privilege.

­ When I related this to my French teacher, Jacqueline, she was philosophical and pragmatic. She said, ‘It doesn’t help me if you stop using your air conditioner because you have this privilege and I do not. But it is good that you don’t have the illusion that you live as a Burkinabé, and it is also good that you are sensitive to help others.

­ Pascal- the day guard from another agency- just paid me a quick visit. This is the 6th day of a serious case of malaria. He has come in to the city to visit a health clinic. He received 2 injections, which have made it difficult for him to walk. He is going to his office to give them the note that he is sick, and then he has to cycle 17 km home. I gave him enough money to take his bike and catch a series of local taxies to take him home. Pascal said, ‘life is very difficult for us, but we are used to it. It bothers you because you aren’t used to this kind of difficulty.’ I replied, ‘I know you are used to it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear.’ He nodded.

­ On another visit Pascal told me the story of his baby daughter’s illness. She recently had a medical emergency and so Pascal took her to the public hospital. The staff would not even admit her to be looked at until Pacal paid up front for the examination, the tests, and the hospital room. They were prepared to literally let her die in the waiting room. Pascal left her there and went frantically around town to collect money. He could only manage to come up with half of what the hospital asked for, but time was running out, so he returned with this. The hospital staff admitted her, and proceeded to give her the most basic treatment, which was all the initial funds would cover. Over the next few days as Pascal raised funds, the hospital provided further treatment. This is the publicly funded hospital, which in theory should be free. If you are poor here and you get sick, chances are good that you will die. Pascal is still paying these medical debts.