Bobo!

This weekend I went with Fatou to Bobo-Dioulasso to visit her mother, and for me to see a new city. The drive takes about 5 hours to get there and with a 4 year old it feels more like ten. Thankfully Fatou’s car had air-conditioning because I was preparing for the worst. She hired a driver to drive us because the roads are very dangerous (physically they are bad) and I think it was the best so that when the four year old was being difficult she could focus on her. On the way home she even change spots with me and sat in the back it got to bad. Not to mention that there was ALSO a nanny that came with us. One the drive you past by a series of different sceneries; first the city where people are still living in homes that resemble houses. Then you come to the edge of the city were you see abandoned one room houses where men who had just moved to the city build in order to live cheaply but commute into the city for work until you can find a better job. These are literally bricks made into one small room just for sleeping and maybe a window, no door. And there is a field of hundreds of these abandoned by the fact that the men were never able to move their families. Then things become a bit more rural. The road we are driving on is called high way 1. It also goes to the Ivory Coast, and Niger, and a few other major countries, so there is a lot of traffic on it. Men pull over their big trucks and sleep underneath them to find some shade. I saw about 8 horrible accidents there and back, which is probably why they had a driver. Things of all shape and sizes walked out onto the road, children, chickens, goats, cows, bikes, crazy people, babies, piglets, you name it and it wanted to cross the road the second you were coming. I’m getting better at not being car sick just from trips like this. Once out in the middle of literally nowhere, you start to see mud huts and grass roofs, less clothing and more naked babies. Fatou told me that 15 years ago you could see elephants here but it has gotten so dry that they went south. But the signs for elephants crossing still exist even minus their absence. It so dry, even the houses look like they are begging for water. But when it rains in Burkina it pours, all the houses have little huts elevated about the ground just to store their years supply of food so that when it does rain their grain will be dry. You also start to see a shift in the economy the farther you drive out. At one point we saw a rock painted “shell” as in the gas station and then a plastic bottle filled with a little bit of gas. These bottles are everywhere even in the city but they are usually a bit more professional than one bottle. Half way on the drive we stop along side a café in a town to grab a bite to eat. I packed a sandwich because fatou said I might not be able to eat the food, and the nanny and driver grab some rice from a woman I will no refer to as ‘big momma.” Because not only was she big she also had like a million children. For lunch fatou ordered chicken, and so this woman takes this scrawny piece of meat, the obviously they don’t use chemicals to beef them up, and threw the whole thing into a fryer, guts an all. She then fishes it out with this stick them and puts it on the inside of a paper bag and puts it on the table, photos to come later. Mmm fried intestine, I passed. After finishing lunch I put my bottle of coke down on the table and started to get up, a horde of children ran to the bottle to get the last sip of coke out of it, and take the bottle to get some money for it. There are a ton of Muslim children begging on the street because in order to become more educated, in Islamic teachings, they need money so you can spot them by the tin can they wear around their waist. Along with the Islamic sayings they say to you. I learned a few of them in Kenya. Basically just hello and may Allah be with you. As you drive along there are some points where you have to register, and pay a toll fine. At these locations women stay sitting waiting for a car to stop to bombard them with the good they are selling. And since it is mango season it is usually mangoes, or sesame cakes. We stopped on the way back to buy like 100 mangoes and when we stopped the car was surrounded by women with baskets and we couldn’t open the door until we had picked the ones we want. I couldn’t see anything but women and mangoes. It was terrifying.

Finally reaching Bobo, I am staying in the house of Fatou’s sister. Fatou had 8 siblings but her father had two wives who had another five children so I cant really tell you who is who, and I thought my family was complicated. Fatou wanted to stay at the hospital with her mom, so I was allowed to stay in my own room up above all the chaos. I even had my own bathroom with a functioning toilet and a good shower! Although the water did not last all weekend. This house was like a day care center, people came in an out like they paid to have their children there. Fatou’s sister has 4 daughters, lots of cousins, the house girls to help and two of her brothers live there. Also I think it was the neighborhood kid hang out. People came from every which way running and screaming. When you first walk in the courtyard to your left you see a little hut where they store food and pots and pans for cooking. Most of the cooking is done outside. There is also a big center for washing clothes and dishes. To your right you see a horse, that’s all I could see. There was just a horse standing there, not in a barn, just there. Actually I makes me sick to think about this horse. Its leg was tied to the wall and it couldn’t walk or basically move, and it wasn’t allowed out the whole weekend. It was a serious form of animal cruelty but I don’t know if it would do any better if I cut the rope. I can’t talk about the horse it just makes me mad. So in front of the horse were the servant’s bathrooms and showers, yes they were outside.

The first night we got there so late all we did basically was eat and then sleep. But these servant girls made so much food, it was a struggle to convince them that you were full. Although I had my own room I didn’t sleep every well, the roof is made up tin sheets and cats and birds like to find their way up there and so all night it sounded like nails on the chalk board, it was in fact one of the worst noises I’ve ever heard. But then it was arranged that the next morning, since fatou was busy with her mom in the hospital, sten’s sister in law caddi would show me around. She didn’t speak a word of English so I had a headache after the afternoon was over, but my French is better. In the morning she took me to the national museum of Burkina. I asked her not to take me to museums, but apparently she didn’t care. I usually like museums, but in western countries. In Africa museum means only white people go so they can charge them a lot. And this was exactly that. I paid about 7 dollars for the both of use to look at five masks and some cloth pinned to a board. Outside they had a “traditional hut” which they kept trying to get me to take a picture of, but it was created to be in a museum so basically it was bullshit. Then after the boys giving the tour could see I lost interest, one said “want to see some fish.” I said why not, so they walked us down to a river behind the museum. I take back the word river, it was a pond filled with trash, plastic bags everywhere and garbage. I looked at the pond and thought “oh Africa” and then it started to move. Sections of the pond were shifting but it was so dirty brown and with so much trash I couldn’t tell what it was. Then the guy threw some clean water in and this huge mouth opened up. The pond was actually filled with giant catfish. And I mean GIANT. There were so many and they were so big they could barely swim. It was fun to watch for a while.

After the museum caddi took me to the big market downtown to look at the stores. It’s a pretty stereotypical African market, where the stalls are put together with pieces of wood and tars. They are so close together you can walk through 10 shops in ten steps. This markets had narrow walkways through many different stalls. You could buy anything from chewing gum to luggage to bras, to stereos. People constantly touching me and pulling me towards their place, tlakign to me, its extremely stressful. Awful even. But you want to see it. I wanted to look at some clothes and jewelry. Caddi negotiated over a piece of luggage. She is trying to get a visa to visit Sweden so she needed a suitcase. I was trying to find some gifts and ended up finding a man who I would tell him what I wanted and he would go through the alleys trying to find it, making my walking very limited. I’m sure he took some money out of it as well. I was the only white person I saw there and there were a lot of kids walking around selling things who saw me as a perfect target. Usually they were selling things like belts or gum, or kids shoes. Kids in Burkina can start working very early, especially if a family cant afford to feed them, begging is included as a form of work because sometimes it is their only means of eating. The market was very hot and sweaty so afterwards we drove back to my home so I could shower and take a little nap after my not very restful night. During my nap I was awoken by another loud noise, rain! Not just a little bit of rain, buckets of rain. When it rains in Africa people run like acid is falling down, they go screaming under shelter. The rain was heavy for at least 2 hours. I love it though it cooled everything down to a reasonable temperature. After the rain stopped caddi wanted to show me another museum even though I begged her not to, but off we went. Driving for about 30 minutes we finally arrive in front of this atrocious gate. Of course caddi says “its so pretty!” the gate is sculptures of people, painted all bright colors, just for tourists. We go inside the gate and then it finally looks like Africa again. A building once built by the French is now crumbling and we walk around to the information desk and no one is there, the whole thing is closed. It was supposed to be the cultural museum but there is nothing left. Probably no one went in it. So I humored caddi and stayed a bit and then asked for her to drive me to the fruit market I had seen a few minutes away. While driving we came across a round about with very interesting symbolism. There in front of us was a wildebeest being eaten by a lion, the lion was attacking the neck and blood was spurting everywhere. Just this alone I thought was weird, then I looked behind it to see two statues 50 meters tall. This was a statue of the president of Burkina with Gadhaffi! I almost fell over! Fatou says that Gadahffi gave Burkina a lot of money a while ago so that the president would favor him, thus the statue. I took a picture…it will come later. The fruit market wasn’t really a fruit market, mainly it was a mango market since it’s the only fruit in season. There were piles upon piles of mangoes, all the same so I don’t know how you choose to buy what from whom. After returning back home, it started to rain again and I enjoyed staying in with the crazy children and eating rice with everyone. It was a really nice trip to Bobo and I was happy to be invited along!

I go home to my own apartment tomorrow, I’ve had dirty dishes there for a week I cant wait to smell it!