The Great North

We’d heard rumors of the good life up north, away from our dense thicket of coastal humidity, upward towards the land of crisp dry air, nomadic herdsmen (read: milk products and abundant meat!), nights cold enough to warrant a blanket, and a very close friend I hadn’t seen in over 2 years. After 22 hours of buses (which promised air conditioning and croissants and failed on both counts) we made it to Togo’s northern neighbor, Burkina Faso! More specifically the capital city which goes by a wonderful name: Ouagadougou.

Unfortunately during our stay Burkina was experiencing some civil unrest. A policemen had shot and killed a university student over a personal issue (flirting with his girlfriend, as I understand it) and the event had started a cascade of student protests which closed schools and set fire to police stations in over 15 cities. There are of course many more layers to the story but my understanding of the situation is limited so I won’t delve in any further. Suffice it to say most of our 5 days there were spent waiting out the protests in the Peace Corps transit house simply talking over coffee and ordering delivery (a concept which has yet to make it to Togo). The one day we did manage to venture out though made up for the rest.

In an act of unexpected generosity, and to get us out of the city center, the director of PC Burkina provided us a driver for a day’s entertainment. First we came to a granite sculpture garden, carvings popping out of the naturally scattered stones where you least expect it. Then we continued on to a place which sounded like “les os” (in French “the bones”) which the driver said white people love. We arrived at a lot of nothingness and were led to a cage containing a deer-like creature with a twisted horn. Coming from the hum-drum village life, we were completely enthralled. For nearly 30 minutes we watched it’s every move until the man leading us starting chuckling and said something like “don’t you want to see the lions?” Lions! Turns out we were at a zoo (confusingly pronounced “zoh”), the president’s private collection in fact, where fierce animals slept behind flimsy cages of patchwork fencing through which the guide made sure to prod them to life with a long bamboo pole. He leapt in to the hippo cage to tickle their noses with a tree branch. Ostriches paraded around the grounds as freely as peacocks. A bossy elephant actually smacked Mike across the face with his trunk. More like visiting an abandoned circus side show than a zoo, and the surrealism didn’t end there. We then found ourselves on some dusty road to a goat cheese farm (cheese!) and sat by a swimming pool (the luxury!) as we heard the news that the riots had intensified, all volunteers were ordered to stay put. No problem.

Back across the Togo border we were invited by a friend in the region to attend a funeral in his village. How could we refuse? Funerals here are an over the top party where a family spends their life’s savings on music, food and drinks for the whole village. Death isn’t ever really mentioned.  This funeral would be best compared to a rave. Around 11pm we walked 30 minutes across dried up corn fields in region with no electricity toward the booming sound of a double speaker system echoing against the starry desert sky. Once there we were given calabash upon calabash of tchakpa (gourds filled with millet beer). Dust rose up in plumes like a fog machine on the dried dirt dance floor where people vibrated intensely to the jittery double beats. There were in fact two different songs playing over one another at any given time. Around 3am, someone served us all bowls of delicious bean beignets, then more tchakpa. The party continued until dawn, revelers simply stepping around the heads of those who’d fallen asleep on the closest patch of spare earth. We walked home and slept under the mango tree in our friend’s courtyard. I woke a few hours later to a kind woman, whom I didn’t know and with whom I did not share a language, placing a steaming bowl of corn paste and spicy sauce beside me.

After breakfast a man in a dark hat came over to tell us there were special guests we might like to meet at his house. There we met three camel-riding nomads who’d passed the night in the village, on their way southward to “better know the world” as there wasn’t much work during the dry season in Northern Burkina. One old man had a brilliant purple purse hanging on his saddle. They let us ride their enormous camels a few paces before heading off across the horizon. And then we too left, on wheels however.