Did you know that...

In following a friend of mine (lotte, ik pik even je ideetje hier, auteursrechten binnenkort te betalen in belgisch bier, ok?) who always sends great mails in this style when she’s out travelling, I present to you, the latest burkina did-you-knows!

Did you know that:

- fall has come to Burkina too: the leaves (or, well, everything) turns brown and yellow, and the light is different
- the nights are getting chilly
- this make me want to come home and celebrate Christmas
- I am coming home for Christmas, yay!
- I have a colleague who has made it a challenge to convert me to the Christian religion
- He hasn’t gotten very far
- We do have interesting discussions on homosexuality, the pope, hypocrisy and corruption
- He has decided that the way into my religious soul is music
- He may be right that if there’s a way, that would be it
- Johan is in Ghana right now, visiting his little brother Marcus
- They seem to be having fun: they were hungover yesterday anyway
- I am tired of Burkina beer
- That the beer here is almost exclusively sold in half-litre bottles doesn’t help
- There’s no pizza in Ouahigouya!
- My parents are coming to visit me here
- I am curious to see how they react to Africa, 30 years after they left the continent
- I went out dancing all night on Saturday
- I love that people love to dance here, men and women
- I had a great time
- I am speaking completely Burkina-french
- This apparently sounds ridiculous to native French speakers, me not being burkinabe
- I don’t care about that
- I am struggling with moore, the local language
- I feel like I’m language-saturated (after learning Swedish)
- This is a pity, because often I don’t know what people around me are talking about
- This is one of the hardest parts of being here
- There are a lot of things that aren’t easy here
- but some things are so much easier
- I am hoping for more visits from friends
- You are all welcome
- People here all called burkinabe
- They are super-friendly
- I feel like I really have some good friends here
- This is nice
- And this is enough for now!

What can you transport on a motorcycle?

can you imagine what people can transport on the back of a motorcycle? I dare you! Answer: just about anything! from refridgerators to an entire cow which has been cut into pieces!

Houseguests

Living in Burkina Faso means tolerating a certain amount of unwanted houseguests... ants, cockroaches, crickets, lizards... they all live in with me, but don't think they pay rent!

This week I painfully discovered I have new houseguests, ones I hadn't met before. I woke up in the middle of the night being bitten hard by something in my bed..ouch! Then it bit me again, double-ouch! I knew this was no little mosquito-bite or ant-bite. I turned on the lights and saw... a scorpion in my bed!!! Panic!

When I arrived here last november I thought scorpions were deadly. Luckily I had found out that this is not true, that scorpion-bites hurt a lot, but won't kill you. And luckily, Johan was with me that night, so I could make him suck out the poison. Imagine I had been alone and thinking I would die! This not being the case I was just bitten and hurting. All in all the bites didn't bother me all too much, the next day they were just red marks. I think the scorpion (which Johan killed mercilessly) was still a baby, it was smaller than usual, so I guess I was lucky. Still, I have hung up my mosquito-net and tuck it in tight now. Houseguests, fine, but unwanted bed-guests, no thanks!

Ouagadougou flooded!!!

Burkina Faso is known as one of the driest countries on earth. The rainy season, which lasts from about may/june to september/october, brings with it rains which often fall suddenly and heavily, but only come every two or three days. The rest of the year: not a drop! This is one of the reasons why I am working here: to increase the acces to water.

But this week, on tuesday september 1st, something quite the opposite happened: an extreme downpour plunged the whole capital Ouagadougou into the water. After a never-before seen downpour of 260 mm (whereas the total rainfall in one year would be about 600-700 mm) the entire capital was flooded. Water everywhere.

The city is not well equiped for this kind of weather, and thus about 150 000 people have lost their house and just about everything they own. Many poor people live in houses built with mud bricks, which melt like sugar in such extreme rain. And because of the speed with which the water rose many people did not have time to save their belongings. This is a hard blow to people who are already struggling for survival.

How come it's already friday, and still nothing has appeared about this on the news in Europe? Not important enough?

(picture: ocadesburkina.org)

check out this video on youtube

Birds

Yesterday I had gone to work with the motorcycle I had borrowed for when Johan was here this weekend. At lunch I came home to find some grass and leaves stuck under the saddle of my bike, which had stayed at home. I thought it was the neighbours kids playing, and removed the grass. In the evening though, it was there again... and today I have found out that there is a couple of small red birds planning on building a family under the saddle of my bike! What to do? I don’t have the heart to chase them away! I think I’ll borrow the motorcycle for a couple of weeks... :-)

Sleeping outside

People have been wondering about my daily life here. So I thought I’d share one of the biggest differences between my European and my African life with you. The past three months (april, may, june) have been tooooo hot for me to be able to sleep inside. My house is nice and cool during the day, but at night its an oven. Luckily, I have a roof terrace on my house, so for the past three months I have been going up there to sleep.

It took some time to get used to lying under a starry African sky, with the sounds of the neighbours turkeys (who appear to be night animals), my neighbours’ (who also sleep outside) snoring, their babys crying, the early roosters screams, and the mosques of Ouahigouya calling everyone to prayer at 4 in the morning. But at least it was cool and there was a breeze. And it feels good, to go to bed early and go up with the sun.

Digging for Gold

In some places not far from where I live someone found gold not so long ago. This has lead to a incredible inflow of hopefuls souls into these places, which were just nowheres in the dust before. The gold-fever has led to the creation of entire temporary villages, where houses are made of straw, but you can get everything you need, just as in a regular town: food, water, a spare tire for your bike, a radio, and even a haircut.

The circumstances in which gold is dug for are daunting and dangerous. Holes of up to 40-50 metres deep are dug straight down into the ground, with primitive manpowered tools. It can become incredibly hot in these holes and air to breath can be scarce, so makeshift airshafts are used to prevent suffocation. There are no ladders, people climb in and out by crevices in the walls of the holes. One person digs and sends up the loose gravel in bags to his companions outside. Sometimes a horizontal shaft is dug from this hole. These are very dangerous, and often collapse, as tools and material for preventing collapse are scarce.

The gravel hauled up can hold indications of gold or gold itself. It is brought to someone on the site who has a machine to grind to dust, and then it is washed to find the gold itself. You need to pay the person with the grinding machine, and you need to buy the water to wash it with, as there are no wells or other water sources nearby (thus this has led to the creation of a small industry of people fetching water and selling it). Thus the whole activity is seldom profitable and only very rarely does someone find his fortune. But those few who do keep the hopes of all the others alive. Imagine, find gold one afternoon and be able to buy your own motorcycle and your own house on the spot, and having the means of taking two wives at once!

Digging for gold is dangerous, and only estimates exist of how many people die in these holes. Some people say the only way to know is to count the pairs of slippers left at the sides of holes with no one to pick them up, or the number of bicycles gathering dust because the owner has disappeared....

Digging for gold is something which attracts young people, young men leaving their villages to try their luck in these dangerous sites. In some villages you will find only old people and children who are left. It undermines the social structure and the development of these villages, and it makes it difficult for our work as well. How to work with developing a village when the whole active population is absent?