Dad does Burkina

I was so happy to see my parents in Tenerife for Christmas. We had a great week together. And then I got to bring my dad back with me. The two times I have left Burkina and come back its like stepping through a time warp, or onto another planet. Just a few short hours on Air France can take you centuries and worlds away.

Having my Dad come back here with me was a great stepping stone to re-integrate myself into Burkina and try to avoid the infamous post-vacation blues that plague a lot of volunteers after journeys to the western world. I have thought a million times over about what it would be like having my dad– or anyone for that matter– here. How would he react? How would my villagers react to him? Would I even be able to translate everything back and forth?

After landing late on new years eve, we still had stamina to share some really terrible burkina-brewed beer with some other volunteers that were in town. The next morning we headed down south. We had lunch in Koudougou (my training city) and visited the host family that I spent my first 2 months with.

We spend 3 days in my village which I think was the perfect amount of time. Everyone was so excited, especially my family, that Dad came. We toured the clinic and visited other volunteers’ sites that were close by. My dad got to experience the joys of trying to sleep while chickens run across your metal roof, the simple pleasure of a warm bucket bath, and the gourmet cuisine I whip up in my hut (featuring my personal favorite of macaroni and laughing cow cheese) .

Our last day in village, we gave out gifts to my family and that evening they had their New Years Party, involving a lot of dolo (which grew on my dad with every calabash he drank) and dad got to dig into some local grub starring the staple gelatinous corn flour called “to” accompanied by an exclusively Dagara leaf and peanut sauce called “djodjo” It was actually really good, some of the best local sauce I have ever had. Best of all, it didn’t make dad sick! Both my dads (american and burkinabe) gave little speeches swapping niceties and gratitude back and forth that were translated english to french to dagara and back by myself and my host brother.

After the meal, we broke out s’mores ingredients that I had had stashed away for a few months. The kids, and adults even, went crazy. There was a small war over who got to lick the marshmallow fluff that had melted onto the plastic bag (which ended up being shredded into tiny pieces by grabby greedy hands). As the sun was setting, the courtyard became increasingly populated with family, friends and neighbors passing out new years benedictions and seeking free calabashes of dolo. Once it got dark my Dad and I broke out glow sticks for the kids, creating another riotous scene, this time there were almost battlewounds with all of the adults clamoring over the kids to get their hands on them too.

We left village the next morning heading towards one of the few tourist destinations this country has to offer, the Nazinga animal reserve. After a rough ride along something that I am not certain was a road, we arrived and spent the night at the campement at the center of the reserve. That evening around dusk a pack of about 10 elephants came right up to the grounds and bathed themselves in the watering hole. The next morning we did a 630am tour around the park seeing 4 packs of elephants, baboons, antelope, bushbucks, warthogs, really cool birds and lots of other things that I did not know the french words for.

Our second touristic stop was the village of Tiebele, near the town of Po and a stone’s throw from Ghana. Its a traditional painted village dating back to the 16th century inhabited by the royal family (all the kings men, if you will). Houses are still built by the compound’s men in 3 traditional shapes and the ornate wall paintings are done and maintained by the women. The village tour we took, given by one of the “princes”, gave my dad a really good idea of the pervasive mysticism and animism of Burkinabe cultures. For example, when a new house is built, if bats do not inhabit it before the people move in, it means that there are bad spirits in the house so it must be torn down and entirely rebuilt.

Overall, my dad’s visit was great. It felt good to kind of show off how far I have come. I feel like in all my posts and emails I try to represent to you all what this place is really like, a nearly impossible attempt, but now he knows. And i think he can now attest to the fact that ‘you won’t believe it until you see it’ definitely applies here. In my dad’s words, “it is pretty much what I expected, only worse.”

Check out my flickr site for more pictures (see sidebar) and I hope everyone’s New Years is off to a great start!

Peace,

Hayley