First Thoughts on Burkina Faso

Neighboring donkeys graze on the barren soil.



Women showing off colorful traditional clothing.



The first impression of Burkina Faso is the color red. The dirt is red, the rocks are red, and the houses, fabricated from mud or brick or cement. A fine dust coats vehicles and animals in a subtle red shade. Ponds and reservoirs, where they can be found, are filled with brackish red water. Green appears occasionally, in leafy trees scattered about the landscape, in the sorghum and millet fields that grow during the summer rainy season, and even the odd patch of grass. But most of the year the ground appears so barren and red one wonders how anything at all can grow here.

In contrast to the landscape, then, is the population. As if protesting their monochromatic surroundings, the people dress themselves in bright costumes of all colors, men in matching shirts and pants featuring all kinds of outlandish patterns and designs, women in similarly decorated skirts and shirts and perhaps a head wrap for good measure.

Secondhand western clothing has permeated the marketplace as well, so it isn’t surprising to see a man walk by in a Georgetown University sweatshirt or a Philadelphia Eagles jersey. These pieces of cast off clothing tend to be somewhat worn, a bit ragged, and of course take on the red dust that settles on everything. But enough people wear the traditional clothing, which somehow refuses to succumb to the dust, that a crowded village street is a welcome refreshment of color from the dry and oppressive red that otherwise dominates the spectrum.

If the visual impression of the country can be simplified in such a manner, the same can not be said for sounds. In village, absent the ever present rumble of automobiles that accompanies and dulls all other sounds in the US, a number of individual and unique noises can be heard and identified at any one time. The wind pushing through the trees is common, rustling the leaves and scraping branches across tin roofs. Bike and motorcycles, the transportation of choice for most Burkinabe, hum and rattle down the dirt paths.Indeed it is not unusual to see a woman in traditional clothing zooming along on a motorcycle with her baby tied securely to her back, or a boy riding a bicycle piled high with goods, food sacks, furniture, perhaps a tied-up goat. Standing out because it is rarer is the rumble of the occasional automobiles, a van transporting people from the city, or maybe a truck belonging to a local merchant. Animals also provide a constant backdrop of sounds—dogs barking, chickens fussing, roosters crowing, often at most inconvenient hours of the morning.

Pattering feet and choruses of baaing and lowing announce a passing livestock herd with goats, sheep, or cattle. Wild birds chirp and guinea fowl make a repeated call that sounds like the creaking of bed springs, which for awhile had me thinking that the neighbors had an extremely active love life. Most bizarre of all, though, is the donkey, which emits a braying that must be heard to be believed, as if someone is struggling with a stubborn, rusty gate, and with great effort amidst pained and noisy protests manages to pry it open, then repeats the task five or six times in a row. Local rumor states that the animals are passing gas when they cry out like that. Whatever is going on, it could not possible be a pleasant experience. Donkeys, like roosters, have the unfortunate habit of sounding off well before the sun has started to crest the horizon.

Again providing the most variety are the people themselves. Neighbors greet each other in elaborate fashions at each others’ houses and in the streets: “Ne yibeogo?” “Yibeogo kibare.” “Lafibala, Zak Rama?” “Lafi, M’Bahhhh--”

How’s the morning, good, how’s the family, good, etc . . . Greetings are an essential part of the social scene and can take several minutes to complete. Afterward the conversation drifts into whatever the local village news of the day happens to be. The culture is very social and a constant chatter of conversation and laughter carries on throughout the village.

Night falls around 6 PM but the noise continues for several hours. Radios come on, animals grow restless, conversation, maybe over a beer or two, grows more animated. It isn’t until later, 10 or 11 PM, when the people and animals start falling asleep, when things start getting almost eerily quiet, broken only by the odd lovestruck cricket or dog whose sleep has been disturbed.

Nightfall brings a whole new visual perspective as well, or rather a lack thereof. The red of the day is replaced by pure black. When the moon is up one can still see surprisingly well even without a flashlight, but during the new moon even the best lights fail to penetrate more than a few feet into the night. The stars are visible, with an incredible clarity and depth rarely found in more developed countries, but terrestrially speaking almost nothing can be seen at all. Once familiar and distinct paths take on a sameness and for one not used to the dark and the terrain it becomes quite easy to lose the trail.

That is how this new Peace Corps volunteer got lost at eight o’clock trying to find my way home my first week in village. Following paths I thought I knew well but at a loss without the familiar landmarks of visible trees and houses, I became entirely disoriented until I was forced to ask a pair of girls walking by if they could help me find the way. I didn’t understand why they were laughing at me until they pointed out that we were standing mere yards from my own house.

I’ve got to learn to use my other senses. I should have recognized the agonized braying of the neighbor’s donkey.

Dirt and the Basic Economy

Aly and his friend reinforce a mud brick wall.



Pierre drawing water from a well.



Out of 177 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index, measuring life expectancy, literacy, education , and standard of living, Burkina Faso ranks fourth from the bottom. A visit to one of the smaller villages makes it easy to see why. The economy of the more remote, impoverished settlements can be broken down into five segments, satisfying only the most basic of human needs. The first segment is agriculture. During the rainy season, roughly June through September, nearly all the population works in the fields tending their millet and sorghum crops. Both are cereal grains which somehow manage to prosper in the red, rocky, and nearly infertile soil which covers much of the country. Both have stalks resembling corn but the grains grow in tassels from the top of the plant instead of in ears, and they can be up to fifteen feet tall.

After the cereal is harvested it is stored in the granaries and one season’s crop has to last for the entire year. To prepare a meal, the women pound the grains by hand into flour, which is used to make the national dish, tô (pronounced “toe” as in a digit on your foot). Tô can best be described as a kind of unbaked bread dough. Chunks of it are picked out of the pot by hand and dipped into a thick, gooey sauce comprised of various plant products, and consumed like that. Most Burkinabe eat tô for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, maybe switching to rice, beans, or spaghetti for holidays or special occasions.

The second segment of the basic village economy is water. Here the much maligned soil actually provides a benefit: it is soft enough to dig by hand the 20 to 50 feet necessary to reach the water table, yet hard enough that the well walls can usually support themselves without reinforcement. This means that villages are usually able to have one of more water sources nearby, although significant time is still spent waiting in line and hauling up enough water for the day’s cooking, cleaning, drinking and washing needs. One major problem with local wells is that the water drawn from them is not always fit for human consumption due to various diseases and parasites. Fortunately government and international aid money geared toward public health has paid for a growing number of pumps which draw water from deeper, enclosed wells and pose fewer health concerns.

The soil also gives another advantage to the village economy in the form of building material. When mixed with water it can be formed into relatively stable bricks. The means for the cost of nothing more than labor digging clay and carrying water a person can build a house that will stand for ten or twenty years before needing to be rebuilt. That may not seem like a long time but considering that cement, the more durable alternative, costs around ten dollars a bag the bricks aren’t a bad second choice.

The fourth segment of the economy is fuel. The only option for most people is wood so they spend a significant amount of time out in the brush gathering and carrying firewood back to the village. Deforestation is a major problem in Burkina, which not only threatens the main fuel source, but aggravates erosion, depleting the already marginal soil and threatening crop viability as well. The government has implemented various measures to combat the loss of trees, including taxing and limiting commercial wood harvest, and reforestation projects. The Sahara desert looms just over the border in Mali and Niger, two of the three countries below Burkina on the UN index, not coincidentally. Much of Burkina lies in the sahel zone that buffers the desert from the more lush and fertile south. Whether the Sahara stays put or advances south and destroys already meager lifestyles depends on whether deforestation can be stopped and erosion controlled.

The final segment of the basic economy is animal raising. Chickens, guinea fowls, pigs, goats, sheep, and cows are kept, and occasionally eaten during festivals and celebrations but are usually sold to markets in larger villages or cities. Sometimes fuel wood and excess cereal crops are also sold commercially but both suffer from supply problems—families can’t always secure enough for their own needs, let alone enough to sell. These sales are how villagers manage to scrape together money for clothes, school fees, medicine, and other expenses.

As the villagers get larger, economic opportunities increase. A community of a few thousand, for example, might have a market every few days where vendors hawk vegetables, spices, clothes, and hardware. There are small stores selling non-perishable food items like spaghetti, tea, sugar, and salt. There might be a bar, some street-side restaurants, and telecenters where people can make phone calls for a fee. You might even find a movie theater consisting of an old television hooked up to a car battery.

Larger cities are more developed still, with electricity, hotels, internet cafes, cell phone reception, and even running water. Some of these amenities like cell and internet service have arrived in the just past few years, and all are spreading slowly but gradually. A family in a community of a few hundred will have to wait a long time, perhaps forever, before their house has electricity and internet access, but most would be happy with just a few more opportunities to make some money.

An example of a development opportunity is gardening, a good money raising activity for a small village but one which requires a surprisingly large investment from a city or outside agency to purchase fencing, seedlings, and fertilizer for the ever troublesome soil. For one coming from a paved society where we buy our food in supermarkets and get fuel and water piped into our houses, it is remarkable to contemplate how much human life, at its basic level, revolves around dirt, which, to understate, leaves a lot to be desired in the sahel.

Nonetheless, development in Burkina marches on, maybe not surpassing other countries on the UN index, but at least forward, incrementally, to improve the quality of life for the people living in the most marginal ways imaginable.

More Intestines for the Chief

Everyone dressed up to dance the Rasandaaga.



The Ouedraogo family gathers at Christmas.



Around dusk in late December, we were sitting around the cabaret when everybody suddenly got up. They all were looking at the sky to the west. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’re looking for the moon,” they told me. After a minute or two one of the men claimed to see it and started trying to describe its position relative to some tree branches. I was skeptical until a gunshot from somewhere in the village confirmed the sighting. Naturally I was the last to spot the moon by several minutes but I didn’t feel bad, because what I finally did see was just the slightest sliver, barely visible in the fading light.

The moon’s appearance marks the traditional start of the New Year, called “Filiga.” The party starts that night with calabashes of the local millet beer, called dolo, then continues the next day as a celebration in honor of the customary chief. The chief does not have the power that he used to, and these days most of the governing and administrative work falls to an elected mayor and appointed prefet. However as the traditional leader of the village, the chief is still accorded a good deal of respect, and his voice still carries weight in disputes and discussions—and he gets his very own party. Not bad, if you ask me.

The mixing of traditional, Muslim, and Christian cultures means that Burkinabe have a lot of holidays and celebrations to choose from. And they don’t run strictly along religious lines—while a Muslin family will say they don’t celebrate Christmas, they’ll still go say hello to their Christian neighbors to mark the occasion, and vice versa for Ramadan.

For that matter, the manner of celebration for Ramadan was fairly similar to that of Christmas. Wives cooked up special meals, which mostly consisted of spaghetti and meat, and people go from courtyard to courtyard visiting each other. Alcohol flowed freely on Christmas, and somewhat on Ramadan, depending on how seriously people followed the rules of Islam.

One of the traditional parties is called “Rasandaaga,” held for the youth of the village. Ostensibly Rasandaaga celebrates the end of the harvest but because there are a number of them over the year, some occurring many months after the harvest has been finished, it seems more like a party held for its own sake than anything else. The celebration starts with a traditional dance where lines are formed about 30 people wide that slowly progress across the terrain. Although the Rasandaaga is for the youth it is the older people who dance the most enthusiastically, because, as some elders mentioned, many young people do not bother to learn the traditional dances. While moving, people beat on tom-toms and chant a song that means, roughly, “The joy is not yet here, the joy is to come later,” referring to the modern dance that follows later at night.

After the dances makes its way around the village grounds in a wide circle, people break up into small groups to eat, drink, talk, or go join in the modern dance, which isn’t scripted like the traditional, and isn’t all that different from what you might see in a club in the US. A friend pointed out another similarity between Burkinabe and American parties: all the alcohol and dancing can lead to situations conducive to the spread of infectious disease.

Back at the Filiga party, I woke up early the next morning to eat spaghetti with friends, then went to greet the chief. More of the usual going on in his courtyard—people dancing and playing tom-toms, drinking. Since I am a foreigner I was an honored guest and the chief invited me to eat lunch with him. I was excited by the prospect, because the standard Burkinabe fare can get tiresome after awhile, be it the millet based break-like paste or the endless plates of rice and sauce.

The spaghetti was nice but here with the chief I was hoping to get something really special. It wasn’t going to be pizza or anything, but this was the chief I’m talking about so I was sure he had something delicious up his sleeve.

We washed our hands, a girl brought out the dish and lifted off the cover to reveal—a plate of intestines. The deliciousness was questionable, but it was his party, after all, so who am I to complain?

On the Perils of Transport

Your typical long distance bus, loaded high with gear.
Photo: Emily Babin



The standard red dirt graded road.



The bush taxi was waiting in the bus station to pick up more passengers, but it seemed pretty full to me. We were jammed in the van five to a row, squashed between our neighbors and holding our bags on our laps. The roof was piled high with bicycles, motos, furniture, and other assorted luggage. Vendors take advantage of the captive audience at the stations, pushing bread, bananas, bags of water, and all manner of consumables in people’s faces through the windows.

It’s a smart place to set up shop. Not only are passengers liable to be hungry and thirsty after hours on hot, dusty transport, it’s likely that anyone who can afford the ticket will also have the disposable income to splurge on a ten cent bag of cold water. A large portion of the passengers are teachers and other government employees, traveling to and from the villages to which they are assigned, or else merchants bringing in goods from town. It’s the middle class of Burkina Faso, packed together like sheep. And the simile is not used idly; passengers frequently share space in the vehicles with livestock like sheep, goats, and chickens. Getting stuck next to a disgruntled goat makes classic travel annoyances like screaming babies on airplanes pale in comparison.

The convergence of wealth on the transports isn’t lost on the beggar
children, either. They crowd the cars as well, holding out their aluminum
donations cans and chanting a beggar’s song in the local language: “Weenndd na siikiii laaafiiiiiiii!” It is sometimes difficult to draw the line between begging as an act of desperation versus a profession. Certainly there are children going hungry and relying on donations from strangers just to get something to eat every day, but there are also many commissioned to go out and raise money for their mosque or church. “Wend na loke,” people tell them in lieu of giving money. God will provide.

One more woman pushed her way past the beggars and vendors and squeezed her way into a spot in the van. That row now had six people and there was no more room for the apprentice, the man who loads people’s luggage and collects money for tickets. He shut the door from the outside and started to climb up the side of the van. I figured he was headed for the roof, which is a fairly common practice. Sometimes it even seems a more pleasant alternative than the interior. On the roof, you can stretch your legs a little and enjoy the breeze. Inside you are crammed between people so tightly you can’t even shift your weight from one side of your posterior to the other, and you have to fight tooth and nail if you want to keep a window open. Burkinabe hate having wind blowing in their faces. Transport windows get closed even when it means trapping twenty people in an enclosed space more akin to an oven than a car, when it’s 113 degrees officially and who knows how hot inside the vehicle, with no ventilation of any kind, when you’re as wet with your neighbor’s sweat as your own. Times like that, the roof doesn’t seem so bad.

But the apprentice surprised me this time. Instead of climbing all the way up, he swung in the open window onto the woman’s lap. I’m not sure she was thrilled with the development but there was no time to protest because as soon as he was halfway inside the van started moving. We had a soothing, cooling breeze for five wonderful seconds before the apprentice reached back and firmly pulled the window shut.

The bush taxis aren’t the only form of transportation in Burkina. Bus lines service the major cities, and large trucks also transport people, livestock, and goods around the country. When riding trucks people tend to sit up on top of the trailer, up to fifty at a time, twenty feet above the ground as the truck bounces along the rough dirt roads. Major cities are connected by pavement but everywhere else is dirt, liable to be rocky, rutted, and filled with mud puddles nearly impossible to drive through during the rainy season. Still the trucks keep coming, and the people sitting on top keep holding on.

What’s really amazing about the transport system in Burkina Faso is that it works. It might be hot, cramped, slow, piecemeal, and prone to breakdown and delay, but by and large people and goods get where they are supposed to go. Freedom of movement is essential for a country trying to grow its economy, so goods can move from one area to another for profit. While the transport might seem daunting at first and far from ideal, the people use what they have, and make it work. Hopefully that thought will keep me optimistic next time I have a sheep for a seat mate.

Mo' Money Mo' Problems

A cement well financed by German philanthropists



These women got a grant to learn techniques for dyeing fabric.



Last year the women of Zogore formed a group to fabricate soap and sell it within the community. Soap making is a popular income generating activity among rural women because it is relatively easy to do and there is a large demand, for washing clothes and dishes as well as personal bathing. The women were lucky to find foreign financing, which bought them a cement building to work in, a week of training in the capital, and machines to cut the soap and stamp it with a logo of their choice. Yet, despite all that, so far they haven’t made or sold a single bar of soap.

Somehow in the process of obtaining and spending the grant money, no one bothered to buy the lye and oils that form actual ingredients of the soap. Now the women are idle, waiting for someone to give them more money so they can start their business.

Most development projects in poor communities use money obtained from outside sources, as villagers living a subsistence lifestyle do not have the capital necessary to buy materials and training required. However with foreign financing comes a myriad of problems and complications.The soap ladies illustrate one such problem- lack of effective money management. The women received money but not the guidance to prioritize and budget their spending so they could use the financing most effectively and begin their activity.

Another fear of many development workers is that constant flow of aid money can produce a welfare effect, that people become dependant and start to feel entitled to the aid instead of working to become self reliant. Indeed, one of the most common phrases visitors hear in West Africa is, “I want to start ‘x’ business but I lack the means.” The complaint isn’t without merit, because many people have literally no liquid assets. However if the prevailing attitude is to sit and wait for help instead of doing everything possible to build up a business little by little, it demands the question of whether a self sustaining economy can ever result. When people are given
things instead of earning them, there is less urgency to learn necessary management skills. Then if a business hits troubled times or fails what recourse is there but to wait to be bailed out again?

However, even with all the problems encountered with financed projects, outside money can and does play a large role in improving the quality of life for the world’s poor. Services like pumps serving clean water, hospitals, and schools all directly raise the standard of living for poor communities who could not afford the development and infrastructure on their own. And countless villagers, from tailors to mechanics to donut vendors, have been able to start small businesses using small grants and loans to purchase training and materials. Now they make profits and if properly managed have no further need of outside assistance.

The problem, then, is not financing itself but how it is applied. Is money given to huge, poorly conceived projects through bloated bureaucrats without local input, or is the money used toward community derived projects that aim to directly benefit the poor, aid local economies and accomplish everything in a sustainable manner so the benefits will continue long after the original money has been spent?

More and more agencies and organizations are trending toward the second model, with micro-credit lenders enjoying success worldwide offering small amounts of money to large numbers of people, frequently accompanied by training so the borrowers learn to correctly manage their money.

Development is a complicated business. Wealthy countries are trying to accelerate the growth of poorer nations to help people achieve a minimum standard of living, but no one really knows the best way to do it. Questions of grants vs. loans, aid vs. self reliance, sustainability, lack of natural resources, and a host of other factors play into any discussion. There are camps who claim we don’t give enough foreign aid and others that say the third world would be best left alone to develop at its own pace. In the face of human suffering it is hard to sit back and do nothing— we just must be sure that the help we give is of the appropriate kind, and not doing more harm than good.

Killer Bees Attack!

Beekeepers work on a traditional straw hive.



Bees clumping on a honeycomb in a modern hive.
Photo: David Noyes



Most Americans know about the African honey bee. Starting with a series of sensationalist movies in the 1970s, there have been fears of African/European hybrid bees rampaging across the United States, making it unsafe even to step outdoors. Killer bees were portrayed as a menace to humanity, advancing across the continent with unstoppable ferocity. Is the description fair?

The story of these so called killer bees began in the 1950s when African bees were brought to Brazil to mix with the European species already established in the Americas. The goal was to create a heartier, more productive bee by combining the best traits of each species. Instead, the experimental bees escaped from the laboratory and outcompeted existing colonies across Brazil and then the continent of South America. By the 1980s they had spread through Central America into Mexico, and were first spotted in Texas in 1990. Now they occupy much of the Southwest and Southern California.

Fortunately the real threat of killer, or Africanized, bees, has been widely overblown. Though they have killed people, they are far from numbers that would reflect a public health threat, or even much surpass deaths from regular European honey bees. Most deaths are due to allergic reactions regardless of the type of bee involved. South and Central American beekeepers have become accustomed to working with the more aggressive species and in fact, the original goal of the experiment has been realized: the hybrids are more productive than the European bees in tropical environments, once the beekeepers know how to control them.

However much the dangers of killer bees may have been exaggerated, there is no doubt that African bees are more aggressive, quicker to sting, and more likely to attack en masse than their European cousins. For example, once aggravated, African bees can take up to a half hour to calm, compared to three to five minutes for Europeans. While a European swarm might chase an intruder for 100 meters, the Africa bees are liable to pursue for up to a kilometer.

With these facts in mind I was a little nervous my first night out collecting honey in the bush, despite my full beekeeper’s suit, complete with mask, gloves, and boots. Alexandre kept fussing over the zippers and fasteners, saying, “We can’t leave any holes, because if one bee finds a way in the rest will follow.” I tried to calculate how long it would take me to run a kilometer wearing a heavy jumpsuit and boots, in the dark.

The bees did seem easily riled, swarming and buzzing angrily when we so much as approached the hive. I could see them crawling on my face mask, mere centimeters from my face. My suit did its job, however, which allowed me to do mine. I was in charge of the smoker, pumping continuous billows of smoke into the hive to calm the swarm. Alexandre, also wearing a protective suit, lifted the wooden planks out of the hive one by one to check for honey, which we set aside in a bucket. Turning to examine our harvest, I felt a little silly when I noticed Abdulaye, the third member of our group, not only wasn’t wearing any protective gear, he wasn’t wearing a shirt at all. “Don’t they sting you?” I asked. He shrugged. “I’m not scared of bees,” was his response.

With our suits, smokers, and hives with removable parts, we had the benefit of modern equipment that most African beekeepers don’t have access to. The most traditional method of harvesting honey was to simply go out in the woods and look for naturally occurring hives. Finding one, the hunters would climb the tree, stick a torch in the hive, and knock it to the ground. People still succeed in finding honey in this manner but there are four major problems.

The first is that the search for wild hives is time consuming and difficult. The next two problems derive from the method of harvest. Sticking a torch in a hive and knocking it to the ground is a sure way to destroy it, not to mention most of the bees, so each colony is good for only one harvest. Furthermore, if not careful the flame from the torch can burn the honey and ruin the taste. The fourth problem, of course, is that despite the calming/killing effect of the torch, the hunters still have a number of furious bees to contend with.

Africans solved the first problem long ago, figuring out how to construct hives out of reeds, straw, mud, or other locally available
materials. Various remedies are used to coat the inside of the hives to attract the bees. With the fabrication of hives the job evolved from hunting to beekeeping, as there was no more need to go tramping through the woods following bees; the bees came to the people. However, beekeepers still had to destroy the hives, risk ruining the honey, and brave major pain and suffering for their troubles.

This is where modern equipment comes in. Well constructed wooden or metal hives can be disassembled piece by piece instead of being torn apart like traditional ones. The problem is that modern hives require precisely measured, processed parts and cost a minimum of 50 dollars, far beyond the means of the typical African beekeeper. In recent years, however, some innovators have improved traditional hive construction to include an opening at both ends, instead of the usual one. Now, by going in the back door, the beekeepers can remove honey without destroying as much of the hive’s infrastructure, and if careful leave a functioning colony so the hive can be reused several times.

The smoker is the most important piece of modern equipment. There is simply no substitute for a steady, continuous, flame free source of smoke. Even if the honey isn’t actually burned by the torch, large buyers won’t accept flame harvested honey because of negative effects on the flavor. Buying a smoker is also a stretch for most Africans but no alternatives have been developed yet with nearly the same effectiveness.

Finally, the protective suit is apparently a matter of preference. For those of us who grew up watching killer bee movies it seems essential. On the other hand, humans have been harvesting honey without protection since long before recorded history. It just takes a combination of steady nerves, resistance to pain, and people like Abdulaye, who are just plain not scared of bees.

Relaxation Under the Sun

A sampling of the local livestock.
Photo: Emily Babin



A Peace Corps volunteer grabs a nap in the shade.



The rainy season in Burkina Faso lasts from June to October or so, and Burkinabe farmers work hard throughout. Somewhere between 80 to 90 percent of the population are subsistence agriculturalists, meaning they rely on the cereal crops they grow over the summer to feed their families for the entire year. Acres of land are tilled by hand, or donkey powered plow for the particularly rough terrain. Then the farmers, the term including men, women, and all but the smallest children, dig holes, plant the millet and sorghum seeds, weed the land, and pray for rain. If it falls in sufficient quantities, the year will be prosperous. Children will eat and industrious cultivators will be able to sell some of their crop for a profit. If there is little rain, or none at all, then there is famine. Thus, the people take their farm work seriously.

Aside from the odd holiday, people spend nearly every day, morning through evening, out in the fields throughout the rainy season. By the time they arrive home, most are too tired to do more than eat and go to sleep, and repeat the process the next day. So there is no question that people stay busy during the summer months. But what about the rest of the year? After the crops are harvested, and the rains won’t come again for six months or more, how do people fill their time?

Most people do have some kind of secondary economic activity in the dry season, be it gardening, small commerce, masonry or other jobs. But these are less labor intensive than farming and frequently do not take up the entire day. Thus, there is ample time for recreation.

The children, of course, find plenty of ways to amuse themselves. They play soccer, shoot slingshots, and make up games with whatever kinds of trash they find lying around. Many also enjoy pestering Peace Corps volunteers. I have a gang that is known to spend hours outside my door chanting, “Bonjour, Madame!” Their grasp of gender nouns isn’t perfect but being called Madame is preferable to “Nasara.” Nasara is the Moore work for white person and is the label favored by most children as they run screaming either toward or away from the white man on a bicycle, depending on their level of fear versus their hope that they will receive candy or some other gift.

So much for the children. It would also be prudent to note that when speaking of free time and recreation I am referring to the men, not the women. Dry season or otherwise women are still responsible for collecting firewood, pounding the cereal seeds into flour, preparing the meals, collecting water, cleaning the courtyard, taking care of the young, the old, and the sick, and any other menial task that come up. That they do all that while working in the fields all day during the rainy season is nothing short of a miracle, as the tasks still fill most of the day even when there are no crops to be cultivated.

It is the men, then, with time to spare. As far as I have been able to observe there are three primary leisure activities that all Burkinabe men enjoy: searching for shade, drinking tea, and yelling at livestock.

Finding shade is self explanatory. If you are going to sit under a tree for two to seven hours, the sun is going to move across the sky and you need to move in the opposite direction or risk getting cooked. At 120 degrees direct sunlight is no joke and a big production is made every half hour or so of getting up, moving the mat and tea making equipment and positioning everything just right so everyone can enjoy the maximum amount of shade.

The preparation of tea is a more complicated process. A big wad of loose Chinese green is stuffed into a small tea kettle with water and left to simmer on coals for a half hour or more. Massive amounts of sugar are added, and when deemed ready the tea is poured from kettle to glass back to kettle, over and over in order to cool it off. Holding the kettle up high,several feet above the glass while pouring without spilling is the sign of an experienced tea maker.

When sufficiently cooled, the drink is served in shot glasses. The proper way to drink it is in three to five slurps, the noisier the better. Since the kettle is small, one round isn’t enough to satisfy everyone under the tree so the process is repeated two or three times. Good conversation and a radio are generally at hand to fill the interludes between rounds. The tea is reused and a popular diversion is to argue which batch tastes best, the first time through the tea leaves or the third?

The third activity, yelling at livestock, is the most interactive and therefore my favorite. In a Burkinabe village, animals, and especially sheep and goats, are everywhere. They aren’t as much of a problem during the rainy season because they are minded by small boys who keep them out of trouble. During the rest of the year, however, when the small boys are in school, the stock is liable to get into the garden, the cooking, the tea, or anything else left unattended. It’s up to whoever is nearby to chase them off. Usually the task can be accomplished vocally, with a guttural grunt or maybe a hiss. If the animal is persistent, or has committed a particularly egregious offense like knocking over a tea kettle, a few thrown rocks combined with vigorous arm gestures usually get the job done. It’s a good way to stay alert when you grow bored with the shade shifting and tea tasting, and sometimes I think the goats enjoy the game as much as the humans.