Donkey Counting on the Road

The reservoir in April after a long dry season.



The reservoir in August after a summer full of rain.



My village lies 27 kilometers southwest of Ouahigouya, the regional capital and fourth largest city in Burkina. On the same road, another 350k southwest, is Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina’s second city. Continue even further and eventually you reach Cote D’Ivoire, a major market for livestock and produce. Given these landmarks, you might expect the road through Zogoré to be a major commercial artery. However, though periodically graded flat, the road is unpaved, which means that to travel from Ouahigouya to Bobo it is significantly faster to go 180k out of the way and pass through the nation’s capital, Ouagadougou. That road, on commercial buses and on asphalt all the way, takes about eight hours for the whole 530k journey. If you take the more direct, dirt road, you have to flag down a passing truck, climb up on top of the cargo, and sit . . . maybe 15 hours, maybe two days; it all depends on the state of the road, the state of the vehicle, and in how much of a hurry the driver is.

The road is going to be paved someday, it’s just a question of when. It was actually scheduled to happen this spring, but this is Africa. When I first arrived in village, they told me that cell phone reception was coming in two weeks. Every time I asked, the answer was the same: two weeks. I asked the volunteer who had been in Zogoré before me, and she said when she first arrived, two years previously, she heard the same thing: Cell phone reception in two weeks.

Eventually, about eight months into my stay, cell service did turn on, and it seems everyone in village got a phone. People play with them all day long, calling each other and hanging up, and complaining that they never have any money to make calls. So, too, the road will come someday, and will be a huge boost to the village economy, with the increase in city to city traffic. However, I must admit that I am secretly pleased that construction has been delayed, at the very least, until I finish my service. It is selfish, but the bike ride back and forth to Ouahigouya is one of my favorite pastimes, whereas having to fight with and dodge road crews would only turn it into a hassle.

A 54k round trip, and I long ago lost track of how many times I’ve made it. It probably averages something like twice a month, to see friends, check mail, buy supplies, maybe continue on to Ouagadougou or beyond.

The ride changes with the seasons. In the cold season, you have to fight the harmattan, heavy winds coming from the Sahara in the northeast. The wind’s impact is substantial. Facing the wind on the way into the city can take two hours or more, but when you turn around to come home the ride can be done in as little as an hour, with the gusts pushing you along from behind. The other obstacle is dust. Every time a vehicle passes, it kicks up a cloud thick enough to blind and choke you all at the same time. It’s best to just pull off the road and wait for it to disperse.

In the hot season, the wind is calmer and there’s less dust, but the sun is the new enemy. The solution is to leave very early in the morning, 5:30 or 6 AM, or wait until evening, or even nighttime if there is a moon.

In the rainy season, the wind is back, only now it comes from the opposite direction. After a storm, it is necessary to wait a few hours for the road to dry off a bit, unless plowing through several inches of mud sounds appealing.

From my house, in lieu of passing through the village center, there is a trail that goes by the health clinic, then the elementary school, where all the children yell “bye-bye” and wave me on my way. The trail joins the main road about a kilometer past the village, not much distance saved but a shortcut all the same.

The first major landmark is the reservoir, another kilometer or so up the road. When the road crews originally graded the road, they created a dam at the same time, to collect water in the naturally low lying area. Gardeners grow onions, tomatoes, and other vegetables along the banks, using man powered pumps to irrigate the crops. As the waters receded over the course of the dry season, the gardens advance, profiting from the land previously underwater. Everything depends on the rain. If there is a lot, the reservoir becomes vast, big enough that a canoe ride along the outskirts would take a good chunk of the afternoon. After a very heavy rain, the entire basin fills up, and water rushes through the spillways, creating fast flowing, frothing creeks in stream beds that are dry 99% of the year. It’s exciting.

Last spring, however, the reservoir was empty by March, nothing but a basin of cracked dirt. The ensuing rainy season was much more prolific, and as of mid May this year there is plenty of water left, promising it won’t run out before the rains come to refill it once again.

The less water left, also, the easier to spot the crocodiles, who come out to sun themselves on the banks. They occasionally take careless sheep and goats, but never, as far as anyone remembers, a person. Good thing, too, since the children like to amuse themselves by chasing them and shooting at them with slingshots. Where do the crocodiles go when the water dries up, I asked. Down into some holes in the earth, to sleep until the rains return again.

After the reservoir, the road passes by Boulousi and Teonsgo, two of the smaller villages in Zogore’s department, or political unit. Here, there is a smaller pond for half the year, not big enough to support serious gardening but a favorite watering hole for the local donkeys- I counted thirty once. Between villages are stretches of land, mostly empty in the dry season, but all designated for millet fields once the rains come. Passing people at work with their fields, you shout “Ne tuuma!” meaning good work, to which they reply, “Kende” or welcome. The response here is “Mbah,” which is not an imitation of a sheep but rather means something, roughly, like “Right on!” I tried to count the number of times I say mbah in a day but I quickly lost track around thirty, and it was still early in the morning.

Next along the road comes Lei, a small town right on the road most notable for its two shiny white mosques. Lei is not in the department of Zogore, but in a trick of geography, or perhaps gerrymandering, the next town, Koro, is. Then comes Passago and Rallo, barely towns at all but collections of huts. Next is another reservoir, of a different character. This one rivals the first in size but doesn’t hold its water nearly as long. For whatever reason, gardening isn’t practiced here and instead it is one of the few places left with a good stock of native trees. Calling it a forest might be a stretch but it is still a pleasant part of the ride, along which you pass the midway point to Ouahigouya.

Next comes the hill. Now, Americans would probably scoff at the notion of this being a hill, though Kansans might be more understanding. Rather, it might be called a slight uphill grade for a kilometer or so. But in Burkina, with only a 550 meter elevation difference over the entire country, it nearly counts as a mountain, especially when there’s a heavy head wind. Arriving at the top, huffing and puffing, you come to the village of Sassamba. Sissamba was a Peace Corps training village in the past, and when I pass one of the family compounds, the kids still come running, screaming, “Sally! Sally!” Now . . . to the trained eye, perhaps Sally and I don’t look all that similar; there are some pronounced difference in height, hair color, and other things. But I guess we do ride the same type of bike, and have the same skin tone, after a fashion.

After Sissamba there’s not much left. Zimba, then Bouri, and you start to spot the radio towers of Ouahigouya. Soon enough, the houses get closer together, and made of concrete, not mud. There is a customs building, a few soccer fields, and then, a paved road, welcoming you to the city with all its amenities: Omelets, yogurt, a cold drink. Even an internet connection, to remind you there is a world outside of village, with wars, credit crunches, presidential elections- and with that, maybe, it’s time to get out of here and start the ride back home.

Greasy Food in the Big City

The 25 kilometer marker on the road to Ouahigouya.



My host family's bar in Ouahigouya, Nabons Wende (Ask of God). Host brothers Soumaila and Salam in front.



The best part about going to the city is the food. In village, if you eat with the neighbors, it’s tô every day- the millet paté served with a variety of disgusting sauces, depending on what’s in season. Usually the sauce is based on a wild or cultivated leaf, like baobab, oseille, or bean leaves. Sometimes it’s a fruit or grain- okra, peanut, or sesame. Frequently, an unidentified ingredient is added that changes the consistency of the sauce to that of bacteria thickened snot, that drips off your fingers and forms vertical bridges stretching from the bowl all the way to your mouth. It’s not that bad, actually. You get used to it.

There’s a couple of road side restaurants in village that serve rice and sauce, meat soup, fish, yams, ground manioc, or spaghetti, depending on the day. When you get sick of all that, though, it’s time to hop on the bike and make the trip into Ouahigouya, about an hour and a half ride at 27k away.

The latest census put Ouahigouya at 60,000 people, fourth largest city in Burkina. It’s the capital of the province of Yatenga as well as the region of the North, encompassing several other provinces as well. A number of government headquarters and resources can be visited: Ministries of agriculture and environment, hospitals, a police station and military base, the sports stadium. There are also foreign financed, non-governmental agencies, tackling the usual enemies such as poverty, AIDS, desertification, and so on. Nearly every building, public and private, is on the electric grid, but very few, excepting the headquarters and organizations just cited, have indoor plumbing. Communal spigots and foot pumps supply the rest of the city with water.

Ouahigouya also has the distinction of being the vulture capital of West Africa; everywhere you look the ugly, bald headed birds are flying, hopping, perching. I don’t think the human or animal mortality rate is any more pronounced here than over the rest of the country, so why the vultures pick this particular city to haunt is a mystery- but there it is.

With the possible exception of baleen whales, which don’t even open their mouths to eat, these vultures may have the least strenuous life in the entire animal kingdom. They barely even flap their wings to fly, instead soaring for hours on end on the prevailing wind currents. Edward Abbey suggests that they’re sleeping up there. They don’t need to hunt for food, but just happily indulge in whatever the reaper provides. I suppose it’s all a trade off for being cursed with a wrinkly, bald head that you have to stick inside a rotting carcass to get a meal. . .

Right. I was talking about food. There are hundreds of places to eat, from women selling rice on the side of the road, to full fledged restaurants serving French fries and salad, even a hotel that serves hamburgers next to a swimming pool! Among all the options, of course, you start to choose your favorites.

The first stop is a small breakfast shack not long after the dirt road from village meets city pavement. An egg sandwich with a big bowl of yogurt costs just over a dollar. If you need a jolt, there’s coffee- instant Nescafe with three or four sugar cubes- or café au lait, the same Nescafe with a generous portion of sweetened condensed milk, a thick, white, gooey substance which turns the experience into something like drinking a candy bar for breakfast.

For lunch, it’s Madame Coulibaly’s, an unassuming sandwich shop on the other side of town. We discovered it because she was the host mother to one of the volunteers during training, and we’ve been coming back ever since. Mix and match filet, avocado, hard boiled egg, and sausage in a baguette with vegetables and mayonnaise, although a few unfortunate times she’s been out of everything, except liver. Wash it down with some traditional Burkinabe beverages- bisap, a sweet purple drink made from a local flower, or zoom-koom, literally flour water, made from millet flour with tamarind juice added to give it some zing.

Then there’s shopping to be done, at mini grocery stores that sell things like Blue Band margarine and Vache Qui Rit cheese product, unavailable in village but necessary for favorite meals like mac n cheese. Exciting, as well, is the vegetable market, especially come the rainy season when all that’s sold in village are moldy onions and rotten tomatoes, if you’re lucky. Ouahigouya, though, keeps a good selection year round, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers, garlic, eggplant, onions and tomatoes of the edible sort, and more. In certain seasons, too, potatoes are abundant, and provide a third response to the question, when I cook for myself, of what to make, spaghetti or macaroni? Rice would be another option but being the main food available at village restaurants I don’t bother fixing it for myself.

With all the varied possibilities back in the city, for dinner we keep coming back to the same place: Sol Beni, a restaurant right in the heart of the city. They’ve got it all- outdoor seating, Christmas tree lights strung about, and a sound system that plays all the classics: Phil Collins, Mariah Carey, Bryan Adams. The restaurant itself is not much to speak of, although they do have good fries, and more importantly, cold beer. We have a gas powered fridge in village that does a reasonable job keeping the beer cold in the cold season, but in the hot season it just isn’t up to the task, and lukewarm is about all you can hope for. In the city, though, the fridge plugs into the wall, and bottles are served, sometimes, coated with ice.

No, the real draw of Sol Beni, aside from cold beer, is the location. Less than a block away is a kebob vendor, a salad lady, and a chicken guy. The kebobs, called brochettes, are filet coated in a spicy mustard sauce, though sometimes he runs out of meat and is left with only . . . liver. The salad lady chops up lettuce, tomato, onion, and cucumber and tosses it all together with an oil and vinegar dressing. But best of all is the chicken guy.

The chickens are butchered, put in a paper bag with lots of onions and lots of oil, and grilled over an old oil barrel. He serves them like that, chicken in a bag, the paper inside a plastic one to keep too much oil from spilling out. You wash your hands with a plastic tea kettle and dig in, seeking out the best pieces, and dipping them in the spicy pepper powder before eating. Everything is a greasy mess, your hands, your mouth, mustache, the table, but it’s a delicious greasy mess. The grease is so good, even after the last piece of chicken and last slice of onion have been devoured, we rub our fingers around the saturated paper bag to sop up every last remnant. Even the realization, came to after a year of eating there, that the paper bags in which the chickens are cooked and served are old cement bags, and probably cleaned none too thoroughly beforehand, wasn’t enough to stop us. What’s a little cement dust, anyway, when you could be sitting in village, eating slimy tô sauce with warm beer?