Working Up a Village Sweat

Neighbors out to help weed the chief's field.



Elois and Ibir digging trenches to catch rainwater on the school ground.



On the only television station in Burkina Faso, there is a recurring commercial for Castel Beer. Three friends are working out in a gym, on the treadmill machines. The first two are sweating and jogging along, but the third seems to be motionless. He smiles, and the camera pans down to show the roller blades on his feet, spinning their wheels on the moving belt. As the ad fades out with a shot of the friends enjoying a beer at the bar, the slogan appears on the screen: “Castel. Be Different.”

It doesn’t take a marketing professional to figure out at what demographic the commercial is aimed. First, one needs to own, or at least have access to, a television to even see the commercial in the first place. Also, the potential buyer needs an income level high enough to afford a dollar fifty for a twenty-two ounce beer. Furthermore, the target audience needs to be educated to understand the English slogan, in a francophone country where a sizable percentage of the population doesn’t even speak French. Finally, the location of the shot would confuse a lot of people who don’t have the slightest conception of what a gym or a health club is.

The very idea of working out is absurd to most Burkinabe, let alone going to a special place and paying money to do so. Yet, most of the people, male and female alike, despite rampant malnutrition, look like they spend a couple hours a day in the weight room, arms the size of thighs, muscles on top of muscles.

The reason being, people’s daily activities resemble an extensive workout plan. I have had the pleasure of participating in a few of the muscle taxing chores, and calculated that if I multiplied my few hours of work times a lifetime, I too would look like a professional athlete . . . maybe not, but you get the idea.

Weeding the fields is not so much a chore as a community event. One day, the village chief called all the neighbors over to help him. We formed a line twenty people wide, holding our short handled hoes and bent over at the waist. In unison we advanced across the field, scraping the grasses and weeds around the six inch tall millet stalks.

In an interesting twist, all Burkinabe are right handed, for hygienic reasons best not elaborated on here. Curiously, though, they wield their hoes with the left hand on top, guiding and powering the tool, the opposite of what is expected. Hands oriented either way, the work is surprisingly tiring, taxing not only the arms but the legs, which brace and support bodies nearly folded in two.

Just as the group’s energy levels started to flag noticeably, a troupe of tom-tom players arrived on the scene, and everyone redoubled their efforts, marching step by step in time with the beat, frantically scraping the weeds to keep up with their neighbors.

The field was long, however, and by the time we reached the other side the workers were unanimous in wanting a break. At this point the chief came through to offer hard candy, cigarettes, and kola nuts, which are West Africa’s answer to amphetamines. A small chunk of the shockingly bitter meat cuts through fatigue like a shot of espresso.

After the break, we saw that the work was far from finished. We lined up again to cross another section of the field, and that finished, another and another for the rest of the afternoon and every day for the rest of the season as people moved into their own and their friends’ and neighbors’ fields. Personally, after the second repetition I decided the best course of action was to sit down and talk to the girl selling dolo next door. So much for my professional rugby aspirations.

Another fun activity was digging holes, and then filling them back up. There was a reforestation project at the high school, and the ground was less dirt than sedimentary rock. Shovels were useless except for removing the chunks of stone dislodged by our pickaxes. Each hole needed to be dug to 50cm in diameter and depth, then filled with better dirt imported from the other side of town where it isn’t quite as rocky. This process gives the roots space to grow thick and strong before having to contend with the rock layers. I offered my assistance, and a 60 year old man in a cowboy hat laughed at my feeble performance until I bent the tip of my pickaxe, at which point I was again sent off to buy some dolo to quench the thirst of the real workers.

Well digging is a similar procedure, except the hole is two meters wide and up to 25 deep, depending on the water table. The laborers chop holes in either side as they descend, so they can climb in and out like a spider. When the well is finished, the workout isn’t: Every day men and women draw up dozens of buckets of water to meet their household needs. Even everyday food preparation tones the arms, as the women lift the heavy pestles over their head and slam them into the mortars over and over to crush the millet seeds into a fine flour.

However, it seems like the very strongest Burkinabe aren’t out in the fields, nor in the kitchen, and probably don’t haul their own water. Instead, they live in the city and have paying jobs. It’s the guys at the bus station who have the really intimidating muscles, the ones who spend all day doing their version of the clean and press, lifting rice sacs, livestock, motorcycles, and all manner of luggage fifteen feet up to the roof of the bus, by manpower alone. Picture a man, standing alone on a platform, holding a full sized motorcycle over his head like a trophy, and think long and hard about revising your workout plan.

Biking Our AIDS Away

The crowd gathers at the start of the race.



Abdulaye and Albert give instructions to the ladies' circuit.



It all started over a calabash of dolo. As the local beer gets passed back and forth, conversation tends to become exaggerated and past exploits more and more impressive. This time, I ended up in a heated argument with Albert, a farmer, gold miner, and herbalist, recognizable from afar by his three inch beard and trademark cowboy hat.

The point of contention was who was a better bike rider. In Albert’s favor, he had already soundly beaten me in other contests of strength and endurance, including weed pulling and hole digging. On top of that, he rode the Tour de Faso in his youth, which is not quite the Tour de France but still impressive in its own right, a yearly 800 mile race that draws competitors from across Africa and Europe. A formidable opponent, to be sure.

However, I argued that he is more than twice my age, and I’ve been in the habit of biking back and forth from village to Ouahigouya, the regional capital- a 50k round trip; not exactly Tour material but significant nonetheless.

Naturally, a race was proposed. It started as me against Albert, but we decided it might be fun with other villagers added to the lineup as well. At some point my inner Peace Corps training spoke up and suggested that we take advantage of the crowd and do an AIDS presentation. Things got more complicated from there.

We added malnutrition and general hygiene to the program, and proposed prizes for the bike race, and for those who answered questions correctly during the presentations. Respected guests were invited from neighboring villages and Ouahigouya, and an elaborate lunch envisioned. A dance party for the youth was planned for the evening.

Preparation intensified. Hours were spent on protocol visits to local officials to gain their blessings. A flowery worded request had to be presented to the mayor for permission to hold the dance.

I found a small grant to help with the costs, but the organizers’ dreams far exceeded the means. My colleagues were insistent on serving meat and bottled beverages to the invited guests. I heard various versions of the same speech at least ten different times: “Here in Africa, if you invite someone to an event you have to welcome them with meat and drinks.” A fine tradition of welcome, to be sure, but somebody has to pay for it, and I wasn’t going to spend development money on the invitees, who were all people who had money to buy a soda if they wanted one. Finally someone came through with a goat and my co-organizers found money for the beverages on their own.

Final preparations were made all day Saturday. Responsibilities were delegated to a variety of helpers. We followed the route of the race with a donkey cart, filling in holes with dirt. We planned a 6AM wake up Sunday to complete the last minute setup. Finally, late in the evening, everything was in place and I went home to sleep.

The night was hot, and I considered pitching my tent in the courtyard instead of trying to sleep in my concrete oven of a house. However, my father has always considered himself a kind of human low-pressure system, bringing rain wherever he passed, due to the fact that every family vacation was spent mired in dripping rain jackets, leaky tents and soggy sleeping bags. Some lightning in the distance heightened my suspicions that it might run in the family, so I didn’t bother with the tent and sweated it out inside instead.

At three in the morning I awoke to the sound of rain tapping on my tin roof. Naturally. When I woke again at six to help set up, it was pouring. I didn’t bother getting out of bed, knowing no one else would either. The storms typically last three to four hours, so I figured I’d wait it out and we’d decide whether to postpone the race after the rain finished. At nine, still pouring, I knew we’d have to reschedule. At noon, with still no signs of letting up, I began to worry about the neighbors. Finally, around three thirty in the afternoon, the rain slowed to a trickle and finally stopped. I ventured outside to see what was left of the village.

Mud brick construction has the advantages of being cheap, fast, and solid enough to last up to twenty years with only minor repairs, before it is necessary to start over. However, the bricks are not stable enough to withstand more than 12 hours of soaking rain, which I was repeatedly assured was the biggest storm in village history. Wading through rivers where no rivers had been before, I surveyed the town, and rare were the courtyards that didn’t have at least one house, granary, or wall that had succumbed to the storm and tumbled to the ground.

“It was a bombardment,” one friend told me. “Today, the B52s came to town and attacked us.”

Another said, “Aaron, it was good of you to bring rains to our village, but this was too much.” I shrugged, and blamed it on my Dad.

We rescheduled the race for a later date, giving everyone time to rebuild their houses first. On the appointed day, nothing went exactly as planned, but the race was held in front of a huge crowd, the guests got their meal, and the health presentations were a success. Everybody seemed happy with the result of all our work.

As for me and Albert? We didn’t actually participate in the race, occupying ourselves with the organization instead. Our personal contest has been put off into the indeterminate future. It’s okay though; this way we still have something to argue about over the next calabash of dolo.

Drinking Dolo at the Cabaret

A vendor fills a liter bottle with fresh dolo.
Photo: David Noyes



The guys get together at Eugenie's cabaret.



The village of Zogore is split about evenly between Christians and Muslims. The Christians are further divided between a Catholic majority and a smaller Protestant population. For whatever reason, the Muslims tend to live in the outlying areas of the village, while Catholic families are more concentrated in the town center. Even were it not for this distinction, however, you can always tell a Catholic courtyard at a glance from the giant woodpiles stacked outside.

Aside from the usual cooking needs, the wood is used to brew dolo, the traditional sorghum beer popular here. It requires so much wood because after being crushed and ground into a paste, the sorghum is boiled for one to three days, depending on the preparation style.

After the boiling is finished, the result is a sweet tasting beverage called Razam, somewhat comparable to apple juice. Being non-alcoholic, Razam is ignored by nearly everybody save a few Protestants who don't drink alcohol but still like to hang out in the cabarets. Thus, to most if not all of this Razam the women add yeast and let ferment, creating beer, alternately known as ram, chapallo, or dolo.

When the dolo is ready, the women fill up big plastic trash barrels of it. A visitor here once asked if the barrels had seen previous use as garbage cans, but no- they are purchased new specifically for dolo. Villagers have no use for trash cans in the traditional sense. There is very little trash produced period, just the black baggies used to carry home items from the market, and the occasional packaging for household items like soap. And why bother filling up a trash can, which would just get emptied out in the streets and fields anyway? Instead the garbage just gets thrown on the ground directly, cutting out the middleman and leaving trash cans clean and shiny for beer brewing.

First thing in the morning, the women drag out the barrels and some benches to a shady spot outside the courtyard, and the cabaret is born. Nearly every catholic woman I know is involved in dolo production. They don't all make it everyday, rather, frequently it is a collaborative effort in which three or four will take turns brewing and then all sit around selling it, the profits going to whichever one produced it on that particular day. There are always a few cabarets open in the village, but the number increases dramatically every third day, which is market day. Sunday is also big, to keep the after church crowd occupied. And if market day happens to fall on a Sunday, especially if it is a special occasion such as the Bishop of Ouahigouya visiting, watch out. I had some trainees in town that particular Sunday and the facilitator nearly went mad with worry over the general boisterousness of the village, marriage proposals from drunken villagers aimed at the trainees flying around left and right, and so on.

Usually, though, the cabaret scene is geared more towards simple socializing than drunkenness. People start passing through around eight or nine in the morning, on the way to work, if there's work, or just for something to do. Arriving, you go around the benches and shake everybody's hand, be it your friend, brother, or uncle, and mumble a few words of greeting. Then one of the women will bring you a half filled gourd, called a calabash, to sample. The variety of tastes of the drink is remarkable, from cabaret to cabaret, day to day, and even morning to evening in the same cabaret, as it continues to ferment. It can be sweet, sour, bitter, or smoky, best when somewhere in between the four.

The dolo is measured in reused bottles. It costs 50 CFA, or about ten cents, for a 33ml soda bottle, 100 CFA for a 66ml beer bottle full, and 150 CFA to fill a one liter liquor bottle. If you are really thirsty, or are taking it somewhere to share with a number of people, you can get a two or four liter plastic oil container filled. With the exception of the little 50cfa portions, these are not personal servings- women will pour into the calabashes of everyone you are sitting with, and retrieve the bottles when empty. “Stop there, I've had enough!” customers will often protest in mock anger as their calabash is filled again, then finally relent and allow the woman to continue serving.

Hang out around the cabaret enough and you start to get to know the town characters. For example there is Julbert, the grey bearded retired school teacher, who loves to prattle on about American history: “George Washington, first president of the United States of American! Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States of America!” The later in the day and more drunk he is, the longer he will go on. Sometimes he will even try out some of schoolboy English: “We weesh you a merry Chreestmas and a happy New Year!” Nevermind that it's April.

Another is Gimbo, who bikes around town pedaling a basket of dog meat, while all the living dogs come charging in from neighboring courtyards to bark and growl, and he just laughs. “The dogs know their enemies,” my friend explained with a shrug.

Conversation will drift into the weather, or village news, or, more likely, making fun of one another. There are a handful of jokes that get used every day, over and over, and somehow never get old. “Bob drank too much and he's going to fall,” or, “Bob drank all the dolo and now there's none left,” or “Bob has blurry vision so we're going to take him to the clinic and get him a shot in the head,” or maybe, “Bob says he is fasting but here he is drinking anyway!” Everyone has a good laugh, while Bob defends himself the best he can.

Gradually people start to drift off to whatever business they have going on that day. Frequently, they might pass again around lunch time, and again in the afternoon, to share another calabash if Bob doesn't drink it all first.

There is a frequently repeated stereotype of an African man blowing all his money on alcohol instead of saving for things like children's school fees and medicines. This can indeed be a problem. You can always tell when someone pulled in a big sum of cash by all the 500CA bottled beers getting tossed back at the only official, non cabaret bar in town. However, I would caution that the admonition doesn't necessarily apply to the cabaret-- you have to look at where the money is going. The Catholic men may be imprudently spending their money on booze, but that money is going directly to a population more likely to direct it towards more productive uses like school fees- ie, the Catholic women. In many cases, to the spendthrift man in question's very own wife. Husbands might receive the first free sample, but after that they pay 150CFA per liter just like everybody else.

A Sight You'll Never See

Women folding themselves in half to plant onions.



Agha and Noufou in a happier moment.
Photo: Mike Wagner



I don't usually like taking very many pictures. I don't like feeling like a tourist in a place where I live, and besides, I'd rather be participating in the daily routine rather than documenting it. For work related events, or big celebrations, I'll break out the camera so I have something to show people at home, but generally I'd rather leave it at my house and spend the days unencumbered.

Usually this suits me just fine, but there have been three occasions so far when I was so struck by an image, by its visual effect and wider relation to Burkinabe life, that I have thought, “Man, I really wish I had my camera.”

The first came last May, when the villagers were preparing the fields for their cereal crops. I went out to a friend's field to watch, while he and two others started digging shallow holes to deposit seeds into. The holes catch rainwater, and more ambitious farmers fill them with compost, which not only adds nutrients to the soil but attracts termites, who then tunnel downward, allowing water to penetrate the ground even more and further improving soil viability.

There weren't any extra tools, so with nothing else to do, I climbed up a nearby Karité tree. The Karité, besides having strong, wide branches that lend themselves to climbing, is also famous for its fruit, which is used to produce shea butter, a popular ingredient in soaps and skin products sold in Europe and America. Burkina has the largest concentration of Karité trees in the world, a rare claim for any natural resource around here. Furthermore, the flowers that precede the fruits are claimed to make the best tasting honey on the continent.

Keeping an eye peeled for bees, I scrambled up to a suitable perch and looked down at the laborers. They were three in a line, bent over at the waist, having completed perhaps a twenty foot square field of small holes, standing out on an otherwise flat and uninspiring landscape.

Burkinabe spend a surprising percentage of their lives bent over at the waist. All facets of agriculture require it: digging and weeding with short handled hoes, sprinkling seeds and fertilizer, and chopping the stalks off near the ground at harvest time. Cooking is done in pots only a few inches off the ground, the cook bent over to stir, add ingredients, and tend the fire. The same goes for laundry and dishes, washed by hand in bins on the ground. If there is no pulley over a well, to draw water out people stand right on the edge and bend all the way over the mouth so as to not scrape and tear the water jugs on the well walls. People have died in this manner when a snapped rope causes a sudden and unexpected shift in center of gravity and the unfortunate person goes tumbling into the abyss.

Sweeping, too, is done with a handful of straw, bent over. I was once reprimanded by my host family for squatting down to sweep my room: “You have to do it like this,” they told me, bending over at the waist. In fact the only times I have ever seen a Burkinabe squat are to discretely urinate, or to eat. Mealtimes everyone crouches around the food, though I'm not sure why it's okay to eat but not sweep in that position. Watching the farmers dig from my spot in the Karité tree, I marveled that more people aren't crippled by bad backs.

The second time I wanted to take a picture but couldn't, I was visiting the host family I lived with during training. They live in the city of Ouahigouya and are well off by Burkina standards, with electricity and television in their house, and two cars in the courtyard. There's no running water but their existence is certainly far more modern that anything you see in village. The family consists of a husband, two wives, ten children ages 0 through 19, plus whatever relatives happen to be staying with them at any given moment. Five children belong to Abibata, the older wife, two to Mariam, the younger, two to another women whereabouts unknown, and one is actually an orphaned cousin who was taken in by the family. All the children are treated equally by all the parents, receiving love, instruction, and discipline from whomever happens to be around.

On the day in question, Mariam was applying a black dye to her feet in zig-zag patterns, a traditional way of decorating the body for a festival or special occasion. When she finished, she started on the feet of Ahga, the four year old girl, biological daughter of Abibata. Noufou, Mariam's six year old son, looked on. If Noufou lived in America he would be diagnosed with ADHD and medicated with a steady dose of pills. As it is, he is free to do what he pleases, which usually means stripping off his clothes and dancing naked in front of the television, shiny brown bottom shaking in time to the music videos. His other favorite activity is provoking his siblings, and especially Ahga, with whom he had at least one shouting/ shoving/ punching/ crying match per day during the time I lived with them. The worst was when she pushed him off a barrel, opening a bloody gash in his head. He retaliated by hurling a rock the size of a Big Mac at her, and through her tears she made ready to throw a piece of cinder block back before we managed to intervene and separate them.

While Mariam worked on the girl's feet, though, there was none of that, no fights, no crying, just three heads bent over together, concentrating, watching the application of traditional body art still relevant to this family, their lives somewhere in transition between ancient and modern.

In village, things like televisions are much more of a novelty. There are perhaps two or three families that own a set in Zogore, which they run off car batteries. Otherwise the only screen is at the bar, which for this purpose doubles as the town movie theater. The owner hooks his TV up to a generator and shows soccer games or kung fu movies and the patrons all pay around 20 cents to watch. Ever since cell phone service arrived in village last July, he has also allowed people to charge phones off the generator.

I was there one evening after dark to charge mine, while a soccer game was playing. Soccer is big here, especially if the game involves Didier Drogba, the Cote D'Ivoire star who plays for Chelsea in the English Premiere league. As I fiddled with a balky cord in the power strip under the television, I happened to glance up and look at the assembled crowd. On the backdrop of a dark night I saw a hundred dark faces, illuminated only by the glow of the television screen. All two hundred eyes, gleaming white in comparison, were fixed forward towards the action of the game. Expressions were uniformly serious, everyone concentrating, no movement, not a sound to be heard save the announcer's voice, everybody fixated on the game, silently rooting on their hero Drogba. I regretted not having my camera, but I doubted it could have done justice to the scene anyway, and especially not to the contrast when the Ivorian scored not minutes later and a pandemonium erupted of yelling, jumping up and down, and handshakes all around.

So, there are no appropriate photographs to accompany this piece. It's just as well, since descriptive as they might be, I don't value the photos enough to justify carrying a camera around everywhere I go for the rest of my life. It's good enough, I suppose, to observe and remember.

Devils in the Night

Just shooting the breeze in Maurice's courtyard.



Guinea fowl hoping they don't become dinner.



After over a year in Burkina Faso, I still rarely have any idea what is going on around me. This is most likely due to still not knowing Moore, the local dialect, well enough to understand most of the ambient conversation. Another reason might be the perhaps deliberately vague answers with which many people respond to questions: “Where are we going?” “Over there to see the thing.” You get used to it. Plus, living in a state of oblivion means you never know when you might find yourself in a new and interesting situation.

Such was the case one night when I arrived in Maurice’s courtyard to eat dinner. I helped him feed the pigs, and we circulated around town a bit to greet the neighbors. Maurice’s wife served us the usual millet pate, this time with baobab leaf sauce. So far pretty standard. After we finished, I thought I would be returning back to my house to go to bed. However, at that point I noticed a canister standing by filled with four liters of dolo, the locally brewed sorghum beer. Bedtime, it seemed, would not be coming early tonight.

My anticipation heightened when Albert and Abdulaye, my two favorite old men, arrived at the house. Albert is known for always wearing a cowboy hat and making claims such as that he can ride four horses, all at the same time, all going in different directions, which I believe is called drawing and quartering in other contexts but for some reason sounds more plausible in West Africa. Abdulaye is a beekeeper who lives out in the bush with his hives. Together, the four of us, along with a guinea fowl, got up and headed off into the fields, into the night. I still didn’t know what going on but it looked like we would be eating the guinea fowl and drinking the beer, which sounded reasonable to me.

On the walk, we came across my friend Raouda, clad in nothing but a towel and at least a hundred meters from his courtyard. “Raouda, what are you doing running naked through the millet fields in the middle of the night?” I asked him. No, he responded. He was just there to relieve himself. Well. It’s not every household that has built a latrine yet.

We left Raouda to his business and continued to a clear spot in the middle of the field. As we drank the first round of dolo, the night was nearly silent, save for the songs of the toads and the crickets, and somewhere, a barking dog. Albert said a short prayer in Moore and took out a small calabash filled with a dark something. He poured oil over it and lit the whole thing on fire. “It can burn like this for hours,” he told me.

I asked what was in it. He laughed and said, “Nothing you can understand. It’s gris-gris.” Magic. “If you pour oil on a normal calabash it will burn up in a matter of seconds. This one is magic.”

Meanwhile, Abdulaye had set some branches on fire, and threw on the fowl, which at some point had transformed from a living bird into a carcass. As it popped and cracked on the fire, Albert would periodically shake another calabash, making a rattling noise, and then scatter some of its contents on the ground.

“Is that gris-gris too?” I asked.

It’s to keep strangers away, they explained- devils.

“There are devils here?”

Of course. All over.

“And they’re evil?”

Certainly.

“Is that a devil?” I asked, indicating the light of a motorcycle that was passing on a nearby path.

“No,” Abdulaye answered, “That’s a motorcycle. But devils are everywhere. There’s one that lives in the big shea tree by my beehives.”

“And you aren’t scared?”

“Never!” he replied indignantly. “He’s my friend.”

“But why, then,” I continued, “do we shake the calabash to keep them away?”

They explained that it’s not the devils from Zogore that wish us harm. It’s the devils from neighboring towns who come in the night to cause mischief. Those are the devils we have to keep away.

And so, we ate our guinea fowl and drank our dolo. I’m not quite sure if they really believe what they were telling me. I think they do, at least a little bit. I’m also not sure if they thought I believed them. I doubt it. What I do know, is that the first calabash burned for nearly three hours, and that as long as Albert was shaking the second one, no devils came to bother us.

The country is full of fantastic stories like this. There are soccer players who claim to be able to kick a ball and divide it in two, so the goalkeeper has to guess which one to save. There are masks that roam about villages on appointed nights, killing anyone who ventures outside their house. There is a town that all pregnant women must avoid, lest they birth a baby that looks like a snake. Many of these claims sound ridiculous to westerners. However, I am reminded of a statement by Mary Kingsley, an Englishwoman who left to explore the jungles of West Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, on her own, with no experience, no knowledge of Africa, in her petticoat. In the book describing her adventures, “Travels in West Africa,” Kingsley says regarding the Africans she befriends, “I think them fools of the first water for their power of believing in things; but I fancy I have analogous feelings towards even my fellow-countrymen when they go and violently believe in something I cannot quite swallow.”

Indeed. The same people who talk about devils and magic calabashes here think I’m crazy if I say that a black cat is bad luck. I guess one is just as believable, or not, as another.

Back at the guinea fowl roast, Albert told me that the previous volunteer here hadn’t believed their talk of devils, and asked them to show her one. It seems to me, though, that whatever your thoughts on the supernatural, and whether you believe in devils or not, it’s awfully foolish to go out looking for them.

Changing Seasons in the Sahel

New millet sprouts in the field behind my house in June.



The same field in September.


“How’s the weather” is standard fare for small talk, whether in the checkout line, around the water-cooler, or anywhere else that invites mindless chatter. It sometimes seems strange that the topic is so pervasive when most of us spend all day in a climate controlled office, then get in the climate controlled car and drive to our climate controlled home. Save the odd ice-storm or something catastrophic like a hurricane, the weather has a relatively small impact on our lives. In Burkina, it’s easier to figure why everyone is talking about the weather all the time. Not only do people spend most of their time outside, unprotected from the elements, but basic livelihoods and daily activities are entirely dependent on the rainfall and other climatic forces.

The calendar in Burkina can be broken into three sea sons: cold, hot, and rainy. The cold season corresponds roughly to our own winter, running from November to February. Cold in this context means night time temperatures as low as 55 degrees, complemented by a persistent strong wind coming from the north. Dust from the Sahara is carried in by the wind and can reduce visibility down to nothing, as well as coating everything in a layer of red. The people pull on thick ski jackets and winter hats, and babies are wrapped up like pigs in a blanket. At night the streets and bars empty as everyone huddles in their huts for warmth. Ask a Burkinabe how it’s going and he will shake his head sadly, and say, “It’s not good. Too much wind,” or, “too much dust.” A huge fuss is made over Americans who are still comfortable walking around in shorts and a tee-shirt.

Despite the complaints, the cold season is also a time of celebration. The harvest is finished, and families have some disposable income for the first time in months. With the glut of Christian, Muslim, and traditional holidays all at once, December is a month long party, which continues into January, otherwise known as the funeral season. That’s not to say that people choose to die in such a convenient fashion, but after an important person passes away and is buried, the family typically waits until January to hold the funeral, to take advantage of the relative prosperity and idleness after the harvest.

Wind and dust notwithstanding, the cooler months are a blessing for an American used to a colder climate, time to gather strength for the impending hot season, which descends sometime around March. One night, you notice it’s getting a bit too hot to sleep indoors, and the next thing you know, it’s upon you: Heat, such that you sit in the shade at twilight and sweat like you’re running under the midday sun, while the dust settles on your skin and immediately turns to mud. Mercury busting, grandparent killing heat, causing skin to stick to itself and any other surface it touches. Heat like you drink five liters of water a day and only urinate once, because all that liquid comes out your forehead and armpits. And this is a dry heat. Pity the environment with similar temperatures and high humidity to boot.

The hot season is a time of barrenness. Any last lingering green plants from the previous year quickly wither and die, leaving a vast expanse of red emptiness. Wells and reservoirs dry up, ending the gardening season until the following winter. Even the insects, so persistent the rest of the year, disappear, perhaps recognizing more astutely than humans that this is no time to be alive.

The humans, however, aren’t as discouraged by the turn of weather. There are, of course, comments like, ‘It’s a real scorcher today!’ (windigo zabdame!) but people’s morale is far higher than in the cold season. Perhaps it is because they know what is right around the corner.

One day, usually in late May or early June, dark clouds appear in the sky. The wind, still since the winter, picks up into a frenzy, and people scurry to shelter. A soaking, soothing, quenching rain settles over the land, usually accompanied by some impressive thunder and lightning. In a landscape with few tall trees and no two story buildings, the storm watching is top notch, lightning fork after lightning fork striking through the air. Then after the storm dies down people come out to greet each other in joy, for it is impossible to underestimate the relief, the good feeling that rain brings after six or seven months without a drop.

The season takes a while to get going, with a storm every few weeks at first. If the year is good, it might progress to a few three to four hour rainfalls every week. If bad, there might be rain only every few weeks if at all. While the rain may cause inconveniences including mud, rivers across roads, flooding, and collapsing buildings, there is not a complaint to be heard- all these problems are secondary to the benefits of the season. Along with the rains comes a relief in the temperature, green grass to the land, and work to the people, who spend most of the season in the fields planting, weeding, and harvesting their crops.

These crops bring another interesting change to the village dynamic. Throughout most of the year, you can see a long way, and wave hello to a friend clear on the other side of the village. Now, with fifteen foot tall millet and sorghum stalks everywhere, you can walk down the village paths in anonymity, perhaps passing within ten feet of a neighbor and never realizing it.

The privacy doesn’t last long, however. By the end of October the crops are cut down, seeds piled in granaries, and stalks given to stock as feed. The end of harvest parties start, and the cold starts to creep in, along with the complaints. “Well, we did have a good rainy season this year, but now there’s just too much dust . . .”

A Cockroach Too Far

The hole where the cockroaches emerge from.


One of the biggest fears of a new Peace Corps volunteer is the legendary hot season, stretching from March into June. “It’s so hot you can’t move,” seasoned veterans tell the rookies. “All can you do is sweat all day long. The only relief is death.” But there is one silver lining to the misery: The insect population can’t bear the heat either, and virtually disappears for four months.

“But the bugs aren’t so bad here,” the new volunteer might protest.

Just wait, is the response. Just wait until the rainy season.

Along with the flourishing of green grass and cereal crops, the insects of Burkina come back in full force with the rains. We lack most of the exotic insects of more tropical climates, the dung and rhinoceros beetles and other fodder for National Geographic documentaries. Instead, our bugs are of the more mundane types, familiar pests to all Americans: ants, termites, mosquitoes, flies, and cockroaches. The difference is in Africa there is no escape from them; people are forced to live in close association with the entire lot.

The ants come in all varieties, small, large, black, red, ants that bite and ants that fly, ants that harvest seeds and ants that scavenge the carcasses of dead cockroaches in my courtyard (more on that later). Mercifully absent from this area are the safari, or driver ants found over much of the rest of the continent, that travel in thick columns and, when disturbed, have a habit of running up a person’s leg and all biting at the exact same time. When it happens, you can’t get your pants off quickly enough, regardless of social decorum. Fortunately, the ants of Burkina qualify only as a minor nuisance, and not a true menace.

The same goes for their cousins, the termites. They have an annoying way of building their mud tunnels up the side of houses and walls. You can knock the tunnels down every day, and commit genocide on the population with an insecticide, but without fail they are back the next morning. Left alone they can destroy wooden support beams, not to mention cause a huge mess, so the fight must go on.

However, there are many who consider the termites a treat, not a problem. After a rain, droves of larges, winged types emerge from the termite mounds and fly towards the light. Villagers take advantage of the pilgrimage to ambush them with lanterns, snatch hundreds out of the air, and fry them up with a little big of salt for flavor. Unfortunately, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend the snack. They’re not terrible, but there’s not much to them—it’s kind of like eating salted dust.

Mosquitoes, on the other hand, aren’t consumed by humans, but instead feed on our blood for their subsistence. Burkina is home to the anopheles mosquito, who announce themselves with an annoying high pitched whine and leave an itchy welt after they bite. The real problem, of course, is the disease they leave behind, the destructive falciparum strand of malaria, which infects between 500 million and a billion people worldwide each year, and kills over a million. By far the biggest impact of the disease is in sub-Saharan Africa, where the endemic poverty makes it difficult for people to afford preventative measures like mosquito nets, or curative medicine after the diseases is contracted. Numerous efforts are underway to combat the scourge, from net and drug distribution to more creative tactics such as genetically engineering malaria resistant mosquitoes, but to this day malaria remains the greatest public health problem in tropical countries across the globe, including Burkina Faso.

Peace Corps volunteers have the benefit of modern prophylaxis drugs to protect us from malaria, and we will inevitably answer that it is the flies that bother us in Burkina far more than the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are only out at night, and their bites disappear after a few hours. Flies, though, have a huge advantage in numbers and persistence. The rainy season is sometimes referred to the fly season, and with good reason. Take an eye off your beer for a split second and you find dozens crawling around inside the rim. The spectacle of hundreds swarming on a piece of raw meat waiting to be sold in the market is positively grotesque. It is rare, during the season, to not have at least five or six crawling around your feet, arms, head, any exposed skin, which will land over and over and over again no matter how many times they are shooed away. Occasionally two will land stuck together, their buzzing amplified in carnal ecstasy, leaving who knows what behind on your skin. Worse is the knowledge that they are doubtless fresh from an open latrine, bearing all the germs and diseases found within.

Flies aren’t the worst thing that comes out of the latrines, however. That prize is reserved for the most revolting insect of them all, the cockroach. Born and raised in human waste, the creatures lay dormant in the daytime, only to emerge by the dozen at night, covering the latrine floor and walls. They are so many and so fast that to mount an offensive against the population is futile, and often counterproductive. Indeed, one of my latrine walls is cracked and crumbling, the result of an overzealous kick- and I didn’t even kill the thing. The only solution is an uneasy truce- I leave them alone, and try not to use the latrine at night except in dire emergencies. If they venture out beyond the walls into my courtyard, or worse, my house, it is an instant death sentence, squashed under my flip-flop, to be portioned off and carried away by opportunistic ants before the morning.

As bad as the cockroaches can be, however, I’ve come across nothing as dire as mentioned by Graham Green in Journey Without Maps, an account of his trek across Liberia in the 1930s (quoting Sir Henry Johnston):

“’These insects,’ he wrote, ‘do not hesitate at night to attack human beings who are asleep. They creep to the corners of the mouth of the sleeping person to suck the saliva. They eat the toe-nails down to the quick, and above all, they gnaw at any sore place or ulcer on the skin . . . the unfortunate passenger, who would wake in the dead of night, in black darkness, to find two or three large cockroaches clinging to his lips.’”

It’s enough to make a person long for the hot season.