With Aidson's friend Esther as a guide, we went first to the campus of the Université de Koudougou, which just opened this past school year as the country's third university (the others are in Ouaga and Bobo and have been open for about 30 and 15 years respectively). We then went by a state-run cotton processing and cloth-weaving factory, which from what I gathered has been having difficulty competing with cheaper cloth from overseas in recent years. I was sorry I wasn't able to find out more. We visited a spirulina processing plant, a dam, a very modern-looking church, and the city's brand-spanking-new market building (the cleanest and best-organized market I've seen anywhere on this trip--well worth the city's investment, it seems to me, and I hope the merchants think so too!). This brought us to sundown, when we headed to a flat-topped hill at the edge of town that afforded superb views of the entire city and the surrounding green countryside. Crops, mostly millet and petit mil, are beginning to sprout, making Burkina much lusher than it was when we first arrived.
We went out at night with Aidson's friend Michel, who owns the roadside maquis where we ate all weekend. Michel brought his friend Jean-Maxime, a Montrealer spending four months in Koudougou on a coop placement through the Université de Sherbrooke and the Canadian NGO Engineers Without Borders. His project had to do with micro-dams in farms in the area, and he'd just finished an impact assessment of the work previously done by the local NGO he was working for. It was really nice to meet someone from so close to home, doing the same type of work, and compare notes on our work and travel experiences. (The dance bar music was the same selection as usual, but I think I can handle it for another three weeks. ;) )
The next day we threw the bikes back on top of the bus and headed back towards Ouaga, getting the bus to drop us at Bazoulé, a town 20 km from Ouaga that boasts a pond containing caimans sacrés (sacred crocodiles). We had to buy a small live chicken and have a park staffer dangle it from a long pole to lure a few caimans from the water, then feed it to one and pet it as it digested. It made me a little uncomfortable, but it's really no different, I suppose, than feeding live fish to dolphins at Marineland to get them to do tricks. I guess what made me less comfortable was the fact that in trying to develop the area for tourism, there was a rudimentary maquis, picnic tables and a gift shop, but there was nothing explaining why the caimans were sacred, and the guide gave only the briefest of outlines when I asked him about it(it apparently has to do with the fact that the caimans have lived there for so long that they are considered to be the ancestors, or to hold the spirits of the ancestors, of the people who now live in the area). I was thinking the site could be a great opportunity to make visitors aware of ancestor worship traditions in the region, but instead it was more about caimans snapping at chickens while a small crowd of visitors and amused locals looked on. We biked back to Ouaga along the paved road from Bazoulé, arriving home at sundown.
Bazoulé was one of the first "developed" tourist attractions I've seen outside the city anywhere in Burkina so far--even in Ouaga, compared to the multitude of museums and plaques in most European cities, there isn't too much to do in the way of sightseeing. Jean-Maxime, in talking about his trip to Mali's Dogon country several weeks ago, confirmed what I've observed about travelling in West Africa so far: it's a lot more about being flexible and patient, seeing what you see, and trying to connect with people as much as possible than it is about cramming lots into every day and checking sights off a list. Given that I'm often task-oriented and impatient, that means I may really have to work to relax and absorb as much as I can during my two weeks' travel at the end of the project (if it's really even possible to talk about "working to relax"). It's going to be a huge challenge, I think, and I hope I'm up for it.
In the meantime, after not having been on a bike for three months, I'm sitting a little uncomfortably today. ;) Luckily today is likely to consist of getting a mural started at ANERSER, which won't involve too much sitting, I hope. (A sore bum sure beats the small bout with amoebae I had last week, too--I was a bit disappointed to spoil my perfect record health-wise, but I've been so lucky with my health this trip that I suppose I shouldn't complain. And don't worry, a trip to the clinic and the pharmacy solved the problem within a day or two.) The rest of the week will be devoted to finishing the mural, writing our final reports, having a party with the boys, and tying up loose ends as we prepare to leave Ouaga and start travelling. I hope to be able to post again either just before or just after we leave. In the meantime, all the best of everything, and keep the emails coming. :)
P.S. In my last post I described cultivation as being "awkward, dusty work for our untrained hands;" I hope I didn't give the impression that it's not "awkward, dusty work, period." I've talked to quite a few people who would rather be doing a lot of other things than subsistence farming, and even those who like to farm would generally have like to have had the chance to finish school before taking it up full-time, but didn't have the means.
posted by Emily @ 8:36 a.m.
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