Hot

Umm it's getting really hot here. Observations:

• The BBC says Ouagadougou is 107 °F (41.7 °C) as of 3 pm today.
  
• My house, according to my body thermometer, is a comfortable 98 °F (36.7 °C).
• I just stood in line to pay my electricity bill and the sweat was literally dripping off me.
• My skin has a perpetual sheen and riding my bike is refreshing because of the "wind".
• The heat radiating off the computer I'm typing on is unbearable.

Mali – Dogon Country

I just took the best vacation of my life. No joke. I spent four days in what's known as Dogon Country in Mali.

Dogon Country is comprised of the Bandiagara Escarpment 200 km long. The Dogon people live on top and at the base of the cliffs. The most striking villages are those in the cliffs themselves which are very reminiscent of Mesa Verde in Colorado. Before the Dogon people came to live around the cliffs another people known as the Tellem lived there. You can still see what looks like tiny houses high in the cliffs. These were actually used by the Tellem to hide their valuables and were not actually lived in. No one really understands why the Tellem left, but they were succeeded by the ancestors of the present day Dogon. These ancient Dogon built the villages in the base of the cliffs, which are uninhabited today.

Getting to Dogon Country from Ouahigouya is "easy". There are bush taxis that leave for Koro, Mali everyday. They don't have a scheduled time for departure, leaving instead when all the seats have been sold. We got to the "station" by the cinema at 6:30 am, but didn't actually leave until close to 9 am. We ended up waiting for two women who had purchased tickets the night before, then we had to go fill up the tires with air, then get gas, then pick-up one more person, etc.

Finally we made our way to the border. On the Burkina side we had to stop and unload at the gendarmerie, customs and border and in Mali at the border and customs for a grand total of 5 stops. To make things interesting the two women we waited for didn't have their IDs so each stop took forever. The authorities wanted the women to pay sums of money for not having their identification and the women tried each time to get out of doing so by saying they had no money (not true). As for us Americans, we had to purchase our visas at the border for 15000 cfa each. This turned out to be very easy with no hassle, not at all what I expected.

Mali border check point with our white bush taxi.

We finally made it to Koro, Mali around 1 pm where we met our guide Oumar. Oumar is the "official" Peace Corps guide for Dogon and now I know why. He's Dogon himself coming from the village of Endé, speaks great english and is super knowledgeable and relaxed. After eating lunch and waiting for the sun to set a bit (3:30 pm) we took off in an old white station wagon to our drop off point where the road became too sandy for the car. Amusingly my door wouldn't stay closed so I ended up holding it shut the whole way. That afternoon we hiked to the village of Nombori and began our hike to Téli (about 30 km).

Camel cart

Quick stop at a village on our route.

We met two thirsty ladies carrying firewood not too far from the start of our hike.

roof sleeping is comfortable!

View from Nombori. It felt as though the sand was trying to swallow the valley. Dogon is located in the region known as the Sahel, not far from the Sarhara.

The mound is/was a fetish or god. Sacrifices are poured on top and in the center is the head of an animal or something like that.

vegetable garden

ladder

meeting place

marché area

rock resembling a camel

hand dug well next to fields

upset donkeys - they were eating ants and then something went awry

at the blacksmith - bellows

soccer game

pain de singe (aka baobab fruit)

basket weaving

indigo ladies

indigo ball and fabric before dyeing


door

Téli

mosque

hunter's home - baboon and other skulls

the Hogon's home

Some neighborhood sounds

Let's talk about problem solving. What do you do if a neighbor is doing something annoying, such as playing their music too loud? Calling the police right away is a little extreme. More likely you'd either put up with it or ask the neighbor to turn it down ... pretty please.

Sometimes it feels like everyone in Burkina plays their music too loud. A lot of people play music on their cell phone, without headphones of course, and they do this on the bus, at the post office, on the street, in the restaurant ... in short everywhere. Then there's the "neighborhood discothèque". It's a virtual boom box competition around my house. Each house trying to dominate the next and thereby creating a cacophony of Bob Marley meets Celine Dion meets Akon meets Burkinabè pop artists meets the drums/singing of a local church down the street. The latest to join the overplayed ranks is UB40's "Red, Red Wine" (originally by Neil Diamond (1968)) and I truly consider this to be a dramatic improvement! Although now I sit on my porch and really crave red, red wine. Confession time, I too have joined my voice (not literally) to the disharmony surrounding me, blaring my music whenever I grade or do laundry. At least my contribution is extremely classy considering all the wonderful music my super awesome boyfriend sent me. Grading is much easier with the blues and laundry is a cinch while listening to comedy.

Now imagine adding to all this background music the sound of goats. Not just any goats, but two of the unhappiest, most miserable goats in all of Burkina Faso. Let's be clear that goats don't politely bleat like sheep. Their wobbly cry/scream is somewhat similar to that of a extremely upset baby. These two particular goats happen to live immediately next to me and they never shut up! Half the time it sounds like they're in mortal peril and the other half like prisoners yelling for their one phone call. Maybe it's because they're penned up when they'd rater be roaming free, slaughtering baby trees at will. I've tried to discover the cause of their distress. I looked over the wall, but their pen is out-of-sight so no luck there. I even did some internet research on goat calls. I found one site that has a goat call named "Pygmy goat kid calling for its mother" which is similar, but my goats' vocalizations are more forceful by a factor of ten. For your amusment I found a YouTube clip that's pretty darn close, just play it over and over and you'll understand. So here's the dilemma ... do I ask my neighbor to muzzle(?) his goats, do I third party the problem Burkinabè style or do I continue living life to the soundtrack of depressed goats? Yeah it'll be the last one.

On the serious side of things, I have new neighbors as of last month: a veterinarian and his wife and two girls (about 1 and 3 years old). This really is very nice except that my bathroom window literally opens into their courtyard. Meaning I can hear everything going on in their house and I suppose they can hear everything I'm doing as well. Just before writing this post I heard the mom spanking the older girl multiple times. It was horrible! and I know there's absolutely nothing a child that young could have possibly done to deserve even a fraction of what I heard! This is going to be an even bigger problem than the goats...

FESPACO!

I didn't really want to come to Ouaga, but in retrospect that was silly. The break from teaching has been wonderful and I've gained new perspective. Being stressed is not healthy. You'd think I would have learned that lesson well from grad school!

I've only been in Ouaga three days. FESPACO is going on and I've manage to watch 2 movies, buy pagnes and get some work done. I wasn't sure what to expect from the African film festival, however based on my limited Seattle film festival experience I think it was fairly normal. People watch movies, directors and actors are present, some are well produced others a bit raw and most very interesting.

The two movies I saw: "Une vie brisée" ("A Broken Life") - directed by Jude Ntsimenkou from Cameroon and "Whatever Lola Wants" - directed by Nabil Ayouch from Morocco. Both were very good and quite different.

"Une vie brisée" told the story of an african man beaten to death by the brother of an arab woman because he had dated her. The movie theater was outdoors. A cross between the Santa Fe opera house (without the padded seats, nice lighting and good speakers) and a drive in movie theater (without motorized vehicles, but with the obnoxious talking people and the scratchy speakers).

"Whatever Lola Wants" was a fantastic movie about belly dancing and yes the title has something to do with the song. :) It is Moroccan, but the story takes place in the US and Egypt. I just found out it was released in Dubai in 2007. The theater for this one was comfortable, your typical American theater with nice seats and air conditioning. In place of a consession stand though was a bar.

This now puts me at having watched 3 movies in Burkina. The first was a dubbed Clint Eastwood film on Chritmas Eve in Ouahigouya. Mostly I remember that one being cold. :)