Sarah Visits the BF!
Monday, May 27 – Thursday, June
13, 2013
Aventure 1: Le voyage à Ouaga
Sunday, the 26th of May, had been the final day of Camp
HEERE. We sent the campers home around
5pm (“Go home! No, you can’t stay
here. Camp est fini! Leave!
Now! Il faut partir à la maison
tout de suite, or the tubabus will start to throw rocks at you….seriously.”),
did some cleaning up around the CEG (“meh, let’s just throw everything into the
storage room so stuff doesn’t blow away and we’ll deal with it tomorrow…”), and
then we all turned ourselves in for the night by sitting together outside the
CEG on our plastic nattes, enjoying a few beers, and eating some snacks. The fourteen of us were too exhausted to do
anything else after a week filled with camp preparations and wrangling
children. Here are more photo highlights, in case you forgot (or never read) my original post about Camp HEERE.
But while everyone else was unwinding, I was occupied being stressed out.
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| Boom! Counselor shot! |
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| Awesome enthusiam, Rachel and Jason! Thanks for singing and doing the actions with the kids! |
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| Gregory, our photographer! |
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| Tug o War! Fight! Pull! Be stronger!!!! Les hippopotemes!!! |
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| Cutest baby ever. Baby Susanah. So adorable! (Her mom was a volunteer who helped cook and teach about handwashing) |
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| Just relaxin' outside the "counselor" room. |
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| Michael enjoying the dust storm. Elijah working in the dust storm. The rain would hit soon! |
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| It rained. Awesome photo by Gregory. |
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| Our group shot in color. |
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| After the rain storm. |
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| Lauren, Molly, and I danced in the rain. Then we were wet. |
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| Camp is finished!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
But while everyone else was unwinding, I was occupied being stressed out.
One of my best friends, Sarah Jensen, was supposed to be arriving in Ouagadougou
the next day to visit the BF (where BF stands for Best Friend….as well as
Burkina Faso. Ha, I’m so clever!), so
obviously I needed to get to Ouaga to pick her up at the airport, not to
mention that I also needed to throw together a backpack of clothes and
important stuff like my passport, bank cards, paperwork for the bureau, etc.
and make sure that my house was somewhat in order and not a total disaster area
for when Sarah and I arrived back in my village. Plus, there was camp stuff to take care of,
such as finishing the budget, organizing the receipts, paying for the rest of
the food and other materials that we had not yet given money for….. In an ideal world, I would have had the next
day or two to do all of this, and following the closure of Camp HEERE, I could
have celebrated a successful camp and relaxed a bit with the rest of my
friends. But no. It was just my luck that everything was
happening at once and it all needed to happen NOW – it couldn’t be postponed
until next week (Sarah and I would be traveling around Burkina), nor could it
wait until after Sarah left (too far after the closure of Camp HEERE and
paperwork needed to be turned in). Thus,
everything had to be in order before I left for Ouaga early the next morning
(4am) so that Molly and the rest of the gang could easily take care of the closing
tasks without my being present.
Instead of getting a few hours of shut-eye that night, I was up,
miserably going through all receipts and making sure everything checked
out. Since I was in charge of the food
budget for camp and had all the receipts, I was the one who needed to deal with
it. I couldn’t leave it for my friends –
they would have had an awful time trying to figure out what everything meant
and what items were for what meals, and which people had been paid already and
those who had simply been given a partial advance and thus still needed
money….. what a headache. I had to
finish, but all I wanted to do was sleep.
Eventually I got “done enough” and was able to leave everything in a
somewhat organized manner for my friends to deal with in the morning, assisted
by the list I had written them:
1) pay Salimata 15 mille for bread
2) give keys for canteen back to CEG director; make sure the 2 largest
marmites are put back inside first
3) put boxes A and B in Beth’s house; C and D go to the library
4) ask Careth if the 4 mille she spent on string for the mosquito nets was
her own money or camp money (whose? How much did we give her? Did we get change back?), and if her own
money, was she was already reimbursed with camp money and by who?
4) receipts in envelope 1 are breakfast purchases; envelope 2 is
morning snack, envelope 3 is noon meal…….
5) .......etc. etc. etc.
Maybe I’m a bit OCD, but I just wanted everything to be done correctly
and be easy for them to accomplish without too many questions. The detailed budgets and explanations of
everything that need to be turned into the bureau for a “grant completion
report” are ridiculous and OCD (though, from a bureaucratic standpoint, understandable
and necessary) and that’s why I was being so OCD and ridiculous myself….
4:00am rolled around far too soon and my homologue showed up with his
moto. Molly’s homo, Abdulaye, also
showed up with his bike in order to transport Gregory, who also needed to get
to Ouaga because he was flying home the next day to Washington (state) and then
Bolivia, for a 2-week visit/vacation.
Gregory and I grabbed our backpacks, hopped on our respective motos, and
away we sped into the night to Tougan, where we would catch the 6am bus to
Ouaga.
***Now that I’m no longer a
current Peace Corps Volunteer as I post this, I don’t have to worry about being
kicked out of country for my “delinquent” behavior, and so I can say it: I rode a moto.
Yes. Yes, I did indeed ride a
moto. A couple different times
throughout my service, in fact. Yes, I
do realize that it is interdit à monter une moto sans permission
officielle, sauf un cas d’urgence…..
but sometimes there just isn’t another viable choice. Sure, I was scared to death the first time I
rode a moto (Augustin drove me about 5km to Gouron to catch the midnight
express to Bobo – in my defense, my bike tire was flat; also I didn’t want to
take my bike to Bobo anyways…) but after a few times on a moto, I learned to
relax and didn’t feel the desire to clutch onto the seat (or the person
driving) with a death grip. Other trips
on a moto include Salimata Sanago driving me to look at various fields, the
abandoned “Education des mille filles” (Education of One Thousand Girls) schools
near Niassan and Di, and an all-female association’s rice production and
packaging center; Abu Toe picking me up on the side of the road and taking me
back to village after my bus broke down for the millionth time about 20km away
from my village and I was so angry I was about ready to murder the bus slackey
boys and driver; and a few other times that I no longer recall.
Gregory and I arrived to Tougan about an hour later, ahead of schedule,
and so we drank some warm café au lait and ate du
pain while we waited for our 6am bus.
Soon the bus was loaded and we were ready to go. The coffee had perked both of us up, so we
were now wide awake and launched into a good discussion during our bus
ride. From where/how we grew up (Gregory
grew up in Bolivia), to our adventures and projects in Burkina thus far (I was
nearing the end of my service; G was still in his first year), to my reign as
the 2006 Minnesota Beef Queen, I think we talked about it all. Not sure why or how the Beef Queen thing
really came up, but it really impressed G.
He was jealous. He really likes
meat, specifically eating it, and in particular, beef, and he couldn’t believe
that I got to spend a whole year representing the beef industry, grilling
steaks, sampling new cuts of meat, and teaching kids about nutrition and beef
by-products. He said being a beef queen
(or king?) would be his dream job.
Yeah, I suppose wearing a shiny tiara and a leather sash labeled “Queen”
all while eating a juicy cheeseburger probably would be a lot of people’s dream
job.
I happened to be sitting next to the window on our bumpy bus ride, and
after a couple hours of intense conversation with G, I dozed off, only to be
awoken by drops of rain on my face.
Me: Urgh, it’s raining. I’m getting wet.
Gregory: Uh….I don’t think it’s raining out. Look at the other windows. They’re all dry.
Me: …..?..... then why am I wet……? See!
There’s another few drops!
G: Well….my guess is that the goats on top of the
bus are relieving themselves…
Me: Ewwww……that’s just my luck.
***Burkinabe buses, especially
those that went between Ouaga and Tougan, were always jankety and questionable
and falling apart, due to the horrible condition of the road (or lack
thereof). Sometimes the seats weren’t attached. Sometimes the door had to be tied shut with a
piece of string. Sometimes the windows
were broken or rusted into place or just completely non-existent. This particular bus wasn’t too bad overall,
with the exception of a few missing windows.
Where we were sitting, there was only one of the two windows that
shoulda been there. This lone window was
centered in the middle of the open window frame space, so that both my seat and
the seat in front of me had a portion of the window, but also about a 10-inch
gap of no window. And it was in this
10-inch gap that the mysterious “rain” was falling.
G: Maybe we can close the window. That might help.
Me: Yeah, good idea.
***I pull the lonely, singular
window my way, so that my portion of the open window space is now completely
covered by the plastic window. The young
well-dressed woman wearing a fancy weave in front of me turns around and gives
me a death glare. She now has a lot of
wind and dust hitting her directly, not to mention a few drops of mystery
liquid as well. She grabs the window and
pulls it completely all the way back to her side, so that I’m now the one
getting smacked in the face with all the wind and dust and “rain.”
G: Wow.
Huh. I can’t believe she just did
that. Usually women are so passive
here. Plus, you’re the tubabu. I woulda thought that she woulda left you
alone. Or that someone else, like one of
the men near us, would have offered you their seat, in return for you becoming
their third wife, of course…. Well, it’s
not fair for you to have no window, so you should at least pull it back
half-way again. She should be able to
handle sharing.
***I slowly pull the window back
part of the distance, but the woman notices, again gives me a death glare, and
yanks the window to her side again.
Apparently she wasn’t interested in sharing the window. Everyone around us laughs; some were probably
laughing at me, but I think most were laughing at the crabby woman.
Me: Uh….? Now what?
G: Do you wanna switch spots?
Me: No, I’m fine.
Just let me scoot over a bit so I’m not touching the window.
***I shift over to the left,
closer to Gregory, in hopes that I’ll stop getting hit with droplets, but with
the wind, the drops are still able to come into the window and land on me. I then proceed to hold my pagne up to the
window, creating a mock umbrella to help me stay dry. I try to take a nap, but for obvious
reasons, I can’t.
G: Okay, time’s up. It’s my turn now to sit next to the
window. Also, I need to be a gentleman,
and so it is my duty to switch places with you.
Me: No, it’s fine.
G: No it’s not.
Me: No, really.
G: Yes.
Get up. That’s a command. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Now move, girl!
Me: Well….k fine.
If you insist.
We got to Ouaga before noon, which was amazingly fast, considering that
we first left around 6am and that the bus I normally take to Ouaga leaves my
village around 7am and doesn’t pull into Ouaga until 5pm (or later) because it
has to go the long way through Ouahigouya to pick up more passengers. (Though I’m not sure why we “need” to tack on
the extra couple hours north to Ouahigouya, since the bus is always already
overfull by Tougan, and there is NEVER room for more passengers in Ouahigouya,
and no ever gets off there either, everyone goes to Ouaga ….oh Burkina, some
things just don’t make sense here.)
We were in Ouaga, but Ouaga is a big city (the capital city), and so
the bus had to make a few pit stops before stopping at its final destination,
the gare
routière, where we passengers could disembark. Primarily, the goats needed to be dropped
off. We were pulled over on the side of
the highway, and within minutes a couple guys with a taxi moto showed up. Someone climbed to the top of the bus and
started throwing down the goats. Yes,
just throwing down live goats, like one would toss down a piece of
luggage. Not handing the goats into the
hands of someone on the ground, but literally throwing. One of the other guys was on the ground
catching the goats and putting them into the taxi moto’s crate, and a third guy
was arranging the goats and sorta tying them down to the taxi moto so that they
couldn’t jump out or fall out once the taxi moto sped away to take the goats to
their place of slaughter. Poor goats. And to make matters worse, they cry like
children. (Peut-être, that’s why a
baby goat is called a “kid” --- they seriously sound just like human kids
whining and crying.) Ear-piercing shouts
of “Moooooommmmm! Maaaaaaaaaaaa! Moooooooommm!” seemed to fill the air.
As the goat unloading progressed, I counted the goats and was impressed
to notice that our bus roof had actually been holding over 30 goats during our
trip. Oh, and a couple sheep, nine
motos, three large crates of chickens, and two medium sized bulls (as in a cow,
but male….so not a cow, but rather, a bull…..).
“What the --- ! How did they even
get those cows up there?” Gregory exclaimed.
“You mean bulls? Yeah I dunno.
Maybe just pulled them up with a rope…?”
To get these two bulls down, the men had tied a couple ropes around each
bull, and then slowly lowered the bull to the ground, and the whole time the
bull was bumping/scraping against the side of bus, but otherwise seemed to be
doing alright. Unlike some of the
goats. Who were definitely dead. They didn’t scream bloody murder with cries of
“Moooooommmm!” and weren’t moving. I can
only make the logical jump that they were no longer alive…
Gregory seconded my thoughts and nonchalantly assessed the
situation: “Yeahhhhh….those goats are
gone…..look at their necks, just flopped over like that. Oh, and all the blood coming from that one
over there! Oh man, that’s
horrible! Check out the goat they just put
on the ground; look at its cut-up head; it’s still alive; someone needs to put
it out of its misery; it looks like its leg is broken too…..”
Finally we were able to get off at the bus station and take a taxi to
the transit house.
Aventure 2: Je cherche Sarah à l’aéroport
I arrive at the transit house and proceed like a death rocket to take
care of some things before Sarah’s anticipated arrival of 2:30pm – I had about
two hours to find us a cheap hotel room, check my email, make copies of some
documents, and shower. The showering
probably should have been my number one priority, but I figured I could always
shower after picking Sarah up…. She might not appreciate that, but it’d be
fine. All the hotels my friends had
recommended me ended up being full and the internet was horribly slow at the
bureau and the copier out of paper so all my attempts of getting some stuff
done failed. I ran back to the transit
house, rinsed off, threw on clean clothes, grabbed my hairbrush and some
jewelry and my money, oh and my phone, and hopped into Ishmael’s car, my taxi
to the airport. Oh no, I hope Sarah’s plane didn’t come in on time, I hope she’s not
waiting for me, hopefully the plane is late – aren’t arrivals to Ouaga are
always late? – even if she’s already landed, she probably hasn’t finished going
through customs yet, right? I
brushed my wet hair and put on my jewelry and even some makeup in the taxi, all
the while wishing Ishmael would drive faster.
Not that he was driving slow by any means. Oh no.
He passed every single vehicle on the road, and spent a good portion of
our voyage on the wrong side of the road, blaring his horn to warn oncoming
traffic to get out of the way, a typical Burkinabe driving technique.
We get to the Aéroport de Ouagadougou and I run inside. Ishmael follows close behind me. I glance around, see no Sarah, notice that an
electronic departure/arrival sign has been installed since my last visit to the
airport eight months earlier, and notice that none of the afternoon flights had
come in yet. Oh good. I’m not late.
Ishmael and I wait and wait. And
wait some more. Thirty minutes
pass. Then an hour. I realize there are two other young white guys
standing near me who are definitely not Peace Corps, but as I eavesdropped on
them, I heard them speak English like Americans, and so I concluded they were
more than likely from the good ol’ USA.
I go up to them and say hi and ask where they’re from and what they’re
doing in Burkina… They were from America
(different states) and picking up a new volunteer (arriving on the same flight
as Sarah) for the mission that they were all volunteering at for the summer –
CRS, Catholic Relief Services. Suffice
it to say that they were also Catholic and, as it turns out, a lot younger than
me. One guy was 20 and the other was 18
and the girl they picked up was 19.
Gosh, I cannot judge age anymore.
I would’ve sworn that they were my age, like mid-20-somethings. Not teenagers. I was impressed that these youngsters were
serving in Burkina Faso for a few months.
I don’t think I ever would have personally chosen to go to a third-world
country and live/work there for an extended period of time at their age.
Almost two hours have passed. Where is she? Where is her plane? At last, the electronic screen says that
Sarah’s flight has landed! Whoo! Just a few minutes not for her to get her
bags, and then she’ll be coming through the arrival doors! Everyone starts crowding closer to the roped
off area, searching for loved ones. Passengers
start coming through, those who only had a carry-on, but no one who is white,
thus, not Sarah. (I was a little
worried that I wouldn’t recognize her – it had been two years and maybe her
hair was different or something….so my plan to easily find Sarah was to 1) spot
any white girls; and 2) see if they resembled Sarah. Considering the lack of white people coming
off the plane in general, and young white women specifically, my plan was
pretty fail proof.) I stand on my
tiptoes to see over the crowd, and occasionally a white or white-ish females
passes through and my heart starts to beat fast, and Ishmael exclaims, “Is that
her?!? Your friend? Look there – a femme
blanche! That one is her?” but
as the stranger comes closer I realize that she is most undeniably not my Sarah. The crowd is starting to thin out, most
people have now claimed their luggage, reunited with their loved ones, and left
the airport. No one is coming through
the doors anymore. What the heck. That was her
flight that came in, wasn’t it? Did she
miss her flight? Did I screw up the
date or time? Shoot, maybe she had
facebooked me to tell me something had changed, but I haven’t checked facebook
for over two weeks. Oh no.
I look around, a little unsure about my next step, and Ishmael tells me
that we should wait a little longer, maybe Sarah was still looking for her
luggage. The Catholic American boys had
found their new arrival – a curly-haired cute red headed girl – and a young
woman of about 35-years-old was talking to them, looking really confused, and
holding out a bunch of papers. They must
have noticed me staring at them, because they all came over to me, and the
Catholic boys asked if I could help the woman.
Me: Sure. Maybe.
What do you need?
Woman: I’m here for a business conference, and I
came a few days early because I wanted to do a bit of sight-seeing around
Ouaga, and so I need to get to my hotel myself, but I don’t know where it is or
how to get there…and I don’t speak French.
I was assuming there’d be an information desk with someone who spoke
English… but I guess I was wrong.
Me: Oh ok.
No problem. I’ll ask my friend.
***I take the papers, find the
hotel’s name, and then turn to Ishmael.
Me: Ishmael, est-ce
que vous savez l’Hôtel Excellence de Cinq Etoiles? (Do
you know Hotel Excellence of Five Stars?)
Ishmael: Oui, oui. Bien sûr.
(Yes, yes. Of course.)
Me: C’est où ? (It’s
where ?)
Ishmael: Bon, il y a
deux hôtels avec ce nom. Les papiers,
ils disent quoi ? C’est sur
quelle route ? (Well, there are 2 hotels with this name. The papers, what do they say? It’s on what road?)
Me: Uh….ce ne dit pas où. Je ne le vois pas….? C’est juste le numéro de contact qui est donné.
(Uh, it doesn’t say. I don’t see
it. It just gives the phone number.)
Ishmael: Ok, ça
va. Je vais les appeler et demander leur
adresse.
(Ok, it’s fine. I’ll call them and ask for the hotel
address.)
***Ishmael whips out his portable
and calls the hotel. Ten seconds later,
after saying a few words in Moore, he has the address and hangs up. He tells me where the hotel is located, and I
know the area; it’s not too far away. I
ask Ishmael how much a taxi will cost for the woman, and he says 2 mille is
enough (same price as I was paying Ishmael), and he proceeds to go outside and
search for one of his taxi-driver friends.
He arranges the taxi for the woman, explaining to the driver in Moore
where she needs to, and he tells me to explain to her in English to only pay 2
mille and what the outside of the hotel looks like….
Woman: Wow, thank you! This is perfect. I never would have been able to figure this
out on my own, and I probably would have given the taxi driver like 10
mille….not just 2 mille. I mean, 10
mille, that’s like $20, and in New York that’d easily be the taxi fare.
Me: No problem.
I’m glad I could help.
Woman: So are you like….do you live here? Is he your husband? ….or how do you speak with
them in their language like that?
Me: Hahaha, Ishmael is NOT my husband. Just my taxi driver. And yes, I live here, I guess. I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer and I’ve been in Burkina
Faso for two years now, living in a small village about 300km west of
Ouaga. So that’s why I can speak to them
without a problem.
Woman: Oh Peace Corps! I should’ve known; you look so integrated
with your dress and jewelry and were speaking to the locals so fluently. Wonderful!
You know, I was a Peace Corps Volunteer too. From 2002 to 2005 in Ukraine. But I just spoke English in my work there; I
never had to learn a different language.
Wow, I should’ve guessed you were Peace Corps. Duh. So
you were speaking French before, right?
I mean, it just sounded so different; I would have a hard time guessing
it was French if I didn’t know that was the official language here.
Me: Yeah, French French, like in Paris, is very
different than African French. A lot of
times people who speak real French French can’t even understand me, and I can’t
understand them either…. But supposedly it’s the same language haha.
Well, I had accomplished my good deed for the day and found an RPCV
(Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) in the process. Peace Corps – we’re everywhere! However, there still rested the problem of no
Sarah. I was really beginning to get
worried. And then I saw her! She was still inside, talking to a security
officer, but I could see her through the glass windows, and I was certain it
had to be her. She looked just like I
thought she would! I waved and she waved
back, but still didn’t exit. Instead,
she followed the officer around a corner.
What the heck is going on? A few minutes later, Sarah finally came
through the doors. At last! I ran up to her and gave her hug! We were both smiling and laughing, and yet,
Sarah looked like she had been crying.
And was going to cry again.
Aventure 3: les difficultés à
l’aéroport
Me: Are you okay?
What’s wrong?
Sarah: Yeah, I’m fine now. It was just really stressful trying to get my
bags and my visa. Everyone was so rude
and unhelpful. And no one spoke English
so I didn’t understand anything. I
didn’t know where to go to get my bags or where everyone got the visa cards
from. A German girl was able to ask
someone for one, and so she got one for me too, but I couldn’t even fill out my
visa card cuz it was only in French and no one would translate for me. I can’t believe they didn’t have a card in
English, or someone who speaks English who works here. Me and this German girl were both just
staring at all the officers like, “What do we do?” And we didn’t have a pen, and there were no
pens on the table, and so we asked the officer for a pen, and he just stared at
us, even though we could see the pen in his front pocket and I know he
understood us. I mean, we were pointing
to the pen and making writing gestures with our hands, he had to of
understood. He was just being a jerk. Some black guy next to us gave us his pen
when he finished, at least he was nice. The
German girl kinda knew how read French, so she was trying to translate it into
English for me and we sorta figured it out but then they wouldn’t stamp my
passport to let me leave because I needed my visa approved and also visa
photos, and I was like, “Where can I get my photos taken? I didn’t know we needed to bring photos,” but
since I don’t understand French and their English was horrible, I have no idea
what they were actually telling me.
Something about come back tomorrow with the pictures for them and they
will give me back my passport tomorrow, I think. So right now I don’t even have my passport,
they still have it. And I guess tonight
we need to find somewhere to take photos.
Can we even do that in this country? I don’t know what to do. Oh, and then I needed to pay for the visa,
but they wouldn’t accept U.S. cash or credit card and they wouldn’t let me go
to an ATM to get money, because the ATM is past the customs area, and I was
like, “How do I pay? HELLOOOOOO, I’m
coming from AMERICA, I don’t have Burkina Faso money yet! What do I do?
Please just let me go to the ATM so I can get money.” I was crying and everyone just laughed at
me. They were so rude. I can’t believe they let such impolite people
have jobs in a setting like this. I
mean, they’re like welcoming visitors to their country and giving us a first impression. You’d think they’d be happier and more
helpful. And so I was trying to talk to
this other officer to see if they would let me exit and find you, cuz I figured
you’d been waiting and could probably help translate since you actually speak
French, and that’s when I saw you through the window. I don’t think they believed me when I tried
explaining that I had friend who spoke French picking me up. Or maybe they just didn’t understand. It was all so awful. I never want to come back to this airport
again.
Me: Oh my gosh…..I am so sorry. Are you sure you’re alright?
Sarah: Yeah, I just want to leave and go somewhere
quiet and shower cuz I’ve been wearing these clothes for over 24 hours now.
Me: Ok.
Well, is there anything we should do before we leave the airport? What about your passport?
Sarah: I don’t know.
I think we can come back tomorrow.
Me: No, that’s not right. You should be able to do everything right
now, leave with your passport and not come back here until you fly out. I’ve never heard any of my Peace Corps
friends say that their visitors had to get their visa at the airport the next
day…..that’s weird. Let me go see what’s
up.
***I approach the officer
standing outside the “Arrivals” door (despite some other guards calling after
me saying that I wasn’t allowed past the roped off area), and I explain that
Sarah needs her passport and that we also need to pay for her visa. He motions to the customs area and says that
first Sarah needs her pictures for the visa – that the lack of pictures was why
they refused to let her pay and kept her passport. I was about to interrupt him and complain
about everyone being rude and refusing to explain things to her even though
they knew she didn’t understand French, when he calls over another guy and introduces
him as the photographer, it would cost 5 mille for the photos, and they’d be
printed within 10 minutes. Well jeesh,
why didn’t you say so? This wasn’t so
hard.
Sarah: What!?!
Why couldn’t they have told me that they were capable of doing the
photos in the airport? Or just taken me
to whatever room this guy was in? No,
instead they told me to come back tomorrow with photos!!! This is dumb!
***After the photos, we go to pay
the 50 mille (100 USD) for the visa.
Everything is looking good, until the lady officer tells us to come back
tomorrow to get Sarah’s passport.
Me: Why tomorrow?
Why can’t we have it tonight?
Officer: My supervisor needs to sign the form; I can’t
do that.
Me: What?
Why can’t he do it now? Where is
he?
Officer: He left already for the day, so you’ll need
to wait until tomorrow. Or maybe
Wednesday he’ll be back. Two days from
now. No, tomorrow afternoon, at 5pm, it
should be done, I think.
Me: No! We
need the passport now. How is she
supposed to travel in Burkina without a passport? What if the police stop us at a checkpoint on
the road? It won’t be done until
tomorrow afternoon!?!?! What about all
the other people who are going to come on planes today and tomorrow and need a
visa? Everyone has to wait until Wednesday?
Officer: Well, most people on the planes don’t need
visas because they’re Burkinabe or already have work visas for Burkina. There aren’t that many tourists, like your friend,
that come to Burkina. And usually they
get the visa at the Burkinabe embassy in their country and mail in the papers,
photos, and money a month before they arrive, so they don’t need to do it at
the airport.
Me: ……?...
And how was my friend supposed to know to get her visa a month in
advance? On the website it says that
everything can be done at the airport upon arrival…..?
Officer: Well, yes, that’s true. But it will take a few days. Especially if the supervisor is en
déplacement.
Me: Is there anyone else that can sign this form?
Officer: No.
He’s the only one.
Me: Well, then we’ll just have to leave the
passport here until we come back to Ouaga in two weeks. Tomorrow early morning we’re taking a bus to
my village.
***This was a small lie. Plans weren’t fixed, and we truly would be
heading to my village at some point in the next week, but not the next
morning. Probably the day after
that. But either way. Doesn’t matter. En
plus, I was not willing to shell out an additional 4 mille for a taxi to
the airport and back again; moreover, it wasted our precious time. We should be wandering the Grand Marché and
eating tasty street food, not putzing around in a dysfunctional airport. I wasn’t leaving the airport until we had Sarah’s
passport, and anything I could say to make them budge and figure out a solution
to this “no supervisor to sign the form” problem was fair game.
Officer: TWO WEEKS?!?
No, that’s not okay. You can’t
leave Ouaga without her passport.
Me: I know, that’s why this is such a
problem. But we don’t have a
choice. I am a math teacher at my
village’s CEG, and I need to be back for my work. We need to take the bus tomorrow morning.
Officer: You are a math teacher? In a village!?! How nice!
What language do they speak chez vous?
Me: Dioula kan fo donni donni. Mumgunda moore bilfu bilfu. (I
speak Jula small small. I speak Moore
small small.)
***Pulling the local language
card works almost every time. No
Burkinabe can refuse a white girl who speaks local language…
Officer: Ah!
Very good! I am Mossi, so I speak
Moore. How early is your bus tomorrow? Maybe it can be finished before your bus
leaves.
Me: Early.
6am. That’s why we need the passport tonight.
Officer: That’s too early. We don’t commence until 9am.
Me: ….so….?
Officer: Let me call my supervisor. Maybe I can get special permission to sign
this form.
***She proceeds to make a phone
call. Then she takes the visa form and
Sarah’s passport and leaves the room.
After about ten minutes, she comes back.
Officer: Okay, everything will be fine. The supervisor gave permission for me to scan
and email the documents, and he will sign them and send them back. Then the passport number can be entered into
the computer system and stamped, and then you can have the passport back.
Me: When?
Officer: Tonight.
I will stay here until it is all done, and then I will drop off the
passport where you are staying.
Me: Perfect!
Officer: Where are you staying?
Me: Uhhhh….oh. Shoot. We don’t know yet.
Officer: So where do I take the passport?
Me: Umm, can I have your number and call you on
your cell phone to tell you where once we know which hotel?
Officer: Well, okay.
I guess so.
Me: Thank you!
Thank you so much for helping!
Sarah: Merci!
Thanks!
Officer: Pas de problème. Bon soirée à vous deux. (No
problem. Have a good evening, you two.)
Me: Vraiment ma sœur,
merci beaucoup pour tout que vous avez fait pour nous! (Really
my sister, thanks a lot for all that you have done for us!)
Officer: Allah ka wula heere di! (Dioula
blessing: “May God give you a good afternoon/evening.”)
Me: Amina!
(Dioula blessing response:
“Amen.”)
Officer: Nse! (Dioula response: “N-sayyyyy.” Not translatable.)
At last, the airport disaster seemed to be mostly mended and Sarah and
I could leave. Ishmael had been waiting
patiently for us the entire time; thus, he had now spent over three hours just
chillin’ in the airport, not to mention the 30 minutes beforehand to drive me
to the airport, and now the additional 30 minutes (or more) that it would take
us to leave and find a place to stay.
What a good guy. I was gonna have
to pay him extra. And he knew it. Oh well.
We grab Sarah’s luggage and head towards the big exit doors. I hadn’t even realized it was raining until I
looked outside. The rain was pouring
down, water falling from the sky so fast that you could hardly see, tiny rivers
trickling down the roads, puddles growing into lakes. We had to cross the street to get to the
“pick-up” area where taxis were allowed, so no matter what, we were going to
get wet. Our 10-second jaunt to the
pick-up area resulted in all of us being completely drenched from head to
toe.
“You know,” I said to Sarah, “when I first arrived in Burkina two years
ago, it rained as we left the airport, too.
Just like this, pouring rain. The
locals told us it was a good thing: the
rain is life -- it is a sign of God welcoming you to Burkina, and now you will
have good luck for a year! Plus, at the
very least, the rain is signifying the start of rainy season and, thus, the end
of hot season. You’ll appreciate
that. Hot season is miserable. You’d probably die. I would die, but I’m used to it now so I’m
fine. But it’s still miserable. Tonight will be nice out, maybe even kinda
chilly, because of the rain. You really
are lucky!”
Aventure 4: L’hôtel
Since I didn’t have a hotel lined up, Ishmael took us to a popular one
that a lot of other volunteers have stayed at, “Jardin de Kalouba.” I checked it out, glanced at the room they
were offering us, and made sure the price was reasonable. Sarah had had a rough day so far, and so I
didn’t want to spend too much time driving around looking for a cheap
room. We could always stay at a
different place tomorrow, if need be.
Everything at Jardin de Kalouba seemed fine, and so we moved our luggage
in, paid Ishmael, and put dry clothes on before sprawling on the queen-sized
bed. Yes, this was going to be just
fine. Maybe we’d even stay here two
nights. Pool outside, clean room,
air-con, comfy bed, even wi-fi. All for
11 mille a night, or about $22. Yeah, I
could handle paying that.
As tired as we both were, we weren’t going to nap. We had two years of catching up to do! We talked about the standard things (How’s it
going? What are you up to? How’s your job?) and also some random things
(apparently Sarah’s mom has a guy “in mind” for me when I get home. Ha.
I’m not sure why my love life is of concern to Sarah’s MOM or why I am
even a topic of conversation at their dinner table when I am several thousand
miles away living in a mud hut, but whatever).
I looked through Sarah’s suitcases and oooed and ahhhed at the goodies
she had brought – some of which were for her, some were for me, and some were
for my village. Wow, your t-shirts are so clean looking! Oh yay!
Fancy razors so I can shave my legs again – it’s been a few months….
OMG.
Is that a Snickers bar? And those
are the books and puzzles for my village’s library? Wow, there’s so many! The kids are going to be so excited!
I laughed hysterically when I saw that the wooden puzzles were all made
up of black people. There was a doctor
and patient scene, Martin Luther King in front of the Stars and Stripes, a boy
riding a bike, and more. But every
single person was black! Not that
there’s anything wrong with that. Oh
no. I was laughing because it was too
perfect: everyone in Africa is black! (Ok,
whoa, not true. That was a very
prejudiced, stereotypical comment that just came out of my typing hands. I should know better. Africa is a very big continent. A lot of people in Africa are actually white,
or tan. Far from brown or black. Just like how America is comprised of many
colors besides white, not everyone in Africa is black. Just everyone in Burkina Faso. There, that’s better!) I couldn’t wait to show my village kids the
puzzles, and the fact that the wooden characters looked similar to them was
going to make such a difference in their understanding of the world. “See,
Aïcha, this woman is a doctor; you can grow up to be a lady doctor too! Girls can do anything, just like boys! Female power! Down with men! Women: we will rule the world!” Yes, these puzzles were going to inspire the
youth of Burkina Faso, cultivate future leaders’ perspectives, bring about
world peace, etc. (My mom later told me
that these puzzles weren’t exactly donations, but rather giveaways that St.
Raphael’s Catholic Church had been trying to get rid of for quite some time now. Every winter carnival for the past ten years
the puzzles were set out as game prizes, but no one ever wanted them because
the wooden characters had black skin.
The Caucasian character puzzles had disappeared instantly that very
first year – I remember them! I, or
maybe it was my littlest sister, had won one playing the Duck Pond. It had to have been my little sister; I was
probably just accompanying her. A
15-year-old wouldn’t have been playing the Duck Pond, right? Right.
Anyways, all the Caucasian puzzles found homes, and even the Asian
puzzles did too, after a year or two.
But for a decade, the black puzzles had remained untouched,
unwanted. All because of the color the
characters’ skin was painted. Sad. Sorta.
I mean, I found the whole situation to be hilarious. A little twisted, sure, but simultaneously a
blessing. Had Springfield people been
more tolerant and accepting of black-skinned puzzle characters, I never would
have had the opportunity to stare at a stack of 15 good quality puzzles in a
hotel room in Ouagadougou, imagining how excited my dirty, shoe-less, half-naked
village kids would be to play with these “culturally appropriate” learning
materials. It was just too perfect!)
My phone rings, interrupting our reminiscing of International Music
Camp, having been the best co-deans of our dorm ever, and also having inspired
the forever-remembered performance as “Twin Lady Gagas” at the IMC Student
Talent Show with my guitar, Sarah’s garbage can drum, and our beautiful vocals,
followed by the epicness that was the Three Guys’ “Single Ladies” dance, fully
choreographed. Not to mention all the
awesome people at IMC, like Matt Miles, Laura Mahowald, Callum, Jeremy, Aaron,
Greta, Amber, basically everyone (except not everyone, cuz there were a few
people that I decided I didn’t like….).
As I glance at my cellphone, I realize it’s the number of the female
officer who had helped us with Sarah’s visa affair. “Oh
no!” I exclaim. “I forgot to call the
visa lady and tell her what hotel we’re at.”
I answer the phone, and the lady tells me that the visa is ready now
and she can drop it off at our hotel for us if I can tell her where we’re
staying. “Oh, yes, merci, we are at l’hôtel
Jardin de Kalouba; it’s not far from the airport…..no I don’t know what
street. Um….I think it’s near the
Lebanese restaurant?” She was going to
try and find us, but little did I know that there are actually two hotels in
Ouaga with a similar name -- Jardin de Kalouba and Hotel Kalouba – and they
weren’t located near each other at all.
I go downstairs to the reception area, thinking that the officer would
show up in a few minutes – after all, our taxi ride from the airport to the
hotel only took about 5 minutes. Five
minutes pass, then ten. Then fifteen. Gosh, I thought she woulda been here by now.
Well it is pouring rain again. Maybe she
got delayed because of all the water on the roads.
My phone rings. It’s the officer
again. “Where are you?” she asks. “I can’t find the hotel you said you are
at. I need directions or a street
name.” I apologize and panic slightly –
I had no idea where we were. It had been
dark and pouring rain when we left the airport, plus I had been chatting with
Sarah, so I hadn’t paid any attention to how we got to the hotel or what roads
we drove on or which important buildings we passed. The hotel was in the middle of a residential
area. There were no significant
landmarks nearby, though a PCV had told me to check out the Lebanese restaurant
that was apparently nearby and within walking distance. But I didn’t even know the name of this
restaurant, or its location from the hotel.
Urgh. Poor officer, out searching
for us in the rain. She was really going
out of her way to help us, and I was just making things more complicated for
her. What to do? I hang up and tell the officer I will call
her back in a few minutes with the address of the hotel.
The hotel is dead quiet. I’m
pretty sure Sarah and I were the only guests.
I don’t see any hotel staff, nor anyone at the reception desk. I go into the restaurant area, and notice a
white man with dreadlocks (short dreads, just a few inches in length) sitting
behind the bar, looking through some record books. Hmm. I wonder if he works here? Sure enough, he turned out to be a French
guy who moved to Burkina a few years ago and now he owns Jardin de Kalouba Guesthouse. I explain to him that an airport officer
needed to drop off a visa and passport, but that she didn’t know how to get
here. I dial the officer’s number, and
hand the phone over to the French guy, who explains exactly where we are in
clear French French. Problem
solved. I hope.
A few minutes later, our lady showed up. She had been riding a moto (for some reason I
had pictured her driving around Ouaga looking for us in a car), and so she was
completely soaked. But, Sarah’s passport
was dry – the lady had good sense and put it in a plastic bag and then inside
her jacket. I thanked her for all her
help and her willingness to find us despite the rain, and then she sped
away. I don’t think she was very happy
with us. I don’t blame her.
Aventure 5: Où est notre hôtel ?
We take a taxi to the Transit House to meet Gregory for supper, and
this time I pay attention to where the taxi is going. “Oh! I
didn’t realize we were right here! Yeah,
and that’s the Lebanese Restaurant over there.
Okay, I think I know where we are now.”
For Sarah’s first night (and first food) in Burkina Faso, Gregory,
Sarah, and I all agreed that “normal” food would probably be our best option,
as opposed to street food. Moreover, we
wanted a nice sit-down atmosphere so we could talk. Eating with our hands on the side of the
street didn’t seem conducive to meaningful conversation. We walk from the Transit House to the
restaurant (I can’t remember which one, but it had a beautiful outdoor seating
area) and end up ordering pizza and wine.
I know, I know, you’re all probably thinking, “Pizza?!?! You go all the
way to Africa and eat pizza?!?!” But I
can justify this:
**First of all, pizza (specifically cheese) is a huge treat for
PCVs. We do not get this sort of food
unless we are in Ouaga. I had just
finished the school year and Camp Heere and pulled an all-nighter and sat on a
bus with goats peeing on me all morning and hadn’t eaten since my café au lait
and bread at 5am. I deserved a
pizza. Maybe even two pizzas. And a pitcher of wine. All to myself.
**Secondly, from Sarah’s perspective, she too, had experienced a rough
day of travel and airport mishaps. Pizza
is comforting. Oily overcooked macaroni
with goat intestine probably isn’t.
**Thirdly, pizza in Burkina Faso is legit Italian cuisine, fired in a
brick-oven, with interesting and tasty toppings such as corn, goat cheese, egg,
tuna, fresh pineapple, eggplant, and more.
It’s completely different from a Domino’s pepperoni pizza. I’m sure there are places in Americaland that
also serve real Italian pizza, but I had never had anything like this until
Burkina, and then of course Italy, when I went there last September.
We enjoyed our meal and sipped our wine, and when Sarah declared that
she was finished, Gregory and I fought over who got to eat her scraps. We ended up splitting the scraps equally, as
is only fair. ***Tangent: if there are
ever PCVs present in the vicinity of food, you can guarantee that every plate
will be licked clean. It doesn’t matter
what was served, or how “bad” it tasted, or how long it’s been sitting out, or
that someone else totally started chewing that piece of meat and spit it out,
or that it was an important business function for responsible adults and PCVs
were definitely NOT invited, but rather just happened to be walking by on the
street and noticed uneaten food and waited rather creepily in the mango tree
shadows until all the important business people had cleared out and gone back
to their rooms for naps before entering the fancy dining area and feasting, all
while greeting the Burkinabe restaurant staff who don’t know what to do with
the young tubabus who mysteriously appeared and are wearing dirty pagne clothes
rather than business suits and are speaking local language at them: “Aw ni tile!
Somogodo? Hey! Oh, it’s okay. Don’t throw that out yet. We’ll eat that. We’ll bring all the dishes to you when we’re
done, so you can just leave us alone for a few minutes, thanks. Or do want to join us? Half-eaten chicken leg? Help yourselves! Bon fête everyone!” Yes, it is a well-known fact that PCVs will
eat just about anything, at any time, and in mass quantities, too. We no longer have taste buds. Or our dignity. But that’s alright! There’s no shame in being a part of the clean
plate club….or helping others achieve clean plates, too. Right?***
Somehow our wine sipping and causerie (chat), took us all the way
to midnight and we knew it was time to call it a night before things started
getting weird due to fatigue, jetlag, and too many glasses of wine. I called our unofficial but official Peace
Corps taxi drivers, but no one answered their phones, even though I had talked
to Seydou earlier that evening and he said he’d be available around
midnight. Shoot. Well, it was getting late and there was no
point in waiting for them to pick up their phones. So Sarah and I walked to the main highway a
few blocks from the Transit House. We
waited about fifteen minutes, but not a single taxi drove by. I continued to call taxi drivers. No luck.
No one on the road, and no one on the phone. We walk back to the Transit House, and I
realize that my phone is out of unité – I didn’t have any money/credit to call
anyone; that’s why none of the calls were going through. Urgh, horrible timing. Everything was closed, so I couldn’t buy any
Airtel unité until the morning; and even if I used someone else’s phone, now it
was definitely too late to call a taxi – all the drivers were probably
sleeping.
Our options consisted of the following:
1. Continue to wait by the side of the road and take our chances on a
taxi going by, but who knows how long that would take. Also, there was the risk of being kidnapped
and/or murdered while standing by the highway.
(Well, not really true. But at
the very least, drunk homeless people could come up to us and be annoying and I
didn’t feel like dealing with that at this hour.)
2. Crash at the Transit House on
the floor, or an empty couch if we could find one, until morning. Probably our safest option, but not
technically allowable, since Sarah wasn’t a PCV and the house was already
overfull and I hadn’t reserved a place.
Besides, we’d have to pay and we were already paying for our nice
air-con room with a real bed, whether or not we slept there.
3. Bike back to our hotel,
providing we could borrow two bikes from the Transit House and find our way
back downtown to our hotel.
Naturally, we chose option three.
We located two bikes amongst the millions parked at the house, and I
hoped these bikes were community bikes and not PCVs’ personal bikes, especially
since we were completely taking them sans permission and not informing
anyone. The bikes didn’t have a name
plaque anywhere that I noticed, so I figured we were in the clear and had
actually found two workable community bikes.
Sarah and I each picked up a bike helmet from the pile, and then we hit
the road. It was so exhilarating to be
biking down Ouaga’s main streets at 1:00am.
Hardly any traffic, cool breeze, reggae music from the dance bars
filling the otherwise quiet city. It was
going to be about a 15 minute bike ride, but distance-wise it wasn’t too far
and pretty much a straight shot. We
finally passed the “rooster” statue, and so I knew we were close. Alright,
which residential road do we turn on?
Where is that Lebanese restaurant?
It should be on a corner, on this main road. Nothing seemed familiar enough, and so we kept
going. We were now on Kwame Nkrumah, a
different highway, but I knew this road too, and I knew that if we got near
Festival de Glace (ice cream restaurant) or Barka (beer and burger bar), we’d
be a block or two from our hotel. We
went up and down, and even saw Festival de Glace, but couldn’t seem to see
Barka anywhere. Ohmygod, where is our hotel? We’re
in the neighborhood Kalouba, look there’s the Pharmacie Kalouba. We gotta be close! Maybe we were supposed to go left at Festival
de Glace? Biking up and down Ouaga’s city streets was no
longer fun. The thrill had passed. It was after 2:00am and we were exhausted and
frustrated, and of course I was the only one who could do anything, Sarah was
just following me.
We were plagued with even further bad luck when Sarah’s back tire chain
came off. We stop to try and fix
it. A taxi driver goes by, then turns
around and comes back. “Here, let me
help you do that,” he says. He fixes the
chain and then turns to get back in his taxi.
“Wait, mon frère! Do you know
Jardin de Kalouba? It’s not far from
here, we are going there, but I can’t remember which road to turn on.” He gives us directions, and it seems as if we
are indeed nearby, but I couldn’t really understand what he said, and so
finally I just ask him to take us there.
We put our bikes in the taxi trunk and crawl into the taxi. We drive for about a whole two minutes, and
then we are at our hotel. So we were
close! I knew we weren’t THAT lost. We had gone by this road a million
times! But, in all honesty, even if
someone had held my hand and led me right to my hotel’s door, I don’t think I
would have found it. Because it was
located in a residential area, it had a wall and courtyard gate, just like all
the surrounding houses, and it didn’t have anything too special sticking out of
the yard or an electric sign blinking in front of the courtyard door or
anything at all to designate it as a hotel, if you didn’t know better.
At last we were in our air-con room and on our comfy bed. It was pushing 3am, and though we had planned
to wake up early to go to the market, we decided against that idea and instead
set our alarm for noon before immediately passing out.
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