Nathaniel's Blog
Monday, August 29, 2005
Accra, Ghana (August 29, 2005)
Accra's development and prosperity exceeds that of Kumasi; but its areas of misfortune are larger and more noticeable and child begging is back in action—light skinned Tuareg children, wandering two feet tall within eyesight of their seated mothers. Refugees from all over West Africa try to reach Accra and many of the poorest and most dispossessed people here are clearly not indigenous: Liberians, Cote D'Ivoirians, Tuaregs, Citizens of Niger seeking food. The brighter face of the city is quite stylish. Clothing fashion, restaurant design and choice of periodicals are all quite Western, revealing less of the authentic culture that once distinguished this place. The companies that advertise on all the city's empty spaces would be familiar to anyone in the West; but here, the models are entirely black. Whichever people paint the billboards and shop fronts in Ghana are also very talented artists. The amusingly disfigured and accidentally cubistic images of male and female heads (on barber shops, on boutiques, on restaurants) that decorate countless African cities have here been replaced by high quality portraits.
We are staying with a kindly and overworked man, younger brother to a more successful businessman who provides him with his spacious one story home. This has become a revolving door African house. There is a Beninese priest in one bedroom and others come and go freely throughout the day. Sometimes the only person at home is a traveler from another West African country, sometimes it's a woman from down the street. Are we supposed to talk with one another? Who speaks my language? Which one is the maid? Why won't anyone offer me something to eat?
This morning at 6:45 am silence was cut into thirteen pieces and scattered far and wide by Celine Dion, handmaiden of Bam Bam the better dressed maid, who cleans the kitchen with his elbows and a large scraping fork. There is now a weary need to decipher whether it is hospitality or aggression when my host enters the room where Sean and I are attempting to sleep only to empower the television with a repetitious battery of Celine Dion videos, subtitled and cackhandedly blundering with shampoo commercial eroticism. Many, many Africans display a fondness for Celine Dion that borders on reverence or idolatrous love. She is the evil flipside of an unfortunate coin with Phil Collins who is similarly, though less widely adored. Outside the expanding circle of Africans who love country western music, these two singers often represent all of white music. When I enter smaller more low scale restaurants the proprietor often hastens to turn off whatever local music is playing (perhaps anticipating the vicious "what is this crap?" reaction that some of our cultural ambassadors have so kindly meted out) and replaces it with high volume Phil or Celine. The thoughtful intention is to make me feel welcome and at home. Dismal, horrible irony. In the past three hours the music videos in our bedroom have not stopped and now their sound is pumped into the living room where Sean and I had taken refuge from the assault. For the last hour and a half they have been R. Kelly videos, approximately four of them, continuously looping. He should be in prison, forced to listen to Celine Dion. People are singing along and someone is whistling, badly.
Impending dilemma of giant forest snails, the most clueless impulse buy of our trip: Sean, "Um. There is a loose snail." Presumably it has crawled off to die in some inaccessible corner of our host's abode, which is sorely lacking in potted plants. Its soul can join the other three that we neglected to death during the arguments about how to prepare them, how many days they must be starved before a forced diet of mint, how many days they had been starving already, whether they could be cooked in the same way as dainty little French snails, whether or not they were still in the car and how to tell our host that we had brought giant forest snails into his home. Even as Sean bartered with the roadside boy, I declared, unequivocally, that I washed my hands, in advance, of everything having to do with snails. The other roadside men were holding giant mouse/rats by the throat; cars endangered us by pulling suddenly off the road to purchase these whenever a new hunter emerged from the roadside flora dangling his catch. I would rather have taken responsibility for one of these cat sized rodents.
There is a disadvantage to staying here. House of pressure. Gusty, desperate, eye-widening stomach. The veiled amphitheater of intestinal shame: our toilet sits behind a tiny plastic shower curtain that falls far shy of reaching the floor. On the other side of this curtain, approximately one meter from the ankles of any seated man, is the bed on which men and women of my age sit watching Celine Dion and R. Kelly music videos. Why does the newly ordained, shifty young Beninese priest keep locking his bedroom door when he leaves in the morning, blocking access to an isolated, solitary toilet (which would be the exact equivalent of the best thing on earth)? I wait for the room to empty; but nowhere else in the house is entertaining. I wait, at least, for the women to leave the room. Wait for the pretty one to leave? Wait no longer. Shuffle by, shamefaced. Even when it gives me dignity by masking my struggle, I do not enjoy the music of Celine Dion. Surrender pride. Exit sweating. Do not look the pretty one in the eye.
(Fans of Celine Dion, please do not feel personally attacked. Imagine I just don't like your baseball team.)
Accra's development and prosperity exceeds that of Kumasi; but its areas of misfortune are larger and more noticeable and child begging is back in action—light skinned Tuareg children, wandering two feet tall within eyesight of their seated mothers. Refugees from all over West Africa try to reach Accra and many of the poorest and most dispossessed people here are clearly not indigenous: Liberians, Cote D'Ivoirians, Tuaregs, Citizens of Niger seeking food. The brighter face of the city is quite stylish. Clothing fashion, restaurant design and choice of periodicals are all quite Western, revealing less of the authentic culture that once distinguished this place. The companies that advertise on all the city's empty spaces would be familiar to anyone in the West; but here, the models are entirely black. Whichever people paint the billboards and shop fronts in Ghana are also very talented artists. The amusingly disfigured and accidentally cubistic images of male and female heads (on barber shops, on boutiques, on restaurants) that decorate countless African cities have here been replaced by high quality portraits.
We are staying with a kindly and overworked man, younger brother to a more successful businessman who provides him with his spacious one story home. This has become a revolving door African house. There is a Beninese priest in one bedroom and others come and go freely throughout the day. Sometimes the only person at home is a traveler from another West African country, sometimes it's a woman from down the street. Are we supposed to talk with one another? Who speaks my language? Which one is the maid? Why won't anyone offer me something to eat?
This morning at 6:45 am silence was cut into thirteen pieces and scattered far and wide by Celine Dion, handmaiden of Bam Bam the better dressed maid, who cleans the kitchen with his elbows and a large scraping fork. There is now a weary need to decipher whether it is hospitality or aggression when my host enters the room where Sean and I are attempting to sleep only to empower the television with a repetitious battery of Celine Dion videos, subtitled and cackhandedly blundering with shampoo commercial eroticism. Many, many Africans display a fondness for Celine Dion that borders on reverence or idolatrous love. She is the evil flipside of an unfortunate coin with Phil Collins who is similarly, though less widely adored. Outside the expanding circle of Africans who love country western music, these two singers often represent all of white music. When I enter smaller more low scale restaurants the proprietor often hastens to turn off whatever local music is playing (perhaps anticipating the vicious "what is this crap?" reaction that some of our cultural ambassadors have so kindly meted out) and replaces it with high volume Phil or Celine. The thoughtful intention is to make me feel welcome and at home. Dismal, horrible irony. In the past three hours the music videos in our bedroom have not stopped and now their sound is pumped into the living room where Sean and I had taken refuge from the assault. For the last hour and a half they have been R. Kelly videos, approximately four of them, continuously looping. He should be in prison, forced to listen to Celine Dion. People are singing along and someone is whistling, badly.
Impending dilemma of giant forest snails, the most clueless impulse buy of our trip: Sean, "Um. There is a loose snail." Presumably it has crawled off to die in some inaccessible corner of our host's abode, which is sorely lacking in potted plants. Its soul can join the other three that we neglected to death during the arguments about how to prepare them, how many days they must be starved before a forced diet of mint, how many days they had been starving already, whether they could be cooked in the same way as dainty little French snails, whether or not they were still in the car and how to tell our host that we had brought giant forest snails into his home. Even as Sean bartered with the roadside boy, I declared, unequivocally, that I washed my hands, in advance, of everything having to do with snails. The other roadside men were holding giant mouse/rats by the throat; cars endangered us by pulling suddenly off the road to purchase these whenever a new hunter emerged from the roadside flora dangling his catch. I would rather have taken responsibility for one of these cat sized rodents.
There is a disadvantage to staying here. House of pressure. Gusty, desperate, eye-widening stomach. The veiled amphitheater of intestinal shame: our toilet sits behind a tiny plastic shower curtain that falls far shy of reaching the floor. On the other side of this curtain, approximately one meter from the ankles of any seated man, is the bed on which men and women of my age sit watching Celine Dion and R. Kelly music videos. Why does the newly ordained, shifty young Beninese priest keep locking his bedroom door when he leaves in the morning, blocking access to an isolated, solitary toilet (which would be the exact equivalent of the best thing on earth)? I wait for the room to empty; but nowhere else in the house is entertaining. I wait, at least, for the women to leave the room. Wait for the pretty one to leave? Wait no longer. Shuffle by, shamefaced. Even when it gives me dignity by masking my struggle, I do not enjoy the music of Celine Dion. Surrender pride. Exit sweating. Do not look the pretty one in the eye.
(Fans of Celine Dion, please do not feel personally attacked. Imagine I just don't like your baseball team.)
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Kumasi and Accra, Ghana (August 24, 2005)
In the sprawling second city of Kumasi, we finally developed a clearer understanding of the successes achieved by the Ghanaian people. It is always much easier to discern these differences in a city, since rural areas tend to resemble one another in terms of pace and opportunity. A few things that differentiate Kumasi from every other large African city we have visited so far: scooters and mopeds, the poor man's common mode of transport, have been almost entirely replaced by nice cars; there are very few beggars on the street and none of them are children; even in the dried fish section the market was not overrun with flies; and the quality of the city was more homogenized, better spread throughout its diverse neighborhoods, most of which seemed to receive the necessary infrastructure and the attention of good working roads.
After five days in the bush, we were all waking at dawn and sleeping early; that wasn't much of a problem, since Kumasi is not exceptional for its nightlife. We stayed at the Presbyterian Mission and caught up on article writing. Southern Ghana is heavily Christian and houses of worship are in evidence everywhere—along with establishments like "Fear of God Restaurant", "His Living Waters Barbing Salon", "Blessed Jesus Pharmacy" and "His Guiding Light Chop Shop". Some consider the Muslim north of Ghana to be relatively neglected, a possible reason for our noticing the true measure of Ghana's prosperity only after reaching Kumasi.
Later, in Accra, a businessman and well traveled broadcast journalist sought to chasten our glowing reviews of his country with his conviction of impending tribal warfare and state collapse. "Our people are suffering. This government is more corrupt than its predecessors. There is a new scandal every day." Apparently the Ashantis in power are only looking after their own—a serious issue for this Ewe man—and the government is simply riding high on the intelligent investments of its predecessors. Why aren't the people on the streets? What will it take for them to demand improvements? "The religious people are too forgiving. After a few days [of a newly revealed scandal] they forget." Too much focus on the afterlife; well heeled leaders with a vested interest in the current administration: an old argument and a common situation. So how will there be warfare or state collapse? This man says, all it will take is a quick and misunderstood flash of localized violence. Thousands of people can die after an argument over a chicken goes bad, provided the disputants were from different tribes. Silly Africans? Millions can die when an arbitrary third world nation is provoked into shooting guns at some intrusive thing bearing an American flag. Perhaps it is worse to plan it from the beginning.
In any case, conversations about national stability are a highlight of life in the developing world. Foreign Policy recently published their first ever "Failed States Index." They listed the top sixty least stable countries on the earth as determined by a couple dozen different indicators. Almost every country we intend to visit falls somewhere between the categories of "Failed/Extreme Risk of Collapse" and "Borderline Stability." Political discussions and personal histories tend to be considerably richer contexts like these and citizens tend to be more opinionated, cynical and well-informed.
In the sprawling second city of Kumasi, we finally developed a clearer understanding of the successes achieved by the Ghanaian people. It is always much easier to discern these differences in a city, since rural areas tend to resemble one another in terms of pace and opportunity. A few things that differentiate Kumasi from every other large African city we have visited so far: scooters and mopeds, the poor man's common mode of transport, have been almost entirely replaced by nice cars; there are very few beggars on the street and none of them are children; even in the dried fish section the market was not overrun with flies; and the quality of the city was more homogenized, better spread throughout its diverse neighborhoods, most of which seemed to receive the necessary infrastructure and the attention of good working roads.
After five days in the bush, we were all waking at dawn and sleeping early; that wasn't much of a problem, since Kumasi is not exceptional for its nightlife. We stayed at the Presbyterian Mission and caught up on article writing. Southern Ghana is heavily Christian and houses of worship are in evidence everywhere—along with establishments like "Fear of God Restaurant", "His Living Waters Barbing Salon", "Blessed Jesus Pharmacy" and "His Guiding Light Chop Shop". Some consider the Muslim north of Ghana to be relatively neglected, a possible reason for our noticing the true measure of Ghana's prosperity only after reaching Kumasi.
Later, in Accra, a businessman and well traveled broadcast journalist sought to chasten our glowing reviews of his country with his conviction of impending tribal warfare and state collapse. "Our people are suffering. This government is more corrupt than its predecessors. There is a new scandal every day." Apparently the Ashantis in power are only looking after their own—a serious issue for this Ewe man—and the government is simply riding high on the intelligent investments of its predecessors. Why aren't the people on the streets? What will it take for them to demand improvements? "The religious people are too forgiving. After a few days [of a newly revealed scandal] they forget." Too much focus on the afterlife; well heeled leaders with a vested interest in the current administration: an old argument and a common situation. So how will there be warfare or state collapse? This man says, all it will take is a quick and misunderstood flash of localized violence. Thousands of people can die after an argument over a chicken goes bad, provided the disputants were from different tribes. Silly Africans? Millions can die when an arbitrary third world nation is provoked into shooting guns at some intrusive thing bearing an American flag. Perhaps it is worse to plan it from the beginning.
In any case, conversations about national stability are a highlight of life in the developing world. Foreign Policy recently published their first ever "Failed States Index." They listed the top sixty least stable countries on the earth as determined by a couple dozen different indicators. Almost every country we intend to visit falls somewhere between the categories of "Failed/Extreme Risk of Collapse" and "Borderline Stability." Political discussions and personal histories tend to be considerably richer contexts like these and citizens tend to be more opinionated, cynical and well-informed.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
The Bush and Mole National Park, Ghana (August 21, 2005)
From the guide book's point of view, we are doing Ghana backwards, entering from the most remote hinterlands and slowly working our way down towards the front pages of the capital city. This was the most rigorous border through which we have yet passed, mostly because the Ghanaians, spread between five offices, meticulously completed loads of paperwork and actually examined our vehicle for any dangerous weaknesses—headlights, emissions and idling—instead of, for instance, asking for Tylenol or trying to marry Tuuli.
And then there was a boy on a bicycle selling bags of ice cream from a professional looking cooler strapped to the front (it tasted exactly like the filling of supermarket ice cream sandwiches—which, under the circumstances, means it tasted exactly like sugar ice princess tongue massage) and then there were medium sized billboards advertising tomato sauce or condoms or how terrible AIDS is and there was a road with painted edges and a dotted center and farms everywhere that looked like they could have existed in Ohio maybe forty years ago and people speaking English and political posters for rival parties and diverse varieties of high quality beer and no pharmacies or telecenters anywhere. It felt so good. We listened to Dusty Groove reissues of vintage New Orleans funk and soul music and then dirty south hip hop. We had okra sauce for lunch and more ice cream and then stout, real creamy, balanced and flavorful stout. Ghana is so good. If Ghana were any better, other Africans would probably start to hate Ghanaians.
The North of the country is just beginning to preen itself for tourists, flanking modest caves, any species of waterfall and over-hyped crocodile pools, signposting them from fifty kilometers away. What little instability Ghana manifests is confined to this sparsely populated agrarian region. The weekend was arriving and we had no way of making it to Kumasi—the central city of Ghana, home of its Ashanti people—so we headed in the direction of Mole (pronounced Moh-Lay) National Park to camp under more spectacular circumstances. For a couple of bucks we were allowed to pitch our tents on the edge of an escarpment overlooking a pair of watering holes in which elephants daily gathered, bathed and misbehaved. Since the park is massive and the rainy season is in full gear, none of us expected to see such a concentration of wildlife—various antelope looking deer creatures horrified themselves all over the place and warthogs, baboons and blue-balled glamour monkeys practically visited the lodge. In one case a particularly familiar, tuskless, docile and ancient elephant intimidated some Germans away from their chairs and picnic basket, sifting through its contents and bringing them to its whiskered maw. He gave two teenage girls an opportunity to shout in close interval, "Das ist mein Bikini!", which helped the crowd to know what he was eating.
We have camped in numerous unremarkable places so this was refreshing and the looks we got for cooking in the hotel parking lot were worth the trouble. Numerous aid workers and fairly numerous Ghanaians had arrived at the park to differentiate their weekends. Their numbers were added to the various tourists who came in families or in small groups, questing to actualize sexual and emotional fantasies near elephants. The small swimming pool was crowded and noisy. It made us feel out of place—reeking of what any good traveler flees. Normalcy and comfort were restored when we discovered the nearby staff canteen where food was local, affordable and hand eaten, where relaxed and welcoming Ghanaians had shed their rubber boots and safari hats to live regular working lives.
Also, when the fire ants attacked, it felt good. The sharp and warm electric pain of their biting was in pleasant and distracting contrast to the full time itch of my entire body.
From the guide book's point of view, we are doing Ghana backwards, entering from the most remote hinterlands and slowly working our way down towards the front pages of the capital city. This was the most rigorous border through which we have yet passed, mostly because the Ghanaians, spread between five offices, meticulously completed loads of paperwork and actually examined our vehicle for any dangerous weaknesses—headlights, emissions and idling—instead of, for instance, asking for Tylenol or trying to marry Tuuli.
And then there was a boy on a bicycle selling bags of ice cream from a professional looking cooler strapped to the front (it tasted exactly like the filling of supermarket ice cream sandwiches—which, under the circumstances, means it tasted exactly like sugar ice princess tongue massage) and then there were medium sized billboards advertising tomato sauce or condoms or how terrible AIDS is and there was a road with painted edges and a dotted center and farms everywhere that looked like they could have existed in Ohio maybe forty years ago and people speaking English and political posters for rival parties and diverse varieties of high quality beer and no pharmacies or telecenters anywhere. It felt so good. We listened to Dusty Groove reissues of vintage New Orleans funk and soul music and then dirty south hip hop. We had okra sauce for lunch and more ice cream and then stout, real creamy, balanced and flavorful stout. Ghana is so good. If Ghana were any better, other Africans would probably start to hate Ghanaians.
The North of the country is just beginning to preen itself for tourists, flanking modest caves, any species of waterfall and over-hyped crocodile pools, signposting them from fifty kilometers away. What little instability Ghana manifests is confined to this sparsely populated agrarian region. The weekend was arriving and we had no way of making it to Kumasi—the central city of Ghana, home of its Ashanti people—so we headed in the direction of Mole (pronounced Moh-Lay) National Park to camp under more spectacular circumstances. For a couple of bucks we were allowed to pitch our tents on the edge of an escarpment overlooking a pair of watering holes in which elephants daily gathered, bathed and misbehaved. Since the park is massive and the rainy season is in full gear, none of us expected to see such a concentration of wildlife—various antelope looking deer creatures horrified themselves all over the place and warthogs, baboons and blue-balled glamour monkeys practically visited the lodge. In one case a particularly familiar, tuskless, docile and ancient elephant intimidated some Germans away from their chairs and picnic basket, sifting through its contents and bringing them to its whiskered maw. He gave two teenage girls an opportunity to shout in close interval, "Das ist mein Bikini!", which helped the crowd to know what he was eating.
We have camped in numerous unremarkable places so this was refreshing and the looks we got for cooking in the hotel parking lot were worth the trouble. Numerous aid workers and fairly numerous Ghanaians had arrived at the park to differentiate their weekends. Their numbers were added to the various tourists who came in families or in small groups, questing to actualize sexual and emotional fantasies near elephants. The small swimming pool was crowded and noisy. It made us feel out of place—reeking of what any good traveler flees. Normalcy and comfort were restored when we discovered the nearby staff canteen where food was local, affordable and hand eaten, where relaxed and welcoming Ghanaians had shed their rubber boots and safari hats to live regular working lives.
Also, when the fire ants attacked, it felt good. The sharp and warm electric pain of their biting was in pleasant and distracting contrast to the full time itch of my entire body.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Ouagadougou-Burkina Faso (August 17, 2005)
Inevitable stomach ailments caught up with Sean and I, consumed our energy and my patience and offered us nausea, foul stench and radically diminished appetites in return. I have no fondness for street food in Burkina Faso, which is ruled by beans (mealy, brown and oily beans), so the diminished appetite was bearable and we were fortunate enough to be lodged in an agreeable and cheap hotel where we could reasonably convalescence. The leaden battery of anti-parasitic drugs left us doubly ill for the final two of our six days in the capital and slowed our progress through numerous chores. We needed to supplement our cooking equipment, improvise a new tarp for one of our tents, address the newest mechanical failing of the automobile, purchase and prepare a new spare tire, acquire visas to Ghana, add new pages to my passport, stock up on food for a few consecutive nights in the bush and spend hours and hours at the internet café trying to update our site. We also had a number of meetings at the headquarters of various NGOs.
Ouagadougou is a decent place to cross bridges such as these since it does not distract with its charms anyone who is trudging around with the determination to find things; it is also entirely manageable on foot, even for the sickly. The city is littered with quirky monuments (typically placed in the middle of congested roundabouts) to the socialist history and leadership of Burkina Faso, several of them simple and representative (a ragged black man plodding down rail road tracks with mallet and spikes) and many of them directionlessly abstract (parallel poles supporting orange and green geometrical shapes). Aside from these there are few distinguishing features with the exception of a central drag of shocking modernity: Avenue N'Krumah is four shrubbery split lanes, with functioning street lights, checkered with stylish bars, clubs and restaurants, several of which fill the spacious twenty meter wide sidewalks in the shadow of the avenue's four to seven story buildings. All of us felt completely out of place here. Not even in Dakar is there a concentrated stretch of such completely westernized aspect.
In any case this city will look entirely different in a handful of years, as ambitious and widespread construction in the Ouaga Deux Mille region can attest. Both Bamako and Ouaga are in the middle of serious building frenzies and in both cases the construction is centered in sizeable and depopulated areas on the fringes of town. Both nations are creating new, high income, high class, broad and predictable suburbs to attract corporate headquarters, embassies and associated workers. Ouagadougou is centering its new public image around something that looks very much like a stone Eiffel tower in the near vicinity of an imposing stone dome. These are at most half built; but their prominence has already been indicated by the massive avenues that converge geometrically upon them
Eventually the three of us completed the bulk of our tasks. Ouaga had begun to feel like a rut and it took us all day to get out. We found the road to Ghana at something like 4:30pm, despite having woken early to accomplish our last errands while packing the car. That gave me about an hour and a half behind the wheel, scanning in the sunset for a decent place to camp. In the lush and densely populated region separating Ouagadougou from Ghana, this was not easy to do
The next morning we had a silent crowd of half a dozen young men observing each minute detail of us breaking camp and fixing our mysterious brand new flat tire
Inevitable stomach ailments caught up with Sean and I, consumed our energy and my patience and offered us nausea, foul stench and radically diminished appetites in return. I have no fondness for street food in Burkina Faso, which is ruled by beans (mealy, brown and oily beans), so the diminished appetite was bearable and we were fortunate enough to be lodged in an agreeable and cheap hotel where we could reasonably convalescence. The leaden battery of anti-parasitic drugs left us doubly ill for the final two of our six days in the capital and slowed our progress through numerous chores. We needed to supplement our cooking equipment, improvise a new tarp for one of our tents, address the newest mechanical failing of the automobile, purchase and prepare a new spare tire, acquire visas to Ghana, add new pages to my passport, stock up on food for a few consecutive nights in the bush and spend hours and hours at the internet café trying to update our site. We also had a number of meetings at the headquarters of various NGOs.
Ouagadougou is a decent place to cross bridges such as these since it does not distract with its charms anyone who is trudging around with the determination to find things; it is also entirely manageable on foot, even for the sickly. The city is littered with quirky monuments (typically placed in the middle of congested roundabouts) to the socialist history and leadership of Burkina Faso, several of them simple and representative (a ragged black man plodding down rail road tracks with mallet and spikes) and many of them directionlessly abstract (parallel poles supporting orange and green geometrical shapes). Aside from these there are few distinguishing features with the exception of a central drag of shocking modernity: Avenue N'Krumah is four shrubbery split lanes, with functioning street lights, checkered with stylish bars, clubs and restaurants, several of which fill the spacious twenty meter wide sidewalks in the shadow of the avenue's four to seven story buildings. All of us felt completely out of place here. Not even in Dakar is there a concentrated stretch of such completely westernized aspect.
In any case this city will look entirely different in a handful of years, as ambitious and widespread construction in the Ouaga Deux Mille region can attest. Both Bamako and Ouaga are in the middle of serious building frenzies and in both cases the construction is centered in sizeable and depopulated areas on the fringes of town. Both nations are creating new, high income, high class, broad and predictable suburbs to attract corporate headquarters, embassies and associated workers. Ouagadougou is centering its new public image around something that looks very much like a stone Eiffel tower in the near vicinity of an imposing stone dome. These are at most half built; but their prominence has already been indicated by the massive avenues that converge geometrically upon them
—whether or not they will have stylish names in keeping with downtown classics like Ho Chi Minh Avenue and Castro St. remains to be seen.Eventually the three of us completed the bulk of our tasks. Ouaga had begun to feel like a rut and it took us all day to get out. We found the road to Ghana at something like 4:30pm, despite having woken early to accomplish our last errands while packing the car. That gave me about an hour and a half behind the wheel, scanning in the sunset for a decent place to camp. In the lush and densely populated region separating Ouagadougou from Ghana, this was not easy to do
—all the land was arable, almost all of it was being used. We abandoned the notion of a truly isolated spot and settled for a dirt crossroads tucked out of site near some small boys herding cows. They were not city boys so they stayed almost out of earshot and watched us intently until older people came. The older people came bearing green dimpled bitter tomatoes, perhaps a dozen of them, as a sort of pay for it later kind of gift. The man who decided not to leave our company did not speak a lick of English or a lick of French or a lick of Puular. Tuuli did her best to engage him. We cooked and the full moon rose. This was our first time camping in powerful moonlight and it was a great deal more enjoyable than fumbling about in the dark while attempting to share our headlamp and trying not to end up in possession of the shake to charge flashlight (ten minutes of frenzied tiresome shaking for a minute of brilliant light)—not that I am knocking this invention, it continues to be exceedingly useful.The next morning we had a silent crowd of half a dozen young men observing each minute detail of us breaking camp and fixing our mysterious brand new flat tire
—once again shredded to uselessness; not one of our flats has been reparable. We decided not to eat breakfast and hit the road early. Though the border crossing was a bit fussy and time consuming we still made it into Ghana before noon and began to feel the refreshing influence of an Anglophone population living securely in the comfort of reliable infrastructure while entertaining genuine political debates.Saturday, August 13, 2005
Banfora, Karifaguela, Sindou, Boromo-Burkina Faso (August 13, 2005)
I count eighty-seven mosquito bites on my body. There are bites on my back that I cannot see to count. On my left arm there are thirty-seven bites. My elbows alone contribute twenty-five. Counting these bites makes it somewhat easier not to scratch them; but I've been losing that self-control, scratching the skin from my limbs while my eyes roll back in my head with immeasurable bliss.
Burkina Faso is much much wetter than Mali. We are in the most fertile, low lying and moist region of the country during the rainy season in the malaria belt, so the bugs don't really come as a surprise; it is just their ability to infiltrate all tents that is making them such an incredible irritant. This is the region of Banfora. It is immediately adjacent to the Ivory Coast, one of West Africa's most AIDS infected countries and also one of its least stable. As a result of its proximity to this troubled country, Banfora has a significantly higher infection rate than other regions of Burkina Faso and the belief that AIDS comes from the Ivory Coast is widespread amongst the Burkinabe there. We have been visiting with health workers in the villages scattered throughout this region; they face serious challenges and are far from the resources and amenities of the capital.
Oddly, we have seen more white people in this region than anywhere else to date. Large tour groups of them crossed our path on several occasions, trekking between one scenic place and another. At one point a group of middle-aged French women entered the clearing where we were cooking our lunch and began taking their clothes off in the bushes. We assumed that they planned to swim in the waterfall. This was not their intention. They emerged in stretch pants and baggy t-shirts and, to the skillful percussion of their accompanying Burkinabe travel mates who came from nowhere with four massive drums, they began to attempt a fairly difficult flailing West African dance in formed unison, gawkily following the example of a younger, fitter and more talented local woman. Their dance instructor seemed miffed that we did not invite him to join our picnic. We were too stunned by the absurdity of the situation.
It seems strange to me that Burkina Faso is attracting so many Europeans and I am unused to seeing young white people wandering around in new tailored print fabric silly suits, sun burnt under their hair extensions or notice-me braids. I suppose they are good for the economy; but it causes people to form unflattering assumptions about my presence here and raises my profile, which is never desirable in Africa. Anyway, it is clearly the scenery of this region that pulls them down here by the busload. Unfortunately, the three of us were fairly spoiled by Dogon. The cascades and rock formations of lower Faso are diminished by comparison.
I count eighty-seven mosquito bites on my body. There are bites on my back that I cannot see to count. On my left arm there are thirty-seven bites. My elbows alone contribute twenty-five. Counting these bites makes it somewhat easier not to scratch them; but I've been losing that self-control, scratching the skin from my limbs while my eyes roll back in my head with immeasurable bliss.
Burkina Faso is much much wetter than Mali. We are in the most fertile, low lying and moist region of the country during the rainy season in the malaria belt, so the bugs don't really come as a surprise; it is just their ability to infiltrate all tents that is making them such an incredible irritant. This is the region of Banfora. It is immediately adjacent to the Ivory Coast, one of West Africa's most AIDS infected countries and also one of its least stable. As a result of its proximity to this troubled country, Banfora has a significantly higher infection rate than other regions of Burkina Faso and the belief that AIDS comes from the Ivory Coast is widespread amongst the Burkinabe there. We have been visiting with health workers in the villages scattered throughout this region; they face serious challenges and are far from the resources and amenities of the capital.
Oddly, we have seen more white people in this region than anywhere else to date. Large tour groups of them crossed our path on several occasions, trekking between one scenic place and another. At one point a group of middle-aged French women entered the clearing where we were cooking our lunch and began taking their clothes off in the bushes. We assumed that they planned to swim in the waterfall. This was not their intention. They emerged in stretch pants and baggy t-shirts and, to the skillful percussion of their accompanying Burkinabe travel mates who came from nowhere with four massive drums, they began to attempt a fairly difficult flailing West African dance in formed unison, gawkily following the example of a younger, fitter and more talented local woman. Their dance instructor seemed miffed that we did not invite him to join our picnic. We were too stunned by the absurdity of the situation.
It seems strange to me that Burkina Faso is attracting so many Europeans and I am unused to seeing young white people wandering around in new tailored print fabric silly suits, sun burnt under their hair extensions or notice-me braids. I suppose they are good for the economy; but it causes people to form unflattering assumptions about my presence here and raises my profile, which is never desirable in Africa. Anyway, it is clearly the scenery of this region that pulls them down here by the busload. Unfortunately, the three of us were fairly spoiled by Dogon. The cascades and rock formations of lower Faso are diminished by comparison.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Sevare-Mali, Bobo Diallasou-Burkina Faso (August 9, 2005)
Dogon country wore us out. After the tactical and scenic drive down from the escarpment we wanted to find a hotel and recuperate. We had business in Mopti (see Sean's Mali AIDS test article), so we drove past the Peace Corps house in Sevare (c.p. flea circus) and headed for the Catholic Mission on Mopti's riverside. Before we had even pulled into the parking lot, young men were chasing our car shouting at us. Tuuli pushed through their numbers to communicate with the Mission's receptionist. Sean and I stayed with the Stingray in the company of fifteen unusually pushy, high volume men seeking our resources in various ways, many of them vying on behalf of other hotels. It was the most unrelenting and frenetic crowd we have dealt with on this trip. Tuuli returned to our commotion with news that the Catholic Mission's roof had collapsed the night before and could not afford us lodging. The men were very excited to hear this. Everything got louder and more uncomfortable. So we re-entered the car and returned to the flea factory at Sevare. This was the first time that backtracking has been required on our trip; it made that infested transit house seem a bit more homey, even though it had filled up with a new cast of characters.
It took us a few days to recuperate from the exertion of our daily hikes and the strain of Dogon's occasionally questionable food and water. During that time we conducted some interviews and finished our features on Mali.
When it was finally time to put Mali behind us we set out on the road to Bobo Diallasou in Burkina Faso. That trip was punctuated by thieving and manipulative, smug and opportunistic Mali border police who created a whole imaginary threat blizzard out of the stapled dangling paper visas we had purchased on the other end of the country. Under threat of forced return to the capital (500km away) we capitulated and gladhanded the cocky ringleader the rough equivalent of twenty bucks. This prompted a pure "finally, you have understood" grin of self-satisfaction. Otherwise Malian roadside cops had been a professional and welcoming crowd.
It occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to offer a highly compressed overview of the countries that I am going in and out of so that they seem a bit more differentiated and meaningful. I will try to register them between the poles of corrupt and brutal failing military state and charming well developed nation on the way to first world status. Otherwise, I would probably not have drawn attention to the state of these nations until they proved exceptionally depressing or sensational.
Mali, then, which I am departing, is a vast country with language groups and cultures scattered so far away from one another that real interaction and unification is only likely amongst the most wealthy section of the population (who have in common their immaculate French, their ability to travel throughout the country and the possibility of their fleeing Africa) or when national athletic teams are triumphing, which in Mali's case is infrequent. Mali is proud of its unique manner of facing its own fragmentation. It is an unusually federalist country with a government that boasts of its decentralization. Local leaders are given the power to make many of the decisions that affect their people. This aspect of life in Mali has also changed the way that resident NGOs function, disrupting the ones that typically issue nationwide edicts from impressive national headquarters in the best landscaped suburbs of capital cities. Such organizations are forced to cooperate with many different and autonomous branches of Mali's government; for some this constitutes nothing more than a headache and a logistical nightmare; others have found it rewarding and educational. Mali's infrastructure is solid and improving; but the huge tracts of land separating its densely populated regions still offer ample room for nighttime banditry.
In contrast, Burkina Faso is a fairly successful version of a socialist state, clearly revolving around and favoring its capital city. Like many nations, it has a dodgy past
I can not help mentioning, before returning to a more personal narrative, that I am not trying to say that either of these countries have laudable policies with regards to dissidence, marginalized populations and the rights of women. There must be numerous people struggling, threatened but doggedly, for difficult and progressive changes. I do not mean to make it sound as though everything is in tip top shape simply because the stable rule of entrenched and unchallengeable parties has begun to create the conditions for legal accumulation of wealth.
Anyways, we arrived in Bobo Diollasou, Burkina's second city, on a Sunday afternoon. We always seem to enter big cities on Sunday, which is growing bothersome because they are the only places where the weekend has any meaning. However, this keeps us on track. In Bobo we camped in the parking lot of a hotel and got soaked by midnight rains. We had to stay an extra day to let our things dry. Bobo was laid back; but we are not going to miss it.
Dogon country wore us out. After the tactical and scenic drive down from the escarpment we wanted to find a hotel and recuperate. We had business in Mopti (see Sean's Mali AIDS test article), so we drove past the Peace Corps house in Sevare (c.p. flea circus) and headed for the Catholic Mission on Mopti's riverside. Before we had even pulled into the parking lot, young men were chasing our car shouting at us. Tuuli pushed through their numbers to communicate with the Mission's receptionist. Sean and I stayed with the Stingray in the company of fifteen unusually pushy, high volume men seeking our resources in various ways, many of them vying on behalf of other hotels. It was the most unrelenting and frenetic crowd we have dealt with on this trip. Tuuli returned to our commotion with news that the Catholic Mission's roof had collapsed the night before and could not afford us lodging. The men were very excited to hear this. Everything got louder and more uncomfortable. So we re-entered the car and returned to the flea factory at Sevare. This was the first time that backtracking has been required on our trip; it made that infested transit house seem a bit more homey, even though it had filled up with a new cast of characters.
It took us a few days to recuperate from the exertion of our daily hikes and the strain of Dogon's occasionally questionable food and water. During that time we conducted some interviews and finished our features on Mali.
When it was finally time to put Mali behind us we set out on the road to Bobo Diallasou in Burkina Faso. That trip was punctuated by thieving and manipulative, smug and opportunistic Mali border police who created a whole imaginary threat blizzard out of the stapled dangling paper visas we had purchased on the other end of the country. Under threat of forced return to the capital (500km away) we capitulated and gladhanded the cocky ringleader the rough equivalent of twenty bucks. This prompted a pure "finally, you have understood" grin of self-satisfaction. Otherwise Malian roadside cops had been a professional and welcoming crowd.
It occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to offer a highly compressed overview of the countries that I am going in and out of so that they seem a bit more differentiated and meaningful. I will try to register them between the poles of corrupt and brutal failing military state and charming well developed nation on the way to first world status. Otherwise, I would probably not have drawn attention to the state of these nations until they proved exceptionally depressing or sensational.
Mali, then, which I am departing, is a vast country with language groups and cultures scattered so far away from one another that real interaction and unification is only likely amongst the most wealthy section of the population (who have in common their immaculate French, their ability to travel throughout the country and the possibility of their fleeing Africa) or when national athletic teams are triumphing, which in Mali's case is infrequent. Mali is proud of its unique manner of facing its own fragmentation. It is an unusually federalist country with a government that boasts of its decentralization. Local leaders are given the power to make many of the decisions that affect their people. This aspect of life in Mali has also changed the way that resident NGOs function, disrupting the ones that typically issue nationwide edicts from impressive national headquarters in the best landscaped suburbs of capital cities. Such organizations are forced to cooperate with many different and autonomous branches of Mali's government; for some this constitutes nothing more than a headache and a logistical nightmare; others have found it rewarding and educational. Mali's infrastructure is solid and improving; but the huge tracts of land separating its densely populated regions still offer ample room for nighttime banditry.
In contrast, Burkina Faso is a fairly successful version of a socialist state, clearly revolving around and favoring its capital city. Like many nations, it has a dodgy past
—the current president stole leadership from his predecessor (who is still adored by the populace) before executing him—but the people of Burkina Faso (referred to as the Burkinabe) seem willing to forgive him and it seems that they have good reason to do so. The infrastructure is solid (roads have toll booths, national parks are well kept, water and electricity are reliable) and, at least in the southern region, the land is incredibly fertile and the people are working hard to keep it in production. The stability of this country has contrasted starkly with the painful disarray of its southern neighbor, the Ivory Coast—previously a sunny success story in an otherwise dismal reckoning of African states. As a result of its reliability and consistent and predictable management, Burkina Faso has been attracting many of the powerful corporations and financial institutions that had previously based their African headquarters in the Ivory Coast. Burkina is doing everything in its power to perpetuate this trend and is visibly growing and modernizing.I can not help mentioning, before returning to a more personal narrative, that I am not trying to say that either of these countries have laudable policies with regards to dissidence, marginalized populations and the rights of women. There must be numerous people struggling, threatened but doggedly, for difficult and progressive changes. I do not mean to make it sound as though everything is in tip top shape simply because the stable rule of entrenched and unchallengeable parties has begun to create the conditions for legal accumulation of wealth.
Anyways, we arrived in Bobo Diollasou, Burkina's second city, on a Sunday afternoon. We always seem to enter big cities on Sunday, which is growing bothersome because they are the only places where the weekend has any meaning. However, this keeps us on track. In Bobo we camped in the parking lot of a hotel and got soaked by midnight rains. We had to stay an extra day to let our things dry. Bobo was laid back; but we are not going to miss it.
Monday, August 08, 2005
Dogon Country
Two years ago I knew absolutely nothing about West Africa. When it seemed that I might be getting myself hired in the Gambia I had to go online and discover where it was. My regional ambition started small; I bought a guide book that focused exclusively on Gambia and Senegal. After a few months in the Gambia, a friend left the country, giving me her budget travel guide to West Africa. She was sure that I'd get more use out of it than anyone else she knew, which at the time, I did not believe. Naturally, I began looking through the pictures. Most were standard fare: crowded markets, masks, city traffic, impressive mosques, waterfalls and beaches; but a handful of photographs distinguished themselves. These were the Dogon. The images of their villages, perched on cliffs or tucked beneath them summoned up all of those lazy adjectives about indescribability and other planets. Their aesthetic has a remarkably pure and consistent otherness; it does not look influenced. It looks like a source. I read the captions. The pictures had been scattered throughout the guide book; but every time I was strongly compelled to find out where the image had been made, it said Dogon. After four or five pictures I could tell a Dogon village from any other in an instant. I decided to go there. However, the few times I tried arranging trips, they fell through. It is a fairly inaccessible place and I never had a generous amount of time for transport and visa processing. As two years slipped by I noticed that most of the times when I had immediate and total respect for African music, cloth and paintings, they were from Mali and with the textiles, specifically from Dogon.
I've traveled through and around roughly thirty countries, most of them thoroughly, many of them I love. However, there is nowhere I have seen that is capable of making a more powerful impression than Dogon country. If it did not spend nine months of the year in painfully dry and foodless circumstances and if it were not astonishingly and infuriatingly full of flies during its brief wet season, I could ignore my need for cities and my love of surfing and live there. Our visit lasted three nights and three physically exhausting days.
We spent the cooler six hours of each day hiking between villages, streams and overhangs, descending and ascending the steep kilometer high escarpment through ravines and goat trails. In every direction the view is memorable. We were far from the touristic villages, which kept the impression from being spoiled by familiar accents and appearances
I have no intention of exhaustively cataloguing the various experiences of this trip; instead I will offer a few disconnected paragraphs.
The Tellum:
A significant amount of this region's magic comes from the remains of a civilization that used to coexist with and perhaps preceded the Dogon people. Clustered into the least accessible cracks in the layered cliff face of the escarpment, sometimes more than seven hundred feet in the air, are miniature cylindrical mud structures. Most of these buildings could not be reached without considerable training and specialized equipment. Locals on the escarpment will tell you one of two things about these extinct people: they could fly and/or they were magical. Rationalists tend to postulate Swiss Family Robinson arrangements or now defunct networks of creeping vines. It is hard to visualize anything of the sort. Whatever the explanation, these dwellings inevitably induce the sort of mind boggled brow furrowing that enlivens the imagination and makes it difficult to concentrate on walking straight.
The Blister Beetle:
Sometime in the evening, while a kerosene lantern was attracting all of the village bugs into the center of our relaxing place, I was savaged by a blister beetle. I did not know this for another twelve hours. These idiot creatures deposit topical poison on things they do not like, typically in a limited area, but in my case far more widely. At first this poison is not an irritant. Gradually, however, it causes burn blisters to form, swell and fill. This nauseating progression happened in my sleep. One of its attacks focused on my right knee in a place where the blister was bound to be continuously disturbed and made to burst. Since the fluid from the blister engenders new blisters if it is not wiped immediately from the skin and since I sleep on my side, the central blister on my knee was the size of a spherical quarter by the time I woke up. The flies began to weaken my sleep, having somehow infiltrated my mosquito net in considerable numbers. At that point I noticed pain and sought to identify its source. The implausible swelling on my leg woke me completely and my mind went to work. I had heard of blister beetles so I was prepared to accept that my tendency always to be selected by belligerent insects was continuing undiminished; but when I ran my hand over my arm and found a second smaller blister, and found a third along my torso, then a couple more around my waist, my thinking changed. Most of these areas should have been protected from bites by the weight of my clothing; so my hypochondria began to list more sensational African nightmare diseases in an attempt to get attention and unseat reason. Sean and Tuuli were soundly sleeping. I sought our guide, hoping to find reassurance in his local knowledge; but he was not around. The hotel owner, in his place, was not sure but thought that it could be an insect. I climbed back up to the sleeping roof and tried to make noise until Sean or Tuuli woke, at which I succeeded. Sean knows the blister beetle well and assured me this was he, which meant I had some early morning tactical lancing and draining to do, which sucked. We had no bandages or disinfectant, so I used vodka and an old sock. It made the day's twelve kilometer hike a bit more tender. Now they are fine.
Night Market:
For purely social reasons, some Dogon villages organize night markets. These differ from the day markets in several ways: far fewer children and far fewer elderly people are around; most of the natural foodstuffs such as beans, grains, fruits, spices and nuts are not on sale; millet beer is sold and consumed throughout the market; there are drunk people. Sean and I followed Haruna through the poorly lit maze of seated vendors, quite a number of whom were selling an arbitrary assortment of pharmaceutical items, toiletries and other individually packaged western goods; when we slowed our pace of walking we were typically passed a calabash of millet beer. This substance is surprisingly good considering it is made without a shred of modern technology or concern for hygiene. Except for unusual batches, it couldn't be stronger than three percent alcohol and it is served air temperature. It is not carbonated and a mealy white sediment accumulates at the bottom as you drink it. The mellow flavor contains a subtle honey like sweetness and a substantive almost musky yet vaguely citrus body; somewhere between homemade hefeweisen, mead and white wine, but so weak as to be consistently drinkable. A calabash is a wooden gourd, halved and cleaned for use as a communal drinking pot. Our reliably drunk and supremely entertaining porter (hired by our guide to carry his bags and find us millet beer) ensured that we were continuously thrust into singing and drumming and shouting circles of people who would dip their calabashes into old margarine buckets and oil drums to offer us the millet beer that they loved to see foreigners drinking with pleasure and not from politeness.
Also I have picked up two food habits here that I wish I had begun earlier
In Mali I have been focusing my attention on the work of Population Services International, a USAID funded organization that works throughout the world on social marketing issues. I visited their Malian headquarters in Bamako and some of their subcontractors in Mopti; but I do not yet feel that I can begin writing about their activities in anything like a comprehensive manner. After meeting with their cohorts in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso I intend to complete the article.
Two years ago I knew absolutely nothing about West Africa. When it seemed that I might be getting myself hired in the Gambia I had to go online and discover where it was. My regional ambition started small; I bought a guide book that focused exclusively on Gambia and Senegal. After a few months in the Gambia, a friend left the country, giving me her budget travel guide to West Africa. She was sure that I'd get more use out of it than anyone else she knew, which at the time, I did not believe. Naturally, I began looking through the pictures. Most were standard fare: crowded markets, masks, city traffic, impressive mosques, waterfalls and beaches; but a handful of photographs distinguished themselves. These were the Dogon. The images of their villages, perched on cliffs or tucked beneath them summoned up all of those lazy adjectives about indescribability and other planets. Their aesthetic has a remarkably pure and consistent otherness; it does not look influenced. It looks like a source. I read the captions. The pictures had been scattered throughout the guide book; but every time I was strongly compelled to find out where the image had been made, it said Dogon. After four or five pictures I could tell a Dogon village from any other in an instant. I decided to go there. However, the few times I tried arranging trips, they fell through. It is a fairly inaccessible place and I never had a generous amount of time for transport and visa processing. As two years slipped by I noticed that most of the times when I had immediate and total respect for African music, cloth and paintings, they were from Mali and with the textiles, specifically from Dogon.
I've traveled through and around roughly thirty countries, most of them thoroughly, many of them I love. However, there is nowhere I have seen that is capable of making a more powerful impression than Dogon country. If it did not spend nine months of the year in painfully dry and foodless circumstances and if it were not astonishingly and infuriatingly full of flies during its brief wet season, I could ignore my need for cities and my love of surfing and live there. Our visit lasted three nights and three physically exhausting days.
We spent the cooler six hours of each day hiking between villages, streams and overhangs, descending and ascending the steep kilometer high escarpment through ravines and goat trails. In every direction the view is memorable. We were far from the touristic villages, which kept the impression from being spoiled by familiar accents and appearances
—in fact, several small children burst into fearful sobbing at the sight of us.I have no intention of exhaustively cataloguing the various experiences of this trip; instead I will offer a few disconnected paragraphs.
The Tellum:
A significant amount of this region's magic comes from the remains of a civilization that used to coexist with and perhaps preceded the Dogon people. Clustered into the least accessible cracks in the layered cliff face of the escarpment, sometimes more than seven hundred feet in the air, are miniature cylindrical mud structures. Most of these buildings could not be reached without considerable training and specialized equipment. Locals on the escarpment will tell you one of two things about these extinct people: they could fly and/or they were magical. Rationalists tend to postulate Swiss Family Robinson arrangements or now defunct networks of creeping vines. It is hard to visualize anything of the sort. Whatever the explanation, these dwellings inevitably induce the sort of mind boggled brow furrowing that enlivens the imagination and makes it difficult to concentrate on walking straight.
The Blister Beetle:
Sometime in the evening, while a kerosene lantern was attracting all of the village bugs into the center of our relaxing place, I was savaged by a blister beetle. I did not know this for another twelve hours. These idiot creatures deposit topical poison on things they do not like, typically in a limited area, but in my case far more widely. At first this poison is not an irritant. Gradually, however, it causes burn blisters to form, swell and fill. This nauseating progression happened in my sleep. One of its attacks focused on my right knee in a place where the blister was bound to be continuously disturbed and made to burst. Since the fluid from the blister engenders new blisters if it is not wiped immediately from the skin and since I sleep on my side, the central blister on my knee was the size of a spherical quarter by the time I woke up. The flies began to weaken my sleep, having somehow infiltrated my mosquito net in considerable numbers. At that point I noticed pain and sought to identify its source. The implausible swelling on my leg woke me completely and my mind went to work. I had heard of blister beetles so I was prepared to accept that my tendency always to be selected by belligerent insects was continuing undiminished; but when I ran my hand over my arm and found a second smaller blister, and found a third along my torso, then a couple more around my waist, my thinking changed. Most of these areas should have been protected from bites by the weight of my clothing; so my hypochondria began to list more sensational African nightmare diseases in an attempt to get attention and unseat reason. Sean and Tuuli were soundly sleeping. I sought our guide, hoping to find reassurance in his local knowledge; but he was not around. The hotel owner, in his place, was not sure but thought that it could be an insect. I climbed back up to the sleeping roof and tried to make noise until Sean or Tuuli woke, at which I succeeded. Sean knows the blister beetle well and assured me this was he, which meant I had some early morning tactical lancing and draining to do, which sucked. We had no bandages or disinfectant, so I used vodka and an old sock. It made the day's twelve kilometer hike a bit more tender. Now they are fine.
Night Market:
For purely social reasons, some Dogon villages organize night markets. These differ from the day markets in several ways: far fewer children and far fewer elderly people are around; most of the natural foodstuffs such as beans, grains, fruits, spices and nuts are not on sale; millet beer is sold and consumed throughout the market; there are drunk people. Sean and I followed Haruna through the poorly lit maze of seated vendors, quite a number of whom were selling an arbitrary assortment of pharmaceutical items, toiletries and other individually packaged western goods; when we slowed our pace of walking we were typically passed a calabash of millet beer. This substance is surprisingly good considering it is made without a shred of modern technology or concern for hygiene. Except for unusual batches, it couldn't be stronger than three percent alcohol and it is served air temperature. It is not carbonated and a mealy white sediment accumulates at the bottom as you drink it. The mellow flavor contains a subtle honey like sweetness and a substantive almost musky yet vaguely citrus body; somewhere between homemade hefeweisen, mead and white wine, but so weak as to be consistently drinkable. A calabash is a wooden gourd, halved and cleaned for use as a communal drinking pot. Our reliably drunk and supremely entertaining porter (hired by our guide to carry his bags and find us millet beer) ensured that we were continuously thrust into singing and drumming and shouting circles of people who would dip their calabashes into old margarine buckets and oil drums to offer us the millet beer that they loved to see foreigners drinking with pleasure and not from politeness.
Also I have picked up two food habits here that I wish I had begun earlier
—since Gambia could have accommodated either one with ease: kebbah and kola nuts. The former is a tree fruit that looks bruised, manky and rotten until it is cracked in half, at which point it reveals some seed clusters that are enclosed by bright orange fruit fiber and juice. They taste remarkably like sour patch kids; consuming the seeds is optional. Kola nuts are widespread throughout West Africa and are given on special occasions or to prominent people as gifts. They are abruptly bitter and crunchy and come in white or magenta/lavender varieties. People seem to disagree about their primary effects. I've heard everything from increased concentration and vivification of colors to intensified sexual potency and stomach settling. I think they taste good. I enjoy the process of eating them, the desiccating potency of their bitterness and the sweetness of water after they are finished.In Mali I have been focusing my attention on the work of Population Services International, a USAID funded organization that works throughout the world on social marketing issues. I visited their Malian headquarters in Bamako and some of their subcontractors in Mopti; but I do not yet feel that I can begin writing about their activities in anything like a comprehensive manner. After meeting with their cohorts in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso I intend to complete the article.
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