Mali

So this isn't strictly related but, I recently visited Burkina Faso again (albeit only briefly on the way between Ghana and Mali). However, although an enormous failure in terms of producing goods for my PhD, the trip has resulted in a video...



I recommend having your sound turned on. I find the images far less emotive in the absence of music!

Video - to make up for my lack of retrospect!

Ghana and Home

Its all gone very fast. Today is the 12th March and in 15 hours we have to be at the airport to catch the plane home. Barring delays in Ouagadougou and Tripoli we should be home tomorrow morning. It better be summer in the UK by now!

After spending 4 days in the East of Burkina Faso doing the last of the interviews we headed for a whistle stop tour of Ghana to find Accra, Linnet, Hannah and the beach. We thankfully found all four and it was well worth the trip, despite the hours spent on coaches getting there and back. I am attempting to add photos from the East and Ghana to some more slideshows on the right hand side (I am struggling though for some reason). Once they are up I will also do some retrospective updates just to round things off propoerly. I don't want to miss out any of the exciting tales just because I've been too busy to update for the past two weeks...

Now that we are back in Ouaga we have realised that the hot season has crept up on us and it is HOT! Yesterday a roadside thermometer read 49 degrees C. I'm not sure it was that hot but it was certainly hot. It is 7.15am as I write and it is already way too hot.

Work Progress

I have realised that the content of this blog thus far has focussed more on the fun we are having and less on the things we are finding out in suport of my Ph.D. This post will hopefully change that. Albeit only briefly.

The greatest contrast we have seen was that between the southwest of the country (Banfora area) and the north (Dori area). In the southwest there are large sugar cane plantations, waterfalls and generally more green things. By contrast, located on the edge of the Sahel, northern towns are very sandy with little vegetation and not much in the way of agriculture. With the year in this part of the world split into a wet and a dry season, people need to grow enough food during the wet season to tide them over for the year. However, people in the north are unable to do this. Even in the years of 'best' rainfall, people only have enough food to get them through to the end of March (with the wet season starting again in May and the next harvest in September). Due to the lack of rain (and therefore no prospect of market gardening) there is very little in the way of employment in the north during the dry season. As a result, migration is a necessity for many people to enable them to earn enough money in the dry season to purchase the food they need to keep the family going. Unless a year's rainfall (and therefore harvest) have been particularly bad, 2 or 3 sons from each family generally migrate somehwere to earn money that they send back to the family to buy food. During those years when rainfall is really bad, older men and "even women" may also migrate in such a way.

By contrast, people in the southwest tend to migrate not because they have to in order to have enough food (although this may still be the case some years) but because there is little work during the dry season and so little opportunity to earn money. The large majority of people migrating from locations in all the regions of Burkina Faso that we have visited go to Cote d'Ivoire. People form the north also head to the southwest but Cote d'Ivoire seems to be the promised land of plantation work and pennies.

On our most recent visit to the East of Burkina (Fada N'Gourma) we were struck by the nice feel that the town had. The east is little mentioned in terms of migration within Burkina, either as a place of departure or arrival. It seems that it is a nice place to live as the land is fertile and they have bins in the town (a rare thing here). So people migrate to there from nearby. However, there seems to be a cut-off distance where the investment neccessary to travel to Fada is such that one might as well head to the southwest where the soil is more fertile and the harvest more secure.

I think thats enough on migration for now. One village we visited in the east had the unenviable position of being able to look at the pylons carrying electricity that they could not use from the dam that they could not use for watering their crops as it was needed to generate the electricity that they could not use.

Don't worry, mission successful...

We had to get up at 3:30 am but it was worth it...

Slight change of plan now. We are off to do a few more interviews in the East of Burkina Faso tomorrow morning before heading to Ghana after that. Another early start tomorrow!

Bonjour! Having spent just over a week in the two northern towns of Dori and Djibo - on the edge of the Sahel - we are back in Ouagadougou. We managed to do some good interviews while we were away although the trip was somewhat hampered by sand and the strong Harmattan wind. It was difficult to get anywhere by bike in Dori due to the deep sand and the dust carried by the hot wind was a bit demoralising at times. As a result we worked fast and were able to flee the sandstorms in favour of returning to the capital. We are now in Ouaga for the week before hopefully heading to Ghana for a week at the weekend. Our passports are with a very stroppy lady at the Ghanaian embassy as I write and she will hopefully have seen fit to give us visas by the morning. As for this week, I am writing up all the interviews and we hope to continue the search for an elephant at some point! New photos in the top slideshow on the right and I will update some more soon with our adventures of the past week.

After a week in Banfora and therefore 2 weeks in the southwest of Burkina Faso we headed back to Ouagadougou...on the bus. We tried to select our bus company carefully. The first section of the route from Banfora to Bobo was done in relative comfort but, when we changed buses for the 5 hour stretch of the journey to Ouaga, we were assigned the worst seats on the bus! We were seated right at the back in the very corner of the last row of seats. These two seats happened to be the only ones on the bus with absolutely no legroom. We stayed crammed in these seats for about an hour before we managed to negotiate a swap elsewhere. We also managed to jam a window open allowing a cool breeze for the entire journey. People here prefer to travel in stifling heat on buses rather than have any windows open. We figured that, as we had the worst seats, it was only right to break the window so that no-one could close it!

For the last week we have been in Ouagadougou. I have been doing a lot of typing up of past interviews. We've dined pretty well and have succumbed to the extortionate price of cereal and milk. Breakfast is one of the three most important meals of the day though so we figured the expense was worth it. We've also been taken out both for lunch and one evening meal. Some Canadians working at the university took us out for lunch and an American family who work for the American embassy treated us to cheeseburgers and pizza one evening. They also took pity on our food budget and raided their cupboards in search of home-feeling food! They import loads of food from the States and so had all the American favourites. We ended up with peanut butter, shreaded wheats and cheeze-its. Food never tasted so good and the box of cereal was consumed in a flash. It is amazing how friendly everyoe is here, locals and non-locals alike. The picture above is of Mike holding our 'groceries' from the Western world in the dark of our guesthouse. We got back from the splendour of an embassy house complete with labrador and pool to a powercut. Hence the candle.

Today we are setting off on our voyage north to Dori and Djibo, two towns located on the edge of the Sahel. It will be interesting to see the contrast between the north and south although I fear there may not be as much swimming as we became accustomed to in Banfora. What I'm really excited about however is the prospect of another bus journey!

Take care anyone and everyone, and you'll hear from me again in a couple of weeks.

Well, the next bus made me realise how lucky we'd been with the buses up until this one. It was sort of a small minibus with hard wooden seats crammed in. I counted seating for 14 people including the driver. This was already impressive as it certainly wasn't a big bus. However, at the peak of our journey we had 26 people onboard. I got Mike to take the above photo when all the seats were filled up and I thought things were as bad as they were going to get. Once things really got bad though I couldn't reach my camera as I couldn't move! We ended up with 7 people standing in the space where there is one guy standing in the photo. For a while the door didn't even close.

However, once again we got to our destination in one piece and only a little disgruntled that it turns out you can do the same journey in an air conditioned coach in half the time and for the same price. You travel and learn. Anyway, we had made it to Banfora which is a real gem of a town hiding in the southwest of Burkina Faso. Tourism is definitely not a big thing in Burkina Faso but, if one were a tourist, there is plenty to entertain around Banfora. We visited a lovely waterfall, a hippo lake and a place called The Domes of Fabedougou which has interesting 1.8 billion year old rock formations. We stayed in a lovely camp place just outside the town and enjoyed a lovely week of interviews, tourism, swimming and eating at the cheapest Japanese restaurant in the world with a group of American Peace Corps volunteers.

You may have seen the video of the waterfall jacuzzi that we enjoyed at the Karfigula Cascades. I will add another in a minute but I can't describe how good it was! It is possibly one of the biggest tourist attractions in Burkina Faso but there were very few other people there and those that did visit seemed to only stay about 15 minutes, take a picture of the strange boys swimming and then get in their cars again. I don't know if it was because we'd cycled miles to get there but any time we visited we swam for hours. Even Sana was excited and on our first visit jumped straight in... and quickly reminded himself that he really couldn't swim!

So, if anyone is planning a trip to Burkina Faso I can definitely reccommend Banfora and Campement Siakadougou (where we stayed). The only disadvantage we found of our location was the cotton factory lorries that drive along the dirt road outside the campement at ungodly hours of the night during the dry season and make it sound like the world is ending. Oh, and the yoghurt is so good in Banfora!

Another bus, another day, and we arrived in Bobo Dioulasso. The only difference on this bus was that Sana used it to move house! As he had to move out of the house at the village school we had to take all his belongings with us on the bus including buckets, bags of rice and three chairs. It all worked fine to start with but then carrying it all 7km to our accommodation in Bobo was a challenge, especially as it was dark. Next time I need to move house in England I'm going to use the bus.

Bobo seems to be a lovely city but our experience of it was slightly hampered by where we stayed. Sana's uncle very kindly allowed us to stay at his house, or at least in a room in his compound that he rents out to people. It was very hot while we were in Bobo and it was somehow even hotter in the compound where we were staying. It was even hotter in our little room! However, staying with Sana's uncle did mean we had a steady supply of interviewees for the 2 days we were there.

In Bobo itself there is plenty of culture to see including a big mosque, an old colonial style station, an old part of town (including Bobo's first house) and a forest park. At least those were the sights that we managed to cram in while we were there. We didn't go into the mosque as there was a carnival going on outside which seemed far more fun. We did go into the station but didn't see a train as there are only 3 a week. We also tried to sneak into the old part of town without paying a guide (as you are supposed to). It all went well until a mob of guides attacked us as we tried to leave. They all ganged up on Sana (who is a self confessed coward) so I had to step in and defuse the situation with my fluent French...or wave money at them and hope they stopped. So, we went around the old part of town again, this time with a guide.

As for the forest park, we decided to pay a taxi to take us out to the park (far out of town) and then wait around for us for two hours. Our main ambition at the park was to go for a swim so we hoped to spend our two hours lolling in the springs that the guide book told us we would find. When we arrived at the park the driver suggested that I pay for him to come in with us. I was happy to do so but hadn't imagined how interested he would be. It turned out he had never been there before and hung off the every word of our park guide - who insisted on showing us the whole park before letting us in on the secret of where we could swim. It was so hot that I fear Mike and I may have trailed along like spoiled children asking when we could go swimming while the driver and Sana eagerly kept the guide talking about all the different trees we were passing. Eventually we got to have a swim, along with a herd of cattle, and the driver stripped to his pants and was almost in before us! I think he had a good day. Thankfully that meant he didn't mind the wet seats on the way home.

So, two days in Bobo didn't do it justice but it we decided to move on in search of cooler accommodation and yoghurt. And so, we were back on a bus...

After our interesting bus journey we arrived in the village of Ouarkoye where we were to live at the local school in the house built for (but not used by) the headmaster. This arrangement had come about because Sana had been working at the school and living in the house before taking the job with us. However, to work with us Sana had obviously had to end his contract with the school. He was very shocked to discover that, given the contract was now over, the headmaster was not keen for the three of us to stay in the house for a week. Especially as a replacement teacher had been found and was supposed to be moving in!

So, it was a little awkward at first but eventually the headmaster gave us the go ahead and we stayed at the school. The photo above is the main part of the school. The small building by the tree is the kitchen and then you can just see a classroom on the left edge of the image. And a cow...

Even though Sana no longer worked at the school, he used the students like his own personal staff and sent them off to fetch us water whenever he felt like it. That however reduced the number of times Mike and I could get water which was a shame as it was actually quite fun using the pump! The school was located just outside the village of Ouarkoye and there was no electricity anywhere around apart from in the one small shop. The village was a lovely place to be though. After dark all the street food vendors would come out and light their little fires. We dined mostly on fried sweet potato and salad in the dark. Mike likened it to the blackouts in the Northeast of America in 2003 (as featured on some tv advert recently). The ambience was lovely.

After eating in the early evening we would then usually head back to the school and have a fire. One night we had a 'tea party' with all the other teachers. It turns out however that tea is quite an ordeal in Burkina Faso and that one tiny pot (about 4 shots of tea) takes about an hour to make with much swilling and rinsing and boiling and reboiling. We went through about 5 rounds of tea that night so we were late to bed! We stayed in Ouarkoye for about a week before catching another bus south to the second largest city, Bobo Dioulasso.

Our two weeks away from the capital started interestingly. We had a 7 hour bus journey ahead of us and so left the house at half 5 on the Monday morning. As Mike and I cycled to the uni to meet Sana the only thing we had to stop for was a big herd of goats that were blocking the way...in the capital...at half 5 in the morning. They didn't seem to have a shepherd either!

We got to the 'bus station' at about half 6 for the first bus of the day. Unfortunately, the fist bus of the day only managed to get itself out of the bus station at about half 10. This was partly because the schedule was fairly flexible, partly because the mechanics had to change one of the wheels twice and partly because push-starting a bus is pretty hard work, especially if the roof is fully laden with bicycles. I was amazed that the only way to get the engine going on the bus was to jump start it with about 20 guys pushing it. I was even more amazed that once we were on the road it turned out that the bus had no brakes! Every stop had to be well planned so that we could roll to a halt at a point where someone could jump out and put blocks under the wheels to hold us in place.

Still, apart from a hairy moment when a cow (who obviously didn't realise our brake predicament) strolled in front of the bus, we made it to the next destination safe and sound. Far from comfortable but at least in one piece. And our bikes had enjoyed the fresh air on the roof. At the next destination (Kedougou) we had to catch another bus. Thankfully this was a splendid beast compared to the last one. It had proper seats and everything! Unfortunately the bus was about to leave when we got to the depot. So, our bikes were loaded onto the next bus while we tried to get Mike's bag from the roof of the first. The driver of the second bus however decided to leave with our bikes but without us and so we ended up chasing the it down the road and jumping onboard through the back door. It was pretty good fun and we even had all our belongings. And so we eventually arrived that afternoon in the village of Ouarkoye...

In the heat of the middle of the day we found that the waterfall was a good place to be! This is a video by the way...

Travels in the South West

Hello! We are back in the land of internet. We had an interesting couple of weeks and managed to combine a spot of tourism with some interviews. The south west of Burkina Faso is a very green and pleasant land with waterfalls and interesting geological features. In the photo above we are standing atop the highest of the Domes of Fabedougou. Standing on that rock was far riskier than it looks in the photo. There were some quite impressive drops! I will try and update this bit by bit over the coming week before we leave for the land of no internet in the north. I will try and compose my thoughts so that I can be concise but also include the entertaining moments we have enjoyed!

Today we've had a very indulgent day. Probably in stark contrast to the next two weeks. We started off with brunch at someone's very nice new house in the suburbs of Ouagadougou. Followed by a swim and sunbathe at the swimming pool of the International School close to where we are staying. We've packed our bags for the next two weeks and, as we need to be able to carry evertything on our bicycles, have not packed much! Probably no updates for a couple of weeks but I hope you are all well.

So it looks like the bullet point thing in the last post didn't work. Each bullet point became a paragraph. I may update some more tomorrow before we leave for two weeks. After that, I imagine there'll be nothing more said until we return to Ouaga and electricity and the internet. I just had to put this post up so that there was a picture at the top rather than text...

Issues

Today is the day of the blog. On Monday we are leaving the capital to travel by bus to a rural area to the West of the capital. We are staying there for a week before heading to the south-west in search of more interviewees. The village we are staying in next week has no electricity and definitley no internet so I may not take my computer with me for the next 2 weeks. I am therefore filling 2 weeks worth of silence now. However, to make this less of a mass of text, I am going to go for some bullet points highlighting some of the of our experiences:

- Mosquito Nets. Mike gave up on his last night and slept for the first time without it. There are not many mosquitoes around but those that there are seem to like biting me. So, I've kept mine up. However, last night when I got up in the night I got confused about whether I was using mine or not. The result enabled me to commiserate with a fish being fished.

- Supermarkets. Although we are trying to live cheaply and so eat what is easily available at the markets, some things we can't manage without. Our first issue was breakfast cereal. We caved in there after just a few days. Today we had to buy squash. We keep feeling like we have got to the point where we can't drink any more water without some flavour. However, things in supermarkets are all imported and so horrendously expensive.

- Supermarkets. Because things in supermarkets are imported and expensive the clientele there is usually of the wealthier persuasion. As a result, all the street sellers congegrate there. Mike is well practised at ignoring them but I feel rude doing so. I need to get over this though as it could get expensive. I was vaguely interested in a book one guy was selling and that was a fatal mistake. I ended up with about 10 people crowding round me trying to sell me things. Next time I'm just going to run.

- Safari. It seems the best place to see elephants is a park called Nazinga. However, to get there and drive around when there you need a car. The guide book says that you can theoretically hire a car at the park quite cheaply but in reality there never actually are any. However, the book does go on to say that you are amazingly allowed to go into the park on bicycles! I don't think there are many lions in this particular park so tha main danger is the elephants. I've heard however that they are very small and docile creatures and that if they extend their ears it means they are pleased to see you.

- Dust. The harmattan winds have started blowing early this year apparently. The locals are not happy. Everything gets very dusty very quickly even when the winds are not blowing. The poor lady who cleans the guesthouse every day has a terrible challenge. I was mysteriosly ill the other day and coldn't stay awake for more than an hour at a time. Sana tried to blame it on the distance we had cycled that morning. Not wanting to accept defeat in the cycling stakes (we'd only done about 10 miles!) I am blaming it on the dust according to another person's theory. It's either that or a brief tropical disease!

Wildlife and People

One of my aims while in Burkina Faso is to see an Elephant. Obiously my work takes priority. But, if I happen to see an elephant while accidentally looking for interviewees in a National Park it couldn't hurt! In terms of wildlife that you can see every day, things are not too exciting in Ouaga. There are a lot of gecko-looking things, one of which lives in the cupboard in our room and makes a loud clicking noise in the night. There are also other lizards that can make themselves quite tall and run on long legs that I think are called margooya (that's what the name sounds like anyway). As you can see from the picture, we have also seen a Crocodile. There is an urban park in Ouaga that is about the size of Hyde Park in London. The park is mostly just forest which people can pay a small fee to go and enjoy. However, there is also a lake/marsh area in which there are crocodiles. thus, about a mile from the central district of the capital there are crocodiles that seem to live pretty much wild. Also in the park there are apparently lots of antelope living in a large fenced enclosure. We've met a guide (who doesn't speak much english but likes saluting us) who is I think going to take us to see the antelope at dawn one morning.

Other than animal-life we've met lots of friendly people. Most people we interview want to know how I can help them to move to the UK. A lot of others however just want to help us. We met a man in a shop who is on a mission to put us in touch with anyone important in Burkina Faso. He is ringing me later about arranging a meeting with the National President of the Cattle Herders Association. We've also met a nice lady whose husband works at the American Embassy. She's invited us to visit their house at some point and there is even a softball game organised for one weekend which we can go and watch! Mike asked if we could take part but she didn't seem to think we would be up to the standard. Maybe its going to be like the American little leagues you see on films.

Life

As you may have gathered from the last post, life here is pretty different to back in the UK. One startling similarity is the bike shops though! The photo above is a bike shop we came across in a village outside the capital. Once you get inside it feels and smells just like a bike shop in the UK that hasn't been sorted/cleaned for a few years. The thing to do here is to pay a mechanic to pump up your tyres whenever you need air for your bike. As we are going off into rural areas we thought we would buy a pump. As everyone pays someone else to pump their tyres I'd thought a pump would be expensive. In fact it was only about 50p. I think it is more of a status thing. If you have to ride a bike here you are apparently telling the world you are not that successful. However, I guess if you are paying someone else to pump up your tyres you are also telling that to the world!

One thing we've found that is still very different is this whole thing of eating. There is a local dish called To (probably not spelt like that). It is just ground millet mixed into a paste and then somehow set into a weird white tasteless jelly. Tastlessness is one thing, but the texture is horrible. And they they tend to serve it with the weirdest tasting sauces! A local dish I do quite like however is Dege (also probably not spelt like that). It is again millet, I think, but mixed with sweet milk. It is quite good although the place we first tried it was special to say the least. Sana, our translator, took us to the canteen at the university where students can get government subsidised meals. The meals should be 600f but are reduced to 100f (about 15p). The surroundings are appropriate to the price. You first of all have to queue through a weird rusted metal structure that is a bit like a maze of the gates used to contain angry cattle at a market. Then, once you've survived this, you go through a very tight space (maybe a fat test to see if you deserve the food) into a room that was once painted white but is now mysteriously marked with red patches (feels a bit like a slaughterhouse). Once you've made it this far you emerge into an area where you are faced with a high metal wall with tray-sized holes. If you are lucky enough to stand at the right hole (and you have the magic piece of metal they will exchange for a tray) you get given a tray of food, but no cutlery. Once you have your food, you can then proceed into the eating area which feels just like a prison dining area only with many more flies and people holding plastic bags through the bars that are the walls asking for your leftover food.

Having said all that, it was good of Sana to show us student life in Ouagadougou and to respect our budget enough to take us there. I think the fact that we've said that we will pay him more at the end if we can means that he is keeping a tight hold on our purse strings!

Hello! As you can see from the photo above, we have carried out our first pilot interview. I'm sure you can spot Mike amongst all the interviewees, but Sana (our guide/translator) is sitting in the front row, second from the right. The interview went well but we found that 10 people was too many. Also too time consuming if they all want me to be pen pals with their children!

Apart from preparing and doing interviews we have spent a lot of time preparing logisitics for our forthcoming travels. Someone told me before I left that you can only really get one thing done per day in West Africa. Although on some days we have maybe achieved 2 things in one day, this testament is proving pretty accurate. When we first arrived I couldn't bear the sitting around and waiting for hours on end. Now however, I find I can sit and wait for hours without any bother...and the time flies by!

Apart from such time-based acclimatisation, it has taken us (or at least me...I'll ask Mike) some time to adjust to life here. At first we struggled to find food because we couldn't tell which places were trying to sell food and which were not. Although I think my French has improved a bit, it is difficult to buy fried banana from someone when they don't speak French either and I have no clue how much it should be. We managed to work out it was 5 francs for one, but then I didn't know if that was one serving, or one banana chip. As a result, the old lady thought it a bit weird that I gave her 10 francs, hoping to buy one portion each for Mike and I.

I feel like I have far more to say but I can't remember it now and I doubt anyone has read this far down the page. One thing that has struck me so far though is that people are very keen to have their photo taken (and for you to send it to them) but they don't liketo smile for the photo. Very strange for me having been brought up to smile for endless photos for the last 24 years.

Mon sac, it's back!

My bag made it to Ouagadougou! I didn't really believe it would work but the bag managed to work its way from the depths of Libya's carousels to me. Probably not that interesting to most of you but it does at least mean I now have clean underwear.

Hopefully future updates will be slightly more meaningful. At the moment though, the prospect of smelling better is too exciting not to write about.

Ouagadougou

Hello everyone.

We've made it to Ouagadougou! Just a quick update to say that really. We had fun on the plane watching American films that had been blurred and edited to stop our minds from being corrupted by them. Afriqiyah Airways was very impressive until they lost my baggage. So, only a quick update as I have no charger for my laptop and I smell too bad to sit in one place for too long. It is pretty hot here but not yet stifling. Soon it will be apparently!

Lord of the Rings

I thought I should provide a bit of background as to why I'm spending two months in Burkina Faso. I'll try and be quick however in an attempt to avoid that glazed-over-eyes look people seem to get when I start talking about my PhD. The aim is to make an agent-based model of how changes in climate affect migration of people in BF. If you are not in the know (as I wasn't until I started my PhD), an agent-based model is a computer simulation where the actions of individuals (agents) affect the behaviour of all the other agents in the system, producing interesting and unforseen outcomes. As that makes no real sense, here is an alternative description.....

In one of the Lord of the Rings films where they have a huge battle scene with many angry characters fighting as they do, rather than draw (or CGI) each of the characters fighting, they made an agent-based model. For each character made, the film people assigned a set of rules of behaviour that would define their actions. So, if an Orc was running into battle, his rules might be "if opponent smaller than you, fight them" and "if opponent bigger than you, run away". So each set of characters had rules of behaviour that led to a big fight. In essence, the aim of my PhD is the same. I need to find out the rules of behaviour that lead people in Burkina Faso to leave their homes in search of a better life. Hopefully the rules I find will be a little more subtle and end in less bloodshed.

p.s. The precise details of the Lord of the Rings stuff might be a little sketchy but I'm told its true!