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.