Summer Vacation

August 10, 2006
Bonjour tout le monde! Yes, despite the lack of new posts here for the past four months, I am still alive and doing well. July has been busy – I was out of Kongoussi almost the entire month, and although I’m finally back here, have a stream of visitors coming through, keeping me somewhat occupied. So, like several people in Kongoussi, you might be asking, where have I been all month? (Unlike several people in Kongoussi, though, you’re probably not asking what I brought you from those places – at least I hope not.) Abby (my sister – although I imagine most people reading this already know who she is…) came and visited, and we travelled around Burkina a bit and also spent a week in Ghana. And after that, I spent several days up in Djibo, working at a Girls’ Camp with some other Peace Corps Volunteers. So for those of you who enjoy skimming, in this blog entry I’m going to write about Abby’s trip, then Girls’ Camp, and then just some miscellaneous other stuff, like coming back to the U.S. this fall.
Abby flew into Ouaga on the 5th of July. Her flight came in around 8pm or so, and I think she managed to be the last person from her plane to leave the airport, so I spent a fun hour or two sitting outside the Ouagadougou airport. And although she was concerned ahead of time that I wouldn’t be meeting her inside the airport, she did manage to find me. (Despite being the only international airport in this country, Ouagadougou International isn’t exactly O’Hare – it more resembles a Greyhound station than an airport in both size and sketchiness.) From there, we went to our hotel – during these first two nights in Ouaga, we stayed at the Hotel Delwendé, which also bears a striking similarity to a Greyhound station (although I tried to describe it to Abby as "just like the Ritz.") On the plus side, the Delwendé is conveniently located in the center of Ouaga, and has a nice outdoor, second-floor terrace where you can sit and people-watch. After dropping stuff off at the hotel, we walked over to Kwame N’Krumah, probably the nicest street in Burkina Faso and got some food. On the way back to the hotel, Abby asked me if all of Burkina looked this "run down," to which I laughed, since we were walking through the nicest, most developed part of the country – the one neighbourhood where you won’t find mud-brick buildings. We spent the next day bumming around Ouaga – we went by the PC hostel and office, the Ghanaian embassy to pick up my visa (if you ever find yourself in the Ghanaian embassy in Ouagadougou, avoid the woman at the front desk – she’s very bitchy, and in both French and English), and just wandering around centre ville. After I mentioned that there was a swimming pool at the American Embassy, we went and spent the afternoon lounging around the pool.
Following our two nights in Ouaga, we came up to Kongoussi. After dropping stuff off at my house, we went and explored the marché, where Abby bought some pagnes (cool African fabric that’s usually in bright colors), which we took to two tailors I know in town to get made into pants and skirts. Somebody (hint: not me) kept complaining about the heat, so once we made it back to the house around 11am, we (although I wasn’t really the one making the decision) decided not to go out again for several hours, but to sit in front of the fan in my house instead. During the two days in Kongoussi, we did a fair amount – she got a nice tour of town, got to see the caisse’s new building (although, since it was a Friday afternoon, just about everyone had gone home for the weekend already), had some Cokes with Nicolas from my English Club, had a beer with a couple of guys from the caisse (and, as I recall, got a marriage proposal from one of them – the previous day, I had received a marriage proposal from the young woman sharing our cab in Ouaga), and got to see the lake and take some nice photos.
After out short stint in Kongoussi, it was down to Ouaga, to catch a bus for Ghana. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get tickets for the one air-conditioned bus which makes the trek between Ouaga and Kumasi (Ghana’s second biggest city, about five hours north of the coast), which meant we got to make the 20-hour bus ride in a non-A/C bus. (We took the A/C bus a week later when we went back to Ouaga, and I think I actually preferred the non-A/C bus, because it only left one hour late, whereas the A/C one left about five hours late, and the non-A/C one made fewer hour-long stops in random cities throughout Ghana.) July seems to be a popular time for Peace Corps volunteers to be visited by their sisters, and so on our trip to Ghana we were accompanied by another PCV, Tim, and his sister Mary, who was spending the last of her six weeks visiting Tim in Ghana.
The border crossing between Ghana and Burkina is not the most efficient operation. Before the border, you get off the bus, and have to give your passport to some random guy who happens to be standing at the bus door. Then the bus disappears, and after an hour or so, with your concern steadily increasing, you begin trying to find your bus. You then begin to panic, because your see that your bus is starting to leave, but you are neither on the bus nor in possession of your passport. Finally, at the last second, as the bus begins pulling away, you find another random guy who now has your passport for some reason (none of these people have any sort of uniform or nametag to make them seem official), and get it back from him, and then jump on the bus. At least, this was our experience – I’m not sure if this is how it’s supposed to work. And this was just to leave Burkina – the whole process was repeated on the other side of the border. Although at least on the Ghana side, you could inquire in English as to the whereabouts of the passport you haven’t seen in an hour. Coming back to Burkina is an even less pleasant experience – your passport disappears for a good solid two hours, instead of just one. Also, you have to haul all of your luggage off the bus, then stand around for an hour waiting for a Burkinabé douane to come and inspect your bag (one guy searches all the bags, which is frustrating, as you can see his partner just sitting in a chair twenty feet away, enjoying his fan while you bake in the sun). The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the kid selling FanChoco at the border – FanChoco, for those of you who’ve never had the pleasure, is a bag of chocolate milk that’s been frozen – it’s sort of like a delicious hybrid between ice cream and a fudgesicle.
Anyways, after leaving Ouaga around nine (we arrived at the station sometime before eight) in the morning, we arrived in Kumasi about three the following morning. We had to make it to Takoradi (another five-hour bus ride away) by that evening, since we had reservations at a place on the coast called Green Turtle Lodge. After checking into a hotel at three in the morning, the four of us decided there would probably be an early morning bus to Takoradi, probably leaving around six or seven. So after a few short hours in the hotel (I took a shower, but didn’t bother trying to sleep), we went to the bus station, where we learned that we could have taken a 4 a.m. bus to Takoradi, and now had to wait for a 10:00 one. So we wandered around Kumasi a bit, got some breakfast, and watched the classic, Oscar-winning Rob Schneider film The Hot Chick, which happened to be showing at the restaurant. (Tragically, we had to leave before seeing the exciting and, I’m sure, thought-provoking conclusion to the film.) So at ten we piled onto another bus, but after the day-long ride the previous day, the five hours to Takoradi seemed pleasantly short. From Takoradi, we then had an hour or so cab ride to Green Turtle Lodge, which included our cabbie ditching is in one random town and handing us over to another cabbie there, for some reason that wasn’t entirely clear to me.
Green Turtle Lodge is an amazing place, and a perfect model of what eco-tourism could and should be. The place is located right on the Atlantic coast, about a mile down the beach from a small fishing village. The accommodations are small huts, designed to blend in with the surroundings – but with slightly nicer amenities, such as a shower, composting latrine, and solar panels on the roof to run the lights in your room. You can lie in bed in your hut, with the door open, and watch the waves crashing on the shore fifty feet in front of you – pretty cool. They also had some great food – lots of fresh fish, and plenty of French fries for Abby. We spent two nights there, and spent our full day lounging around the beach – swimming, Frisbee, walking, etc. All in all, a very relaxing place to stay.
After Green Turtle, we took a bus along the coast to Cape Coast, which is a very picturesque city. For several decades, Cape Coast was the center of the British colonial government, and the whole city if full of old colonial houses and offices – built a hundred years ago, and fairly neglected over the past fifty years, but very colourful and interesting nonetheless. The combination of the coast, the architecture, and the hills all over the city gave it a very pleasant feel, and we spent a lot of time just walking around the city. We also visited the Cape Coast Castle, located right along the coast, which was once a thriving embarkation point during the slave trade days. One of the nice things about the castle was that, unlike castles or historical buildings in Europe, we had free reign of the building, able to go wherever we wanted (there weren’t any roped-off areas or anything), and there weren’t too many tourists, so you could have an entire wing of the castle to yourself. On the downside, though, a door knob came off a door that I was trying to open, and after that, Abby kept blaming me for destroying a World Heritage Site.
Following two nights in Cape Coast, we took a bus (yay! more buses!) back to Kumasi, and spent a day there. We spent most of our day in Kumasi wandering around the market, which was unbelievable. I’ve never seen a market so large or so full of activity – there were so many people that we often didn’t really choose where we went, we just had to go wherever the crowd was going. And we kept doing this for hours, without ever hitting the same part of the market twice. Kumasi’s market also has several DVD vendors, and unlike the guys selling DVDs on the streets in Ouaga, these movies are in English. Also, they’re unbelievably cheap. For a mere 60,000 cédis, that’s about seven dollars, you can buy a DVD that contains nine of last year’s top Oscar winners. Unfortunately, these DVDs are not guaranteed to work (I don’t think my Oscar one worked, but the Harrison Ford collection one, complete with all three Indiana Jones movies, did).
Overall, Ghana was great. The country is far more developed than Burkina. It’s still very poor, but very noticeably wealthier than it’s northern neighbour. Everywhere we went, for instance, most of the children we saw were in uniforms, on their way to or from school. By contrast, in Burkina, there students can’t afford uniforms, and not very many can even go to school – you’re far more likely to see kids herding goats or begging on the street than on their way to or from school. The buildings were nicer, too – not only were they generally made of concrete instead of mud-brick, but the Ghanaians can afford to paint their houses, making villages and cities far more interesting looking than the drab, muddy brown Burkinabé landscapes. And unlike in Burkina, the streets of Ghana aren’t full of faux types trying to sell you something or con you into giving them money. When you walk through downtown Ouaga, you can’t go ten feet without someone yelling, "Mon ami, le blanc…" and shoving their merchandise in your face. This never happened to us in Ghana. While Burkina makes you constantly aware that you stand out, Ghana gives you the illusion of blending in. If I were a typical tourist, I’d be far more comfortable in Ghana than Burkina.
Anyways, after a day in Kumasi, we got back onto a bus for another exciting twenty-some hour long adventure back to Ouaga (the first six or so of those hours were spent in the Kumasi bus station, trying to figure out where the hell our bus was, and trying to guess why it was five hours late). After a night in Ouaga, we went to Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina’s other big city. I’d heard lots of good things about Bobo, but was a bit disappointed – it’s really quite similar to Ouaga, just a bit smaller and with more trees (and thus, more shade). After a day bumming around Bobo, we headed back to Ouaga, in time for Abby to visit the Artisan Village to buy some souvenirs before catching her plane. The Artisan Village is a really interesting place – just about any sort of west African handicraft that you could imagine is available there. And, unlike just about anywhere else in the country that you try to buy artisanal products, you don’t have to haggle over the price (we learned, however, that you can haggle over the prices, but you then have to hide whatever you buy in a purse of backpack so that you don’t have to turn in the non-existent-because-the-transaction-is-under-the-counter receipt when you leave). After that, we did some packing, and then Abby flew out.
After Abby left, instead of going back to Kongoussi, I went to Djibo to help with a Girls’ Camp organized by some volunteers in and around Djibo. Girls’ Camp is sort of what it sounds – a week long summer camp for middle school girls. However, it’s not quite the same as working at Camp Webb. First of all, everyone was speaking French (or Mooré or Fulfuldé). Also, there was a lot more swearing on the part of the volunteers than you hear from most camp counsellors – we could say anything we wanted in English, since we knew the girls wouldn’t understand. The camp was held at a high school – we used two classrooms, one for the sessions and for eating and sleeping. And unfortunately, instead of Stacey’s lasagna, our meals generally consisted of rice and sauce. Also, no matter how high the temperature gets at Camp Webb, I’m pretty it was worse in Djibo. Perhaps the single greatest difference between Girls’ Camp and Camp Webb: in Djibo, we could go out for beer at night, after all the girls were in bed – of course, this was a bit of a problem the night when a storm suddenly moved in, and we had to walk back from the bar to the high school in the middle of the night, in the rain, with sand being whipped into our eyes by the ridiculously strong wind, only to get back and discover that one of our tents had blown away, and then spend thirty minutes wandering around blindly in the rain and wind looking for the tent.
The general point of the camp is to help empower the girls and give them the skills, knowledge, and encouragement they need to advance in life. There were several themes repeated throughout the week, such as "stay in school", "don’t get pregnant until you’re married", and "don’t get AIDS." The activities included things like meeting and questioning successful women in the community, performing skits about the effects of getting AIDS or becoming pregnant as a teenager, formal instruction on how to use a condom, and role-playing what to do if your boyfriend wants to have sex and not use a condom. I thought the sessions were pretty good, but it’s really hard to tell what kind of an impact they actually had on the girls.
After Girls’ Camp, I came back to Kongoussi for a few days, then went back to Djibo to celebrate one year in Burkina with some volunteers up there, and then went to Ouaga to buy some plane tickets. I somehow managed to passably muddle through the Foreign Service written exam, and now I have to take the oral exam, which gives me a good excuse to go home for a bit, and maybe even convince my parents to pay for the ticket. So I’m flying back to the U.S. on November 20, and then leaving O’Hare on December 10, arriving on Burkina on Dec. 12, with a 15-hour layover in Casablanca (Royal Air Maroc recommended getting a guest visa so I can leave the airport and see the city during that time). Royal Air Maroc also doesn’t accept credit cards, which means that when I went to make the reservation, I had to walk around downtown Ouaga with about twice the per-capita GDP of Burkina Faso in my pocket. (Also, for those of you with Visa cards: if you don’t use your card for a year, and then suddenly try to take large sums of money out of several ATMs in Africa, you’ll run into problems.)
I’m (hopefully) going to post two pictures here. One is of Abby and I in downtown Kumasi, Ghana. If you look closely, you’ll see lots of evidence of how Ghana is much more developed than Burkina, such as the fact that we’re on a paved sidewalk (I don’t think Burkina has a single sidewalk), next to a paved road, with cars parked on it. If not for the woman carrying stuff on her head in the background, you might not even guess it was Africa. I let Abby do all the photography while she was here – when she sends me a copy of all her pictures, I’ll try to post some of them. The other picture is from Girls’ Camp. You’ll notice a few people in the picture who don’t quite belong – those are the volunteers in and around Djibo, and also Marily, the country director for Peace Corps Burkina Faso. Also, since the girls look sort of miserable in this photo, please keep in mind that Burkinabé never really smile for photos.