Touristing

Okay, well get ready for a doozy of a post as I did pretty much allll the touristy things one can do in the passable regions of Burkina Faso this weekend. I have many pictures and stories and no fewer than four chickens were sacrificed in my name this weekend so there's that. 

We went to Banfora for work stuff and tacked on two days for travel because Banfora and the Comoé region are arguably the prettiest parts of Burkina Faso. The work stuff involved doing interviews with people impacted by MCC projects, and that in and of itself was cool because it enabled me to go into villages and see what typical village life looked like. 

Thursday,  we visited some farms. This is an onion field in a village outside of Banfora. 

I actually really hate raw onions, but the plants are kind of cute!

Friday, I hung out on the roads, and it was rainy so I didn't get too many picture taking opportunities, and I wasn't wearing my hard hat so it was clearly not worth documenting. HOWEVER, on Friday night, Julia received a live chicken as a thank you gift. 

His back legs were tied to our Land Cruiser

Hospitality is huge in Burkinabé culture, and it was incredibly generous of the gifters to part with a chicken for us. However, we obviously had no idea what to do with it.  Thankfully, Salif, our driver, was just like "Ladies, you kill and eat the chicken, it's bad form to do otherwise." While Julia took more meetings, I discussed the killing and eating of the chicken with several Banfora dining establishments, most of whom were not all about killing and de-feathering a chicken of unknown origins for us before the Friday dinner rush. Fortunately, Salif knew a woman in Banfora who would prep the chicken for us, and he returned after about an hour with a respectable looking chicken, which our hotel restaurant agreed to cook. However, the cook who agreed to do it would only agree to cook the chicken when his boss was not in the kitchen, so the chicken sat in a bucket hanging from a tree for a solid 30 mins before they took it inside and prepared it. Probably a miracle we didn't get salmonella, but we survived and the chicken looked great. 

Et voilà: 

There were more chicken encounters to come... after the jump! 

Saturday, we did some more interviews in the morning and then proceeded to knock out almost every tourist attraction in the region. First, the peaks of Sindou, which are rock formations that are also a sacred religious site for the ethnic group that lives in the area. Parts of the site are not supposed to be trespassed on by people not from the village; they used to allow camping here but found that people trashed the area, which is really unfortunate. This is the southernmost point of the peaks, which extend for about 70 km into Mali and is a semi-popular trek that people do (though interest has tapered since Mali flared up). 

Peaks, cows

Next we ventured to the sacred Baobab Tree, which is a (min) 300 year old tree that has a full hollowed out room on the inside. The 300 year number is from oral history in the village, the actual age of the tree is unknown. 

The tree. You climb in through a "door" on the right side.

The lovely man on the right below has been the caretaker of the tree for the past 30 years. He follows a traditional animist religion, and considers the tree to be a source of spiritual guidance for the village. He said he had asked the tree for many children, but now that he has 14 from his 2 wives, he asked the tree to stop giving him children. He also referred to the tree room as his "salle climatisée" (air conditioned room); he definitely had his cheesy tourism schtick down pat, but I was eating it up as I sat in the tree being maybe (probably) defecated on by the many bats who lived above.  Those are cattle horns that are part of the ceremonies in the tree room. 

It's pretty clear I have no idea what to do with myself in this picture. 

The entrance fee for the tree was to pay for two chickens to be sacrificed to the tree at the next religious ceremony. If you're keeping score, that makes 3 chickens who died in our name in the first 48 hours of this trip. 

An external closeup of the tree 

 After the tree, we went to the Cascades, which are waterfalls also in the region. 

The waterfalls

The final Saturday stop was the domes, which are somewhat similar to the peaks but... more dome-like. 

The domes were arguably prettier than the peaks

The final stop was the Hippo lake, which was very beautiful. We saw little hippo noses and ears and faces, though they were not keen on getting out of the water because there was lots of noise and hippos prefer quiet. I also thought they preferred ballet and pastel tutus, but it appears I was mistaken.  

Sunset with les hippotames

Sunday morning was the big market in Banfora, which we went to. I did not buy anything, but it was really great to be in the midst of the hustle and bustle. We were with a researcher who gathers information for a Market Information System that is being rolled out; he got price information on commonly sold grains and vegetables to contribute to a database. Farmers can text into the system and get information on the prices of goods in different nearby markets and major national markets to have better price transparency. The expansion of mobile technology here is really impressive; in almost every village, even if they did not have power, people had cell phones and stores sold credit and solar powered charging time. 

Also... just one more of the croc. 

The croc also required a donation of... money for a chicken to feed it. Which brings us to the fourth chicken. I am poultry's worst nightmare.