After a trip as expected - 21 adults and 5 kids crammed in a 12-seater resulting in aching knees, bottom and neck - we arrived in Burkina Fasos capital. Ouagadougou is as cool as it sounds!
Finally, finally the ¨real¨ African music instead of hiphop! Another concert every night!! The french have clearly an eye for culture in their ex-colony and seem to sponsor excellent cinema, cultural centre and even library.
In between, we arrange all our visa for staying; going to Mali and getting back to Ghana. Bianca throws up in the garden of the Ghanaian embassy probably with yet another food bug. I fall head-over-feet on the street and am happy with the big pot of iodine/betadine we bought. Not being able to sleep on our crappy bed, we have swapped for a bit less crappier beds in a Catholic Sisters guesthouse. With Mother Mary looking down on us, we certainly feel safe.
As a Ghanaian friend told me ¨you know I do not want to dissapoint you but up there it is quite the same as here; actually... they are also black! Oh yeah, but they do speak a difficult language.¨ My french is not as good as I wished, but with a lot of patience seems to keep us out of the worst trouble.
There are more differences though: poorer, with more stinking, open sewages and even more unwanted friends uh amis... Am becoming quite a bitch to yet another rasta boy with their omnipresent cat calls and sleazy chat-ups: they are all too glad to call my attitude rascist. Cant they understand how anoying they are! But the music more than makes up for it and so did the bizarre ceremony I watched this morning:
Like every week the Moro Nabu came out to greet his people and to discuss court cases with the elderly. Imagine: the king of the Mores/de Moren/ los Moros!! In a bizarre ceremony mixing the traditional with the modern; he still is asked for his approval over current affairs of national government. The important men of the city came to gather in the palace garden (which looked rather like a dog-shitted city park than anything more up to royal standards). According to their means and status, they arrived on bicycles, motorbikes or spotless Mercedes Benz cars with their traditional boubou dress, sword and djembe-like gongs. The chiefs horse was there, there was a lot of kneeling for him (and to all the senior men by the juniors) and even two cannon shots were fired.
One of his servants told me the other day how he was taken away from his mother involuntarily at a very young age to serve the King. Not being allowed to school, go home or play modern instruments, he had to work for him till being released from duty at about 20 years of age. Now he is a musician. But is not that called slavery? The custom has not changed since then..
Africa, where age is still seen as an achievement that demands respect instead of a process of decay that needs to be covered up with lifting surgery.
Africa, where traditions are valued, but just as much are mobile phones.
I am going to enjoy one month more of this crazy continent!!
vrijdag 27 juni 2008
Last days of research
After ages, I thought I let you know where I am.
After sick, ill, asthma attacks and sick again, I finished my research around Tamale. They showed me the gods that allow or demand burning bushes. Without wanting to show disrespect - it looked to me an eggshaped form plastered with feathers on a stick. They told me all about their fire-and-hunting feast after harvest and I could see their eyes glimmer. They explained me how the gods are actually quite flexible and comprehensive towards a change in customs - like stopping the burning of the bush - as long as you sacrifice enough guinea fowls. But as a smiling chairman explains: ¨It is not the gods but the people that will not allow it!¨
Well anyhow it is a long story and I will tell it to you when back home (which as you might have heard is 29 th of july)... Sure thing is that I hugely enjoyed my last days in the field, when finally not trying anymore to understand their behaviour in terms of a rationality that I could not grasp. Is it more rational to be smoking our lungs away; stressing up to the point of heart attacks etc. than burning the bush?
Time had come to say good bye and we even organised a dinner party for our electricity friends. They are some guys in our street who work on a Worldbank project of putting street lights on both side of one street, where other parts of town have none - strangely coinciding with upcoming elections. Thing is, the Ghanaian are deemed too stupid for doing the project themselves - so our friends are driver or watchmen only - and therefore some Egyptians who could hardly speak English were flown in. They stay in their airco building almost all day. Ibrahim, Abdullah and our other friends are therefore teaching us the art of boredom; where unemployment seems the norm, a useful skill to master. They know exactly who of all our neigbhours have passed at what time of the day and are happy for any chat and offer their help to the tiniest problems we have (like where to find yam for dinner.
After eating their pasta and finishing their drinks - no alcohol, thanks to Allah - they ask permission to go home; a Ghanaian party finishes whith the food it seems...
Holidays start with travelling up to Bolgatanga to see the others and have two field trips:
After sick, ill, asthma attacks and sick again, I finished my research around Tamale. They showed me the gods that allow or demand burning bushes. Without wanting to show disrespect - it looked to me an eggshaped form plastered with feathers on a stick. They told me all about their fire-and-hunting feast after harvest and I could see their eyes glimmer. They explained me how the gods are actually quite flexible and comprehensive towards a change in customs - like stopping the burning of the bush - as long as you sacrifice enough guinea fowls. But as a smiling chairman explains: ¨It is not the gods but the people that will not allow it!¨
Well anyhow it is a long story and I will tell it to you when back home (which as you might have heard is 29 th of july)... Sure thing is that I hugely enjoyed my last days in the field, when finally not trying anymore to understand their behaviour in terms of a rationality that I could not grasp. Is it more rational to be smoking our lungs away; stressing up to the point of heart attacks etc. than burning the bush?
Time had come to say good bye and we even organised a dinner party for our electricity friends. They are some guys in our street who work on a Worldbank project of putting street lights on both side of one street, where other parts of town have none - strangely coinciding with upcoming elections. Thing is, the Ghanaian are deemed too stupid for doing the project themselves - so our friends are driver or watchmen only - and therefore some Egyptians who could hardly speak English were flown in. They stay in their airco building almost all day. Ibrahim, Abdullah and our other friends are therefore teaching us the art of boredom; where unemployment seems the norm, a useful skill to master. They know exactly who of all our neigbhours have passed at what time of the day and are happy for any chat and offer their help to the tiniest problems we have (like where to find yam for dinner.
After eating their pasta and finishing their drinks - no alcohol, thanks to Allah - they ask permission to go home; a Ghanaian party finishes whith the food it seems...
Holidays start with travelling up to Bolgatanga to see the others and have two field trips:
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