A Reunion, a Foot Bath & Lots of Hippos

“YOU OWE ME WESLEY!!” I yelled into the phone over the typically expected noises that emanate from a Burkinabe bush taxi, you know the ones by now; the screaming babies, the screaming goats, the screaming music, the screaming shriek of the bus' interior frame about to collapse from the abusive roads, the man screaming into his phone next to you who thinks this is the perfect time to have a friendly conversation with his brother twice-removed on his father's uncle's side. Yeah, I was on my THIRD of these deluxe bush taxis on my way to see one of my best friends, Wes, in his village of Lanfiera (in the Northwest of Burkina) for the weekend. After FIVE of these and about 14 hours later, I made it to his village, in one piece but in desperate need of some R&R, which Wes marvelously provided with a foot-soak bucket bath and a lukewarm beer.

Lanfiera is a smaller village than mine (Bagassi) and is predominantly Muslim. Wes had told me numerous times about the friendly neighborhood Mosque that had its microphones directly pointing towards his house but I never understood until I was woken up at 4am every morning with the screamo-styled chanting into these said microphones and then the free-for-all kids' karaoke time that came afterwards. That day, we worked at the Bisongo where Wes volunteers (pre-school) and spent the day doing a review of the shapes, colors and numbers they learnt that week. I taught them how to play “Red Light, Green Light” and they loved it. The Bisongo has about 15 kids from the ages of 2-5 and is funded by the community itself (even though apparently not many people know that it exists!). The volunteers that Wes replaced had built, painted, furnished and stocked the Bisongo the year before and Wes' job for his service is to help with teaching methods and techniques at the administration level and help teach the pre-school teachers hands-on classroom management.

After the day of work, I got the grand tour of Lanfiera and went on an epic adventure to the river! After biking about 2km, we got to the river gardens which was growing a variety of plants and fruit trees and grass. We parked the bikes and walked about another ½ Km to the actual water (its dry season so the water had receded drastically) where we asked a local man to take us out on his canoe, he refused saying that he was done fishing for the day (putting nets out) so we kept walking. Finally I saw another man coming in so I made my way over while Wes and his site-mate (another volunteer who lives there) walked to the other bank to find hippo prints. This man didn't speak a lick of French so I have no idea how, but completely in Dioula, I managed to get the guy to take us out on his dugout canoe to go see the supposed hippos that were in the river (super proud moment y'all!).

The water was giving off an air of humid heat and the sun was setting like it always does here, in a huge ball of fiery orange. Adema had us sit in his canoe and he pushed us out with a large bamboo stick/tree until we got to where the hippos were supposed to be. We heard them before we saw them...the noise brought goosebumps to my skin and shivers down my back:

“MAARRGHHHHH” went the hippo, “GAAHH!!” went we.

After hearing the deep, vibrating, angry sounding roar of the giant bull hippos, Adema still continued paddling towards them until we could get a clear view:

“GAAAH!” we yelled again, “Akine Adema, Akine!!!”

(In Dioula, 'its good, its good', meaning for him to stop).

I gave him the thumbs up and told him that it was beautiful, he gave me a quizzical look, clucked disapprovingly from his lips (very typical Burkinabe thing) and shook his head and said what I thought was:

“No good, hippos no good, hippos eat people!”

I almost tipped the canoe. **

After we got our fill of hippo watching and got back onto safe ground, we thanked Adema profusely and went to find our bikes (at this point it was almost completely dark and we hadn't thought to bring a light) and I thought my adventures for the day were done. I was wrong. I guess I have a sort of attraction for bats because I can never seem to get away from the furry little things. I was just walking between Wes and his site-mate, chatting away excitedly about what a beautiful and raw experience we just had and BAM!! out of nowhere, an obviously disoriented bat smacked me square in the back! I had no idea what it was until I looked back and saw the poor thing flying away all wobbly and confused. Guess Burkina was giving me a reminder to never let myself think I'm safe from the flying rats!

After I recovered, we continued to a great little shack place that had fresh fish from the river and we picked through 3 whole fishes (heads and all) topped with cucumbers, onions and tomatoes (most protein I've had in a while!).

So, to sum it all up, everything is still going great here in Burkina and in even better news, I didn't become hippo poop this weekend!

Let the adventures continue!

**Don't worry, what he actually meant was that hippos just maul people, not eat them.

What Peace Corps Volunteers really do...

Adama, our Hippo Hunter

Those specks are Hippos!

Fresh catch of the day 

Wes' Preschoolers