Burkina wedding

My colleague is married to a Burkinabé, her brother was getting married and we were invited.















Waiting outside townhall





























The bride and groom and ???

Going from the townhall to the party venue we got a surprised. Some women started singing to us and followed us to the car, singing and (we think) wishing us good health. They were surprised that we didn't reward their stalking by paying them.















The entertainment hall with red carpet and balloon heart, like all good weddings.















The girls















All (couple of hundred) guests get a plate of food















The cake

Our roundabout

As mentioned in an earlier blog they took our elephant of the roundabout.

Good news: They put something back.



















A local artist has the honour to put his work at display. Not too bad, however a detail does make us a bit unconfortable. It is not the bird on the back of the cow that looks like a flat chicken. Well, I let the photo speak for itself.

Salif Keita

We had a lovely time at the concert. Good music, unstoppable background singers.
Even dancing public. The pictures tell it all I think.











The secretary reserved places for us, so we were right in the front. Where else in the world can you see a star like this with VIP treatment for 15 euro.












As a sidenote, Salif was rejected by his family as albinos are bad luck. He started in a government sponsored band. An example that good programmes do work. I think it paid itself back a hundredfold.

Culture

Ouagadougou is home to one of the, if not the, bigest film festivals in Africa.
http://www.fespaco-bf.net/

This means a few things:
- Films are shown in the main Fespaco building, the french centre and several cinemas in other quarters of the city.
- Parking fees around these buildings go up from 100 CFA to 500 CFA (0.90 Euro) but organised with tickets
- More white people rooming the streets (often looking artistic: read badly dressed and unwashed hair)
- Souvenir prices go up and it is assumed you are one of them
- A few streets are very busy, closed off or both

So we felt we had to go to a film. To me it looked like the were showing a film at the French Centre in a room called CBC. It turned out that it was actually an entirely different place. The same goes for all the cinemas in the other quarters of town, you are meant to know where they are, no addresses. So we ended up watching 3 short films in the french centre.

Film one 'Drogba est mort' (Drogba is dead). A streetboy dreams of being football star Drogba and gets killed in a roadaccident. The maker explained all sort of deep things behind it which we didn't get. Fact remains simple: streetboys are poor and have dreams that mostly stay dreams. Advantage of this film is that not a word was spoken.

Film two was about a boy who went fishing with his father. At the end of the day they had to hand over the fish to a man to pay of a debt. The boy called them 'photofish'; we see them but can not eat them. One day instead of giving the fish to the boss he sold the fish and paid the boss of with a bit left to buy medicins for his mother. Lesson; give the kids education and try to start a bussiness. Again not very deep. Short film in english, not too difficult even if it had been in an other language.

The last was a bit longer and more weird. A boys father is ill, so he goes to see the witch. The witch gives him 7 tasks; find the sun, help someone, pay a debt ... So everywhere he sees a sun (on a shirt, on a truck...) he follows it and the tasks become clear. He earns some money by saving someone, so he can pay the landlord and when he comes home his father is well. Not sure if there is a deeper meaning. The film was in Kikuyu with very fast french subtitles, luckily the storyline was not too difficult.

Thursday we did what most locals do: First you make sure that traffic is disrupted by crossing without looking and park you moped/car close to the festival grounds preferrably in the way of something. You come in your best dress and walk around the stalls. Depending on your wallet you look at nothing, the cheap jewellery, locally made clothes, imported goods. In that order.
Besides the selling stalls there are a few charity and official stalls. Some of these seem to be just about showing of. You have a leather couch possible a desk with a printer and as decoration some cloth or flags. It seems not neccesary to have visitors. This is a stand we went into, to the surprise of everyone. There was not even someone there to talk to us.



































This is about the fight against women circumcision. Still a lot of girls die this way.

After that you walk around the 'maquis' these are just cheap tables with cheap plastic chairs. There seem to be more of these then anything else. Generally you take your time and try to take as long as possible to drink your one drink. Some of the maquis sell the famous brochettes (meat on a stick). So we sat down, waited 10 minutes for the girl to take our order, took 5 minutes to explain we wanted to share a big beer, so only one, no we share, two glasses, no one beer, yes two glasses. We enjoyed our beer, got the bill, got some dirty looks and discussion because we did not have small money, we know this is a problem, but I really did not have any smalls.
To our own surprise we came home empty handed, not a t-shirt, not even a blow up Spongbob stick or a party nose-moustache combination whith a whistle if you blow through your nose.
It was fun.

So to try and overdose we are seeing Salif Keita tonight. Worldfamous albino singer from Mali.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salif_Keita

Tiebele and Nazinga

After lots of problems with the internet, the tech guy FINALLY came to the house after Lon called the director of the company.

We have a router problem which has caused all the frequent drops. It should get fixed on Tuesday.

In the meantime, a wire to the wireless router means that I can FINALLY upload a few vids from our trip last month.



This is from the roof of our hut in Tiebele, you can hear the drumming from the funeral in the distance





fun at bathtime

Man and his mangoes

We have a mango tree in our garden, and two of our neighbours have trees which overhang our garden.

We are enjoying watching them grow and develop. Hopefully, we will get some yummy free manoes! It is however possible that we have the fibrous type...oh well





A couple of Sundays ago we could hear a lot of party noise, so took a walk round the corner to walk into a rather posh wedding party

Visit to Tond Tenga

We got up early on Sunday to visit a project on the edge of the city.

Its an organic farm and boarding school, teaching young men how to grow a variety of crops, and animal husbandry for all kinds of animals. There's a good description here



the vegetable gardens

the cooks making To which is very labour intensive. They are cooking on bio-gas which is a by product of the cows...



the bio gas installation

very interesting. We hope to join their veg box scheme after the hot period.

Bleurgh!

We may have discovered one of the most disgusting beverages aimed at the African market - its being quite heavily advertised here.

Why lemon and ginger would be appropriate flavours to add to COFFEE I don't know. Maybe I am too conservative. Either way its yuck, not even mmm interesting, plain yuck!


We can post the first brave soul who's interested a sachet as we have one spare!