School outing

We went with the embassy on a team building day. Hazel tends to call it ' schoolreisje', school outing. However I did not get a bag with candy (green Rang is my favorite), nor did anyone throw up in the bus.

It was fun. Earlier then normal we met at the embassy. We all got a orange shirt with a little flag of The Netherlands and Burkina Faso sewn on. Nice. We were grouped in 5 teams of 4 and went in our 5 cars towards our first activity. Two dutch companies aided by the dutch government set up a factory for sesame seeds. In short, they collect sesame seeds from farmers all over the country, sort them with 3 machine (rough sorting, shifting dirt and sorting black from white). Burkinabé sesame seeds have a bad name, this joint venture is trying to change that. So far they are doing well and hopefully in the future they can also offer semi finished product (halffabrikaten).

After a photo and some coffee we were given a route description with several questions to be answered on the way. This is sometimes made harder by the difference in culture, for example if a building has two floors for me it has one ground floor and an additional floor. My colleague argued that the first one does not count, so a bungalow, according to him, has no floors. How can you live there! Any way, we all took it very seriously. One of the stops was at the monument for heroes.

This is a well known landmark in the new quarter 'Ouaga 2000'. The idea is that there will be nice houses and embassies there. So far there are a few big houses (not neccesarily nice) and a lot of nothing. This monument was a good idea, but not fully thought through. This one time a colleague arranged that we could climb it. The first floor (the ring) houses, according to a sign, 'museum of politics' maybe it was a joke; it is empty and dusty. A few broken windows. A small staircase brings you to the top, also empty, even more dusty and small. I find it typical that they are able to put such a big building somewhere and then let it rot. In a few years time they can tear it down, or ask donor countries money to rebuild it.

We ended our trip in a hotel/restaurant on the outskirts of Ouaga, nice. After lunch we were asked to make something out of clay under the supervision of an expert. Like expected I hopelessly failed. My banana was recognized, but the pineapple was considered a strawberry and the mango was quickly rejoined to the motherload of clay. The bicycle looked OK, but couldn't be moved, so with pain in my heart I destroyed my own piece of art.

All in all a busy but enjoyable day.

By the way, my team came last, but at least the last and first teams won a chocolate letter, so better last then second.

Sorry, no photos yet.